Wyomissing Area School Board: April 13, 2026

001I'd like to call to order the committee of the whole meeting. If everyone would join me as we are in the audience. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Anyone reporting to the meeting? I appreciate that. And we'll call Mr. Boyer, please. Mrs. Herrenson? Here. Mr. Hershey? Here. Mrs. Coon? Here. Mrs. Phillips? Here. Ms. Rodriguez? Here. Mr. Shippers? Here. Mrs. Taylor? Here. Mrs. Torres? Here. Mrs. Zabinski? Here. Five in attendance. I'd like to welcome our visitors for this evening. There is a Board of School Directors meeting on April 27th at 6 p.m. in the community boardroom. There is a Committee of the Whole meeting on May 4th at 445, also in

002this room. A Finance, Budget, and Facilities workshop on May 8th at 5 o'clock, also in this room. An executive session was held tonight before tonight's meeting for a legal item and there will be an executive session following tonight's meeting also for a legal item. Did you say May 8th? I did say May 8th for the financial facilities. That's a Friday. Unless I'm on the wrong calendar. I just thought I'd know. Maybe it should be the 6th. The 6th would be Wednesday. You're right. so it should be the sixth just check it yeah you don't want to be here on friday so correct is that finance budget and facilities workshop will be may 6th at five o'clock thank you missus you're welcome um is there any public comment okay um moving on to approval of the

003minutes by voice vote it is recommended that the board of school directors approve the following minutes which were the march 9th 2026 board meeting minutes to our human rights presentation. So at this time I would like to introduce three of the members of our first cohort who have enrolled in the Penn State University Human Rights Education Initiative. We have Mrs. Rebecca Stemzamota, a school counselor at the Hills. We have Ms. Sally McEvoy who is a special education teacher here at the Jader Senior High School and we have Mrs. Vanessa Macrina who is a kindergarten teacher over at the Hills. As you can see by the three of their titles we span for this cohort really K through 12 and a variety of content areas and specialties which I think right there is arousing a rendition

004or browsing a support. for the work that this group of educators has been involved in. We're not gearing this towards one specialty or one grade level of teacher. It's really across the board, across our entire system. So what I promised you last year, because this was quite frankly... a leap of faith, right? There was one other school in the county who was involved in the Penn State Human Rights Education Initiative. We had a community member, Mr. Victor Hamel, who spearheads this and helps to find the support and advocate for this initiative. But we really weren't quite sure. It's hard to put into words. What is this like? What are we going to do? What are we going to learn? How is it going to affect my professional practice and my relationships with students? And so

005I thought, we're taking the leap here and we're partnering with Penn State University out of University Park. How about we listen after almost a full year of the program? what some of our teachers got out of their experiences, how it has impacted what they practice in the classroom, and how it may impact moving forward. So we have, I believe, is it 17 of our educators, I think, in the cohort. 17, and interestingly, these three ladies agreed to come to speak this evening. We have others. who are putting together clips for a recruitment video for their colleagues who have agreed to speak to their impact that they received from participating in the program. And we also, I don't want to forget. Thursday, April 23rd, 3.30 to 5.30 in the Junior Senior High School Library is really

006a celebration of stories. It's a celebration of the projects that our cohort members have been involved in. So all of our board members are invited to stop by the Junior Senior High School on Thursday, April 23rd. Anytime between 3.30 to 5.30 if you're interested and have a little bit of time to come and listen to. their experiences too. But we know it's difficult, we know schedules are really packed, so we thought if we can bring three people to you today, we'll get a little glimpse as to what April 23rd looks like as well. So ladies, whoever wants to start? You can stand wherever you wish. We're going to lighten up your face. So actually, that was a great tip because one of my favorite takeaways from this was just having the opportunity to meet other

007professionals in other buildings that I otherwise wouldn't have that much time to talk to and collaborate with. So talking about what I'm finding in my classroom and some concerns I have or working through things, talking to kindergarten teacher or assembly in the counseling office where they see like-minded things and they're challenging to say well have you considered this perspective etc and then having facilitators come in that have pretty much no skin in the game and listening to us it's just kind of a great mental health for teachers and professionals as well to kind of work through some of those things and because we're only meeting once a month and working through those things, I can look forward to seeing Vanessa or Rebecca and saying, hey, how is it going? What's new? Where otherwise it would

008just be choppy and not as beneficial. So that was a huge takeaway for me. One of the strengths because we had such a diverse different roles different buildings I always struggled with finding professional development from our district that was linked to my role specifically as a school counselor. There's only seven of us. It makes sense that you know most of our PD is a whole picture we're looking at all the staff members and a lot of the curriculum that we're doing so when I saw this I was like Is this something I think that would be really applicable to my role as a school counselor? And she said, absolutely, and I agree with you. My future self is definitely thanking my past self for joining. As you know, the last time out we were here

009with the other counselors, we talked about our K-12 counseling comprehensive plan. So we were working on this whole year, and as I'm doing this class, I'm also noticing that I'm processing what I'm learning while I'm making that comprehensive plan in this class. and creating that wondering. And the fabulous thing about the wondering is you're not looking for a solution. As an educator, we're kind of like, what's the fix? What can we do? We see a problem, what's the answer? And this multiple times was told to us, you are not looking for an answer. You're looking for an understanding. for this trauma-informed approach. So I really look forward to just, again, spending time with the colleagues and having those conversations and really taking some data and looking at all different perspectives to learn more about my

010wondering that was very specific to what I was going through, learning about all the things that we do as counselors. And it actually developed into a second wondering now. It's just this cycle that I really look forward to coming and talking through. So I hope to have the chance to do it again. I'm looking forward to be able to present the project, what we've learned, what our next steps are coming up here in April. I do agree with both of these ladies with everything they said. I want to touch on the piece that's extra. I chose this to also get the course credits. And so just our sessions every month is not quite it. It's a valued time. But I also very much enjoyed the kind of online portion of it. So every week we

011do, or every month when we meet, we have a Google Doc that we kind of keep adding information to. and everyone who runs it, for lack of better terms, sorry, is able to have access to that too. And so that's something that then throughout the modules that you're going on, you kind of implement some of those things. But I think a big component that I really liked was self-paced going through these kind of webinars, these modules, to teach me the big content portion of it about being trauma-informed. how you handle difficult issues in your classroom not just learning that but then the reflections that you had to do you really had to kind of look inward into what you were doing in your classroom to then kind of fill in these portions so i think

012it was definitely a both i did very much enjoy meeting with my colleagues but that piece because you're kind of like well We didn't always talk about every difficult issue. So those webinars really kind of helped give you skills and strategies that then you can use in your classroom where when we met individually, you were working on your inquiry. It wasn't like, here's an inquiry. How can we? fix this how can we it was really what we wanted to work on so i chose in mind to kind of look at my curriculum and figure out how we can get the needs of our students met with standards that are not provided like in our in our programs these are kind of the extra pieces so it was really nice to have both of those pieces

013put together do you have any questions for us Can you give us an example? So, you know, you're talking about coming together. What are the kinds of things like and you know, no specifics, but like what kind of topics are you talking about? Like what's something you might bring to this? So like in the beginning, we talked about what were some difficult issues in the classroom that you're seeing in why I'm missing. So we all touched on it could be something like children that are going through divorce and what that would look like for them coming in if they are ready to learn what things we might need to do the way we are going through our instruction to make sure we are touching on all the right things that they need that we might

