001our September scheduled board meeting. I'd like to start with the pledge of allegiance. 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. And now, a moment of silence. Amen. All right, Mr. Martin, I'll turn it over to you, sir. Welcome to our September meeting. Uh, first on the agenda is our consent agenda, financial report, and board minutes. Are there any questions on that consent agenda? I have none. Okay. With that, I'd like to make the recommendation that the consent agenda, financial report, board minutes of the regular board meeting held on August 14th, 2023 be approved as submitted. All right. So, we have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? Nope. You motion by
002Sarah. I got a second. All right. Second by John. Any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Okay. All right. Um, with our new legis legislative act acts, we are required to report on student achievement. So, we thought we would take this part for part of Oh my goodness, I have I'm tongue tied today. This part of this of the meeting and talk about the great work that our teachers and buildings are doing at PLC's um learning community. So, I'll turn that over to Miss Fab. Sure. Uh, we put in your packet um it's really a flowchart of the way our teams work. It's called the Pidge PLC. Um, and we thought we would start there to let you all know how our teams monitor student learning. Um, and how they respond when students aren't
003quite there yet or when our students are are ready for the next thing. Um, and so our our teams meet once a week. They come together and they determine what we call essential standards. What do they want all students to learn and be able to do? Um, and they use formative assessments to determine uh what that looks like. So this process that you have on on the paper is where we generate or how we generate student data to determine our next steps for instruction and intervention. Um and and they meet once a week. All of our teams in kindergarten through 12th grade go through this process. We spend a lot of time in the summer working through professional development on the process with our PLC institutes. Um and then each of our campuses have a
004guided coalition, a group of campus leadership made up of teachers, teacher leaders who come together, they monitor the process within the campus and they they support their needs in making sure that the instruction is focused on uh student learning and responding. It's kind of where we want to start. Any questions about that process? What's CFA stand for? Common formative assessment. Thank you. Yes. So every student who's taking third grade literacy will take the same assessment no matter who their teacher is. Um and then that team will come back together and look at how students did and decide what they need to do to go back and provide some additional instruction if necessary. So then if we have a group of ones who are exceeding expectations, do we continue to move forward if if they're ahead?
005If we have some that are trailing? Yeah. So for our students when they this group of students who do have shown that they do know it that they've learned it um then we have enrichment activities where they may go deeper into the learning uh they may go into some student choice projects to expand their understanding of that content um but they continue learning and we provide their mediation on students students who aren't quite there yet but it's not the whole class has to go through the same thing again. Every building has a period of their day uh for intervention or whatever student needs. Um at our elementary it's called win time or what I need time. Um at our junior high and high school it's encore blackhawk family group. Um but those times are dedicated
006to whatever each student needs. Okay. Oh, Miss Neighbor just said what I was okay. Anything else? You know, I am so proud of the work that our teachers and our administration do. You'll see this has been a journey for us, but what we're doing is implemented a guaranteed viable curriculum with high quality instructional materials and it's paying off for our students and our teachers are doing an outstanding job of implementing that. Absolutely. It's been fun to watch last several years. All right. Up next are our action items. We have anou with NWA bilingual solution solutions. And what that is is for us, it's a memorandum of understanding for us to uh purchase interpretation and trans and translation services for our students and for our families who are non-English speaking. Are there any questions? And this
007covers this thisou covers any from Spanish to any other type of bilingual that we will need. Yes, ma'am. Okay. This this company is the speak. Oh, sorry. I misspoke. This one is a Spanish speaking. Okay. They are local, which was nice for us. We're working on another option to expand different languages. Right now, our primary is a Spanish speaking. Okay. Okay. Any questions? Okay. With that, I'd like to make the recommendation we approve the mou with NWA bilingual solutions. So, we have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll motion. Motion by Sarah. Do we have a second? I'll second. Second by Ryan. Any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Okay. Next, we have a tuition agreement with um those our guidance. We've used them in the past for for multiple years. What this
