001we're going to call this special uh meeting to to order we're here at the Liberty Elementary School allpurpose room we're going to show that this meeting starting at 4:45 board members present is uh board member Schmidt board member serenon board member Zimmerman and myself board member Kenyan um Miss Schmidt if you don't mind leading Us in the pledge please sure I pled aliance 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 thank you we'll move to item 1.3 approval of election of board president this is action and discussion would anybody like motion to approve Kelly Zimmerman as new board president beginning February 20th 2025 do I have a second second okay we have a motion and
002then we have a second we'll go ahead and take the vote board member Schmidt I board member serenon nay board member Zimmerman I and I will also show that a nay so that motion fails do we have any other motions or recommendations or discussion motion to approve Chris Kenyan as new board president beginning February 20th okay I will also second that we'll take a vote board member Schmidt nay board member serion I board member nay and I'm also an i which shows that to two which also shows that failing so we have this is where I'm going to ask Mr Clyde you know that you can abstain if you're not ready to cast a yay vote but you don't want to cast a nay vote like you can abstain if you'd like Mr Dangerfield yeah
003is great can abstain okay you can also say a motion to reconsider and then if you have a second run it through again and see if any votes going to change okay so we need a motion to reconsider if anybody would like to reconsider their Vote or else it stands as it is where there's no elected board president that's correct okay would anybody like to make a motion I motion to reconsider to approve Kelly Zimmerman as new board president beginning February 20th 2025 Mr Dangerfield are we able to reconsider the same exact motion yes yes okay just need you'll need a second okay second we have a motion in a second we will take a vote board member Schmidt I board member sanii nay board member Zimmerman I I'm also an a n which shows
004that motion failed do we have any would we like to have any discussion or I would just like to make it clear that I have no issue with any member on this board being president or president of the board the reason I haven't voted for Miss zerman yet and all will say yet is I don't feel that you would be able to have good control of the meeting right now and that be trans a third break and that's the only reason holding my boat back right now okay but can you give me the opportunity to do it well you haven't given me the opportunity when have I not been prepared when have I not been able to control myself I have not lost my temper I have not done anything I have not shown you
005that I cannot be in control well it's it's more like when we have the crowd gets dismissal you give a nod of approval to what's going on instead of not encouraging the disruption you you don't know if you notice your body language but you nod and you smile at what's going on and that to me that feels like you're not to that I'm being honest with you was that oh I think that you are making an assumption about about me and I don't think that I have shown that I have done anything that wouldn't warrant me being able to control the crowd and to speak the truth and to hold people accountable for what they are doing and I'm just really I'm I'm just really surprised I guess that this is the way it's going
006because are dis okay this is not a public form for General comments so please keep your comments to a silence I just feel like I have I have earned the right to at least try I don't I just don't think I have proven any other way and I think you saying that I not my body language like you don't even know what I'm nodding at and to use that against me right now I just think is unfortunate well thank you Miss simmerman I would like to no I'm listen I hear you thank I would like to speak as well um I think I bring the most experience on this board I've been on the board for 2 years um out of everybody that's quite a bit more than everybody else on the board not that
007I'm perfect I will absolutely be the first one to say I'm not perfect but in trying to keep order of a meeting um and trying to make sure that everybody's opinions are heard and respected even people who disagree with me should be able to look at that and say you know what you know he's able to make sure people are heard doesn't matter their opinion um and so I've seen a couple of questionable things Miss Zimmerman uh that could get us in legal Jeopardy in the past um I'm not going to state what they are right now and we could talk about it later but I just know that there's there's certain issues that I have concerns that I have with at the moment you being board president okay well this board before me has
00815 open meeting law violations that is under you so I don't think it has anything to do Mr Dangerfield is she allowed to discuss that which thing are you talking she's stating open meeting law violations against the the previous board that's not where we're what we're discussing here well we're talking about the election board president so um it's pretty open for the discussion all right if you're going to keep talking ma'am we're going to have you leave this is not public discussion what we need now is if anybody is willing to do a motion to reconsider again can I just say one more thing before we do that please sure is I lost my train of thought to be honest so well miss Zimmerman I would say I would like to oh okay sorry I
009with with time I would like to give you just some pointers on how this runs um all right you can please leave can you leave we were having a conversation and you're disrupting this meeting I'm going to ask you to leave now you're being no want can can we I is there Clyde Dr um excuse me we don't have a police officer with us today we don't however that doesn't mean you're able to disrupt the meeting okay so this is a meeting up here when we have a general meeting where you have opportunity to comment you can comment thank you so go ahead okay so one of my concerns is that the all the agenda items that I have asked for don't make it to the agenda and it's not up to the board president
010to decide which agenda items should be on the agenda that are being requested so are you it's not but if if you understand how this works it is the president of the board who works with the superintendent to set the agenda okay so I just want you to know that he's going to limit the agenda it I did not say that you just did you said that it's your job to basically limit them and that my concern is that my agenda I did not say it's my job to limit them and this is not a time for argument it's just understanding what principle legal principle is and Mr Dangerfield if you want would like to clarify whose job is it to set the agenda I know who job it is my point is that the
011president isn't listening to all of the board members and if the board president is just supposed to set the agenda then all of our items should have carry equal weight and my concern with Chris Kenyan being the board president is that he's not giving equal weight how can you say that I've never been board president well you just said that basically you're that it's your job and you didn't I did not I said it's the board president's job okay but you have aligned yourself with parks and Todd and they limited those agenda items and I had zero say in the creation of the agenda okay so you're trying to wrap me in with something I would had no part of okay well I'm just trying to defend myself because I'm being accused of nodding and
012that's why I don't I'm not qualified so I'm just bringing up other concerns I have with people that are being nominated for board president okay yeah to that extent I would also like to say that I have concerns um how you sometimes react opion in meetings that it's inflammatory people get riled up by the things that you say as well um so keeping control over the crowd doesn't happen when you accuse people of things or say things that you know are going to cause a reaction which is happened at every meeting I've been a part of so far so you know a calm demeanor would go a very long way in getting things done on this board and I don't know that you have that from my experience which as you've pointed out is very
013little but in two meetings I've seen it twice with that do we have another motion no other motion okay I'll motion to reconsider again to approve Kelly Zimmerman as new board president beginning February 20th 2025 do I have a second second let's take a vote board member Schmidt yay board member serenon nay board member Zimmerman I and I'm also a nay that shows that fails we'll give it a second okay any other motions with no other motions it'll show that at this time there is no board president and we will move to item so vice president Kenyan so Clyde do you want to clarify what what this kind of means or moving the motions have all failed so it just is going to leave the board the way it is with the just a vice
014president no president vice president will have I think your mic just went off there you the vice president will be in the acting role as president okay with that being said then do we still do a 1.4 which is approving the vice president yeah it's not necessary it's an agenda item okay let do it all right 1.4 approval of election of board vice president uh motion to approve Kelly Zimmerman as new board vice president beginning February 20th 2025 do I have a second second we have a motion we have a second let's take a vote board member Schmidt I board member serenon I board member Zimmerman I and I will show that I'm an a which means that that passes so board member Zimmerman you are vice president so so sorry about that so we'll
015have to I don't know Clyde we have a sitting vice president and then we have a vice president who is just elected so Point yeah we may have to figure that out how how that works um and look at that all right Mr aguire everybody everybody so my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong is that at this point we would go ahead and the new elected vice president would take over the meeting as okay that's correct and that is fine so with that sir can I also get a clarification what's going um so since we could not elect a board president and you said that the vice president is an acting President right so essentially just elected our new acting president that is correct okay thank you okay so we'll move on to item
0161.5 discussion process of the governing board vacancy I'm going to lead it right yes okay so um just for a little bit of a history lesson um we do have a vacancy on the board and um so it is um the governing board job to create a process um in which to potentially recommend up to three candidates to the county superintendent for her consideration for the appointment um and it's up to us as a board to create that process um people can apply directly to the district and that has been posted for about a week and people can also apply directly to the county superintendent um and um I just wanted to provide some history to the board for people that haven't been on the board as long or watched meetings about how it's been
017done in the past and then we can discuss how we want to conduct the process so in October of 2017 um the governing board basically hosted a forum and the community had the opportunity to provide written feedback um and the following day after the Forum the governing board discussed the candidates in Open Session and then uh would make a mo to you know recommend um in December of 2017 they did it a little bit differently they had an interview panel that made up of boards principal teachers and parents the audience also had opportunity to provide written feedback but they made a recommendation that night so in my research in like the board minutes I couldn't figure out how the board got the written feedback so just something for us to consider in January of 2020