014not be upsetting them and all those type of things based on then after that they showed us kind of the steps you take to Decide what a difficult issue you wanted to try to tackle within the year and then the steps you take and how to go about that The data you're collecting what would be your difficult issue and kind of going through those steps Does that make sense you want to touch on any of that? So it's I could talk to you for two hours And I often feel as though there's sometimes where I feel isolated with the teaching that I do and the practices that I do because I don't follow the state standards specifically or my goal for my kiddos is are you going to get employed and have a successful life

015when you leave this building? So taking those principles and those goals and talking to a history content teacher or talking to a guidance counselor to say these are my worries and concerns to make sure that this child has a strong and potentially filled life. What are you seeing in your room? And the similarities that were drawn and the aha moments with that history teacher being like, oh, I never thought about that. Oh, your kids do that? And I'm like, yes, they do. They're fantastic. So it's just collecting data across subject lines that really helps, I think, everybody get a more clear picture of what we're doing and give our students the voice that they might not have otherwise and give tools so if you see my kid is in the hallway, like, this is how

016you can approach them and this is how you can start the conversation where before it might be like, I don't want to upset them, I won't say anything. So that has really, really been a wonderful asset to these conversations. And it's inviting students and for some of our general education teachers that are a part of this, in the lower levels like kindergarten, first grade, they've also reached out into parents because we want that data, that information from the students and the parents and staff to be able to truly understand what that difficult issue is and what we could try and do, tweaks, changes, modifications, to just shift the needle just a little bit. Anybody else? A couple of you mentioned the opportunity to take this again. Because you find you've been working on a Wondering

017and now that's prompted another Wondering. Danielle and Karen, the facilitators, the primary facilitators, and I have talked and that's not uncommon. Once people get into this cycle, they have more questions and they want to continue to dive in and do some research and try to think about their practices in a different way. And so we have talked about that. that this doesn't have to be I've been there, done this one time, now I have no more opportunities for professional learning in this realm. That realistically, every year you could go down a different path with a different inquiry and engage and learn more. And so we very much support that as learning as well. And going back to what Rebecca said, it is not always easy to find job-aligned professional learning when you're not a math

018teacher or an English teacher or a social studies teacher, you know, and you have a specialty. And quite frankly, even with Sally, you know, it's such a niche, you know, type of a teaching that to be able to find professional learning that matches what they do and helps them to grow because it comes from them. I can't tell Sally what to... to investigate. She knows what she wants to learn more about. I can't tell Rebecca what she needs to do or wants to do. It comes from them. And I think that's the buy-in that I saw from and I heard from the cohort. It's me being in charge of my learning and my inquiry and I have changed practices because of that. That to me is true job-embedded professional learning. And I've talked to a

019couple people that started a little slowly, have to understand what was going on, but when we really got into it and realized I can choose the path that I want, I can choose the question, it's really exciting. And so that's what I've heard over and over again. It's like Pandora's box. A little bit. And how many times that our facilitators are like, well can you control that? Isn't that your sort of control? And we're like, no! It really is. a neat cycle to watch and how we would constantly check in every session. Has your wondering changed? It was okay if it did because of things that you learned. So to see like where we started in session one to like where we are now, like some of us, it looks a little different but kind

020of consistent and then some others, it went in a total opposite direction and they welcomed that. I think that was the great thing about this professional learning is it was okay to make those live in the moment tweaks. as you were doing the sessions. So like Missy said, we do strongly encourage you to come to that event on the 23rd because you will get a chance to hear our exact inquiry, what I just spent all year doing, tell you about the data, we'll tell you about exactly why and the things we've learned. So it's a little bit more in tune to each one of us that's gone through the cohort. So we would love to have you there. Come hang out. Yeah, please do. Please do. Is this, I'm sorry, so it sounds like it

021was obviously very beneficial to everyone. And obviously we'll probably do another cohort. Is it something that could be done maybe not with the same facilitators? Like is it something we could do? Or it just seems like it was beneficial to have these conversations. Like can that continue maybe not necessarily with the exact same facilitators? Like is it something we could replicate? I think it depends. If you are looking for facilitators that are Y Missing Area School District employees, I think there was this beneficial of having outsiders coming in that had enough knowledge, but they also showed us all the different schools in Pennsylvania that they do this with, and I think some in New Jersey. they came and brought that perspective with them. And I don't know that you're gonna find that in every facilitator

022that could do this. But that was super beneficial to us because even when one of the sessions we met like on Zoom with the other cohorts across state. It was really neat to see like, oh you had something similar. So I think we had three that kind of took turns facilitating and I think they did a wonderful job. But does that mean that they're the only ones? No, I would just caution that they did bring so much to the table because they were outsiders and had exposure to others that did this program. And also, they've been helping me connect the schools in Pittsburgh. because part of mine is the Italian philosophy, which, that's a little pitch, come see me. But there's a school in Pittsburgh that's based on that philosophy, and one of our facilitators

023was born and reared in Pittsburgh, so she's been able to actually get me in touch with some of those teachers for us to collaborate and help to bring some of those ideals into my classroom here and hopefully build up the program here based on the foundation out there. So that alone has been tremendously helpful. Thank you. If I can share with this partnership, we started with this cohort this year, we continue to be a partnership with Penn State Human Rights Education Initiative, then we're already lining up work with our administrative team. You mentioned trauma-informed practices. We can always learn more and do a better job of understanding trauma-informed practices and that starts. with the administrative team and how we work with families and understand situations and such so we are looking at putting together act

02445 hours which are professional learning hours for specific folks in administration that they have to earn through the summer and then in through the school year next year also as a building leader how do i support our teachers who are in this as well so we're looking at trying and to grow not only just the teachers who are in the cohort, but also support in this work with our administrative team to be a stronger team as well within each other, but then also supporting our staff. It's such a great program and it sounds like you've talked to a lot of the parents and I'm sure they understand what a terrific resource this was. I wonder though how we communicate out to the community a little bit more about just what you guys have been involved

025in an upcoming cohort, how this benefits our school kids, etc. So we are creating this, well actually this recruiting video, right, is also, it's recruiting colleagues but also hopefully celebrating the work that's been done. So during one of the previous sessions recently, we had quite a few people agree to be videoed and then the human rights education. initiative group is bringing all of that raw footage together to create this information. So we'd like to get it up on our website. We'd like to get that public as well. And I'm thinking we can probably do a couple shout outs for April 23rd on social media as well. After the fact too, just to share out some of the great work and learning that's been done. It's different. It's, again, hard to put into words. That's why

026I'm excited to learn specifically about the inquiries that our teachers engaged in. I would stop in very, very... occasionally and in that what was interesting because at first I thought I wanted to be a part of it I'm gonna be a learner alongside and then I met with Karen and Danielle and Kylie and we they kind of said you know what I think it's good if you take like you're not in that situation because we want to make a safe space for them for everybody and let them share and I said absolutely I understand that so It's been like I'll visit for a couple minutes and then and that's all I get. But I'm very curious to hear all about their learnings too. But we definitely wanted it to be a safe space for our

027teachers to engage. And when you're talking about problems of practice or you know wonderings you know you definitely need that culture of trust and I think that's one thing that I even when I just visited you could see emanate from the members of the cohort And I'll say this again, some of our folks were members of the total experience learning cohort and it aligns very beautifully. I've heard that over and over again from people, like the kinds of learning that we were doing there may be a little bit more instructional in practice, but you can't do that without your conditions for success, without your safe environment. So those pieces very much do partner with one another. I can share my inquiry and Steph Zechman, she is a first grade teacher, have some crossover in that

