001We'll call this meeting to order. I'll ask our board member, Miss Baxter, to lead us in our invocation and prayer. We stand with pledge. Our gracious heavenly father, we thank you so much for this opportunity to come here this morning and we ask that you be with each of these board members and our superintendent as we make decisions for the students of Levy County. We thank you for all the staff that's represented here this morning and we also thank you for the opportunity to live in the greatest country in the world. We ask dear Lord that you be with the situation in the Middle East and just continue to be with our leaders and thank you for strong leadership. And we ask that you give us wisdom and guidance throughout this meeting and throughout this
002day. And we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Amen. I pledge algiance 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. All right. Welcome everybody. I will entertain a motion to adopt our agenda. So move. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any oppose? Seeing none. Good morning. I don't know whether to be happy or scared. I know some of y'all. Well, all right. We'll move first into our superintendent highlights. Madam superintendent. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning everyone. Thank you for being here. And I have a wonderful email that one of our board members sent to me and I wanted to share everything that
003was written here because it is amazing and wonderful. And we have someone among us that needs to hear these words. And so that's why I asked all of you to come here this morning. But I do need that person to stand next to me because I can't go through this email without interjecting their name because it won't make sense. Mr. Law, if you would please join me up at the podium. [Music] Adam's in trouble. I am certain he has already received an impact award for all he has done. But if not, I would like to recommend Mr. John L. And if he has, he should receive something even better. In my time as a board member, John L has been a steadying force and an absolute professional at every position he has held. He was
004outstanding as principal at Williston, as principal at Bronson. He guided that school back to being the star of this community and once he came to the district office, he was he has continued to excel. It's Tiny Prince, I'm sorry. He is the most knowledgeable assistant superintendent I have seen in my 16 years with the district. I will say publicly that were it not for the work of John Lock, the new Chief Middle High School would not be. His meticulous care with the construction of that school is the key reason it came in easily on time, on budget, and with unquestionable quality. He did this all with the quiet confidence and humility that he has carried throughout his career. He has always been the one working hardest, quietest and most efficiently. If you need the answer
005and you need it to be well thought out research and correct, you go to John. He does so much and knows so much that I wonder what will happen when John leaves. In my time, we have had other assistant superintendent, and we are blessed to have very good ones, but none have been as good as John H. When he left the classroom to be an administrator, people wondered who would take his place. None did. When he moved from principal to district office, we wondered who will take his place. None did. Now, as he leaves the office of assistant superintendent, who will take his place? That's my interjection. In my opinion, there will never be another one as good as John Lock. They will try, but he is going to be impossible to replace. I do
006not know if there is a special award, accolade, or recognition that can be bestowed on John W, but I certainly support it. [Applause] know who already wrote it. Mr. Cameron, I knew that. It was too many words. Wow. I would like to present this to you from everyone here and a little pin and we can Everybody in a group picture. Okay. Maybe Mr. Delaney, not to keep you out of the picture, but you please take a picture if we all gather together. That would be wonderful. Thank you. [Laughter] We have to hide Cameron's shorts. Yeah. Should we stay back, man? That's some sexy leg. I may hold up this pose. [Music] [Applause] Inside breezy and inside inside breezy inside Ashley. [Music] Escape. Okay, I'm gonna take a bunch and we're going to pick the best
007ones. All right. [Music] [Laughter] How about cameras? Get down in the back. I did want to say thank you all. Um, this is my second one, by the way. Pleasure serving the the board all these years. Uh this is my fourth superintendent. Um each one brings a different thing to the table and I'm I'm very appreciative of that and uh different perspectives are always nice to learn. Um and uh thank you all for the many years. [Applause] All right. Thank you, Madam Superintendent. Mr. L. word. I remember that comment about all the words. Hey, just so everybody knows, you know where he went to high school. Let me guess. It had to have been. All right, we will now move into our finance budget workshop with Miss Lake, who also went to a very great
008high school. Do you know who my economics teacher was? There you go. about that. What does that really say though? I think she just told you. No, I think I think he says that's why he thinks I do a good job. Um, so when I messed up, he that's probably the last day he'll be here. And I'm trying not to be offended that he got a full house and everybody leaves. All right, so let's have fun with that. You can go on to the next page. This is our budget timeline. So, officially this meeting is not the start of trim. The next meeting is the start of trim. We'll meet on July 22nd. We'll propose with a proposed budget for the board and we'll approve our trim ads. July 31st, we'll adopt the tenative millage
009and budget. And September 11th, we'll adopt the final mill and budget. All right. So, as we look into this first calculation, report Senate Bill 2500. It just dropped. I mean, I think the paper's still hot. So, it was a$ 15.8 billion education budget, up from 15.6 billion. That is a 1.73 increase. But I will want you to note that inflation has been 2.4. Base student allocation is up $42 or 78% 40. Did I say $42? 78%. Private school voucher funing has increased by 3%. So take note of that. We've increased 1.73, but private school voucher funding has increased by 3%. Which is above inflation and no cap on these scholarships. Since 2023, vouchers have grown by almost $1 billion in the education budget. TSIA is no longer what that's called, teacher salary increase allocation, but