018they had a forum um the minute state that the audience could provide feedback but it didn't say say how but there was a recess for 20 minutes so I'm just thinking maybe that's when they read the feedback they discussed the candidates the same night um and then in September 2021 they hosted a forum they did attach resumés to the agenda for the public to see who was applying um the audience gave electronic feedback um and the recommendations were given that same night it stated in the meeting discussing the process that the electronic feedback would also be sent to the county superintendent so that was different than I had seen before in the other minutes and then in February 2024 there was a forum um and there was no opportunity for the public to give feedback
019during that Forum um so uh I just wanted to give the board um just some an idea of what um has occurred in the past as we begin our discussion of what we would like to do with the candidates that have applied yeah vice president Zimmerman I'll just chime in we currently have seven candidates if I'm counting right and um the date that we posted you know the board's aware there's a very tight timeline you have like 30 days to get the the name submitted so the date that we posted for the Forum was next Wednesday here at 5:30 and we we stand ready to do whatever the board wants to do with the community input process or changing meetings around so uh vice president Zimmerman just gave quite a history so we stand ready
020to do however the board wants wants to do the Forum and um we do have a board meeting on March the 4th um so if there was if the board chose to do a public forum on Wednesday there could be Community input and then it could be discussed and decided by the board at that at the March 4th board meeting so we stand at the ready to do whatever the board wants okay so we'll start with Miss Schmidt do you have um some ideas about the what how you'd like to do the process um I like the idea of a public forum with and then allowing for Community feedback post Forum um if we could do that electronically that's probably good uh although having written feedback right at the moment is also maybe a better
021option sorry I'm thinking that threw in my head and thinking that maybe electronic isn't the greatest um giving each candidate an opportunity to present thems and speak I think is important so we can hear what they have to say um so yeah I like the idea of the elect uh the public forum excuse me and uh Dr Monroe could you just tell me again what date it was posted because I know you said we only have 30 days so I'm just trying to keep that in mind Minnie do you remember what dat remember the exact date sorry do you remember what what's that no what date it was posted that for that our 30-day window starts before we have to have the stuff to the superintendent it started on it starts on the date of
022the opening okay so it was on it was a Friday it's the 7th but I think she meant what when did the district post yeah whatever our window of 30 days when did it start so when does it end like what is our final it starts on the 7th when we resigned it starts on the 7th I want to say we posted on Monday or Tuesday or maybe Monday was a holiday I don't remember but but yeah it does start vice president Zimmerman's right on the seventh thank you okay Mr serenon uh no I don't feel good I'm sorry okay um Mr Kenyan yeah thank you um so I've been through number of these couple years back um and I I really like the public forum section where we have the opportunity to get to
023meet the candidates the public gets to meet the candidates although meet is kind of a not the right word because you know you you can't get to see who they are in two seconds but um it is a good good way they can be introduced in the past the board members have been able to come up with two or three uh questions to submit to uh the board secretary to kind of put together and organiz or put together the meetings that or the excuse me the questions that would be asked of the candidates um and also the community also had the opportunity in this last one to send questions to um I don't know if that's directly to uh Miss Minnie camarado over there our board secretary or who but out of the questions that
024were submitted then it would be there would be one selected at from the public that would be asked and I would ask that the same whether it be you know I just previous forums have been very interesting because it seems like a lot of the questions are kind of repetitive and the the the candidates answering the same thing over and over and over um I know that happened to me and so if they could be a little unique in the questions that would be great um just kind of some advice going forward but and I would try to limit it we have as Dr Monroe said right now currently seven candidates that could grow and we want to be sensitive to their time but and I would also ask that they each get asked the
025same question that way it's fair to everybody um I agree I I think a a public forum is good I think a lot of people are very interested in the vacancy I don't know that we've ever had seven people apply for a vacancy um I also think I think limiting it to three or four questions I don't think dragging it on like you said we're just getting a snapshot and as we all know you know it's really up to the county superintendent um and so you know I mean we can make our recommendation but that may not you know hold weight or not um I do think that the public feedback is really important um so I would prefer to to um not have a discussion that night and give people the opportunity to um
026I think we need to differentiate the people that attend in person like they give us feedback and we know that they were here and we know that they were present but if people want to watch it have like a different one because then we're not controlling who's filling it out as much to know like are you know did they watch it or they just making a decision I would sorry oh no it's okay no no no go ahead go ahead I'd rather have a discussion I would I would just caution that because then you know some people may not be able to make and then they watch it later I like the idea of them having the opportunity I just don't like the idea of saying these ones were here versus these ones weren't I
027think they all should be pulled together my recommendation I agree I'm just I just am worried are we just going to have people that like don't live in the district and somebody sends them the link that says like hey fill this out that's that's the only thing that's why I'm CAU watching it a little bit but I agree I'm okay with leaving it because I do want to give people the opportunity to watch it afterwards I just think it's important because ultimately it is the stakeholders that should be electing us and so that opportunity was remove from them and so I want to give them as much of a voice as possible so um I think by just having the Forum and then discussing it as a board later so that we have time to
028read the feedback people have time to watch the meeting and give the feedback um so I'm fine just keeping it the same you know who's here and who's not here is that okay with everybody else yeah so let me let me ask vice president Zimmerman so I've heard a few different things so we can do the public forum here I've heard three or four questions um and we can you guys can direct us to you guys want to submit each a question how do we want to do that we can definitely arrange something electronic that just the the responses come to the board to make it nice and easy that way if the board does discuss on March 4th the community has yeah four or five days to be able to watch it and submit
029their comments or their rankings or or however and then also I would just want to know you know if the candidates are up here if they're sitting up here you know does the board want to just have a public form where the board's just kind of in the audience does the board want to ask the questions you know the last time we we had an opening Dr SLO kind of moderated so those details as well but those are some of the things I'm hearing right now three or four questions maybe an opening statement okay um do we each want to respond to our thoughts about that Miss Schmid uh yeah so public forum opening statement three or four questions I think having one person who's the moderator who asks the questions to everybody is probably
030the best way with us just hanging back and listening and the and the same questions right the same question to all individuals um and one you know not one of us somebody who sort of um not as in in the moment can be the moderator um however we want to decide that um I think that's the most Fair way to handle it uh and even you know puts every on an even playing field and nobody feels anything so that would be my recommendation Mr S no I I agree with that that makes most sense to me right now okay Mr Kenyan yep I agree the same um I do like Dr SLO putting him on the hot seat uh I I think every time I've seen him do moderation it does a phenomenal job so
031I I appreciate him for that and I would be open to having him moderate it yeah I think Dr SLO would do a great job um do we I think an opening statement is nice cuz I think that they can kind of prepare that in their head do we want to make a time limit though for them to either uh an opening statement and answer the questions or just the opening statement give a time limit I'm trying to remember how it was I've been through this process this a couple times and I I I want to say there was there was a time limit there was like a basically a one or two minute you know you have your two minutes to open then each question you had a timeline to answer the question a
032minute is actually a lot of time you know what I mean like when you say two minutes it feels like an eternity a minute might be ample where people don't have to feel rushed but again we'll and again if all seven people come to the form or we have more applicants it could turn into 8 9 10 you know cuz we still have time for people to submit their interest right I would just maybe could we do two minutes for the opening statement and then like a minute for the questions I'd be okay with that okay yeah I'm okay with that do we want to write the questions right now or you don't want to do it in the um cuz otherwise we otherwise we're not going to be able to discuss it outside of
033a meeting yeah that's the that's the question do you know the candidates have the questions beforehand um or do they not have the questions again not that it's a Goa or anything or do you want to see them be more prepared and again we're only talking about three or four questions is the Forum an agenda item though can we still discuss it without it because unless it's agenda item we can discuss it right because we'll be an open like a meeting or would it be like a special the open Forum open Forum count as a meeting M all right yeah I mean go ahead and comment Clyde I don't see where it would especially if the board's not making any decisions right this is not a it won't be a decision-making action item yeah especially
034vice president uh Zimmerman said they would discuss at the March 4th meeting so it's almost like a public forum I mean Dr SLO could welcome everybody and start the public forum so I so that at that point I don't think there would be any open meeting law because it's just sort a public for as long as the board members aren't speaking because we will be we will be voting on this later yes later you will yeah but plus we can't talk about the questions to we can we can right now that's point point but later we can okay it would be like an agenda item yeah like we can't email back and forth and you know we can't have many send us the questions and then have us all say yes or no we can't
035do that so we either have to decide right now what the questions are between the four of us or we have to designate somebody to do it yeah in the past it was I got an email right here um from the last one it just says hello this serves as a reminder please submit your two questions to me and this was to mini on the last one um that will be asked on the Forum on the 28th so we could do two questions but then that's eight unless we decide to see if some of them are repetitive we can Whittle it down or else we just say each one of us come up with one question that's four questions that's still I think okay yeah I just am worried um I guess is you know