028both of ours have to deal with kind of the whole child with your kind of learning skills, your everyday skills, your life skills, excuse me, and your SEL, your social emotional learning. And so we bounced data back and forth. And then after... talking about our inquiries, we both have kind of are looking to take the next step at WECC is to kind of bring a discovery room, an SEL discovery room to that area to kind of make sure we are meeting. all of the students at WECC to be able to utilize those things. So we are looking to try to do that for the fall next year. So that's again kind of piggybacks on what you were saying. She went through TXBL, I have not. I would love that opportunity. And so but that is

029a little bit of collab that we're going to try to do. Thanks for all your enthusiasm. We appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Sally, we appreciate learning about what you do. And your time. And it's a time commitment, too. So thank you very much. It's a nice time commitment. I will say that, too. It's not too much that prevented us from wanting to do this. Once a month, an hour, almost two hours. It was great. Thank you. We will see you on the 23rd of November. Thank you. Thank you. So they do that on school time? So it's a combination of school time and after school time. Many of the meetings are like at 3.30 to 5, but we had an early dismissal. We brought them together during the afternoon. So it is

030a combination. We've been trying to do that more with TXPL and with this balancing. Life, you know, with learning and I think that's the piece that has been inviting for some folks that if it was all 4 to 7 p.m., we might not get people to do this. So we have to understand their busy schedules. But at the same time, another piece of this is when they're meeting one-on-one with their facilitator, that's on Zoom. They can do it at 7 p.m. from their home. So the facilitators have crafted a program that is very convenient and flexible, which I think really helps. This was a part of our partnership that we spent the professional development money, professional learning money on. But I am eager to grow it and really put together a program for our... administrative

031team. That's true. It's just a shame the name is so up to. I know. You just can't wrap your mind. I don't understand. I thought it was going to be like racial discrimination. That's what I used to human rights be. So it's very hard to, I'm glad you're doing the snippets because it does not convey what it is. I think because it came or it stemmed from. completely wrong here, but it stemmed from some of the work and the efforts of Vic Hamill with the Holocaust education and the monies that he's put forth in, again, making sure to get the word out there and the learning and understanding of those atrocities. And so it stemmed from that, but it has grown in ways. And so I agree that... And I think that's why initially when

032we had four people interested, I was like, okay, and then I said, let's not start this in August. Let's wait till end of September. Let's do a better job of helping people understand. And then before you know it, we had 17 people who are saying, I want this. And I would say probably about half of the people would love to do it again. And again, and. the course number gets changed so technically we can have them enroll again because their program is going to look different the second time than it did the first time. And to me, if we're being responsive and we're allowing them to learn about what they would like to, then why not stop that? So it's a different look at professional learning, but again, one in which I think... is valuable

033and meaningful and I just love listening to a high school or junior high school, middle school, school counselor talk to a first grade teacher who talks to, that's just kind of cool. So we've seen some good partnerships from that. So thank you again. We wanted to make sure to bring them back to you and if you're able, again, just to stop by, not necessarily for the whole two hours in the 23rd, we'd love to have you by the junior, senior high and forward. So we'll go back to committee. Now you may go back to committee. Going back to our board liaison updates, our curriculum, facilities, finance, and policy. So Mrs. Zavinsky and Mr. Hershey for curriculum. I do not have an update. Do you want to say anything? I would just say that the committee

034of the whole meeting in May, we will be bringing to you the textbook approvals. a philosophy textbook. We have a new course for a philosophy course. So I have a textbook approval for that. And then also what we will have is the English language arts. textbook and material approvals for grades five, six, seven, and eight. That's been after a year of the piloting, different resources and such. So we weren't quite ready to have that for today across the four grade levels, so we will be ready for early May. And then in addition to that, I guess, maybe not, at our April official board meeting we will be highlighting the award winners for the Spartan spotlight award So we have some books to to share with you members of our staff So that's coming as far

035as later April and then early May with curriculum and I don't mr. Hershey I don't know you got a chance to visit some of the LA classrooms last week, so I don't know if you wanted to say anything or not. I was curious. No, I just reached out and said I would love to visit and, you know, like to get my, put my head in there right now and then. So Dr. Redgate was gracious enough to take me to see some first graders learning how to read and then also some second graders, called the Talon of Science. No, it was great. It was really cool. I think also to recognize, when I asked him, I was like, this is a little different than how my kids did it like three or four years, five, six

036years ago. And he confirmed that. And I asked a couple questions about how it lines up with some of the state mandates and things. Obviously couldn't. That is not my depth. But no, it was definitely good to be able to see that. So I really appreciate being able to do that. And again, if anybody is ever interested in visiting classrooms, we'll work to arrange that. It's always good to see what's happening in the classrooms. I was a little confused when one of the kids said, hi, Mr. Hershey. And I was like, my kids are too old to be here. But the teacher told them we were coming. I know you. Everybody knows you. Meanwhile, all of the kids in high school are like, even if they do know you. And you're right, we continue to

037change practices, you know, we learn better practices and then we also learn things that the state requires. So we're continually evolving over the next couple of years. The state, you know, is requiring some more changes to English language arts instruction, but we do have resources now that... are in alignment, you know, but we continue I think to want to get better at making sure that we're teaching students a combination of phonemic awareness and phonics and you know comprehension and vocabulary and writing all of those pieces are a part of our English language arts classroom. I think years ago we went one direction over the pendulum swing and we didn't really teach. phonics and then other direction it's only phonics and we're learning that it's all of those pillars together that really make a an effective

038english language arts instructional classroom so we continue to work with our teachers with that but you probably did see some different resources that they didn't do even you know three or four years ago it was easy to see how the kids were really into the phonics part because i know there was a story in the past with oh it's too boring kids won't want it but i mean they were super into it yeah Exactly. And it doesn't have to be an hour long. You know, it's a 15, 20 minute quick hitter, but it's routine and regular and consistent and it really makes a big, big difference. And it helps some of those kiddos who need to decode in that way. And so that's the piece we're trying to teach a lot of different strategies so

039that we're meeting students of all types of needs. So, yeah. Thank you for your interest. Since Phillips is not here for facilities, we did just have a facilities workshop last week. Mr. Schipper is on finance. I was not able to attend the finance committee meeting, but I do have a sneaking suspicion that tonight's budget presentation... is going to bear a striking resemblance to what was covered during that meeting. In fact, I'll bet you there's a slide with four buckets on it. There is. There is a bucket slide. That's a new slide. That wasn't presented. So we look forward to getting a redo on the budget. Sounds good. Great. Thank you. And Mrs. Hrensa. Okay. Great. Thank you. Some new ones are coming your way, though, Mrs. Hrensa. All right. Mrs. Hrensa. So speaking of budget,

040I believe it is Mr. Gorder's turn. So thank you very much. And as a continuation from Wednesday's facility compliance workshop, we... are kind of start, oh, there you go, you can start it. We're gonna continue the conversation specifically on the budget side. There were some additional questions. We had a great conversation on Wednesday, but we're gonna kind of move this forward. So there are some slides that are repetitive, but there are some new slides too that kind of help maybe clarify a few things or hopefully not confuse anything. So yes, thank you. So we are starting it's that season where we want to fill our buckets or maybe I'm so Really what we're focusing on tonight is a general fund. That's the entire conversation we're going to have. That's where everything, as you remember, recall,