010that's what we refer to it as. Has 1.1 million in this budget, but it had 250 million last year. Florida is 35th in the nation in terms of prosperity, but 48th in economic resources dedicated to public education. So this is one of my favorite CFOs in Miami Dade and and I believe what he's saying and he said we're seeing trivial increases that will keep us on a slow long downhill slide. We hope to slide and not fall off the mountain now. So that's what this budget is about being conservative. And one thing about uh I did want to say that while funding to public schools has increased minimally um the funding to expand uh school choice has increased um exponentially and we do not have the same ability that private institutions have which is we
011can't control our revenue and they can control their revenue because they can increase those those fees. Private schools are not held to the same accountability standards as public schools and they get $8,000 per student in their voucher program. And I want to also mention that um during 2008 financial crisis, we are still receiving they lowered the FBFP and we're still receiving less than we would have then. All right. So, what are some challenges impacting this year's upcoming operating budget? it's always going to be these universal vouchers now that the wheels are off and and there's no caps. So, student mobility uh is alive and well and and also there's a homeschool option this year. It was capped uh I think at 20,000 last year. This year it's 40,000. Uh FEFP, we're struggling with the minimal
012uh base student allocation increase. That $42 doesn't go very far. And again, we're still below 2006 state funding level. FRS is increased again. So retirement has gone up. And then we have inflation and other cost increases that are impacting this this budget. Talk real quick about scholarship loss. I won't go through each year, but this is something that you you have and you can review. 2004 was the start of uh McKay. I believe 2020 was the start of FS. And so you can see total loss to scholarships including what's estimated to be lost next year 5 point almost 5.3 million is as 25.45 million we've lost just with fees just slightly over 19 million of that is fees our base student allocation I gave you some historical data here you can see where it started
013to decrease between 20 8 and 2012. You see this year it's growing by 78%. So we factored in inflation. We've grown the BSA has grown 32% since 2008. Inflation's at 48%. So we really should be looking at a base student allocation of about $6,000. Florida retirement. This is just some more historical data. You can see we've increased every year since 201 21 except last year. We are on target to increase again this year and it's going to cost the district roughly 850,000. And the the money that's used to pay for that increase is the flexible funds created in the the with the increase in the BSA, but that is the same money that would be used to fund uh salaries or compensation packages, new positions, anything like that. So this is the classroom teacher and
014other instructional personnel salary increase. I think TFIA is just much easier. So you can see this year we have a little over 191,000 which includes the charter school share for this allocation. It's not an allocation. It's part of the BSA now. So that means it fluctuates with FTE. It used to be set at the second calculation that dro dropped in July and no matter what happened to student population. It didn't change. Now it es and flows with every calculation. Maintenance is insufficient and and it will continue to be insufficient if student enrollment declines and we do not react with uh readjusting staff size. So, there is new language for this particular uh TSIA and it's allowing for money to go for this I want to say budget to be used for increased personnel compensation cost.
015It used to just go to full-time classroom teachers and certified prek teachers, but now they've inserted that or in there. So, it opens it up to different things to negotiate whether it's for support salaries. Um there's been some talk that Maybe it could cover uh some health cost increases. I don't know. All that has to be negotiated, but it gives flexibility, but it gives flexibility with $191,000. So, let's look at the FFP. So, I do not have the fourth calculation yet. Usually, we have it by now. So, we're comparing the third calculation with the Senate Bill 2500 or the first calculation that just dropped. And you'll this these are just district and charter FTEES. I've already um removed the scholarships and you'll see there's a decline in unweighted FTE almost 56 FTE. You see the
016growth in the BSA we've already discussed and then you see the dollar increase per unweighted FTE. that $9,526.64 that includes BSA in all the categoricals, all the items uh that we we say kind of below the line. They're usually earmarked for particular expenditures. So total funding increase for the district and charters is just over 514,000. So something different has happened with the additional weighted funding. So we did not lose or the CTE calculation and the uh AP dual enrollment early graduation. They used to be part of the additional weighted funding which you would get a little bit more FTE per student participating in this program and it would generate dollars to feed these programs. So what they've done this year is instead of including it as part of the BSA and then we peel it
017out because we know how much additional waiting we get per uh program. They have moved some of these to a new categorical. So you can see in terms of weighted funding, we've lost about 68,000 with the removal of those particular programs. So now if you go to the new academic accelerations option, you can see total funding will be $616,348. that amount matches what we received in the third calculation because they wanted to hold harmless for one year at least. So they made moving into next year the exact amount for these programs that it was in the third calculation. However, as we move through next year and and FTE goes up, goes down, whatever it does to impact these programs, it will be reflected in these amounts. So that is not bad news. We were happy