036if we if if two of us ask basically the same question how maybe maybe we have one question that we really want and then maybe like a backup question that's like you know if you and I send her basically the same question then she uses one of our backup questions I think that's why she asked for us to submit two last time because there were some repetitive ones and I I have some of my questions here from what I submitted before um and then the duplicate ones basically got kind of Whitted down and Miss Minnie if you can correct me if I'm wrong vice president Zimmerman board members um the last process is was each board member submitted two to three questions and then once the questions were gathered then I forwarded them to you
037all four you know all four of you and then you picked the one that you wanted and then I sent it back to you stating these are the questions that will be asked all candidates were asked the same question along with their opening statement so however you you know you see fit I just want Mr Dangerfield I just want to make sure that that is going to be okay yeah I would say uh that submitting the questions and then um I would I would direct the administration to go ahead and Whittle them down to eliminate the um any repetitive nature of it then the other then those questions then should be used okay so we're not coming back then with with one that we're picking that's where I got a little bit concerned I agree
038that you would you would direct the administration to go ahead and Whittle those questions down okay Clyde what I what I would not want is for I will submit all the questions I don't want to be the one to decide right oh this one is sounds repetitive this one doesn't so I would feel better just forwarding all questions as transparency and my understanding if I remember correctly you did send those all all the questions to each board member but individually not as a group no it's always it's a BCC yep so it's an individually so there's no violation of opa meeting law and then the individual board member would pick out of the options and send it back to her there's no still no discussion between the board members it was just these are this
039is list of the questions pick one and send it back to me that was it there's no discussion so that's where correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that violates open meeting law I would I I could also recommend that the questions go since Dr SLO is our will be our moderator that they go to him instead of me and just leave you know administration myself out and he and Dr SLO would probably better you know that's a good suggestion yeah they would just go directly to Dr SL that's a good suggestion or the other the other suggestion I think is that if we each come up with one or two questions and we agenda size it before the Forum that we have a meeting and we sit up here and we say
040we want question number two like you go down the row and you say I want question number two we're not saying what the question is at the moment so and then we know which each person picks because we're still going to end up particular we could end up in the same position if Minnie sends us all and all of us pick number three is our question then she's still going to have to come back and say oh somebody else picked three and then it I think it really opens us up for open meeting law yeah so would take what you're suggesting would take another meeting well just right before the just right before the for the Forum okay that would work that would work too we send all the questions to Minnie we each come
041up with two questions we she compiles them right before the you know before the Forum it's a meeting we sit here and we go down the order and we say Sarah says sorry mm she says I'm going to pick number two and Mr serenon says I'm going to pick number seven and I say I'm going to pick one and then and then we hand those numbers to Dr SLO and he asked the questions that would work sure yeah that would work but I'm also comfortable with Dr Sloat like if we give him you know our choices I'm also comfortable with him picking them I'm okay with that I'm just suggesting another way for us to have the voice if the board wants to really be able to choose the questions I'm okay either way I
042still kind of like just each one of us submitting two questions and if we're submitting them just leaving Administration out and submitting them straight to Dr slope and having him be able just to pick the ones that he feels are the most appropriate it's up to the board how whichever way you need to come to a consensus on which way like to do it okay Miss what what would you like to do I'm perfectly comfortable with Dr SLO choosing the questions as long as he feels comfortable being the one to choose the questions okay Mr serenon uh I'm okay with email them to but I think we should email them to to Minnie and then she can send them over to Dr slow microphone um do SLO are you comfortable if we submit two questions
043to mini are you comfortable whittling it down have basically four questions thank you for asking yes I am uh absolutely I would be uh more comfortable uh at the beginning of that meeting if you allowed me to submit to you how how I went through and bed it and or arranged and that before that form started as a board you said yes this is good or you elected at the beginning of that meeting to say I'd like a change I mean I'm okay with you giving me that kind of thing I'm glad to do it but if at when that meeting convenes if there could be an item at the beginning that says reviewing and approving the items that we're going to ask in the next five minutes I think I would feel comfortable with
044that okay um I'll just I just want to make sure that I give you the opportunity I just heard you say that you were okay with SLO so I didn't ask you again no I'm okay with okay thank you um I hear what you're saying about us but I'm I'm just afraid that if if we come together right before the Forum it's a meeting and one of us is like oh I don't like that question question I just if we're going to meet before the meeting I think it might be better just to have the eight questions and each of us pick a number that we're we want you to ask because I just think it could lend itself to a lot of discussion again of oh I I did my comment wasn't meant to
045make this more complicated no I know I know I don't want to make it more complicated before the Forum of us having this whole discussion about whether we like the questions or not you know um just being respectful to your Authority and your position appreciate it um but I'd be glad to if you would send me if you agree to send me a few questions uh each I'd be glad to bring it down to four and um You Know cover sort of cover the topics that seem to be Germaine through the question that you submit me I'll gladly do okay is everybody okay with that or do you want to be able to have a discussion about the questions before the meeting I'm okay with it yeah I'm fine I'm okay with it as well
046okay so just to summarize we're going to have a forum we're going to have an opening statement for two minutes and they can answer the questions in one minute we're going to send each of us are going to send two questions to Dr slope um I want to give us a timeline so that we give him time to process that but I want to confer with the board because um we were not asked about the Forum so can everybody make Wednesday at 5:30 I can yes yes okay I try to think of it's okay um I I can I'm just wondering if um just thinking about the district it's like the um Sports championships that at night and other people that are coming from work if they're applying like would it be okay to do
047it at 6:00 I will go with what the board wants um but if you really want to do it at 5:30 I'll do it at 5:30 I'm okay with 5:30 I would be okay with starting at 6 if it's more amenable to people I know 5:30 can be really rough if you work farther away from the district um but either would be fine I have no preference either way it's both works okay you want to do six I would prefer to do six okay um so but we're going to do it on Wednesday so can Dr slow is two days appropriate for you like if we have them to you like Sunday evening so when you came in on Monday morning that would be F okay is that okay with the board okay yes I
048miss anything else do you um all is your guys's preference to sit in the audience do you want it to be almost a board meeting like or just have a public form do you guys want to just sit in the audience um and have Dr SLO lead the whole public forum I mean we can post it we can obviously do that but I'm sorry no good I'm okay with sitting in the audience so this is this is not a meeting that we're supposed to have a discussion um so I'm okay with being just a Observer I am too yep same for me okay and then we could my idea would be to maybe Dr slope we help create a QR code where people can scan with like a yes we need to talk about this
049a readon file to the board that doesn't go to Administration or anything but it goes to the board if that's what you want for input and then if people watch it we won't be able to live stream it because that's that's tough but we'll post it but they have four days to watch it then they'd have people who are here could do the QR code or if they watch it the next morning or the next day we could send out the link where they could submit their feedback and the board could all see it not together but you guys would have your separate thing as a read only um I think the board should discuss what we want the feedback to look like do we want them to rank them do uh do you want
050to just leave it open for comments um I think we should discuss we want what we want the feedback to look like I I would just offer that remember the I think the statute says the board can submit up to three names now if on the fourth the board discusses and they can't come to a conclusion on who how the who the three names are what the county has told us is that everyone will be contacted for an interview with the county superintendent with that being said my thought would be almost a a ranking or you know my thought would be like who is your top three and then maybe a box at the bottom just an open- eded boxes box for comments and then so the board sees that and then can also see
051all the comments yeah that was what I was going to say I think we should have the combination of open comment and ranking um it's probably the most efficient way to get feedback um just open comment would be difficult because you'll probably only get comments on a couple of the people so if you do the ranking where they have to rank everyone um or the top five maybe then at least we can have um more placeholders there to move down the list um if it comes down to Like We can't agree on three and we're moving down thisy uh no I like the ranking and the comment box just allows because if somebody has like a very strong concern with somebody allows them to voice their the concern besides just making look like they're just
052last but like the one you know like really why they want them to be last like that yeah I I'd like to have them all ranked personally um just cuz I do think that there are varying um you know ideas on the board and I just think it would be good to have all of them and the comment box oh I'm sorry I should have I'm going in order sorry I meant I that was my bad um I also just want to like remind the public that um I'm thinking of his last name Shane's last name with first said that um you know the county would request everybody that applied so I just I don't want the public to be concerned that like the county superintendent isn't going to get their name so I just