041is. That's where all of our operating revenues and operating expenses go through. Capital reserve, that's, for instance, the Flannery Field Project. That's a completely separate bucket and financing source that goes through there. And then we have our third bucket, which is food service. Once again, totally separate from the general fund and capital reserve and then our student activity which is our fourth bucket which is basically completely student funded and basically are the custodians of those funds. So the big concentration right now is on that general fund bucket or source there. Okay, so this slide is repetitive from on Wednesday, and I just want to go over this just as a follow-up of where we are in as projecting out this current year budget. So the budget for 2025-26, the current school year, once again, I

042can't make the fine. I'd be better to apologize except on the bottom. And what we're going to do is really focus on the two columns or the base in the middle to the right hand side where it says year end projections and current budget. When we passed the budget for this year back at this time, or May, last year, we projected a $700,000 deficit. That we projected to use fund balance, which we'll get to that clarification soon about what does that mean. But we projected to use $700,000 of our fund balance to cover or basically to balance the budget. What I'm projecting, and I'm now going from right to left, so I went a little bit backwards, that near-end projections. So what everything's turning out to look like, we're going to be projecting to only

043use about $485,000 of fund balance, which is great, so we're cost-avoiding about $214,000 of fund balance to use. Which is not great. We're not showing a surplus, but we're also projecting to come basically under that budget that we projected to you. And the big kind of financial assistance structural and that's mostly in wages at 377. It's not all wages, so don't please don't think it is. We just had some over budgeting there. So it's really and also on the revenue, all of our taxes, it's just not real estate taxes. It's all of our taxes that includes the earned income tax, which is a big driver of that $154,000. This is this is good news. It's not great news great news would be hey we broke even We did we were able to come up with

044this not use $700,000 of fund balance But it is better news because we are not avoiding to use all the fund balance that we had so there's more fund balance there for the district to use which we will talk about very very soon. Thank you So getting into where we are headed as far as next year's budget, 2026-27. And this slide, once again, is repetitive from our committee workshop. If I just go right down to the bottom, kind of into the chase, you see the adopted budget there with a $700,000 projection. I said we're going to do better than that. I'm sorry to use less on balance, but right. the media column, it's that center column there, that's where we are right now as far as 26, 27 and right now showing a 3.3 million

045dollar deficit. Now I am cautioning everyone this does not include a tax increase, so this is a 0% tax increase and it also does not include any additional basic education or special education subsidy payments from the state. Does include what we got this year 25 26, but does not include any additional money that is being proposed the governor's budget That was done in February. We'll get to that slide later what that looks like So right now if we do nothing at all, this would be your preliminary budget with a Deficit of 3.3 million dollars, which we have to cover with our fund balance Okay, we'll get to the what's in the fund balance in a couple of slides. Any questions about where we are right now? Not exactly the best situation, but I can tell

046you this, in all my meetings with my colleagues over the past today and on Friday, This was the number one question, what does your budget look like? Everyone's faces turned sad and said, I have like a $1.9 to $3 million deficit that I just can't solve. So we're not in this boat alone, but we're going to solve it and see what we can do. Margaret, what does one of your biggest variances is wages, which is down over projections, but benefits is actually about the same or slightly higher. Is that a COBRA extension, or is that just cadence? Some of that was where we projected health care. If some people were not getting health care, they're getting a waiver. And then either we had it higher before or after the budget was projected, and then they

047got health care. That's where that variance occurs. So where we might have projected healthcare being lower, it actually is higher and it is trending that way. By looking at the cash flow, our healthcare costs have been higher, not because anything changed from what we budgeted, just only that more people took it than what we expected to. So it's just by turn over unfortunately. Any questions? Okay. So, new slide, new slide over here. So, this, I just want to kind of portray over about 10 years what our actuals were. The last two columns of the bar graph have been our budget columns. So, if we go left to right, way back in 1718. we in 1819 we had deficits and this is actual so we actually had um you know our expenditures exceeded our revenues and

048then 1920 and remember how great that year was we started to have this different trend where we um showed a surplus essentially of 279 000 and then covet occurred so where things shut down where we got injections of cash uh and we weren't purchasing items because it just was a different time. We had a $2.6 million surplus and then the following year we had an additional $2.2 million. And then 22-23, bless you by the way, we had another surplus of $1.7 million. And then things started to even out. As they call the financial cliff started to take place, the COVID dollars fell off. And we've basically used our COVID dollars when we were supposed to. We didn't carry anything over. We used them when they, because of the amount that we got, were not exactly

049the greatest of what everyone else got. We didn't have any problems or have any carryover of how to use those funds. But as you can see here, funding kind of dried up on the federal side. 23-24, we were still able to have a surplus. more modest at $371,000 and then $24,000, $25,000, and $423,000. So I can't say it's cyclical because it kind of looks that way, but it's really not. So $25,000, $26,000 as they stated before, we're projecting about $423,000 deficit. Once again, we still have a couple of months to go in the fiscal year. That could change a little bit. It doesn't look like it's going to happen, but that's really where we're going to end up. Sorry, I don't mean to be dumb, but those are all numbers without including the tax increase.

050Only the far right-hand side. Does not include the tax increase. Does not include tax increase. The other ones are even more tax increase. That's all actual. Yep, that's all actual. Yep, the last two columns. It includes the tax increase, but not the last two. Great question. Once again, for grid clarity, the last two columns, 25, 26, and 26, 27 are budget. Okay, those were budget numbers. Everyone to the left of that is actual. So that's actual audited financials right there. But 2526 included the tax income? Yes. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. Yes. And then did we, for 17, 18, 18, 19, did we go to... Get that money out of the capital reserve fund. Yes, we use fund balance. Okay. Great question. Okay. I thought you were going to go in a different direction. Sorry. As

051a segue for the next slide, which is what I did. We'll save for 2526. Yes, for 2526 we'll be using fund balance also. Okay. So what I did was I took the exact same graph and made it a little bit more challenging, but I overlaid our tax, our actual tax increase, which is the red line. and then I overlaid the Act 1 index of what we could go to. Just to kind of see, there's a little bit of a correlation, not much, because when we had huge, we did a tax increase, 2021, 2021, 2022, not expecting the injection of cash that we got, and we still showed giant surpluses. But I also wanted to overlay what the tax increase could have been if we would have went to the... Just for reference, right? You can

052see back in 1718 I didn't arbitrarily start that year because there was a 0% tax increase. I just picked it because there was a deficit at that point. But you can see that we did have a deficit and we did a 0% tax increase, which is that red line there. So you can see one year, which was 1920, we went over the act-coordinated index by the exceptions that we could take which was the special ed exception. So we went slightly over just to kind of make up from that 0% and you can see we had a small surplus that year. What are some of the other exceptions that allow us to go above that one? We can, there's actually five. We only ever qualify for two which is the pension and the special ed. And

053the pension just depends on. There's some variables in that one, especially we almost always qualify for. The pension just depends on our wages that year and how they stack up. Because it goes all the way back to the year one was enacted is how you kind of measure that amount that you can go for reference. Well, good question. Any questions on this? Next slide, please. So before we dive into fund balance and other good stuff, I just want to kind of condense a couple slides from Wednesday as basically points of why we're kind of in this situation for 26-27 that we're heading into. Once again, some of the big things is we have less revenue than essentially what we started with this year, if you just look at the tax revenue. if i lined everything

054up with um 25 26 and 26 27 for the real estate taxes and we did zero percent tax increase we actually will have less real estate tax revenue than we did this year simply because of the um assessment appeals that took place um and then with the potential of which obviously did not occur yet with cca with the tax exemption which is just coming down um eventually, I have that out of this budget already. So right off the starting gate, we're at a deficit. We're already behind the pace of 25, 26. So we have to make that up. You know, tax increase, you're already making up less amount than we had last year. So, and that doesn't include the whole fact of potential writing hospital. Okay, so in this budget we built in half the

