001Good morning. I now call to order the 11:00 a.m. special meeting to approve the 202526 annual financial report and cost report. Um, we're going to now stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. Please be seated. We'll now take role starting at the end of the table. >> Lauren RmIrez, present. >> Amy Roie, present. >> Christy Chong. >> Will Furry present. >> Derek Bars, present. Ryan Hudach, president. >> Lashak Lammore. >> Thank you. And just for uh the public, uh Derek Bars is joining us uh via telephone and online. So, um do we Let's move on with the uh agenda. Do we have
002any changes to the agenda today? >> We do not. >> Okay. Then I'd like a motion to approve the agenda as stated. >> Move approval. >> I have a motion by Miss Chong. >> Second. Second by Miss Ready. Uh all in favor >> I opposed hearing none. It passes uni will move forward with the agenda. So that lead us to board action item 3.01 and we welcome Miss Patty Warmeck. >> Good afternoon Chairman Harry, board members and superintendent Moore. I'm here to present the um annual financial report today. Um we will be pulling up the ESC 145 report that is on board gaps and we'll be focusing on the first couple pages which do represent our major funds. This is very similar information that we have already um gone through in the past three meetings
003during the summer. I just wanted to update on the final numbers um and where we are at. I will focus on uh the first is our um general fund which is our main operating fund. This is uh what we tend to focus on the most as this is what pays for the vast majority of our salaries uh textbooks, classroom supplies, things like that. We did estimate very conservatively um of where we were going to end up during our budget meetings. Um we um were able to after doing the budgets for all the other capital funds, we were able to utilize um capital funds to maximize our transfer zone. Um I am very happy to report with that hard work and strategizing with senior management and our superintendent our general fund um fund balance is at
00411.2 million. >> Wow. >> The unassigned amount is 10.2 million. When you take that unassigned amount and do the calculation for the financial condition r um ratio it is 7.8% which falls in line with board policy of 5 to 8%. So we are pleased to announce through all the hard work and working with our capital funds and our sales tax fund uh we were able to achieve that that high high mark. >> Outstanding effort. >> Thank you. Um the next fund on here the first two pages like I said are our major funds. These are determined based on a calculation that is uh given to us by the auditors and it is based on your percentage of assets and liabilities. So, our next major fund is fund 290, which is our major debt service fund.
005This is all of our cops, and we do continue to um pay off $5 million of debt each year. And I will just reiterate uh what Mr. Furry had mentioned in the past in the last meeting that we did refinance our cops to 2024 with a savings of $700,000. We do have our financial analysts always looking at those options for us and bringing those to us in the superintendent um whenever the market does look favorable for us. The next major fund is our 370 fund. That is our 1.5 mil. We have continued to maintain a healthy balance in this fund. It did go down about half million dollars. We um have built this fund up after COVID um to make sure if we have any catastrophic items that happen, hurricanes or things like that that
006we can um or like we just recently had a HVAC Chillow go down at FPC that cost $6 million that was not planned for. That is the purpose of keeping this fund balance very healthy. So, I'm happy to report that we are in um this pretty much the same place that we were last year with this fund. our uh uh fund 390 is our 1.5 mil and our half set sorry our halfet sales tax and our impact fees. Um this remains uh the same as the Matanza's expansion project has neared completion. We will continue to see this fund balance go up as the impact fees will not be used unless we have future expansions. And the very last column is um what's called other governmental funds. These are all what's uh it includes all our
007non- major non- major funds. It includes the school food service fund which as we had talked about ends with a fund balance of zero and uh it includes our smaller debt funds and our smaller capital funds. This here is a summary of all of our funds in the school district. This is summarized in a format that is required by DOE and this report will be submitted to DOE uh this week. I will let you know the other items listed. There are budget transfers, budget revisions for the month of June. These are needed to close out the fiscal year. You will see quite a bit of them there. And the ESC 348 and the cost report are submitted electronically to DOE through their portal. At this time, I will take any questions on these financials. >>