053wanted to clarify that yeah that that's correct uh and I appreciate you saying that uh even if the board comes to a consensus on the three we submit all of the documents if someone applies to the county they contact us but we we submit everything to the county and at that point it becomes their kind of their their thing okay Mr Kenyon yeah no I'm I'm okay with the ranking and the comments um I just want to remind everybody that the last two of these forms we did nobody who was a part of it was even selected so just remember that so okay um so I think we'll go ahead and go with the ranking um all the way down and a comment box Dr slow is there anything I'll be meeting with you after
054the meeting Dr slow but is there anything that we thinking about the form that's on your we've already as you know we've already produced a prototype of it with ranking question Follow by General comments box right now the question is set up for the community person to indicate your top three protocols I keep violating them um uh for the Community member to indicate their top three on it if we want to leave it open if we have seven or eight candidates and we ask the community members to rank them from one to eight becomes a much more complicated uh activity generally we ask them to either s select their top candidate and then the top three candidates become the ones that have the most votes for the top and another way to do it is
055way that I might suggest that we ask the community members to to indicate their top three without doing one two and three on it and then we could modify that to indicate to have them rank their first their second and their third if you'd like so I just want to clarify what I hear you saying is that it's it would be difficult to have them rank all seven well when you ask the more five generally and then put them in an ascending or descending order of things it complicated I know it sounds odd and triv trivial but it's more complicated for the individuals to do um and they might not do them all uh if you make it more simplistic candidate one gets that opens up the survey form those names will be in a
056different order at the beginning and they'll go through click click click for their top three so as not to have the order uh impact which it does actually are there any strong feelings either way I like the top three I think that that gets kind of what we're looking at what we want um and the other question is is this something that candidates are going to see cuz i' you know coming in 7th or 8th that kind of doesn't sit right but this is something that would just come back to the board correct yes anyone that would have the link would be able to fill it out though right right we certainly we won't send it out to everyone but I imagine we post it on the website that are part of the Liberty Community
057but the data will come back just to us and then we'll you know process the data and send it uh to you candidates won't see it and the users won't see it um what the results are as they fill it in okay uh before I let other people respond I just want to ask um what kind of time do you feel like you need to kind of organize the data as you said so that we publicize when we're not if you know if they want to be able to fill out the form at what point do we have to kind of cut off the QR code for them to be included obviously they can always email the board um that's there obviously anybody can email us and and tell us what they think but in
058order for you to be able to get the data to us in enough time for us to you know look it over before the meeting it's it's a very simple simple data collection so it would take me probably just an afternoon to put together a summary of this results especially the top three is really just a frequency count everyone chooses their top three say 3 400 people respond hopefully um and it just becomes who has the most uh frequency of the top three and it pulling the comments too right the comment the comments will be there and since it's just internal um this is the the issue if it's just internal to Administration and yourselves then the comments can sit as they come in as if it's your servant uh to read them unedited if
059the comments become public then some vetting of those will probably have to be done or should be done in some ways much like we did open so Dr slow so they could have a link and just I'll be able to provide they could have a link and they could go in and check over the next few days a live link and then we have to just determine do we close it or how when do you guys want you know cuz the meeting's Tuesday night where the the board would discuss and decide so does the board want it to just stay open until Tuesday or do you want to close it on a time or does that matter so that the board has time to read over the comments before you discuss it on Tuesday so
060I mean if the meeting's on Wednesday that link is live Wednesday night so people have Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday I just want to clarify so you're saying you're going to send us a link and we'll be able to read the comments live yes okay yeah there'll be a secure link um that I can forward to you and the leadership team if you'd like uh and you'll be able to see minute by minute as the data changes on it you'll see every single candidate and the number of votes they get if they're in the top three you'll be able to see the frequencies of that so you me you be able to see it and you'll be able to see all of the comments as they come in and we and depending on the board
061it doesn't have to be shared with me doesn't have to be shared with many if it wants to just be exclusively to the board but with this you know if board member has time on Friday morning or Friday night or Saturday afternoon you could click in and see the the feedback that keeps coming in you know the ranking and then you could also see the comments as it goes yeah I would like to see you asked her a little bit AG go ago but I think we should probably close it that Sunday that way the Monday it's just the data is there and nothing's changing that'll give me plenty of time to do whatever sort of assembly or sumary report that you want for Tuesday for sure are you okay with Sunday okay I I
062think Sunday night is a good um clean break and we'll when we publicize it cuz uh one thing is we'll publicize all this we'll make sure the public knows about what the board's talking about right now and especially the candidates especially the people here we'll make sure that that gets emailed to them or what have you and then we'll also publicize you know Sunday night at 8:00 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. you know to give the board feedback that way you guys at least have 48 hours before the board meeting and you can read over all of that so we can do that how does the board feel about having Administration attach um the candidates resumés to the board agenda for the public to see I'm not sure how I feel about that for like their
063privacy Mr ceron since they are recording this can you talk it to the microphone try not to say to everybody uh I'm not sure how I feel about that as a candidate I don't know if their resume should be out there for everybody to see especially the ones that aren't selected so I don't know if everybody needs to see that or not this just my opinion if they are made available we could redact obviously or tell them not to put their address or their phone number or anything like that we can certainly redact that if the board or or any private information you know that they would have out there m I would like to see the rums I think um but I would also ask that all private information be rejected at this point
064um you know if they become a board member it kind of becomes public information but until that time I think keeping some semblance of privacy for them is probably the right thing to do Mr Kenyan I'm okay with that okay um I I think that the resumés I think you know if you want to redact their address and stuff but you know when you're when you're running for a governing board position I mean your your address is everywhere I mean people can find it people can it's out there so I feel like if you're willing to take on that position then you know I knew that that would be you know what would happen so um I I just think again for transparency purposes the this should be the stakeholder voice right like ultimately they
065normally elect the governing board so I'm just trying to give the stakeholders as much voice in the process and as much knowledge as they can just as if they were running you know they would present themselves they would you know I assume present their resume and and things like that so are you okay if it's reducted oh yeah okay okay okay I think I think we're good yeah I think unless Dr SLO you're thinking of anything I think we're good yeah sure I apologize uh you're sending me the questions giving me um sort of freed to to all through them and that am I allowed to to communicate directly from me back to each one of you directly if I have a question on the questions that you submit or does that violate some type
066of it should be you're sending me the questions in an email directly to me am I able to email you back directly if I have a question my my understanding would be yes we just don't we don't want the board communicating with each other with each but if you had to reach out to board member Schmidt and say hey do you like how I worded this or is this what you mean yes exactly I I think that's probably fine yeah okay um we'll go ahead and move on to item 1.6 which is um the FY 26 budget work study um Mr Balden vice president members of the board Welcome to our work study session regarding the FY 2526 budgets um let me see get their point up here to uhoh you already went to the
067last thing first uhoh now there's no there's no surprise anymore all right so to kind of figure out how we got to where we're at today we had to do some research and watch a board meeting from January 9th 2023 regarding budgets and that board meeting was Sterling it was super exciting to watch and just hear all the back and forth and the board meeting is about 90 minutes long um but in the board meeting they approved the fy2 24 budget interest form and the motion exactly was to include line items one through 19 including any additional sped siens and going into the reserves of about 150,000 the superintendent at that time Dr shelf warned that we had carry over of 3.1 million however if ADM projections were off that we will not be able
068to afford the increase of about two fiscal years uh there was no total or estimated amount of expenditures that the board approved they just simply approved those line items so I did go ahead and get a separate spreadsheet and total those line items up and it was about $2.5 million give or take um and even then some of those so I sat with Crystal and we we discussed some of those items some of those raises that were given even those budget estimat seemed a little bit low so we think it's even higher than that is what it ended up being so let's move on to the next slide yes if it's okay I'd like us to pause at each slide and allow the board to have a discussion because I think this is very important
069and uh and ask questions because I think it's too much to ask all of the questions at the end yes okay Miss Schmid I do not have a question right now okay Mr ceron no right now Mr Kenyan yeah real quick you said that where you had to go back to 2023 January of 2023 to look at the budget that was budgets typically are what 2 years yes this this is the budget for fiscal year 24 right that they did in January 9th 2023 board meeting okay and who were the board members on that during that meeting it was Chris Kenyan it was president or Brian Parks it was uh Michael Todd Michael Todd and Paul Bixler Paul Bixler Mark Maguire Mark McGuire yes thank you thank you okay I have a couple of things
070um I just want to remind the public too that in January we're not passing a budget this is just the the prioritization so you know the the district wasn't held to any of this the district passed a budget in June of of 203 in June of 23 for the fiscal year 24 so saying that this was all approved it was a prioritization but it's up to Administration to make sure that we actually have the funds for this and if you actually look at that budget interest form it said that the budget available was for two two like $2.0 million and $1.1 of that million dollars is because the overd phased back up so not only cuz we passed the override in in November of 2022 so the first time that you're which is in fiscal