018that at least they moved it somewhere else and we were very happy they didn't put it in the BSA because if they had put it in the base student allocation and maybe we would have gotten $65 versus 42, it would have seemed to our shareholders that we got this huge gain in in base student growth which we did not get. So we'll look at the uh other categoricals that we will have next year. You see a a very small decline in safe schools. Uh a little bit of a bump for the ESSE guarantee allocation which supports our ESSE programs. There's the educational enrichment which used to be the uh SAI student transportation. And student transportation es and flows as well and normally it's higher in the first calculation. Mental health allocation has declined as well
019slightly. And then there's that new categorical academic acceleration options. And that is not flexible money. That is money earmarked for those specific programs that we talked about. One of them is dual enrollment. And dual enrollment we get about 140,000 and we spend about 170. So if you look at those changes in categoricals, you look at an increase in our RLE again that's an estimate. When you get your second calculation when I do the proposed budget, that will be a better representation of growth there. You can see net we have an increase of about 574,000. Now these are going to be the deductions to that. Uh right now we do not estimate a proration. We know we have a large In the third calculation, most of that proration was based on the underestimated scholarship. So, we'll
020get into that in a minute because I'm almost certain that's going to happen again. And that is problematic because we don't budget for that. So, that is a loss that you see in the uh second half of the year. So, you can see family empowerment scholarships are slated to grow by about 1.1 million. So once we adjust for those changes, we've now instead of 574,000, we're at a negative 448,000. Class size reduction is going to go down slightly. So before FEF adjustments, we would have a growth. So if you were to pull the first calculation and look at Levy County, it's going to look like we got a million dollar gain. You have to go in and remove the scholarship and all those. And once you do that, you can see state funding has fallen
021by almost $100,000. So that growth we have of 514 is coming from local from what they're projecting the RLE will bring into this budget. And you can see real quick talking about why I think there'll be another proration. uh our first calculation last year. So what the forecast was built on last year's budget, there were 437.77 scholarships. What we actually had in scholarships were 583.5. So that was an under forecasted for our county of 145.7 which project which is where that proration came from. And I think the reason it was so hard to project is they opened it up to private schools to to parents and families that have been supporting their students in private education all along that now have access to state dollars to offset those costs and they couldn't or didn't forecast
022well enough how many were going to come into that program. So bottom line you can see the growth 514,000 but we have to remove TSIA because TSIA is in that because it's part of the base student. So, we have to peel that back off. We are having some issues with health insurance uh claims and costs escalation there. So, we're anticipating having to put in about $500,000 into that program which will come out of the general fund. And then we the board already uh graciously approved an increase in supplements to the tune of around $100,000. We have added are going to add additional dollars because it's an ELA adoption and we do not get enough textbook uh funds which by the way they moved that several years ago from a categorical up into the base student
023allocation. So it fluctuates again as FTE goes up and down. So we're going to contribute 75,000 more to make that budget around 550,000 and then the increase in FRS and when all said and done we're looking at a loss of around 500,000 with those flexible dollars. So, that's just looking at the budget. Now, we're going to look at in a minute where we think we're going to land this year. So, backing up real quick, that $500,000 loss, the way we overcome that is we either have to cut programs or people in order to offset that and balance our budget or we have to pull it from reserve funding. So, that's how we offset that deficit. All right. So, this is just looking at our February because I anticipate we're going to have a further loss
024because we lost uh 42 students from the district between the October count and the February count. And I'm estimating that at around 235. That might be a little high. My finance officer told me today that our last uh payment from state of Florida looks to be about $65,000 less. So, what I don't know is if uh the difference between the 235 and the 65 is going to hit us next year. the prior year or if the 65 is is going to be it. Uh once we get the fourth calculation, I'll kind of know where that's going to land. But if we were to lose the 235, you're looking at a loss of almost 688,000 for this year that we're in. That money will have to come for reserve funding. All right. So, let's look at
025where we're at this year in terms of revenue collections. We are estimating collecting about 99.5%. Today we we are we need to collect about 2.7 million more between now and June 30th to meet that mark. Expenditures we look like we're going to expend about 96%. We usually expend 98 to 99. The reason it's less is we have some grants that are in the general fund right now. And the way grants work is you have to budget the grant in its entirety even though you have three years to spend it. So it sort of inflates those collections. So you have to be mindful of that when you look at that. But we still have almost a million dollars roughly outstanding in uh payroll that we need to do process and accounts payable we need to process.