008is is a tuition agreement that if we have a student gift to therapeutic pay services, our TD therapeutic pay treatment that we are charged $45 a day for each student, which has been a been a price for several years. So, are there any questions? Okay. So, you answer my question. There was no increase in the tuition fees. Okay. Any further? I don't think so. Just for clarification, it's just the cost share that's not covered by Medicaid that we're paying or what is the $45 for? I'm just curious. So these students um while are still members of our school district, we bus them to another location for their they can get school school and therapy. So that that school district that that falls under doesn't get um our foundation money. So that's like the fees we
009pay them. They bill for the therapeutic services through if they qualify, but some of them are have insurance. Gotcha. It's not just for Medicaid. The $45 isn't like the non billillable or not. It's just to feed lunch and you know those kinds of things. It's the tuition, right? It's the educational piece of it, not the mental health. Okay, gotcha. I just wasn't sure what tuition materials things like that. Okay. Okay. Because they don't get the per people allocation for those students. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, with that, I'd like to make the recommendation that we approve the tuition agreement with those our guidance center. All right, so we have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? A motion. Motion by Jessica. Do we have a second? I'll second. Second by Mindy. Any further discussion? All
010in favor? Any opposed? Okay. All right. Next, we have our with open avenues. Again, this is a that we've had for several years. This is a to help our um students from Portland be able to transition into the workplace. Um so, it's pre-employment transition services, a wonderful program to help get them going. And are there questions? No. Okay. With that, I'd like to make the recommendation that we approve theou with open avenues. All right. So, we have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion. A second. Second by Ryan. Any further discussion? And this on the theou it also says Arkansas Rehabilitation Services. So, is it for both of them? It's a division of Thank you. They're all umbrella. Perfect. They're all tied to the Arkansas Department of Workforce. Perfect. All right.
011All in favor? Any opposed? Okay. Next, we have an out of state travel request. I know it's not very far away, but it still crosses state lines. I believe second grade is wanting to go to exit, Missouri to do the cornbase there. Um, and so every time we we cross state lines, we have get school board approval. And so with that, I'd like to make a recommendation that we approve travel to exit, Missouri on October 13th, 2023. All right. So, we have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? Motion. Motion by John. Do we have a second? All right. Second by Jessica. Any further discussion? All in favor? Next, we have board transfers. That's a little different this year. new legislation that's come out. We have to um look at these every every month. Um
012I I expect this to really last month we had I think eight or nine on the list. This month we have one I expected to stay around that you know with school already starting. I think August and December or January are going to be our highest month. So right now we have one student wanting to transfer in in fifth grade and one student transfer out in seventh grade. we have room for the for the fifth grader that's not an issue and the seventh grader we're we're trying to be good neighbors and let people go to where they want to go as much as possible so with that I'd like to make the recommendation that we approve transfer in and transfer out as presented all right so we have recommendation do we have a motion motion
013motion by Sarah do we have a second I'll second any further discussion all in favor any opposed Okay, up next we have um technology purch. So we have three technology purchases. One of them is go guardian um which is a yearly renewal. It's a classroom management slashcontent filter we use in the district. Okay. um pricing say might have went up a few dollars just for that might give that 5% and it comes out with over here. Um that cost was $23,486.36. So that's pretty much going to go that we have. Next item is a Microsoft agreement which is our licensing for all of our Windows, workstations, laptops, servers. Allows us to have all those lic to install everything we need to install main update. Price of that is $20,000 $20,427. That's going right from Microsoft
014school. That's also a yearly renewal. Third item is an upgrade to something that we already have. I believe purchased in early spring called Crowd Strike. Crowd Strike is a cyber security platform we use in all of our Windows machine. Um allows for intrusion detection endpoint protection. It's a nextG antivirus. There are particular pieces that we didn't purchase for the vast majority of our window stations and they were in Springfield. We only got the more advanced version for our servers and for our administration. I'd like to purchase all of our same protection. um the only strong week. So I'd like to have all those across all 441. Um the cost of that is 20,000 no 19,92510 and the the one that's 19925 the crowd strike it itself did not go over the $20,000 threshold. It's the