071year 23 so the first time you're going to get the override monies is in fiscal year 24 so 1.1 of that 2 million 2 million do that you added up is because we had the budget for it because it came from the overrides and um and the other things that it came from sorry where did I write it down is the inflation it tells you where she got you know where the money came from the and the ADM which was only projected to be 1.7 was which was $45,000 so I just want us to be really clear here that that money was allotted for and we did have the budget for it um now what happens after that is a different story but again the this is the January meeting is just a priorization there
072was no budget approved it's up to Administration to make sure that we have the money for the priority items okay we can move on okay so let's take a look at our ADM so essentially in fiscal year 22 you can see we increased our ADM by 14.64% or 547 kiddos and then in 2023 we increased by 3.13% which was 134 k Kos and our projections were in FY 24 were 4868 um however it was flat we actually didn't have any increase at all uh we think the reason we didn't have any increase was because Great Hearts Academy opened that year and it was also the first year of our Liberty 4day work or 4day week so essentially we think that some parents took their kiddos out of our district and went to a different school
073so between that um being flat in the projections of 48 78 our revenues were short by $2.25 million um so that's you know a huge Mis projection um in regards to the budget but we do project that we're going to increase by 2% this year or 92 kidos so any questions from the board on this Slide m no Mr seroni no Mr Kenyan no okay um so my question to Administration is you knew the ADM in February of 2024 you knew that the ADM because that comes from the 100th day was going to be zero so my question is and to the board that was on the board is why did we build a school why did we build a school if we had no growth because later on we're going to talk about the
074reserves and all these things and if if we were really in these kind of stets I just am not understanding why we built a school and if you know that the ADM was Zero then in February 2024 the administration should be coming to the board and saying whoa this was a way miscalculation we need to cut some funds right now like I you know there wasn't a budget uh revision until May and it didn't look like from what I looked at the budget revision that any changes were made so again Administration needs to come to the board immediately like this is a huge deal that we are way over we spent $2.5 million of reserves and we can't just say well we spent too much I mean these are taxpayer dollars and these are and
075and now we're going to affect children and I just I don't understand where you got this 450 students it was supposed to increase by 450 students where did that number come from it's 468 minus year 4418 since the projection was it's basically 424 between what we projected it to be and what it actually came in at I where did you get that projection it was in the board meeting on it was in a PowerPoint presentation that was made to the board in January of 2023 and I can send that to you as well okay I cuz I looked for it and everything that I looked at like from applied economics and other projections we were only projected I saw numbers all all the way from 76 only 76 kids up and the highest number I
076could find was 217 so I I don't think that that's an accurate number i' I'd have to look I'd have to pull it up but I'm just concerned that I don't think that we can blame spending $2.5 million on reserves of on well we just didn't meet our ADM we have to hold ourselves accountable that we weren't checking we should be checking this ADM I learned today from the auditor general that it it's it's given to you every month so we should be checking that ADM constantly and we should be plugging that number into the budget to to question we have to check ourselves we cannot get into this position so um where in the where in that PowerPoint did that come up because I'd really like to see it yeah I'll Emil to you
077separately you said in J in that first January meeting yes December 12 2023 oh December de December 12th okay yeah so I okay that's the meeting I was looking at and I don't see anywhere that number the difference between 20 the school year 23 oh 2223 to 2324 I don't see where that 450 is cuz it's it's 4868 it's what 4868 is a projection you say that was in the December or January it was December December 2023 Dr Monroe printed it out 2022 2022 okay because I've looked at this a billion times today so you looked at the demographic uh projections by applied economics is that where you pulled that I was looking at the [Music] presentation by applied economics or the district presentation because there are both that night de I think it's a
078district presentation I'm not sure if it was applied economics that did it or not and you said December 12th 23 oh okay so there was a new one okay so I apologize so um I apologize I could not find that in board docs today that there was an updated applied economics so I still want to look at it but we can move on because I didn't prepare for that thank you okay so this just shows our salary spending overall so from each fiscal year for m so essentially in fiscal year 23 our salaries were 19.1 million bucks and then in fiscal year 24 salaries were 21.5 not 450 kid so the difference is 20 or 2.4 million or we had a 13% increase in salaries between 23 and 24 and then our benefits in 23
079was 5.7 million and 6.8 and 24 or a difference of 20% and our salaries are about 23 or 20 24% of our our benefits excuse me our total um about 23% of our total salaries so you got to remember that every time we give a dollar raise that we got about 23 cents of benefits that we're that we also have to account for so we got FICA Medicaid Medicare ASR so those are all additional expenditures that we need to account for as well and then we're looking at fiscal year 25 there's about a 2.2 million increase and for benefits is about 600,000 for the current year but these are all estimates for the current year because the year has not finished yet any questions from the board Mr Schmid not right at the second Mr
080S no okay Mr Kenyan not yet okay I apologize but I I need us to go back to the ADM okay okay so I'm on page seven of that of that presentation it says FY 2223 ADM 4,874 FY 23 24 oh that's the 40th Day okay it's a difference of six children it was 4868 is that what you have for FY 2324 40th Day ADM 4868 4868 but the ADM for 23 2223 is 487 which is which is also in I think that's incorrect I think that's bad information so we're actually looking at our ADM we had 4418 for 23 and 4418 for 24 it was flat so when we're comparing 48 4868 to 4418 that's a difference of 450 students that we didn't get okay but where are you pulling the 4418 from from
081our so when we had Mindy pull the information she's over all of our ADM and she pulled up all of our 100 day numbers for the prior years and we just had to take out our preschool so basically we have to add up kindergarten through 8th grade and then we remove our preschool numbers and we came up with 40 and I we triple checked because we're like how is it possible that we were exactly flat two years in a row and so that's where we got our information from I don't know where that was coming from I don't know if applied economics was giving us our our ADM 474 for the prior year or what but that you know that number is not accurate so you're pulling the FY 24 ADM from this PowerPoint but
082you're pulling the ADM for 23 from a different spot I is that what I heard you said so the the estimated is 4868 the numbers that we're pulling here are from the AG's office this is you know where we get all of our ad information from so this is consistent it's this number from applied economics that's inconsistent so you're saying the what's on the spreadsheet is wrong versus what the attorney general or the yeah the general I'm saying this is correct but what's what was in this PowerPoint is incorrect okay gotcha this is incorrect okay so what you pulling was the actual ADM numbers from our district exactly okay okay but where did you get that we were projected to grow 400 50 students in this presentation right here so when I when I take
083the are you seeing it because when I take our 4868 okay and I subtract the 4418 that we actually came in at that's 450 on the nose okay that's was the projection that's the increase that they thought we were going to have in the number of students and the number of kiddos that we did not have okay but if you I'm just trying to understand if you are saying here that the projection was wrong but here is where they pulled the projection from but you're pulling it from a different place so now you're you're not comparing the same thing because you're saying I compared the number you know I took this one number from this PowerPoint but then I'm pulling a a number from somewhere else but if you're saying that the problem came in
084January of 23 from the projection they only projected that we were going to be up six students so I just the anticipated growth oh here it says 78 I'm sorry okay but that's not 450 is my point and I just don't want us to get into blaming other people for their projections but the projection here is 1.6 so again I'm just not clear where the 450 came from so I understand we need to move on but I would really like you to be able to show me where that number came from yeah that that's fair and and I want uh the board to understand listen we we all make decisions on based on the information we're given so we're in no way blaming anyone we're just trying to create a context and tell a story
085of why we think we're here at this point so we're not trying to disparage any past board members any past superintendents or Administration and but I think that's fair and um that we should have that we should have that nailed down um but I just I just wanted to make that clear I don't want anyone to interpret it that way needless to say we need to move forward with accurate numbers right yes okay but the projection wasn't questions from the board that's what I saying is that should based that's but but they're saying that all right can we move on please yeah okay so here's just kind of an AFR snippet of what our expenditures are for salaries for FY 24 and FY 25 so I just kind of took the spreadsheet that I had
086before and I'm like well let's just look and see where our actual increases took place and so we got a function code 1, 2100 so mainly you know majority of our expenditures are in instruction and then so if you look at your instruction overall it increased by $1.3 million or 11% increase for that year and certified teachers increased by about 72% so excuse me it was 11.13% so do you have any questions on and those are kind of like some of the highlighted items that were just highlighting this information and the totals are the same totals that are in the previous slide um M Could you um just the certified other column what does that all Encompass so those are for stiens for classroom coverage mainly is there anything else that there included Crystal all
087all stiens all sens thank you Mr [Music] serion uh no it's a lot to to take in um but if I'm reading this right like one of our biggest increases outside of our our teachers would be our administr Administration is that correct yes okay yes admin increased by 103% so we went from 156,000 in the prior year to 317 in the in 24 the only reason I bring that up is because hopefully we get to the point we're going to figure out how how we got to fix this right yes and I think that's one of the first things we have to look at Mr oh sorry I'm sorry I'm done okay Mr Kenyan yeah just I want to remind the board we're looking at fiscal year 24 when we look at fiscal year 25