026So at the end it looks like we will expend around 58 million. Now we'll expend 58 million but our revenue is looking to be around 56 57 million. So what that's going to cause is uh possibly a deficit of 1.5 million. So that means we'll reduce our our fund balance, our reserve funding and end somewhere around 8 million in reserve funding. We'll go from an 18.4 to a 14.9. Now, I do want to remind you not all of this comes uh I'm not surprised by a lot of this because in the beginning when we did our compensation package earlier this year, you guys agreed to about a $2 million compensation package between federal and general fund. General fund alone was 1.8 million, but of that 1.8 million, about 400,000 of that was bonuses. So, we
027knew we were going to dig into some of that reserve funding on purpose because we were maintaining a 19 and 20% uh fund balance. What we didn't anticipate was the proration and all these other things that have come to pass as the year moved on. But I'm not hugely concerned that we're showing that uh deficit because we we sort of prescribed that deficit in a way. But my budget's not done. So, I do want to And as what I tell you today could change tomorrow. There are some different things that we haven't done. We haven't done some of our transfers and other things that we would normally do. But right now, expenditures to revenue, we're looking at about a $ 1.5 million deficit. Now, I know everybody's saw on TV, Facebook, all of our surrounding
028counties have either uh let go of quite a few people, they've frozen positions. We have not done any of that. The reason we have not done any of that yet is because I think the board has allowed us to be good stewards of our money. We had a healthy fund balance, but I'm not saying that may not be that may come to pass. But right now, we aren't at that sort of, you know, we're not waving a red flag. We're we're we're holding on to that fund balance. So when we talk about the fund balance, what is a financial condition ratio? So it's important to know what comp comprises that because that is how our temperature is taken so to speak by the state. And so that is our total unassigned and assigned fund balance
029divided by our total revenues less any transfers. So they want to exclude any of those maintenance transfers or other transfers that we do because that's not a reliable source. You shouldn't be living off of that. So they want to remove that. But again, just keep in mind certain things about that financial condition ratio. And while it may be all we have to test the health of the district, it is as we get certain grants, certain things that contributes to that financial condition ratio because it grows the revenue side, but the expenditures don't always follow the revenue side. So there's just multiple things you have to know the equation to know kind of what is driving that financial condition ratio. We have a 5% back. It's about 2.6 million 2.7 million. That again will change depending
030on what that revenue number is. So I look at that as a target. I don't believe that we should try to get ourselves down to 5%. That is a target. We have to look at how many federal salaries we have out there. So if in any one year we lose the federal funding, we can continue the payroll of those particular people. So that's a target that the board the board set that as as our minimum, but that's just a target. That is not something we want to we want to get down to. 3% which is all the state requires is 1.6 million. And that is woefully uh under what we would need and I'll show you why in a in a minute. So when we talk about assigned fund balances, what's in that? That is
031not a place to just to hide money or move money. These are programs, real programs that are generating funding through the FEFP in most cases or outside the FFP that we bring into the general fund and we need to keep that money assigned to those particular programs. Your schoolhouse budgets sit there. Um, SAC some sack program funds sit there, AP is there, which is all that fund our IT programs, CAPE sits there. We have a little set aside for capital and school safety as well. And reserve funding is important on many levels. We know that it acts as a savings account, but it also keeps us fiscally strong and helps maintain a stable operating budget. It helps to mitigate uh financial impact of major non-recurring or unforeseen events like hurricanes. We do get refunded from
032the county, but we have to put that money out first. Having reserved funding can reduce or eliminate the district's need in the moment to cut staff and programs. This is a large shift. You can't turn that ship very quickly. And the last thing you want to do in the middle of the year or start cutting teachers and moving kids to other to other uh classrooms. So, you have to go on throughout that school year if you have the reserve funding and then make your change in the following year. The biggest way to move the ship, unfortunately, is cutting people. When when you have close to 80% of your expenditures going for people between benefits and salaries, you have that is just unfortunately the quickest way to do this shift. Reserve funds um also affect our
033bond rating. So we want to keep and have a healthier fund balance so that if we have to borrow money, we get a lower interest rate on borrowing those funds. There's something called a TANS which is where you we are heavily dependent on those local tax dollars to start coming in in November, December or January. Sometimes some schools have to go out and get a loan in the gap between July and and that November or December. And so it becomes important to be able to get a good interest rate for that. Real quick, how this all ties together, your fund balance and cash flow is we do have a negative cash flow until we receive the first check from the county. So that means that we live off of reserve funding until around December, January
034to the tune of almost uh or almost 1.7 million. Average payroll, those are last year's numbers, so they're up slightly, but they're all still relative. Uh average monthly payroll is about 1.7 million. Average monthly expenditures including payroll is about 4.4 million and you can see average monthly revenue is about 4.3. So that's why we have to have that reserve funding. We need it for some other reasons as well. All federal expenditures are paid first and then drawn down. So at any point the federal programs are borrowing from the general fund at the tune of almost 940,000. we do get that money back and we get it back fairly quickly, but you have to be able to uh pay those vendors. General fund reserves can also be used to support major capital purchases before we start