008Any questions from the board from Morack on this? Um, besides the cop savings, I was wondering what other items uh or strategies were used in order to, you know, meet the ever shrinking pool of funds but yet raise our um fund balance to that 7.8%. If you could highlight maybe the top three that you think were most effective. >> Well, I do and I'll uh uh student more if you have anything to chime in. I will say we started planning um over a year ago because of the estro funds that were going away. So we did very strategically strategize on positions being held um not refilling um using overages through attrition. Um so as you know the salaries and benefits it takes up over 80% of our fund balance or sorry of our budget. So
009that's a huge piece. You're not going to save money through classroom supplies. you're gonna save it through salaries. So, we did strategize over a year ago and make sure that we held our schools and our departments to that. We also um had departments go through their budget and do a 4% reduction to save cost. Um we started that in preparation for this next fiscal year. But I would say the biggest thing we did was holding strong on our positions and knowing that our ESRE funds were going to be gone by this past September, making sure that we didn't hold on to unnecessary positions. And when we did use our ESR funds, we didn't heavily use it on positions like some school districts. So we were fortunate to not be um really hanging off that cliff
010like some other districts were. Um what is your take or analysis on the um cafeteria funding? Um under uh we currently still offer zero charge for breakfast and lunches. Um but my understanding is much of that money comes from uh Medicaid um SNAP enrollments and as those numbers may decrease so would our aotment of funds to that. Do you see that we're able to continue that program at zero cost for families um for the next several years or do you feel that we need to take a look on perhaps scaling or um um addressing potential fund losses? >> I would not pretend to be an expert on that at all. >> Yeah, I can't answer that that question. Um so we're um coming up on one year left with that with um in that program
011and so the board is going to have to reconsider that. Um what I would say preliminarily is that we may have to consider um doing two models within the district that the entire district is not uh free. Um but there may be schools individually that would qualify where we would go back for other um schools that would have a cost associated with free and u reduced lunch because as you're saying um stating um with the changes of the direct cert certification those numbers are having an impact on our ability to be able to sustain the um free uh breakfast and lunch across the entire district. So, we'll have to look at that and consider that and um kind of weigh the options of which direction do we go? Do we, you know, do we go
012two programs in one school district, which is common for um districts, or you know, do we, you know, kind of decide which of the two would be u most appropriate. Mhm. I mean, uh, you know, even, uh, families that don't qualify for a Medicaid or SNAP to, um, you know, go from night and day to free to paid can be quite, um, >> yes. >> Um, you know, troubling. And many of those families have less disposable income. So, uh, I'm wondering if there's a third option as well in terms of a, um, modified adjustment. maybe not back to full cost, but a modified which would allow us a longer runway to um hold those discounts for all of our >> and if we um do have to go into a different model, it will be
013uh families will have enough notice to know what that impact is going to be. Be it that you're paying, you know, full uh price or you're doing a reduced price, they will have um the notice to know that that change is coming. But that is something that we will begin talking about, you know, as we close out this school year. >> Okay. Thank you. >> And I know they have applications. So, prior years ago, you would fill out >> and then, you know, maybe 40 cents for a lunch or 25 cents for lunch, >> which will be a change because we haven't had to do that um in a while. So, that will be a change to go go back there. But um as we uh bring on our new food services director um October
0141st, this is be the first thing that that he will begin to pick up on and begin to to to run with. One of the major things that impacted um this department last school year was um hurricane days. And so us when we're not in school, they're not receiving funding. Um and but there still is a cost that is associated with that, right? cost for staff, cost for you've already spent and all of that. So, that was one of the major um hits to to this department here, >> you know, and that also begs the issue of the administrative oversight because you're going to have to manage all that paperwork. We would want to take a look at streamlining that because we don't want to lose um essentially utiliz personnel utilization or cost to those
015administrative pieces that are going to return. >> I agree. Thank you. >> Um I just wanted to highlight something about the reserves. Now when we have two payrolls a month, right? And and how much is each payroll approximately? >> $5 million, >> right? So I just want to put it in perspective that having an 8% um but it sounds like a lot of money and it is a lot of money. It's $1 million. But essentially what we have what we have here is a bridge for two payrolls right amongst every other thing. So uh this is uh we were way way way way down. Uh we're we're it would have been catastrophic had we had a major um financial hit early on. As a matter of fact, I recall that we were at maybe one