088it'll be a little different picture um but I don't disagree board memb Shion is that we need to look at administrative costs um and I'm going to reserve most my other comments and questions for the next slide okay okay um I just uh just want to point out that the board approved raises for 2% in fiscal year 25 even though the superintendent at the time advised against doing that because of the concern that we wouldn't be able to withstand it long term and I also want to point out that in fiscal year 24 is when the board at that time forced the superintendent to resign and we had to pay out her contract and then we had to add another superintendant so I'm sure that that played a part in the administrative costs that brings
089up some her did her pay superintendent payout all that got lumped into the one FY since it was all happened at once corre yes ceron can can you move that microphone to the edge of the table sorry trying to record this meeting is that better okay I think we're ready to go on to fy2 all right so again this is kind of how what we would see on the AFR so just taking a look at instruction and these are all projections so we we kind of take our our expenditures year-to date and then we take our encumbrances and we take our pre- encumbrances and we just sum all those up and we come up with a projection of what we think that expenditures will be and for for teacher salaries we had an increase of
09011.53% so in fy2 it was 15.14 million and in 24 it was 13.6 um and you don't have to worry about that 6114 I had a PO in there to hold for Budget carryer forward for next year so it's actually that that 6114 is closer to 300,000 which is more in line with what we had in the prior year so um if you had any questions in reference to that it's you don't have to about that but um any questions uh mm no Mr S no Mr Kenyan yeah I have a few so couple I mean good things right so we see that instruction has went up like you said the 11.53% so that's good to see the money's going to the classroom um however we we could say teachers didn't necessarily get a raise
091of 11.53% so what does that mean does that mean we've hired more teachers with more experience so the more teachers that come on obviously it's tiered so they would come in at a higher rate is that what we're looking at there yeah uh we got to really kind of dig into those numbers to figure out why it's you know 11 11% but it's uh you're exactly right I mean we're thinking we're like hey we only gave a 2% raate so it should be two closer to 2% and so um but some of those also um that's included in that 6114 so you got to remember that you got to reduce it by a million bucks as well so that also that would be lower than 11% so it probably be closer to like 3 or
0924% okay so yeah there's last less of the classified temp Subs pool um so that would make more sense that the you know the money going to certified teachers is is going up um also looking at maintenance of the plant that's a pretty substantial number or jump the 36.3% um even the prior slide it was pretty high at looks like 26.7 6% is this I'm assuming a lot of this was picking up the Deferred maintenance that was you know neglect of the buildings and and HVAC systems and stuff and I know Bob has been doing a great job Mr Young excuse me has been doing a great job with with the maintenance of our campuses um but can you speak a little bit to that is yes sir exactly it yeah it's hiring Bob and
093we also brought our our uh crew our grounds crew in house and so we were we were using uh what was the company the grounds crew company y Yellowstone we were using Yellowstone so we got rid of Yellowstone and we bought all of our grounds crew in in house so that's why you see that increase in those expenditures there okay it's it's m though it's salaries it's not paying for cuz you said HVAC and stuff I just right right right the maintenance the maintenance the people yeah the maintenance of the plant so yeah we brought brought staff in yes in-house do that that's going to be an increase there um I guess it's probably too early I know the the board had we're working with a company right now and dealing with substitutes having a
094substitute pool helping to fill vacancies and things like that um is that what kind of why we're seeing on here some The Substitute Teacher reduction of almost 40% um no so we're not going to go with ESI until fiscal year 26 so until next next year so I'm not sure why you would see the reduction unless we just didn't need as many Subs know if teachers were that's good class that's good if we don't need the subs all right so but that did bring me to my next concern is all of the stiping and I know stiens teachers staff they like the stiens um but I would like to you said you said that this this item uh the certified other line that's not the correct number right now yeah it's at 1 million less
095so it's actually closer to 300,000 so it's actually about $75,000 less than it was last year okay okay but it's we don't really have any incumbrances for those so we're about right on par from where we were last year okay thank you okay um so I have a couple of concerns so the District knew in July 24th that we had overspent the budget by $2.5 million and so my concern is is why did you why did you one not tell the board clearly in my opinion because I was attending meetings watching meetings and you know if we didn't have the money for the 2% raises like don't get me wrong like I want to give teacher raises but we have to be fiscally responsible and if we didn't have the money because we haven't got
096there yet but you know we're we're over 2 million in fiscal year 25 and so we we can't be doing this and I just want to point out that in this in this fiscal year that the administration and the board approved that these new admin positions so we took the director that's now HR and we've split that job into three positions before this superintendent that position was one and now it's three and so that's a significant amount of money because those are high level administrators that we paying so that maintenance and operation number here is part of that um but again I I just really it's the The District administration the board is relying on you to give us the information that we need to make decisions and in my opinion you should have been
097telling the board we do not have money for raises we cannot do this and this is why at the last board meeting I did not want to approve any job descriptions because I was very concerned about this budget and why I asked for a budget study session and why we're sitting here because I knew that we didn't have the money I can see it in the auditor the audit risk but it never came before the board and so you know my concern is is you know we're already um six seven months into fiscal year 25 like we need to right now look where can we cut immediately um I'm just I'm very concerned that we're continuing down this path okay we can go to the next slide right and this is just showing benefits essentially
098you know we're increasing by uh 10% for instruction but we just got to keep in mind that for every dollar that we spend for a salary increase we got 20 cents that we need to spend in benefits for those increases as well so this is just kind of to highlight that but any questions from the board on the slide any questions no okay no questions all right so reserves so the legislator appropriated a $1 million in FY 24 that was taken away in FY 25 so we didn't have that additional million dollars in FY 223 we had approximately $3.5 million in carryover in 24 we had about $1 million in carryover and that's due to salary increases and over estimated ADM projections so essentially if the governor wouldn't have gave us that $1 million onetime
099funding n ify 24 our carryover in FY 24 would have been zero bucks I don't know if that math makes sense or not but missmi no I I got this okay any questions on the slide okay Mr cion uh no questions just that's it was very alarming read that Mr Kenyan nope okay I have a couple things so last month when there was a sick out the District administration said that in it in an email from our communications director that was sent to the media that we use that 10.5 million or 10.5 woo Kelly 2.5 on the building of the school and salaries but that was incorrect correct correct yes okay so why are we putting out incorrect information to the public he did not look at he didn't make sure that he ran that
100by me before he put it out there but I mean it was just it was an accident it was an oversight our apologies on that okay I think that it needs to be redacted like you need to put out a statement in my opinion because these are our taxpayers and we gave them incorrect information because we haven't even paid for the school like there is no money Bond money that was spent in fiscal year 24 for Loretta zumbro except for the land is that correct that's correct okay so I would really encourage the board to go back and look at the um presentation made in September of 24 about the capital money where we did not spend any money on Loretta and so my concern is is that we overspent and we didn't even build
101the school and now we're in fiscal year 25 and we still have to build the school so um so my question is is how do we have enough Bond dollars to finish building Loretta zumro or do we have to use District money we have enough Bond dollars to finish building Letta Z yes okay um and again hold on when the ADM came back in I we still have to be looking at the ADM because it should you should have known in February of 204 that it wasn't going to come back in your favor and that's my concern is that we still went forward and built the school we still approved raises and I don't mean we because I wasn't on the board but that that the district kind kind of allowed the board that you
102didn't provide the the board with the enough information for them to say because again I have spent hours looking over this budget looking through board docs talking to different people talking to the auditor general to make sure that I'm prepared because I'm not confident in the information I'm being given right now and so not everybody has the opportunity to do that and I'm not blaming anybody up here these people all work full-time jobs and whether we want to admit this this is a volunteer position and I am fortunate enough right now not to work a full-time job but this is your jobs and I'm sorry but you it has to be said that this is not okay how we got here is not okay and I know we have to fix it I know we
103have to move on but it you have to be transparent with the public and I really think that you know this whole like well that's what we paid for Loretta we haven't even paid for Loretta yet it's not in fiscal year 24 can I make a comment yeah of course um correct me if I'm wrong Mr young but I believe there was a meeting where it was the board had directed Administration to dip into the reserves to pay for pieces of Loretta zumbro in regard to especially a lot of the electrical stuff that was long wait times lead times you know the 78th month out lead times knowing we were going to get reimbursed from the state but we didn't have that money at the time so the the board directed Administration to dip into
104the reserves for that purpose is that correct or no uh Madam vice president Mr K I don't know if your mic's on oh sorry there we go uh we we used the state money for that we did not dip into reserves for anything on the uh on the Loretta zos okay thank you and I think what you're referring to is there was a resolution that was passed by the board to appropriate the $9.9 million but that resolution was passed in fiscal year 25 it was in August of 24 which is in fiscal year 25 so that can't account for the reserves of 24 okay okay we can move on to the next slide all right so then in summary we underestimated and over estimated our revenues in F fy20 four um we've been working with
105Karen Smith with hfal meech and Becky Williams with PCG been meeting with them on a regular basis trying to solve this issue and figure out how we can how we can get this in the rights uh variables involved so and we talked about these in in the slides above but we had pass pass budgets planning uh on enrollment projections were not met January 2023 budget priority salaries approved with some underestimated amounts Governor Hobs gave us a onetime funding in 2023 24 ADM did not reflect enrollment growth and also eser monies have been expended too so we have a lot of positions that are in our eser dollars or that were funded out of Esra dollars that are no longer that now being in m and so m is having to take it take the hit