035receiving local tax dollars, buses, those items. And again, it just allows us to make better decisions uh faster short-term decisions on how to address students and staff needs with that reserve funding. And you'll see that mostly I always think of ESSE. So ESSE sets the number of aids they need based on the students they have. Then we start getting students that have needs that we didn't anticipate and ESSE may need the general fund to pull in some aids and we want to be able to do that. We couldn't do that without reserve funding. So this is a historical view of the change in our revenues between uh 1920 and this current year we're in. The biggest thing I wanted you to see was the the variance. So the percents, you can see that after CO
036that one year back after COVID, we actually had uh we had a decrease in revenues. And you can see the revenues start to increase. 2223, that's when we added the $15 an hour. So that's why there's a 9% bump there. 3 3.8 last year and 6.6 this year. So I like to look at that in context of our expenditures. So when you start looking at a growth this year of 6.6% in revenues, you see we have a growth of expenditures of 9.6. So that's not really good. We've got to somehow bring those expenditures back in line with what our our revenues are. But you can look over the course of the the various years and see what that growth in expenditure and match it with the growth in revenue. I always uh like to say
037that is the board In the context of compensation plans, that is the board trying to use uh fund balance dollars to support compensation packages or give the staff everything you could because you can see that our expenditures most often are slightly above what our revenues are. Now, we would like to do that with non-recurring funds. So, we were very happy with the bonuses last year. This is just bringing everybody uh back to health insurance and how much the board actually supports currently for health insurance. Almost $5 million a year is the board's contribution for health insurance. This is enrollment changes between May 2020 and May 2025. You can see district is down 64, charter's down three. You can see that that huge increase in homeschools and scholarships. What's important here are the number of students
038that did not choose us as their option and that was about uh 1500 which would include charters. So if we had those 1500 mind you some of those would have never come to our district because they were private school from mama's birth um but 1500 of our students chose somewhere else to the tune of about $8 million. So, as we're continuing to build this budget, look at this budget, we continue to address these challenges. We still have a challenge of the increased uh scholarships, homeschool, which results in declining enrollment. We're continuing to see increased benefits costs, especially with insurance and retirement. We have increased technology needs that we do not have sufficient funds to support. We are fighting inflation and increased operational costs. Everybody can tell you that our contracts just keep going up and
039up. We have quite a few unfunded and underfunded mandates that are a challenge. Class size is going to be an issue uh due to reduced funding. I don't know h how and I'm not speaking for the superintendent. I'm just speaking from a budget perspective how you manage class size when you don't have the funding to support that. And we want to avoid labor and program reduction. So everything we do is with that thought in mind. What decision we make today, what how is that going to impact staff tomorrow? That is anybody have any questions? Wow. Wow. So we have like almost 25% of the 20 I guess about 20% of people in Levy County that don't go to public schools. Correct. That's residents of Lady County. They got to take their kids somewhere else. Yes.
040Yes. And again, you know, some of those a hand I don't know how many to tell you have never set foot in here, right? The homeschool ones become a little bit sad because they have set foot here. Most of them there is a little bit of overlap between scholarship and homeschool. I just can't feel them out because now homeschool in some cases get scholarship. So, we're looking at ways to offset that. There's a PEP program that I think Morgan has spoke about uh charging some of those home homeschoolers specifically that are utilizing our schools. Um Mr. L has been extremely helpful in looking at different areas AP dual enrollment. What are some things we can do that might signal we need to tighten our belt but doesn't um negatively impact a student. So, we're we're
041trying to walk this fine line between not wanting our staff, parents, and students to think the sky is falling, but they also need to understand what we're about to move into. No offense, we don't want to be a lot county. We don't want to be one of those counties that I would rather freeze vacancies than than send people back into this market that we're about to enter. So, but with that being said, we're about to approach where we don't have the lapse time. Teachers don't have as many options anymore to leave the seat. The good news for us is we have more options now as an employer. Bad news is that budget's going to start to be fixed. We're going to have people staying in those seats all year long where we were reaping the
042benefit of people leaving and taking a little bit longer to fill that seat and every year having a little bit of last time. We knew this was going to happen. So, we just need to make sure that I would rather us incrementally reduce things than really just start to cut. Um, Just trying to keep that. What is the financial ratio of logger county roughly? Do you know? I sure don't. Marian County, do you do you look at different ones? No, because we're not equal. That's so in the beginning when I started this job, I would. But now I can't compare myself to anyone else. I can look at what they're doing to remedy and see if I can replicate, but how they got there will be a completely different road than how we got there.
043We can't even compare ourselves to Gilchrist or Dixie. I can speculate on how county out there, but that budget is, but it's not published as far as their percent ratio or anything. It is. It is. I just don't know what it is. Do you know what their what their They have the same policy of a 5% and then they're covered by the 3%. So, yeah. 3%. We have 3% one year. I mean, I could imagine being 3% would barely cover payroll one year, right? One month of payroll. Yeah. So, I would hope we haven't come back before the board to increase that yet, but we want to look at that. It's just something we need to look at as we move through the year. There's a timing issue. Um I think it's we need to
044get a little further into this budget and where we're going, but I definitely think that is something that we can discuss with the board if we need to increase that from 5 to 7 or 5 to 8. Um maintaining it. So I write the budget, I do the budget. We don't have a lot of control because the spending all happens at school levels and at other levels. So, I need to work with Mr. Lot and some other people on our team to start to control some of that so we can better control it at this end. But we have a very conservative district. I do want to say I'm I'm very pleased with how our district spends and how they think and they're still thinking as if they're in 2008. So, that's easier for us.