015one we combined from the previous purchase it. And so that's why we're bringing that one to you. So, the Go Guardian, does that allow parents the ability to um shut things down on kids computers too or is this just the teacher and administration stuff? I I can answer that. There is a function that we can we can initiate I believe. Is that correct? There is a parent that would allow them to go in also set additional content filters while away from school only. So they wouldn't be able to do anything during school hours, but after hours they said a time frame. So if they had a 10:00 curfew, shut off at 10:00. They also couldn't go play fantasy basketball. Is that something that's within this purchase or is that something that we would have to
016look at? Something included with current license instruction. Okay. something turned on. It's not been turned on. Okay. Okay. And that can be done at a individual student's parents request. So like I've got a kid in the system. If I decided I wanted her curfew to be nine o'clock, I could work with you and get it to where at 9:00 it would shut off. My poor kid gets used as an example. I'm so sorry. We uh I'll have to double check, but I don't believe we can turn it on for just individuals. Okay. We may have to turn it on for more than one person. Oh, okay. Okay. But then, of course, not everyone has to use it. Okay. I can turn it on. Well, I'm going to trust y'all's decision on that. I just didn't
017know if that was where I could set it or if it had to be districtwide or how that worked. So, just curious. All right. Thank you. Any other questions? With that, I'd like to make the recommendation that we approve the three purchases as presented. All right. So, we have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion. Motion by Ryan. Do we have a second? I'll second. Second by Sarah. Any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Okay. Our next item is related vendor disclosures and we started this in August um about 10 or 12 and we have another one that um has been um turned in. So we would like to um you know that is so that if we are work if we potentially want to do business with a someone
018who an employee who owns the company that we have to they have to make that disclosure and to potentially the contract. It's Cody Alexander. I guess he does um bounce houses and everything like that. So, he would like to be on the list for potential consideration. So, with that, I'd like to make the recommendation that we approve the the vendor list as presented. All right. So, we have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion. Motion by John. Do we have a second? I'll second. Second by Jessica. Any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Okay. Okay. Up next is our curriculum instruction piece. Um, every year we do the um, federal assurance statement of the Arkansas Department of Education statement of assurances for programs under the elementary and secondary education act
019of 1965 as amended by the student succeeds act. And what it basically is is our LEA, us as a school district, um when we are requesting district funds covered under the elementary secondary education act that we ensure that we are meeting these these this criteria so that we are within within federal compliance. I mean that's that's basically it. So we do this every year. Um we always make sure that we are in compliance. Are there any questions? Okay. So, I won't have I'll read this. So, you're going to have to read this. Yeah. I'd like to make the recommendation that we approve the Arkansas Department of Education statement of assurances for programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act. All right. So, we have a
020recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion. Do we have a second? A second. Yeah. Second by Jessica. Any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Okay. Our next item is our community um service graduation requirement plan. U Miss Taber is going to talk about this. I'll share this information with you. Um this was enacted based off of u legislation that occurred last spring. So I know that it's been in the news a little bit. I know that the bill has already released their plan. And so this is requires court approval. And so, Miss Saber, you have the you have the floor. We worked with uh the junior high and high school campus principles and counselors to come together and look at the requirements under the law and it was approved as district
021policy also this summer. So, we compared the law policy, making sure we had everything covered in our plan. You have the one pager in your packet. Um, we do want to make sure that all of our parents and everyone in the community understands that this graduation requirement begins with our current ninth graders. So, students in grades 10, 11, and 12 are unaffected by this. Their graduation requirements have not changed. Um, but our our current ninth graders, the class of 2027, now falls under um a different set of graduation requirements. The difference is the 75 hours of community service that is required between grades 9 and 12. And so this is our plan to ensure that all of our students have um equitable access to opportunities to earn those 75 hours. We want to make sure