055revenue than we received this year. Remember, going back, part of that revenue was real estate tax revenue. It changed when we cut their exemption. That moved to the pilot, which just took further money out of that . You say it does not include? of letting health acts early on except you did put in 50 percent. 50 percent. So it includes 50 percent. Okay. Yeah. So remember this year was 823,000. Yeah. So we have it. Okay. So we can't just make up that money either. Right? So now you're really starting, if it's, you know, all we need to start, we're already behind. Once again, I did not put any increase in for that basic interspecialty. And once again, those are the levers that we're going to talk about, the tax increase. It does include all title

056funds. I know there was a bunch of talk about potential title funds going away. If whatever situation was going on in the federal government, I know that conversation kind of dissipated and is not in the forefront. So I did leave the title funds in. I did not increase the title funds at all. So if there were to get some sort of increase, which would be very nominal anyways that we received, but if there was any increase, that's not budgeted. Obviously our interest income is going down simply because interest rates fell and we still have plenty of cash, so it's not a problem, it's just interest income is less because the interest rate is much lower. I did include, of all things, I think the surefire type of money that we could be getting from the

057state would be that Ready to Learn grant. I did not budget the increase last year, and I'm planning on the budget increase for this year, which is $50,000 each year. So I did put that in the budget because that's the most, I think, the most concrete thing we could be receiving this year. I did include increases in earned income tax, business privilege tax, and our delinquent taxes. When we switched to the county of Berks to collect our delinquent real estate taxes, they are doing a very good job at turning those back over to us in a good fashion. So that includes prior years also. So that was a good thing. Once again, we are budgeting a full complement of staff. All increases are based upon our collective bargaining agreements and our agreements that we set

058forth with our employees. It does include that additional math interventionist. That position is still in this budget. And it does include retirement, severance, payouts that are for the CBA and it does include the savings, the potential savings that Dr. Boyard and I kind of looked at each position, individual or school positions, we looked at each one and said this is where I think we would be hiring. So if there's any savings between the former employee and the new employee, we took that savings into this budget. And then benefits assumptions, this is where it gets real kind of tricky. I still did I'm hedging the bets that we're going to hit 11%. It's looking at 15.99, but we're not done yet. We have a meeting this Wednesday again. That's my entire life is budget meetings and

059health care meetings. So we're going to keep working at that rate. And I put my ends in the basket of 11%. I kind of chuckle at that because we had this conversation again today. But we're hoping that we can get that closer to 11%. And are they going to be more captive with the coalition? Well, there is no real technical cap. They're predicting 16. Right now with no plan change. So I don't know what the plan changes. I mean that will be a discussion about the Consortium of the trust agents, but we're captive in other words. We we have no real effect of getting that way down. It's what the consortium can collectively True, but there is there is yeah, we can press that down Because we haven't really started talking about the plan change.

060We only started talking about, you know, what the not to exceed quote rate would be. And then we talked about like a cash injection, what that would do to bring that down. So there's more to discuss. Nothing is set in stone yet. So there's, hopefully I bring back good news the next time we meet or in our next update. Next slide, please. Thank you, sir. And then just some more expenditures, our non-wage ones that are kind of the increase in transportation costs because we switched to a new contract. Naturally, it was going to go up. That was going to happen regardless of who we decided to go with. We went with the lower one, which is our incumbent, which is G&L. Still, that increase is just going to be, it was going to happen because

061our contract was up and the range would go up regardless. So there is some minimal savings, but I say minimal savings in cyber charter tuition. When the state changed how the rate is calculated, we did get some relief in that. I believe we'll get a little bit more, but that could also be offset by any new individuals transitioning to that cyber environment. The, once again, special education, we worked a little bit on that. We got that down to only a 9.36% increase and that doesn't include the wage part of that. That's just on tuition and all the extra costs that go with it. Plan operations increases about 16.29%, but majority of that kind of like with Increase in natural gas we're projecting about 20% increase and then 15% increase in liability insurance. The reason why

062that's going up so much is because it's not necessarily the cost of the insurance, it's more of the cost of any type of replacement. So as goods and services go up, they basically take a look at all their values of our buildings and equipment and say, well, it's going to go up because it costs more to replace something. The 39% increase in debt services, that's specifically for our new debt service that we did, but that's being offset by removing that line item that we had set aside for the capital. So it's almost a wash. 37% increase in BCTC is a good thing but also a bad thing. We had more kiddos attend BCTC which is a good thing but then because of how it's shared across the board not specific by what our kiddos attend

063we had a larger share of the expense. No, it wasn't 400. So it was under 400,000. It was about, I think, about 132,000. Yeah. Yes. If it was 400, don't worry. We're having a different conversation at that point. We're going to be attending some different meetings. And I just put this on here because typically I haven't been budgeting a full complement of crossing guards because we really haven't. But we have. Isn't that a big problem to have? It's a big problem to have. And it would be even a better issue if West Reading gave us 50% back, which they don't. So we're paying 100% to West Reading, like 50% for . So that's really where we lie. I mean, there's other obviously smaller increases that this is where the big, big lump of increase occurs.

064I mean, it's a little challenging to make up the revenue that we're missing. if we had that revenue base this would be a little bit better story okay okay all right so this is where we are at um as far as like what i call options or levers that we will need to decide uh specifically for um kind of heading into next uh the next meeting where we present the actual preliminary budget for vote which would be May, which is right around the corner. It's kind of hard to imagine that when we start this process that we're almost in May already. It seems to go by quicker as the months go along. So I did give basically five tax increase options. I'm leaning towards the far right here just because that's the last column, which

065is about 3.5% increase. That's our Act 1 index. That's what's going to get us to get that deficit down. So if we kind of look at that right-hand column, a tax increase at 3.5% based on our current assessed value would yield us about $996,000, which is good. It's going to wind down that deficit a little bit to about 2.3 million. The big question is, And this is kind of a little bit of a, we're hedging our bets a little bit on this, is what do we want to do as far as the state revenue? I actually had a group of teachers here that were interviewing for, or discussing with me about a project for their... their class at Alverde and one of the questions was basically, what's your biggest challenge is? We kind of started

066to discuss this and they said, well, what would you feel safe at? I said, well, I don't like to risk stuff in the budget. I would feel safe at 50%. But based upon our scenario, if we get 100%, that would make that number look better. But it is riskier because we never got . Yeah, we actually have. It's just, once again, we don't know what that number technically is because you're dealing with three forces that we're trying to, we have no control over. You have the governor, you have the senate, and you have the house. And you have each group in between that probably doesn't want to work together anymore, but is a governor-elect here. So they're going to do something quick, supposedly whatever quick is for the state, and we just don't know what

067that's going to be. I mean, no one wants to tap into their rainy day fund. Just like we don't want to tap into our rainy day fund, which is our fund balance. But at the same time is, I don't want to under budget anything. And then just be like, oh, well, we should have budgeted 100%. So, you know, this is kind of where we are. I mean, if it came down to it, I would say, let's just budget 100%. And then if, you know, where the tax increase lies is where it lies. So I did put 2.25 on because that was I think the first initiative goal here. I did drop that off. So we have between a 2.5 and 3.5% tax increase. I think one thing we might want to consider is for illustrative