045But, there are some things, you know, the four-letter word athletic. There are some things we spend a lot of money on that that we just need to look at and just I think that's it for now. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you very much. We're thankful to have you. Sure. Stay on top of it. All right. Now, let's look into Mr. Eastman and Mr. Huber, what they have to say. Good news, boys. Good news. Don't come over here. Won't spend money after that. You heard lady. You heard what lady said. Source of funds matter. Source of funds matter. I'm talking about general fund. They're talking about capital. Okay. Got covered. Must be nice. Go ahead. We typically put the piggybacks and stuff in the contract. I want him to do it. You want him to do
046it? He knows. Um, we typically put that in there, but we had to change some stuff. We piggy backing off a UCF contract, but we needed to put in our contract. They required level one background screening. We did level two. So, that's the reason you see that contract along with the um there's a big amount that UCF had. Was it like a $4 billion contract? We're not asking for that. We're asking for 250,000 for this particular contract if we need it. Um you may look at it and you look it it's only for one month. It's for one month. UCF has agreement to extend it up four more years, but they're ending in July. So I'm waiting for them to come back to say they extend it for another year and we're planning to py
047back off of that. But we'll bring that to another consent agenda item on another board meeting. Max's here if he wants to talk about kind of what we're planning to use these services for. It's WWA, by the way. Yeah, we we already use WWA for emergencies. Uh they've been a very good company for Levy County. Some of our real large systems like our cooling towers at Wilson High Chief O'Neal, we just don't have the expertise or the manpower. We're just trying to clean up and meet some statute, the amount of money we spend. Uh we have some projects where we've got some equipment we bought with some extra money. That is why we want to do it this summer. We don't have the manpower to change these units out. upgrades. Schools summers don't shut down
048for us anymore. So our guys are run service calls don't drop. So we just do not have the manpower to do upgrades. So we we have to have somebody when we have when we work with Kim every day if we have in budget. We just need somebody we can call not go through wasting weeks of bidding process, right? We need this done and we can get it done is the purpose of this contract. And some of the materials are required. We've got a Joyce Bulock office unit that is something that just popped up, but we I do have quite a bit of equipment in storage from the fall that we'd like to get installed this summer. And whereas this contract says 4 million, we're looking at 250. Yeah. So, if something was to come up
049six months from now, you know, if it was over that, we would still go out and bid. So, 250 is a good under that and we've got it in budget, then we just roll it. You think 250 will I I think for our for our purposes yes. If we go over that we would want to entertain probably going out a bit. Okay. Okay. I I'd entertain a motion. Second. Have a motion to accept it and a second. Not a 70. That's a whole different look. I'm on I'm on muscle relax. We'll give you a break. Okay. Uh we have a motion in a sec. a second to accept uh this proposal. All those in favor or any questions? First of all, any questions? Seeing none. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any oppose?
050Mr. Car, thank you. Hey, if you didn't know, Matt Huber had a birthday. 63 years old. Looks good for 63, don't you? Yeah. Happy birthday. A secret to them genetics. And you're driving. He's only kidding. He's not 63. Now you say you're driving. Relaxer. She talking about you. Am I driving? Yeah. I relax you. He's one question. Did he graduate from Bronson High School? No. Mr. Huber did not graduate from Bronson High School, but he he fell in love with the Bronson High School and said, "I got to go there." Close. That's close. That's close. That's close. Mr. Stockton, how you doing? I'm good. Having fun always. Good morning. I'd like to say about the last presentation, we're lucky to have somebody like Mr. Huber with his knowledge and expertise in the air conditioning field,
051HVAC, gas, and uh he can work through these bids. These bits are very complex and he's you know he has a knowledge to to work through them. We proud to have him on our side and also say that WWA when we have went out to bid they've been competitive and very responsive to our to our needs. you know, we can call on emergency. They there because time matters. Timing matters for sure because and they got local people that have skin in the game, kids in the school community. Absolutely. So, uh what I'm here for is to uh update you on our warehouse project. We did not get our CO certificate of occupancy yet. We had a change in our building official defect that we contract with and he assured me he would have it before
052the end of this month we would get it. But statutes require that I come give you an update if we don't have our CO. So in case he doesn't make it, I'm just giving you a budget update on it. We're basically completed with all costs that we had planned and we have roughly $15,000 remaining in the budget. Since we're having to roll this and having to do this presentation, it's not something that would affect our CEO, but talked with Miss Lake and we're going to reach out to insulation company to see if we can get the remaining portion of that warehouse insulated for this money to help out Brandon and guys that have to work in there. I've already reached out to the company that insulated the original portion that we climate control and I've