022that um we we pace ourselves and the law was uh stipulates these hours as well for each grade level to make sure that we are on track for a student to be able to earn 75 and we're not waiting until their senior year to get all of those in. Uh so in ninth grade we'll focus on getting 15 hours um and then 20 hours each year. After that, if a student moves in and joins the cohort, the graduating class of 2027, uh they will fall into wherever that grade level is, they will not be required to make up the lost hours. So, for example, if the student joins us in um their 11th grade year, they will earn 40 hours instead of 75 for the state graduation requirements. um as long as that student's moving
023from uh outside of Arkansas within Arkansas, we'll work to translate those hours. Um so all of our service activities will be provided that 15 hours will be provided within our district, monitored by district staff. We're going to make sure that um we meet the requirements under the law and that our community service activities are aligned with the Arkansas Department of Elementary and Secondary Guidelines for service learning. Um and that means they must include components of preparation, action, and reflection that will be done in our classrooms. Um they'll be planned and facilitated by our campuses, supervised by our staff. We're going to make sure that um and and the law stipulates that this must be service provided to tax exempt organizations and programs. It'll be vetted by parents through a parent permission form. Um we'll make
024sure that our transfer students were monitoring their hours um as they enter our our cohort. And then we'll we're working on a method for communicating their progress to students and parents through home access center. So that a student and a parent will be able to look to see that they're on track for their 15 hours this school year and then in uh in particular school years that they're still on track. Um so we have started working with our campuses to get these activities. Um for 9th grade we're working to get 15 hours. We have until the end of the school year to do that. Um but once they have a set of activities planned, they'll communicate that to the parents, receive permission from parents, and then work on the student application. Um so this is
025our overall plan um to make sure that we're able to provide an opportunity for students to complete this graduation requirement and it's not on them um to find that time on their own. Um when you go ahead my question is it's so maybe we have some that so we're going to provide opportunities. What if there are some that hey I'm going to do I'm going to go work at food bank or Samaritan center. I want to do this on my own. Does that self starter does that count? So, our plan is to provide the 15 hours, but then also log any additional time that a student does. Um, and then once we determine because we have to make sure that the hours meet the requirements of the law. And so those 15 hours that we
026provide, we'll make sure that they do additional hours. On top of that, we'll have to have a process for the campus principal to make sure that they are with a nonprofit organization and meet those those So yes and or no, we will count them. We want we want our student service locks to reflect the actual time they spent volunteering. Sure. The 15 hours will be within the school day. Um connected to course work, connected to what students are learning. Um and so that will be with their peers. So we're going to give them the opportunity to meet the requirement and that will fulfill their requirement to graduate whatever else they want to do on their own that just won't necessarily be able to meet the requirement. That's how and we're working to our current nth
027grade class we know they aren't student drivers. we know they don't have access to a lot of um afterchool opportunities outside of P Ridge and so once we roll into the 10th grade year uh we're hoping to also have more guidance from the state to determine how those outside opportunities work. We don't have our rules and regulations on this law yet but we need to get started. Yes. Sarah, did you have a question? I did. I just Are you I'm good. Okay. Um vetted by parents, what does that mean? What if a parent says, "I don't I'm their parent. I want to opt out of this because this isn't part of the active curriculum that prepares them for college." I I wasn't sure what voted by parents what that meant. Our parents will have the
028opportunity to review our opportunities just like they do all of our instructional materials. Okay. Um and then connect it back to this is a graduation requirement. Um, and so we want to make sure they understand how we're helping students meet that graduation requirement, which then does become part of our curriculum sense. Um, but yes, we want absolutely have their input um and and work with students and parents who want to look at other options or they don't agree with an option. But for ninth grade, our goal is to really bring a lot of things in house so that they learn about service and they learn about the options so that then they can start going out in the the high school years. Okay. How will you contact the parents? So it be like an email