016it one and and and change percent of the of the state being able to come in and taken over our books. So, this is a a uh an outstanding effort and result uh by the district. But I want to highlight that because this is not easy to do when we are always working within um the framework of these funds that that we we can't raise money like a business can to do this. We have to do this within allocations that we get. Um and this sets us up for for success for the future knowing that uh and it's this is for our organization to know that we have this money here that if something happens we can make payroll, right? And we don't because our alternative is we'd have to let we we'd have to
017either borrow it or you know we've done anticipation bonds before, right? Uh so that saves us money too because those are those interests the interest on those tax anticipation bonds can add up really quick. >> And I will tell you too, thank you for that point. I will tell you that it has been probably about four to five years that we have not had to take out a tax anticipation note. What that is um is most school districts take that out in the summer in order to meet their payroll until the um property tax funds roll in, which does not happen until Thanksgiving. So, a lot of school districts have to take that out um to be able to pay their their their um payroll. It's a short-term note that is paid off six months
018later. Um but when we used to take it out, it was $10 million. And because of our um work in keeping our capital funds high and at a stable fund balance, we have been able to not have to take that short-term note out. And it saves about $100,000 of interest each year. >> I'd like to say I've actually heard that from several school districts. So as we meet with them across the state, so we do do a lot of right good things. So thank you for that. And then uh highlighting the emergency cost. So everyone if if you have an emergency fund for your family, it's similar. So just so the public's aware, we don't know what could happen. So when a pipe burst in a school, it's similar to your home. So having that
019extra cushion is what you know is very important and we do have a lot of needs. We have a lot of wants, but we have a lot of needs. So I'm glad to hear that we have that cushion for the for the needs that might happen. And and even though I like to state that with, you know, learning a lot through this um insurance, we have insurance of course. However, I also have learned we do not get that reimbursement sometimes over a year plus or so. Um so we have to have that fund to cover. So I'm excited to hear that we have that cushion for >> need. We'll now resume our meeting. Uh just for the benefit of the public, we had a power outage and that's why the feed dropped. Uh but we
020are now uh back and we'll uh return the floor to Miss Warmarmac. >> Yes. Um just as I think we were talking about the tax anticipation note. Um Mr. um Furry, the question was when was the last time we had to take it out? Um or that we had to take it out. It was 2021. We have not had to take one out since then. Um, we have taken it out as long as I've been here, which was 2011. And even prior to that, it was uh $10 million taken out uh each summer and paid off in January. >> So, the total the total amount of the bond was 10 million >> and the interest every year was about 100,000. >> About $100,000. Okay. >> And that comes straight out of the general fund. >>
021Gotcha. Okay. Well, this is a significant uh change of events for Flagger Schools. So, well done on that. Um, any uh other questions on what's been discussed already before we move on? >> Okay, smart. Go ahead. >> Thank you. >> Okay. So, is that that concludes your your all your uh presentation? I'm sorry. I I didn't I didn't know was there anything more you nothing more to add, right? Okay, >> that is it. If you have any more questions. >> Okay, so then now we will we will vote on this here. >> Um, so I I'll need a motion uh to approve agenda item 3 01. Um, do I have a motion to approve? >> Move to approve. >> I have a move by Miss Ready. >> Second by Miss Ramirez. There any discussion? >>
022Hearing none. All in favor? >> I >> Okay, opposed hearing none. It passes unanimously. Thank you. >> Thank you for Okay, so that leads us to public comment. Is there any public comment? >> There are no public comments. >> Okay. So, we will close public comments and uh we will just move on to board member comments. Are there any additional comments from the board? >> No. >> Okay. Very good. Thank you. I just want to once again um highlight a significant achievement here in in this year's re uh annual financial report and cost report that we have uh significantly put Flagger Schools in a healthier financial position and uh have uh set it up to to eliminate the need for future tax anticipation bonds that have been costing the district over $100,000 a year in
023interest, which That's valuable money that can go back into education because that money was affect affecting our general fund. Um so well done to uh every all the entire team and Miss Warmarmac for leading that charge. Uh and that concludes my comments. Superintendent Moore. >> See you at one o'clock. >> Okay. Meeting is adjourned.