068purposes, what could impact to an average homeowner? Any questions? I have that. Well, I have a 3.5. I had a 2.5 to 3 on a slide that I took off. But I have the impact of what, 3.5%, so you can always wind backwards. So we have that slide coming up, which I think is the next slide. Is it, Mr. Armstrong? It is. Oh, my gosh, with eye impression. And by the way, he's a poet. He did not have this slight debt before. I did not. So he is either on that predictable, or you have great expectations. So I did do just a 3.5, just to kind of illustrate at the top of the end of the scale what a tax increase would be. $150,000 average assessed value would be about $186 per year, about $16

069a month. The other factor here that we don't have yet is what the homestead exclusion would be. So that comes out May 1st and what is a little unnerving is we usually get a list that we have to certify of all the homeowners that have applied or that are in the homestead from the assessment office and we haven't received the list yet and it's April 30th. So that is a little concerned. in certain names, I should say, that we don't have that yet to be able to certify and go through that to make sure that no homeowner is getting two exclusions. So that is going to play a little bit different effect in this because you'll see like that would come off of whatever that 186 is. You know that 358 reduction we offer a

070total tax bill. It's probably going to be the same. That number doesn't go backwards. But over the past two years as you can see we had that significant changes or excuse me actually the four years we went from 489 and 2122 to 184 thousand uh 184 excuse me 849 000 of exclusions that are coming uh towards the district now this doesn't help our budget it just offsets how much the taxpayer is going to pay um which is a good thing so and by the way thank you so so this gambling when he's come in hopefully um more um more money comes our way for that. So I can't really give you what that number would be yet, just don't have it. So I used last year essentially would be basically the same, assuming no one

071knew who came in today. I can't even tell you if anyone knew who came into the program, so I don't have anything. But as soon as we get it, we can let the board know. It's definitely May 1st is when the number comes out and gets certified from the state. And the 150 is an accurate updated number? Yeah, the 150, that's just basically what we use. We used to use 100,000 a couple years ago. We moved up to 150,000. That was my question. Yeah, so. Adjusted from inflation. Right. If you kind of go up, like if you have a $400,000 home, you basically, or a 300,000 to make it easy. Yeah, yeah. You're doubling that. So. Then you just level 186. Yeah. Yeah. People can do the math, but it's good to at least start

072at the average home price. Sure, and really the average home price probably, because we were talking assessed value, not market value. Exactly, which is a huge distinction. Yes, yes, when your home is valued on the market, it's completely different than what your home is valued on you. Especially if you have an older home. And if you had new construction, you might have new construction in the past 20 years. Your assessed value is different. That's the reason why we had 36 appeals that came through and won because of that old. It's all connected. Okay? So yeah, we can definitely just double check to make sure that that's basically the means it's really close to the mean of what the homestead value is so that the value of the home that comes into the homestead we see

073all the assessed values on that it's basically with that. I'm thinking that more to the education part of this in the community when people ask us why this was an outsized tax increase compared to the prior years. Being able to say on the average home in Y missing is an increase of X is just a helpful data point. People can do their own math obviously, but Y borough just raised taxes as well. And so I think people are going to be looking at it. Correct total package of impact 100% just has that conversation again today about the total tax the county borough Obviously with the biggest piece of the pie net we have to be sensitive with that Especially when we look at you know with white spreading also their borough millage is higher than

074what? Wow's is even with the tax increase So we have to be sensitive to that to make sure that but same time is we're going to have a very large deficit that we have to cover. So in that regard, it's probably maybe helpful for us to have another slide in the future if you could manage it because the borough showed the slide. It's nice to show what our percent is compared to what the borough. You know, if we're going up, how much did the borough just increase? Was it 12? Well, it was originally 14. Yeah, I think it was 12. Still, that puts our 3 point whatever in perspective. You know what I mean? Just that we could all be able to state what the burden is versus... Yeah, I mean, just having that kind

075of, the overall context of tax burden. And then Mr. Board, that connects to the scholarship can only go so high as far as the percentage. So in that regard, can I ask a question about that one? So looking ahead, if we had several years of a $3.3 million deficit and started to use up our fund balance, I could imagine that you might want to at least have the option of exceeding the Act I at the decision-making time. It doesn't mean that we would do it, but it would be good to have the option. Like, today we don't have the option. So for future years, is there a better way to know at the time of the decision to appeal the Act or exceed the Act I? Is there a better way to know that we

076could be headed to this? Do you know what I'm saying? Yes, yeah. So we can do... We can provide more information and we can push that back a little bit. We've done it in November typically. We can wait until January. What it does is if you were to decide in January to do... take the exception, we would then just have to basically have, you're basically doing a budget in February that you would need to vote on. Which is okay, because theoretically we should have that right, and it's not your final vote, right? It's not your final budget. Your final budget still has to go through the same progressions. You basically need to show the state when you do that that, yeah, you have this issue, this is why you're doing it, and we have to

077just... basically approve it, load on it, and then I have to submit it. And you're not making the decision then to exceed it, you're just holding it in place. You're preserving your ability to exceed it at this time. Correct. Like if we would have done it this year, we could have gone up to I think 4.65%, which isn't going to solve your deficit completely, but it would give you a little bit of a plus. Another tool in the box if you want to use it. It might be relevant in other similar years. So I think On my end, I'll take responsibility 100% for that. No, no, no. We were. We were pretty clear. Just let me, just let me kind of just, because I, you know, we kind of didn't do it. So it almost

078became a formality, right? Like, oh, here's the exception. Yeah, we always say no, right? And then all of a sudden, maybe this is the year we should have considered. So, you know, I can make sure that we're more prepared. Right, and this year is less important because we have fun now. But yeah, but it could be a year. Sure. Down the road. I mean, this goes back to the classic debate of usage of fund balance versus just putting all tax increases and saving your fund balance. And we talked about that, Eric. One of the things we asked Mark to kind of help us with in the future, not tonight, but it was just kind of like, help us put in perspective this fund balance. Like if we were being, fiscally responsible, but I'll feel like

079what's a good because we've never been you know most of us in our tenure haven't really been faced with having fun balance significantly. We've had it all the time. We in the budget process have to make up all those deficits. Right. So I know, but we've never been, we haven't been looking at having a 2.2 million dollars. Not to this extent. That's on. But what I think. So it makes a different conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to your point, he has a great slide on what happens if we over tap in the fund balance. And that is a hockey stick down in the other direction. Right, and he's been shot. I had said we haven't seen that in a long time. Yeah, yeah. You're going to see it was a great foreshadowing. It's a balancing

080act for sure. But I think, you know, in the minds of the taxpayer, you're like, you're sitting on this giant fund balance. You're raising my taxes outsize. Why not? And again, I think this whole thing is part of an education process. If you overtax the fund balance, it's gone. You're never getting that back. You're not building that back up. And so you've got to... You are, but it's not going to be fun. Let's just put it that way. Right. It's going to be worse. Let's put it that way. It's going to be harsh. That's a better way. So it's finding that right balancing act of everybody sort of shares the burden of the realities of... state of the world today right nobody's fault it's where the economy is today so we have this light here

081just to kind of go through fund balance once again um and um just to No, we'll just cut to it. So the far right column, which is 630.25, you can kind of see how the fund balance grew. And that slide way, way back about the surpluses we saw. So right now we're sitting audited numbers at 630.25 was a fund balance of $16,879,000. That's a pretty healthy fund balance, okay? Our board policy says we can go up to 8%. of unassigned funds. So when we look at that top chart there, I'm going to work backwards with this. I'm going to go top to bottom. So the unassigned fund balance at 3.7 million is 8% of the 25-26 fund of expenditure budget. So that's exactly 8% right there. Okay, and then we work backwards so that assigned