029or is it like a a goal is to do a overall permission form for the once we have a set of activities planned. We don't want to do hour for hour. We want to say here's our overall plan. Um and so they'll get that in writing permission slip sent home. We'll communicate through school status and through our new website as well. Um and then that gives them a chance to learn more about it. We'll have some information sessions and parent teacher conferences as well so the parents know a little bit more about the program and some of the opportunities that are coming. Okay. And then are we going to work around schedules because we have a lot of student athletes just to make sure they have the ability to participate as well. Yes. And that's
030that's another benefit of working it within the district is we're able to provide some of that during class um during since a field trip really. Um and so that allows us to work around their schedules. Okay. Are the things that we're looking at are they do we have any idea? Is it going to be career focused? Like we're going to do these things to help them? Yes, it's community service, but it's not just do we even have any idea of what we're looking at? And we're exploring. We we have three different categories of service that we're looking at. Advocacy. So they're they're under understanding different causes and and trying to advocate for those causes. We're looking at indirect service. something they can do from the classroom um and the direct service that the the opportunities
031to go out in the field. Um and so we're trying to make sure that we can offer all three levels um and so that students know before they go out what kinds of you know the importance and the value behind that giving some time to research these different groups. Um right now we're looking at some options of you know you can write letters um to different groups um letters of appreciation different kinds of advocacy campaigns that you can do making posters build awareness and things looking at that uh much like red ribbon week uh you know those kinds of activities those programs that are already within our schools and connecting our students there um and then you know right now our students are in um college and career course work each school year connecting that
032to careers um and how the different interests can they can connect through their service. Okay. And then the student and the parent gets to decide which route they take or do they get to do a little bit of all the different types. They're going to do a lot of exploring in nth grade. Okay. And then our goal is for us to be more targeted in 10th through 12th when they've they've done some exploration. Okay. I just think it's new to everyone. I mean I don't I don't even know if any other state is even doing this. So it's kind of um the biggest challenge that we're facing too is that caveat with the non you know the nonprofit there's not a lot of options for us the original and we're also competing against all the
033other ninth graders in the region. So us we're having to look you know close to home so that might look a little different for us versus a larger school district. So, we're trying to really give an equitable opportunity for students and we'll have that communication for lots of parents and it'll be included in the um permission slip those different options that they'll be are we going to I know I'm asking a lot of questions but I just think as a parent I'm curious so I know there's other parents that probably don't even know this is coming because it's so new. So are we as a district are are we able to create programs if our we have a small community of 6,000 people if there isn't job like local nonprofits available for us to provide
034this is that something that's why we're looking at time all get to the school today like the letter by mean or the other opportunities we can you know beautify our campus we can do a lot of variety of things and you know we have our own food pantry we have our own bright futures so we have a lot of community service learning happening in our district. It's just going to get the students engaged in a different level that they haven't had the opportunity to do before. Okay. Do we have a target? So, I know like before we have groups of kids go out to the military park that do we have a target on the amount of opportunity? So, like if it's 15 or 20our week, are we targeting to have 150 hours of opportunity
035for sicknesses and athletic? like do we have a target for how how much margin we're going to allow for them to have to get their requirement done? My point I guess what I'm saying is you know if we build in 30 hours and you know they just coincidentally have a problem like or are we building in 10 opportunities and so they've got more than enough time to pick path and that's I guess my question definitely have to be flexible to ensure that a student um is able to earn that 15 over the school year um you know and so some of that may be an opportunity that students able to access at any time of day much like the letter writing or the advocacy building, those kinds of things. And this year, you know, we're
036focusing on 9th grade and 3 years from now, 9 through 12, we'll be doing this. Our district will be responsible for organizing over 8,000 hours of community service. It's a massive undertaking each year as we get deeper into it. And I know you said the schools are going to be tracking. Who specifically is going to be tracking trafficking or tracking? Not trafficking. Take that off. We're not trafficking anything. Tracking the students achievements. Sorry, it's a Monday. Because our students um need to complete that that preparation component of of understanding what they're getting ready to do with service, their goals behind it, and then the reflection piece, too. Um, we're hoping to house that within our college and career readiness coursework so that a student each school year they're in one of those courses. Um, and