053reached out to them twice and have not heard from them and so find somebody else see if they want to do some work for us. So, uh, that being said, if we do not insulate it, that's what we're going to have left over, the 15 roughly $15,000. Uh, but if we can get insulation and get it for that price range, we want to do it while we got the money. You seen the spray foam insulation? Yes, it' be spray. And you don't think it would go over that? Well, it won't because we don't have we're not going to do it. And we we do have the option. We want to just insulate minimal the roof deck. That's where so we'll see see what our options are when we get somebody to give us quote. So
054I'm have quoted a few different ways. Do what we got to do by statute to update you on where we at. Thank you sir. Thank you. All good. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you. Oh, I forgot to say I still appreciate working with Mr. Bo and everything we do. Fantastic. Fantastic. Hey, I'll even go so far as this. You do a good job. What school did you go to? You'd do better if you was Bronson, but what school did you go to? [Laughter] All right. You and Gore both, right? Yeah. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. took all you could do to get through, but it worked, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. All right. I was Miss Chief High School. That's it. That's it. At this point, is there any public comment that
055would like to be brought up at this time? This big crowd. Big crowd. All right. All right. We'll move over to our minutes. Has everyone had a chance to read those minutes? Yes, sir. If there are no changes that need to happen to have a motion to accept. Do we have a second? Second. Motion and a second. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Well, we'll move on to our consent agenda. Uh we'll start with Mrs. Campbell. Mrs. Campbell, do you have any questions or concerns with the consent agenda? No, I've already had my questions answered. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Baxter. My questions have been answered. Thank you, Mr. White. Superintendent answer all my questions. And I have no questions. Man, that's pretty good. All right. All those I'll
056entertain a motion to accept it. Make a motion to approve. Do I hear a second? Second. All those in favor, please say I. Any oppose? Like sign. Motion carries. What about on the finance agenda? Uh, Miss Kemp, any questions? No. Mrs. Baxter? No, Mr. W. No, sir. And that's another no from me. So, I'll entertain a motion. We have a motion and a second. Second and a second. All those in favor, please say I. Any opposed? Motion carries. It is now our superintendent's turn again to Thank you, Mr. Chair. Let us go. Thank you. Um, I just want to give a shout out to Michelle Still and Sherry Tindle the last board meeting for all the help in the absence of Mrs. Hogan having a wonderful vacation with her family and grandchildren, but they they
057were a big help and and they stepped up immediately and took care of all the paperwork and the downloads and it's good to have them where they are. Uh, also it was a busy week last week and I know all of you will talk about your um, successes at the schools, but I was able to attend with about 70 district staff, teachers, and admin the AVID leadership conference and that was amazing to see how hard and collaborative the communication was. um you would go to breakout sessions in the morning and then we would all come back and um go to what's called a site team and Mr. Mlen was present as well and then from there you'd everyone would be together you'd be broken down at tables from your different schools but we would all
058work on everything together and just um it was it was great. It was really a wonderful experience. Um, from there I went over across the street, so to speak, to the FFA state convention. And honestly, I think those general sessions might have blown an eardrum on the right side. I've never been in a place that was that loud in my life, but those kids were amazing. I mean, it it was, you know, to see the pride on their faces from the the little ones to the ones that were making their speeches because this was the last time they would be on that stage. Um, some were tearjerkers. Um, but it was wonderful to experience that. And on a legislative side, um we just to let you know all your hard work and the district staff
059when you sat together and did those one pagers and we went to Tallahassee, uh the we were approved a portion of that appro of the appropriations that we asked for at 487500. So Miss Lake is aware of that and that will go to some of the roofing projects and I know Dr. McDougall called and she was um happy about that. But that's due to what you all did for them to approve that. And that's all I have. Mrs. Campbell, do you have anything? Um well, I just wanted to share that I um I did visit the summer programs that are going on at our schools. Uh the coalition is doing a great job. Um I was amazed at how many students are involved. Our our students are taking advantage of it. It's great. um also
060attended the schoolboard conference which was wonderful. And um uh the guest speakers um were great and the theme was communication and and it was uh learned a lot about how to communicate at times of conflict or when there are controversial issues at hand. And so that was good. Um I did attend um the professional AI development yesterday and it was fantastic. Um, and it was so good for me because I have so many questions about AI. And I think that one of the uh the most important things that I heard that helped me realize just how important it is for me to get to know more about AI and all of us. Um, AI will not replace you as a teacher, but someone using AI will. So we do have to get with it with
061with AI and and the presentation was great yesterday because it was informative about AI but it also um raised all the questions that I had too and how are we going to work it here in Louis County. So it was great and I was thankful for the opportunity to attend. Thank you Mr. Speaker. Well, I too enjoyed the um schoolboard conference in Tampa and communication is key to any organization. So um and like Miss Campbell said, they talked about what to do in a crisis situation and um and other situations that can be uncomfortable. So that was very informative and I plan to my visit is scheduled for next week. they had to reschedule my visit to the to the school um where the achieve programs are going on. So, I'm supposed to go next