106any questions on that slide okay not at this moment okay uh Mr Sun uh I know it's kind of tough cuz you weren't here and you're trying to figure out what's going on yes All right so uh I do want to say I I do appreciate you trying to figure out what happened cuz you weren't there cuz you just started last year is that correct July 1st um so I understand that you weren't there and um we are looking at you though as the financial expert so that's I think that's why it sounds like we're being kind of hard on you um we know you weren't there but we're just looking to you for the answers and so I appreciate you bringing like some this up you think that caused it um that's that's really
107I know we have more to go but I just wanted to put that out there for right now thank you oh Mr Kenyon um yeah this we knew that Sr mone's was going to die off um and I know that there's a number of things tied to that and and you said the M took a hit because we basically are using M to cover those I just can't hear you clearly because there's discussion going on in the audience okay can we just try to keep it it's hard because we're in a big room thank you so my my question was well statement SL question is because the Esser funds we knew those were going to go away um and we moved m&o Monies to cover that for the time being um I I would like
108in the to see what all those cover yes and you know if we don't have the money for it maybe they just need to go away yes now I know it's going to be hard I've had people ask me about summer school summer school was paid for eser money I love the summer school idea I've went and toured when it was happening and and uh it's a great thing I don't want that to go away but if we don't have money for it we don't have money for it um now if Administration can get creative you know and and find a way we can make that happen that would be great but um yeah looking at these numbers we got to look at some really tough decisions and you know we got to be careful
109my concern is I don't want to pull money out of the classroom that hurts the kids so so um just being very creative on how we can get this down and get this this handled and member Kenyon we'd actually just briefly talked about summer school this afternoon just a a few hours ago because we're looking at some of our Title One capacity with budget remains for the title one Grant to possibly do the summer school this year it may look a little different because it might be funded under a different Source but that title one wouldn't be included in the m and we have a balance where we're going to explore being able to have summer school through the title one Grant so one of the options we have moving forward is we really need
110to expand our options with grants like we've done on a lot of things so that we can fund some of these things that may be reduced or or what have you so uh more information to come on Sunday on summer school but right now our intent is to do it we were just talking about it but pay it not not there's no Esser but potentially pay it out of the title one Grant thank you um I had a question since we're going to talk about summer school is was Summer School paid through Esser or is it normally paid through Title One funds it's normally paid through Title One okay so the SR monies didn't really have anything to do with summer school no okay um I do think that we need to look at what
111the SR money is paid for for sure so I agree with Mr Kenyan absolutely um when did the SR funds expire like when did we stop getting them September of 24 September of 24 so that's a little bit into fiscal year 25 just a bit okay and and you know District administration so you know I agree with Mr ceron that Mr Balden hasn't been here but miss uh Dr Monroe has and so you know again you need to have brought to the board what was being paid by Esser funds because you're right we should never have and I think one of the things is um the um permanent substitutes I think that is one of the things that was paid by Esser funds yes okay so that should have been a discussion for the board
112last June because you knew those monies were going to go away in September and so I you know again these are going to be very very difficult decisions that we're going to have to make but unfortunately we're going to have to make them because we cannot be over like this uh that we can I'm good with the slide if if if I remember correctly we did discuss some of this back in June uh June so all right so fy2 analysis so right now our M budgets over capacity by 2.2 um our unrestricted Capital hover is over capacity by 1.8 and so we can move that capacity additional capacity in our capital budget over to our M budget leaving us just negative by just short of $400,000 and we can transfer those those expenditures over the
113Medicaid which will put us at a zero and then we'll also have some additional growth dollars of about $451,000 that we're anticipating and so that will be our carry forward that we have going into FY mm um the growth money is coming from additional students additional kiddos okay thanks Mr s uh oh S I do have a question uh so I know we just did like the oh my gosh V verie yes the vary stuff right so that should be kicking in soon so we got we did the loan for that and we're getting like the match back for the savings and stuff um this might be a dumb question though but when that starts kicking in in the savings does that relieve some of this m budget that we had unfortunately it's a wash
114so we're going to be spending 500k out of capital where we're going to be saving 500k in M okay so it's it should be a wash but it's a different pot money though yes but we can move that pot of money from Capital over the budget over the M if we need it all right thank you yes sir Mr Kenyan yeah um looking at the growth money talking about you know additional students I think that that was understanding the demographics and how Buckeye and good year is exploding and growth still there's building everywhere um that was the main idea behind building Loretta zumbro was to help with the growth uh relieve the pressure from Blue Horizons that's at Max Capacity right now um and so being able to service more families more kids will ultimately
115help us with this this money um the more students we have have here obviously that just makes sense so I don't know if you know stopping the building obviously you said we have Bond dollars to help finish this this phase of Loretta zumbro um getting that open and going hopefully we'll see a nice increase flux of students I know that there's a number of developments happening and still going to be happening in the area so um you know again nobody knows who's going to move into those houses but we have an idea right so that's it that's my comment okay um so when you say we're currently you know in the negative so you're projected for FY 25 were over spent by $2 million can that number go up because we have not finished fiscal
116year 25 it really shouldn't we have all of our expenditures so that's our year-to dat transactions we got our Inc brances included in there so that's any POS that are open any salaries that are still haven't been paid yet so all of those are encumbered in that negative 2.2 million and then also any pre- incumbrances that's any open like requisitions that haven't gone through the process yet or even any any positions that have not been filled that are vacant okay so my question is is when you when we adopted the budget in June of 24 for the 25 fiscal year was the balance was the budget balanced or were we or did we overspend and go over what the board approved as the budget so we will be doing a revision in well actually soon
117as possible to make sure that we're that the legislator knows where we're at but essentially we will be able to move some of that budget capacity from M to Capital and so it's not excuse me from Capital to M to help that negative so it's not going to a you know as bad as it looks right now you know it looks like it's a -2 million but it's not really -2 it's really closer to - 384 and as soon as we move those expenditures from our okay hold on one sec as soon as we move those expenditures from m in Medicaid then we're good okay but my question is is when the board approved the budget in June of 24 was the budget balanced meaning we weren't going to be in the negative and need
118to be in in reserves yes the budget was balanced so the district has overspent what the board approved by $2 million yes okay so okay hold on hold on hold on I'll ask I'm going to get there um so my I mean I just I feel like I have to state that obviously we there needs to be some checks and balances right because the District administration should be following the board's budget that is our policy we pass the budget and so if you're going to be spending more than the budget it needs to come back before the board and it will I know but it already happened right like we already spent the 2 million yes okay so it needs to come before you spend it because it's our job to approve the budget that
119is one of the main jobs of the board my concern is that this unrestricted capital budget that you're just going to move what is that going to leave that capital budget at zero zero so now we're robbing Peter to pay Paul and we have a we've got a bond [Music] it you know there are lots of things that could come up and one of the things that I learned today is that computers falls under unrestricted Capital so I mean we have 4,000 students and you know all of those computers are not going to work next year they're they're teenagers I'm just going to tell you I have teenagers and they're not going to work and so my concern is is you I understand that you're balancing it but you're really just creating a different problem
120and so I personally think that the district needs to look at the ml budget and and think right now what can we do immediately tomorrow to to reduce some of this because I don't I mean obviously we have to do something we can't be in the negative we don't even have the Reserves to cover this if we don't move the unrestricted Capital but I don't want to set us up for a different problem where we don't have capital for things that we need what if an air conditioner goes out tomorrow the FSB already told us there's no um no grants the rest of the year so we can't go to FSB if an air conditioner breaks tomorrow we'd have to pay for it and if we have no Capital we're not going to able to
121do that or we're going to be in the reserves which we only have 100,000 or excuse me close to a million sorry I misspoke and I just you know I looked at all of our peer districts and there's only one District around us that has less reserves than us and that's Saddle Mountain everybody else is in the millions so it's not that everybody else is in the same position everybody else was able to balance their budgets everybody else lost their Sesser money so it just we really have to look at the ramifications and I just am not comfortable moving all of capital my question about the Medicaid are we not billing Medicaid properly like why are we moving it because Medicaid is like what we build for special services so I'm not understanding how we
122can move money um from from m one is ml right yes so why is it getting moved to Medicaid Medicaid dollars are very flexible so we can pretty much move anything into those dollars they're very similar to 570 like our indirect costs and we got about 1 point $1.1 million in cash balance right now sorry it's really like you're really fuzzy tonight with that Mike I so we're taking ml money but we're in the negative in mno to Medicaid because we need to pay for Medicaid no because we need to make sure that we're not negative anymore so we're going to move $384,500 14 of expend es from M over to Medicaid which we have the capacity for right now we got about $1.2 million in Medicaid that's cash we can just use it's there's