037that team can work together to make sure that transition from 9th to 10th grade is seamless, that data is connected and and moved from one building to the next. And the team can also work to kind of vertically line and make sure that we're not overexhausting the military part or overexhausting city hall. Um, that you know, whatever we do in ninth grade, we build on that intent, but we don't replace it. Um, and so we're we're hoping to work with that team. Um, our college career readiness counselor, we just met this morning uh to go over some options. So, we're still in the initial phases of planning as well. And then as a parent, am I going to have access to C just to stay on top of where my student is? Yes. And so,
038that's that's another benefit of of placing it within one course each year is that we're able to use um home access center essentially through um a teacher's grade book communicating hours. you can make an assignment unweighted. It doesn't count at all for a grade, but it will communicate um a a complete, non-complete, or a number of hours. And then is this going to be like the same type of communication if my student hasn't turned in work or we're getting close to the end of the year and she might have only had 10 hours. Are we going to get notification and say, "Hey, we still have five hours we have to do." Yes, that will definitely have to be something that we're making sure we keep up. Um just like a student passing a course is
039you know it's a student on track to graduate with community service requirements. So we're going to add this as a course in hack. Um it right now we have a a course code with the state that's called community service. We can use that. Um if you have a course assigned to a student the techn technical side of things. If you have a course assigned to a student in their schedule it must have a teacher record. um which means we have to have a staff number assigned to it because we're so we're going to use that course number on transcripts but that we'll use our our courses that our students are already enrolled in. So how would I log into that into hack and and check my students progress. So our plan is for that right
040now nth grade college career readiness you would log in look at your student's grade book and there would be an assignment called community service. Okay perfect and a number see what awesome okay that's our current and that will all be parent teacher conferences is our goal. Okay. The grandparents will have all that information. We'll have sessions at that time. We'll have fun majors to go home, record it. All the things will be out there. So, there plenty of opportunity if you can't attend conferences to get the bullet. Perfect. Okay. I think we're asking a lot of questions, right? Because it's new because a lot of us are parents. But I want to go back to what Keith said. Over 8,000 hours in 40. I have no doubt we'll get better at this and we'll dot
041the eyes and tees and figure it out. But that's a huge opportunity. I mean I I know it seems like we're creating work but that that's massive. And so I mean we we can look at this as a requirement of burden but man the impact that you can the influence and the impact absolutely our takeaway. I know sometimes as a parent I might not think that but that's that's pretty amazing. And I don't know how many people in this room have had kids graduate and apply for scholarships but you have to have community service on the scholarship applications too for some of them. So just FYI. And one of the best things you can do as a member of the society is is give back. Absolutely. So it's a wonderful opportunity. It's just going to
042require a lot of ground work and doing this is a plus because seriously with when my older kids graduated and were applying for scholarships, you had to have community service. We had to go outside of school and and find that ourselves and document everything. So this is this is huge. So I guess my question will be though if every kid in the state is required to be doing community service will it have the same impact as a service you know future future test. Anyway that's but I guess my last question was with it only being 15 hours for the whole year. It's not like it can only be a class like it wouldn't really be a class. Will it just be specific times where they're pulled from other classes to go do that? Is that
043what you're saying? College readiness. Okay. So that'll just be like a field trip day where they go or they are are on site each um a student takes a college and career focus class every year and so it'll be embedded in that so we'll be able to get the hours through that that class 15 9th grade 20 11 12ish okay yeah I was just curious because it's not like a weekly thing it's over a whole year yeah so it's not that much okay thank you guys for answering all of our questions. With that, I'd like to make a recommendation that we approve the community service and graduation requirement plan as presented. All right. So, we have recommendation. Do we have a motion? Motion. Motion by John. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Ryan.