082fund balance that is our current deficit for 2526 So we assigned that to cover that Deficit in our fund balance right there So it's earmarked specifically for that which we're going to hopefully do better than as I showed you earlier and not use the full 700,000 the committed which is that third line working up, you know top or bottom to top of 12.3 million dollars. That's everything on the bottom That is what the board can Deem where they want to move in just takes a board vote Uncommitted all that and put it all to say for instance Curriculum enhancements with 12 million dollars in curtain and have one line says you don't have to use it You don't have to use it there, but you can do it. You're right And that and we'll get

083back to that a little bit later. So just working up so restricted that's restricted funds that so The excess money that was left over from the fence. I think it was like $17,000, I believe. Part of that money's there. Camp Conrad Weiser, a better example is anything left over for Camp Conrad Weiser, we leave in restricted funds there. Okay, that was quite a raise for that. We can't touch that. That's restricted. The non-spendable, that's just prepayments. So anything we prepaid for the next fiscal year, that $30,000 lies in that number. Horse King can't touch that. but the three below it we can. So when we talk about committed, committed is just essentially saying that we plan to do this with this money. We might not ever do it, but it's there when we have it.

084So when we're talking about using, let's just say we don't do any tax increase and we don't use any of the basic or special ed funding, $3.3 billion. Essentially what that would do is it would come out of the unassigned and then you would show that but we would also then just start moving that $12 million back into unassigned to keep that 8%. So it's just almost like a shuffling game until you actually physically have to use it. You just shuffle kind of money around. So we can shuffle things out of the committed fund balance? Correct. To make, to reduce the current? Yes. Correct. If we would, you would, for, if it would be 6-30-26, so at the end of our fiscal year, you would see a line item under assigned at $3.3 million, if

085that's what we chose to do. And then you would have unassigned, we would try and keep that at 8%, and then your committed would be, you know, $9 million. So what if you just reduced a little bit out of curriculum enhancements for example? I'm not trying to take your curriculum enhancements. I'm commenting at the workshop. What if you just took $500,000 out of curriculum enhancements and... We would probably reshuffle that whole thing. We would have a conversation. We would probably say we're going to use the PECERS committed money. So that money, that $4.1 million has been sitting there since I started. So since 2014. that 4.1 million dollars has been that 4.1 million dollars for 11 years so i don't understand that yeah well i don't understand why we don't take that down to 3.193

086and give ourselves a million dollars of better work let me make sure if we ran a 2.2 million dollar deficit yeah then that 2.2 is coming out of the one that says committed 12.3 and we decide to decide where from below it's coming out of yeah we kind of just reshuffle So what we have to use on tax on budget deficits is 12 million. I'll just give you this warning again. That's your fund balance. Yeah, based upon what you're using your entire fund. No, no, I'm just saying like that's what we're talking about. Right, like it doesn't give us new money to take it from below. It's a savings account. Think of it as a rainy day fund. Correct. Yes, but if you added all the committed fund balance, it is that 12. Yes, the

08712 is what's down below. This is broken out into the. Okay, so whatever budget deficit we run, it's coming out of the committed line up above 12 million. So we have 12 million available. If we needed to spend it over six years by taking 2.2 million of deficit over six years, that gets down to zero. Yes, we have the 3.7 which is what we're required to have. I'm not suggesting that. I'm just saying that's where it comes from. Theoretically, you could. But then once again... I'll show you in a minute. I'm not suggesting. I'm just clarifying my understanding. We run a deficit where it's coming out of is that committed line. How you pull it from the detail down below is essentially money. But you raise an interesting question on the PISA. What is the

088rationale for saving? So that money, well, it was there for what PISA is. and I don't know if I've shown this chart in a while, but at one point there was this huge hockey stick curve this way of the rate going to increase. So the employer rate tripled in like a year. That money was set aside at that point to use for debt because that rate was just going to keep going up. It's finally plateaued. We never had to touch it. There was budgets where I said, okay, out of the deficit that we're projecting, we're going to use part of this out of the appeasers because this is the portion of appeasers, the incremental increase between what wages went up and the increase in the employer rate, that delta is what we would pull out

089of that or suggest pulling out of that money. Every year we did it, we didn't have to do it. So I just let it sit there. But this year we could absolutely use a lot of appeasers. Yes. That's for me. I'm still trying to understand it. This is not my strength. But it's hard for me, not that anyone is asking, but if someone did ask me about the tax increase and they said, but you have 4.1 million that's been sitting there since 2014. Help me understand why you feel you need to keep allocating 4 million there. I would have trouble answering. I can answer that question. I can answer that question really soon. Next slide, please. There's the next slide. Let's get this one. I'm sorry. This is tiny and I will give you the

090whole presentation to you. But if you can see there. Oh yes. Technology is a wonderful thing. Mr. Arns. Way to go. Gold star. All this time we've been suckers. So I did adjust this for a 3.5% tax increase and I did put 100% of the BEF and SBEF just to kind of model this out what this would look like if you did that. Obviously, you can create any model that you choose, but this is just what I started to kind of go down this road and look at these numbers. Sorry, I just wanted to do that disclaimer. Sorry, that was involuntary. 3.3 to 1.9, how did you work that magic? Well, this is how I did it. So what I did was I just kind of modeled this out based upon our conversation on Wednesday.

091So you can see, if you look all the way down today, that first yellow line, it says surplus deficit. You see the 700 now, then you see the beginning fund balance at 16.8, and then year end if we use the full 700, it would be 16.1. But just to model this out, we are going to assume that we do. So for the 26-27 school year, so next school year, I said, okay, this is where we're going to look at a $1.9 million deficit. So we're going to use fund balance to balance the budget. So that leaves our fund balance at $14.2 million. So just look at the numbers below that. That's 28% of expenditures, right? That's our total fund balance. That's 3.38 months of operating expense. Okay, so as much as our fund balance looks

092awesome, it's only 3.38 months of operating expense. So if something were to cease, we'd get no more revenue, and we had to pay everyone. That's what we would be living on. Okay, which is unlikely because that's not how the models set up to work, but if it were to occur, that's where we'd be. So as we progressed out the years and I increased the local, the local lineup there, I increased it by the ACQUAIN index. So the ACQUAIN index is going kind of down from 3.5%. So I used that, I did modestly increase our assessed value. It's not a great, but it's not going, I did put it backwards. It did increase our assessed value. So I did grow out the taxes. You can kind of see it's like 3.1, 3.1, 3.0. That does include

093increases in earned income tax. But as you can see going down for the 27-28 school year, so two school years from now. our deficit's at 2.1 billion. So once again, if we're using fund balance again, you can see it progressively get smaller. And then going out the five years, we'd end at a fund balance of 900, 1,000. So to kind of answer your question, if we constantly kept using fund balance while raising taxes to the Akron index, eventually in about And definitely in six years, we'd be in a negative fund balance situation, which our board policy does address that, where we have to make cuts to the expenditure budget. So what did you just say? If we continue to use fund balance and increase taxes, what are our other choices? I mean, if we didn't

094do that, what would we do? Oh, we have to look at cutting expenses. So doesn't that mean we should start cutting expenses now? Well, what factors not in here is if there's any changes in revenue or expenditure that could help us. For instance, if we would look at if something were to occur where this is say, I'm just I don't know if this is true, but just foreshadowing is to say highlights, builds, outcome. Okay, that changes your assessed value. Or if, for instance, a common load. There was an assessment change at the county. They did a county-wide reassessment. And the common level ratio changed. And all of a sudden, when something sells... there's a potential for us to appeal that and potentially get additional funding. So anything, this doesn't really take to change any of