123not a lot of restrictions on it so that's a recommendation that was made to us by Karen Smith okay but Medicaid payments were getting for providing services to Children correct yes but those there's not a lot of of restrictions if the board would rather us do 570 we can do 570 we can move those into you know we have several different pots that we can move those expenditures into but that's just the one with the highest amount of money that has the least strings attached to it okay I guess my concern is like we're taking I don't even know what we're taking from M and we're assigning it to Medicaid when it's supposed to be used to service children I mean I understand what you're trying to do and trying to balance the budget but
124the way that we're going about it seems quite concerning to me personally butti illegal okay we'll go ahead and move on to the next slide okay so this is FY 26 so right now our revenues our estimated revenues so those are in blue are going to be 36.3 so that's our prior year budget with an increase of 2% in inflation and a $500,000 increase for growth our estimated expenditures in FY 26 are 39.5 A4 and that's what the f % increase for any fixed cost that we have uh leaving us over budget at 3.2 million and unfortunately in fiscal year 26 we don't have any Capital because we have lease payments to make out of our Capital now of about a million bucks for verg and um and our bus lease payment so we don't
125really have that budget capacity to borrow like we did for this year and so now we're out all all the way at 3.5 million okay Miss Schmidt and this is with zero salary increases for everyone in the district that's correct coming out of M anyway yeah Mr s taking it in yeah Mr Kenyan no thank you um Mr Balden for helping trying to figure out solving the problem or at least balancing this but I agree with Miss immerman I think we need to really look at the M um budget and fix the overall solution or fix the overall problem um and that is the m&o part of it right yes um and so we really need to get there but no looking at this obviously this is foreshadowing of a bigger problem if we don't
126take care of it right now so yes sorry yeah I do have a question of course sorry sorry um for the fiscal year 26 budget when it says you know zero raises or increase in expenditures are the teachers that we will need and every all the staff for zumbro included in these numbers already yes we do have a $500,000 accounted for for the staff and then there's also $500,000 in growth assuming that we open zumbro otherwise if we don't open was onroad then we would reduce the budget by 500k for the additional salaries and we would also reduce our revenues by 500k for the additional students the additional ADM that we think we're going to get so it's basically a wash projected hopefully yes okay okay um obviously when I pulled this slide up last
127night I was a little bit shocked to be honest um in in the beginning of in January of 2022 the board and the district had to cut $850,000 because we had to phase down the override because we weren't able to pass it before it phased down and let me tell you how difficult it was to cut $850,000 and to think that we are going to have to cut $3.6 million I don't even know how it's frankly possible um obviously we have to figure it out but you know I'm going to say to our board that I think we really need to consider not opening zumbro because you are talking about opening a school with 300 students you're paying for a principal you're paying for an office staff you're paying for a custodian you're paying for
128specials you're paying for a reading interventionist we're going to have two schools that are at 300 kids because the preschool isn't included they are not benefiting from any of those things that I just listed and because what we can't do that we did in 2022 is raise class sizes because that was approved by the override that was approved by these voters and if we have ever any chance of passing an override in this District again we have to honor our word to the taxpayers and that is very much part of the of the override is class size that were approved by the board in November of 23 uh uh no November of 22 right after it passed and we really have to look at Staffing because we have grown and so we can't have classes
129over the number because we have several classes this year that basically have started over the max over the target plus four and so we still have to hire some teachers because we cannot have kindergarten sitting at 30 kids that is a complete disservice to these kindergarteners that have happened all year long so I we are we really are going to count on the district to bring to us really hard decisions but also you really have to think can we open Loretta is it fiscally responsible of us to open a school with 300 children when Liberty is already at 300 children oh I'm unless anybody else has anything on this SL I did have a question for you actually in your thought process so we don't want to increase class size right and a lot of
130the schools are are maxed out they're not um so some of them right they have like 30 don't say Max but they have like 30 kids in their class um yeah yes I mean so how do we have growth and not increase class sizes because if we don't have more space to open put more classes well the only school that's really at capacity is blue so I believe every other school on Camp every other um um school has capacity um and I didn't print it out but Dr SLO gave me the capacity at all the schools when we were doing the boundaries um and so really blue is the only one that's near capacity um and so uh I don't see Mr namsky to ask him how many classrooms he actually has at Blue um
131I believe there's only one grade level that's over the target at Blue so that would only be potentially one classroom what did we put it at was it 30 it's different I'd have to pull it up um like kindergarten is supposed to be at 22 plus 4 I see it um so every other school has room these are reged so yeah and my color cing which is sorry sorry did that did it answer okay okay I think we're ready to move on to the next slide yeah all right so next steps so we're going to revise the budget ASAP so the board knows where we stand with our spending we're going to consider reductions so the board can move forward maybe even form a committee so they can tell us what they think their recommendations
132are in regards to reducing the budget um we're going to continue to promote new enrollment so we obviously if we're able to get additional students and additional EDM that will help with all of these issues that we're having um and then we want to analyze classroom site fund potential so we do have some class classroom site fund dollars which we can actually give teachers increases through those monies and so we do have some additional capacity budget capacity there and so you know this is just looking at the M budget we wouldn't be a you know couldn't give increases from M but we could classroom site funds so we want to discuss that as well um consider possible voter approved Bond uh so basically if if we pass a bond that's going to help us big
133time in regards to our Capital like we can move some of those expenditures from capital and then move some of our budget capacity from Capital over to M um and then if we get an override that's going to help us as well if we were able to increase that from 10 to 15% and then next week Monday is a 100 day of school so that's when we'll know our actual 100 day ADM numbers and then we can go ahead and complete our budget revision and then as always the legislator takes until June 30th to actually decide well sometime they have until June 30th I guess I'll say to decide on what they're going to give us in regards through additional budget so you know if they do give us some additional monies then that would
134help alleviate some of these issues as well so hopefully they're over over kind of negotiating working some things out in our favor but any questions on the slide M um a couple comments uh considering reductions I mean I think there's no way around reductions if we're being honest right like we just need to put that out there there are going to have to be reductions made um which is always the worst thing to have to do but it's going to have to do we need to make sure those reductions are not impacting the students we need to look outside of the classrooms for those reductions um and then just to comment on possible voter approved bonds I mean I've lived in this area long enough to know that you should not rely on that to
135happen it it is not something that is really uh supported unfortunately um but that's the reality of it so thinking that that's going to come and save us at some point it probably should be sort of taken off the table and just that's extra if it happens yes thanks for the feedback for member Schmidt and even earlier today Dr Monroe was saying you know when we're looking at Cuts we got to make sure that we're not touching the classroom or like the circle is our classroom and that's that's where we don't want to touch and then it's everything outside of these additional circles the farther we get away from the kiddos those are where we want to concentrate on making our Cuts District salar um Mr s uh I'm glad to hear that I think
136that's something I the board doesn't agree on a lot um but I think that's something we all agree on is that we got to focus outside of the classroom first and hopefully only to figure out these Cuts but we're in a tough situation so we're going to be looking at you to help us get out of this situation so hope you're ready and appreciate it yes sir thank you Mr Kenyan no I I agree I agree it's just it's a tough sticky situation we're in but hard decisions have to be made and uh you know as much as we don't want to touch classrooms we also need to make sure everything is on the table um I I'm the last person who wants to even move anything away from a kid's education but looking at
137these numbers I want to see options for just about everything is there um yeah I agree with uh what my board members have other board members have said um you know I don't wanted to touch the kids um and you know I think it's really unfortunate that the the administration brought like that director of student services to the board at the last meeting because really we probably shouldn't have hired that person and I'm not sure if we can get out of that contract because that's one of those positions that we broke off and so I think you know we cannot be adding anything there cannot and you know we may have to cut things unfortunately like programs and different things that we service kids in other ways so um yeah I want to see the
138different options I don't think we can rely on a budget committee I think we need District administration I think you need to I I think the District administration needs to come up with viable options to make the cuts and then allow the budget committee to look at those options and help help us hear from the stakeholders about what they feel like you know we could cut from but I I don't think it's fair to ask our teachers and our parents and administrators to cut $3.6 million they're not going to feel comfortable doing that we need you guys to come up with the main ideas and then bring it to a budget commit in my opinion if I could just one last comment um when when Administration does bring things back I would like to see
139what it looks like without Loretta zumbro opening versus with I think uh I still think we need to make sure we have that room for growth there's a lot of growth happening and if we can't catch these families they will go elsewhere um and if you're trying to say that some somebody who just moved in in the in the north part of our district is going to have to be bust halfway down or all the way down to Australia or Rainbow Valley parents aren't going to want to do that so um it's just we have to be smart as a board as well as look at all the options on the table so sir did anybody else want to add anything um if there are no further comments um we will go ahead and adjourn
140the special meeting at 6:47