044Any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Okay. Okay. Next is in September. We're required to approve our budget for the for the current school year. So this year is for the 234 school year and Missell I know we did a study session on it but talk about a little bit answer there we go when working on the budget for the 23 24 school year um I look at our goals as a district that we have and our two primary goals are to always strengthen our effective programs and to retain and hire our best personnel that we have. When I'm working on the budget, um I have some principles that I that I personally look at and one is we always want to spend less than we receive. So when I budget, I budget revenue
045low, expenses high and come out to a balanced budget. I always focus on improving our teaching and learning and we distinguish between what our needs are as a district versus what some wants are as a district. Our key budget components that we have regarding our funding is is our local property tax assessments, our state foundation funding, what our student membership number is, and this year it was added where we had the Learns Act of Learns Act 237 of 2023 where that really impacts our budget this year. Um, as you'll see in the later slide, our budget is primarily made of salaries and benefits. Well, with the Learns Act, we were required to bring everybody a certified teacher, everybody up to a $50,000 minimum. So, that included some raises for those teachers and then anybody that
046was over the 50,000 we had to give them at least two faculty. So, we did that as a minimum and on top of that, we created our steps that um you guys approved during our separate discussions for the year. On the PowerPoint, you can see how our property tax assessments have increased over the past, it's probably been the past 10 years. I'm reflecting six. As you can see, we had a huge jump from 23 to 24 due to the reassessment. This is our average daily membership. This is the number of students that were funded on from the state. And so, as you can see, this year we're funded on 2,441. And that's the ending number from last year. That is the third the first three quarters of last year average. Okay. And so when I
047budget, I budget based on this number. We're guaranteed that number. We are already at 20. We're hanging out around the 25 40 25 45 mark right now. Um I do anticipate us continuing to grow. Miss Button um sent over their um spreadsheet of certificies. This month was the highest month they've ever had on record. I think it was over 70 certificies. So this year will be our largest year of COS issued. So I do anticipate us to continue to grow as the school year continues. Okay. So, our budget is based on the 2441. In December, the state will true up to where we are on student membership. So, they'll look at what our average is at that time and we'll get a portion of it in December or January and then and that's student growth
048money and then we'll get back the rest of it in May and June when they see what our numbers are for the first three quarters. our state foundation funding. This year we received $7,618 per student, which is a little over $200 increase from the prior year. Um, that number is funded to us, a portion of it is funded from our property taxes and a portion of it is funded from the state. um our local revenue per student uh we are guaranteed 98% of our assessment on the first 25 mills that we have and we're currently at 47.2 mills. So as you can see this year our our funding per student is guaranteed at 7,618. 25% of that is coming from our property tax assessment. The other 75% is um from the state. This is the
049historical how we've been funded in the past. As you can see, our percentage between local and state on our first pupil funding is pretty much it ranges between the 23 to 25% and the 75%. um our operating funds. My projections are based on our revenues, our growth funds, which I generally don't budget our growth funds. One of the reasons why I don't budget our growth funds, even though we're at 2500, it's not a guaranteed dollar amount until I see it in January and May. And we use it for reserves for big projects that we may have coming or emergencies that we may need to deal with in the future. Um, our operating revenue, as you can see, it's primarily made up of our state foundation funding is 55% and our property taxes are 33% and
050then our state revenue services sources, excuse me, which is about 10% which is our categorical funding, which is our PD, our alternative learning, our English language, and our um enhanced student achievement funding and then we received some other state funding sources as well but those are our primary categories under state revenue. Our operating expenses um it is primarily as you can see 76% of our budget is salaries and benefits. Utilities is four. Our debt payments is 8%. That only leaves 12% of our revenues that we can budget for supplies and other things that we're that is needed in the district. Okay. In your packet, I should have your um a copy of your budget. Um I segregated our budget between our four main categories. Operating our building fund, our federal fund, and our child nutrition
051fund. Um, just to make it simple, as you can see in our operating and debt service budget, um, last year we spent about 24 million. This year I'm budgeting about 25 million. In that other state funding category, you can see a pretty big jump. Included in that is the 700,000 that we're receiving from the state to pay for those increases in salary. on the expenditures. Um I am budgeting about 19 million in salaries and benefits. Again, the increase is is primarily due to the learns act. And then we did add additional FTPS this past year just because of our student numbers growing. We were needing more staff. Um the other big categories that I've increased were our security. As you can remember, we went from three SRO's to five SRO's and um our insurance our