095those factors that we don't know about. Yeah, can I just interject? In fairness to you guys, and for those watching at home, you guys are constantly looking at expenditures. And the people who want a good education for their children need to understand that you're constantly looking at what's the optimal number of teachers, the optimal number of counselors, the optimal number... It's the revenue piece that you have very little control over. The expenditures, even your admin, your cabinet is dealing with... a very skeleton crew. So there's not, to Gina's question, there's not big levers out there that you could make up $3 million. There just isn't, there wouldn't be. And the other thing is we are not staffing at optimal anything. We're already not staffing at optimal. If I said to God, order tomorrow, what do

096you think is optimal staffing? She could find a whole lot more people to go out and counsel her and ask people. It's not that we have done that. Because I agree with you 100% in business you're like well, let's look at where we can make cuts let's everybody's gonna have to make do with that but There's very little leverage that you have to be able to eat up that kind of Diocese that we're looking and maintain the quality of education that the community wants and I think that it's that it's good perspective What our fund balance is in relationship to our monthly? Another institution that I work with had a consultant and we asked the question what is reasonable to hold in savings? three months of expenditures. That's where we are now. Or next year,

097right? So even though our board policy lets us take it down further. And we're going to do everything we can to. I still think we're going to go step three. Three because you always did I'm gonna have faith in the heart magic. Well, so we go again you might not like it No, it all has to be like There is some stuff like, you know, like we made some decisions and just have it You know fully blossom again to some things here, right? And it would To kind of put that in the budget might be a little It probably wouldn't remove us to do that. No, no, no. These are based on the unknown. Yeah. That always shows up at the end of the budget process. Well, I'm hoping that that happens. It's been, I'll

098say, just an odd year for revenue. To say that just because of how the budget fell, how we kind of lost, like, almost lost $25,000 of interest income. I just can't make up because of not having the revenue come in. And, you know, it's just been awkward. And we're trying to make the best of it. And we always hope for a better outcome. We always hope to show that somebody has balance. But another point that we don't talk about enough that is important for the public to understand is that we are in an unusual position in that we have very little, relatively speaking, commercial property and those are the money makers when you look at revenue and you look at the fact that we don't know that the mall is not our revenue and that's

099wilson um you know i've said this before 30 years ago there was an analysis where they said we couldn't exist as an ms school district because we didn't have enough commercial property and we were we were by this point projected to have merged with something like government because but it's a real thing and then you look at how much of our property in addition to that how much of our property is non-taxable because Reading Hospital sits on that much of it, we're in a really difficult position from a revenue perspective that's different than other school districts. And we've been keeping up with other school districts' budgetary. Why? We're doing better than. Yeah, until the advent of the Amazon distribution centers that now other districts don't have to raise taxes at all. Right. That is changing

100and we had that conversation on Friday that those districts are now having deficits because of tax appeals. So that new warehouse money has essentially, I'm not going to say dried up. but it has gone backwards where they are facing deficits similar to ours and they're not going to explore this from our side. So, you know, it's just a tough situation regardless. I mean, we're in this boat kind of by ourselves, but we're not. So it's kind of like, well... what the state promised and what you're actually getting based upon the formula is also kind of set against us because of how we're set up. We're not a high poverty school district. We're not going to get extra funding because of that. And we're not going to do it. It's just not set up that way.

101So. And one of those lines you've shown us charts in the past about what the other districts are looking at in terms of taxing. That would be helpful. I'll have that ready for you. Just waiting for my colleagues to. for the putting their information in. And they're waiting for you. My information's in there. I put my information in and we're waiting. So I have to remind everyone to kind of do that. Yeah, that's always helpful. Yeah, it really is. And we have a good working network here with our colleagues. I think it's also important, you know, we as a group understand this is an ideal. We do have the funds in the fund balance right now. We want to make this a yearly situation. Ideally, no. But otherwise, we're going to have to do what

102others are doing, and that is looking at a list of line items and starting to say. We're going to probably have to cut this. We're going to probably have to cut this. And I know that's not what we want to do because that's when we aggravate different people in the community, different groups in the community. We want to be able to provide all that we can for all of our students. And that's the piece where I say at this point in time, it makes sense to use that money that's there. I just think that we have to do our best and figure out how not to make that an annual situation. So just moving forward because the next time we meet we probably won't be discussing this but in May I guess the temperature I'm

103getting is I'm going to put two recommendations, a 3 and 3.5 and about the state revenue. Should we go 100% or should we go at like a lesser amount? I'm okay. It's a little bit for me. It's a little bit riskier But you're not talking large seems to money talking $330,000. So I could feel comfortable putting it in a hundred percent To see where we can find that we'll just have basically two lines that we can choose when we did this before We had like a two point five and two point two five Basically three point five and three if anything changes I'll update everyone in the Friday update that, hey, all of a sudden we, you know, I got the new numbers in for March on the earning contacts and it is much better.

104We can kind of go off of that basis. Is everyone comfortable with that? Okay. So once again, on May you'll see basically two budgets and we'll just basically just say we're, you know, we're going to turn to this one to have a little more discussion. I would just renew the request. I think there are a few members that haven't caught this conversation or the last one. I think it's really important that we catch them up individually before the next meeting so that we're not redoing for a third time the conversation. And so that they're not surprised by what we'll have on the plate. Okay. Thank you. I can do that. I will do that. I will do that. I'll be doing another email or... We'll include this information in the Friday update, but I do

105think it probably bears reaching out individually to folks. Yeah, or maybe you can ask me. I can come and meet with you. We can do it either way. I know there's definitely two individuals that have done... You're allowed to meet with two at a time? I can meet with... Thank you. Anything else? I think that's all. I just had this aggravates the conversation. I don't understand these errors anyway. So can I just clarify one thing? When we had that prior conversation about the piecers line item, if we did a 3.5% increase and that meant a $2 million deficit that we were going to tax the budget from and it actually came to be a $2 million deficit, essentially that is the same as us using 2 million if we decided to of that 4 million

106dollar yeah yeah we would probably if you know for purposes of discussion i would take it out of there i would reduce it it would be 2.1 million dollars and you see that on your assigned line where were you taking the 700 for the 25 26. uh i just because we had a surplus magic yes because we had a surplus the year before it didn't really it increased our budget yeah because remember you're just moving it down below yeah right those numbers are near behind essentially yeah so i just yeah it's almost like I wouldn't call it magic, but it's just shuffling. Yeah, yeah, now I get it. If we don't use that seminar, it just goes back into, I just put it in some way, like I'll increase curriculum by several thousand dollars. But

107you have to vote on it, right? Because typically you vote on it when we approve the audit. That's when the numbers are counted right on. That makes sense. Okay, great. All the slides that you'll get in the rest of this deck are just slides for reference. that we had in the works and there's nothing new additional to mention. We read something about the way, you know, that is green is good, red is bad. Your green arrow is going up. It should be red arrow is going up, green arrow is going down. The whole thing is wonky. My whole mantra was green is increasing, red decreasing. It wasn't a bad or a good thing. It's all bad on that screen. It's all shades of that. Yes, which hopefully we can start turning that around. So some

108good news hopefully coming our way. Okay. Thanks for your time. I. Thank you. anything further from the budget or anything else okay I can entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting all those in favor all those opposed