052property and vehicle insurance unfortunately went up from about 185,000 to 400,000 and that is statewide. Anybody that is on the state insurance had the same level of increase that we have. Um, our next budget that I am reviewing is our building fund budget. This is where we do all our building projects. In the prior years, we still had partnership funding that we had to finish the high school and to do the um and some bond money that we used to do the HVAC HVAC system. Those projects are complete. So, um the the money that we have coming in the building fund is funding that we get for our QAP debt payments. We get a little bit there. And then this year, um, from a prior meeting, we approved the land purchase for about 460,000. So,
053we will be using the reserves in the building fund to do that, but that's what the reserves were used. Our federal funding, as you can see, um, we budgeted a little less than our federal funds this year. you recall the past two to three years we've been getting some um esser co money and so this is this is the last year and we'll have a little bit left in the 2425 year not much but this is our last year of using those funds and so that's why that dollar amount decreased get slight decreases in our title funding this year um and that is across the board and that's based on our free As you can see, primarily we're using most of our federal funds we're using for curriculum materials. We do pay for SAP sum
054salaries out of our federal funding, but we try not to concentrate our federal funding on salaries and benefits because with federal funds, you're not guaranteed those funds every year. Those are it could be a fluid number and it could be a fluid number during the year as well based on our numbers as well. And so we have a handful of people coded to that. As you can see from actual to our budget there was a decrease last year. We were able to do a bonus with part of our ESSER money. So that was why there was a significant dollar. And our last fund is our child nutrition fund. Um, this comes from our free and reduced reimbursements that we have and then our private pay dollar amounts for students to eat in the cafeteria. Um,
055I've kept it approximately the same as in the prior year. This one's kind of hard to budget just because you just don't know when the kids are going to eat in the heat in the cafeteria. So, we try and keep it consistent with the prior year and there's really no significant increases. There are some additional food costs. Food prices of course have gone up. Um, just like everywhere else for us. Um activity accounts, we don't budget activity accounts. Those are not budgeted items. Those are student groups, student le groups and athletics. Those are based on their fundraising effort efforts and athletic gates. And so what they raise is what they can spend and that can be different every year. So that is not there. Any questions? Okay, with that, I'd like to make the recommendation
056that we approve the budget for the 232 24 school year as presented. All right, so we have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? Motion. Motion by Jessica. Do we have a second? Second. Second by John. Any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Okay. Thank you, M. Um, up next we have personnel. I don't think we need executive session. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Okay. With that, I would like to make a recommendation that we accept the resignations of Lukie Harper, Brian Kger, Melinda Lewis, and Linda Nelson. All right. So, we have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? A motion. Motion by Jessica. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Ryan. Miss Linda's going to be a hard one to replace at the primary. Yes, ma'am. Quad ways off. I know she is, but
057she's going to be missed. Those those littles love her so much and she is so fantastic with them. So, I hope you guys found somebody really good to to replace her. All right, any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? All right. Up next for hiring, I would like to make the recommendation that we hire Kim, Isaiah, and Janelle Ze. All right. So, we have the recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion. Do we have a second? I'll second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Okay. And last, we have um personnel transfers. I'd like to make the recommendation that we transfer Miss Ricky Smarts to cafeteria manager in primary school. All right, there we have it. All right, Miss Ricky. All right, we have a recommendation. Do we have a
058motion? All right, motion by Ryan. I'll second it. Any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Okay, our last item on the agenda is two additional positions. Our first one is for a bilingual instructional aid. We are seeing an increase in our ESOL students and we're needing the support to help those kids make the kids to have what they need to help our teachers as well. And the last and the second position is an instructional special education. As our populations continue to increase, we have to increase staffing and same thing to provide services. Any questions on those two positions? Okay, with that I' like to recommendation that we approve um a bilingual instructional aid and an instructional aid for special education. All right, we have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? Motion. All right,
059so we're going to put Sarah down his motion. Second. I'll second. Second by Jessica. Any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? All right. Anything further? No, ma'am. So, I would like anybody want to do a motion to All right. Good job, John. I'll second it. All in favor? Thanks, guys.