062Monday, I think it is. So, I'm looking forward to that. And last week, um Miss Bole mentioned about the FFA convention and I was extremely proud of the Chief FFA. Um, one of my former students was elected as the area 2 state vice president, Riley Lockach. Her dad was a former a advisor, FFA advisor at Chief. And then my nephew um Grant was a state star farmer winner and he also um was a proficiency winner in vegetable production. We had um Key Serrano Aguilar who did um she was a champion for the Spanish Creed and um she'll go to the nationals in October and our parliamentary procedure team which they had something that happened u one of the team members had an appendicitis um attack and had to go to the hospital and another student
063stepped in. They still um placed third. So anyway, I'm very proud of the Chief FFA. Very good. That's all. Mr. Wy, so last week um I I'll start with the FFA. Um Wilson had a bunch of different people competing in different stuff. So are some to highlight. Colin McGawan was a state star discovery winner. Uh my daughter Annabelle was elected the district three secretary and also placed second state and prepare public speaking and our junior conduct team finished second state. So um a couple really close to state winners but right there. So just um there's some more kind of kind of make you want a little more you know kind of bittersweet but kind of give you a little edge to maybe want to do something push over that. So anyway, exciting and like I
064said, we had a lot of other people competing. Um I was also participating in the safe patrol last week. So um it was an early start. Miss Bull saw us off 4:30 in the morning. So right there at Bronson Elementary School and it was a long bus ride. We ended up getting there about 9:30 that night after all the stops and stuff. So um so and my 6'4 self on the bus is a kind of tight spot. I tell you that right now cramped up. But it was good and seeing the um you know being in Washington DC and seeing the patriotism um you know and how history how we persevered through all the struggles you know from you know you know from facing struggles from other countries to civil war within ourselves um you
065know and just how we've always came out on top you know through our differences. Miss Baxter said, you know, to be able to get along, you know, that's important. You know, we've lot lot of lives have been lost through that struggle, but you know, a lot of people who um fought for our freedom. Thank goodness we're able to sit here on this board, do what we do because of a lot of people's sacrifices. So, but it makes you appreciate it seeing um you know the names on the you know the Vietnam War and the World War II Korea you know just you know we're you know we sit here and we take so much stuff for granted that you know that a lot of people have fought and died for us that makes you really
066reflect and appreciative of that but it's a very good trip and certainly encourage anybody to go to Washington DC and experience that. That's all I have. Thank you. That's cool. What was your favorite part? What was your favorite thing you saw? Or maybe what was your child's favorite thing? Um, we like going went to the capitol and just walking into the ratunda. Yeah. And seeing it's impressive for hearing and hearing over there. Yeah. Yeah. Just just I mean just that's that's one of the best ones. It's neat. It really is cool. I had to pick one. That was probably good. Um, again, I would I would say congratulations to the Bronson FFA. They did a fantastic job this year. Uh we had a a sales proficiency recognition. Uh we did um we had Carson and
067Maddie. That's their names. Carson Meeks and Maddie. And I can't remember Mattiey's last name for nothing. Stuart. Go ahead. Um won the power structural and technological division of the A science fair. Uh, a mechanics team was recognized for being fourth in the state. Uh, farm aggra business management team recognized for being third in the state. Uh, poultry evaluation second in the state. We're all like right there. Had a couple state degree winners and we have a gentleman Liam Meeks who is going to be recognized for American FFA degree. U, but what I would like to add to this and this is not disparaging of anybody else. Um, and sitting on this board, I have I've told people this out in public and it's going to be public record now. There was a point in the
068Bronson FFA. I didn't have a whole lot to say. We were just getting by barely. Um, and now we have us, we finally have an advisor who is there to be an adviser, who is there to push these kids. I can remember time go state convention. There were three kids from Bronson and wasn't getting their name call. We just there for a week of vacation and that's what it was and go to national conventions in two or three and they hey we going to just hang out. We didn't have anybody and uh Kelly Barnes has come in here filled that gap. Chief graduate. That's right. Um filled that gap and has turned that thing around to now we're we're back to being Bronson. And that's what we all there was a time uh in my
069FFA time and short before and shortly after where any of the at that time there were only three in Levy County Bronson Chief and Wilston if any of those showed up at a contest them big school said uhoh we're in trouble. That's right. Um the beauty of FFA we don't have 5A and 1A. You go against the big boys. That's right. And these little boys from here can whoop up on them big boys every day. And it's it's pretty cool to see that happening in every school. I would also like to say congratulations to Miss Annabelle White because her mama is a graduate of Bronson. I know that's what's pushed. And Mr. Eric Grant, his daddy is a Bronson graduate. So we true we have to pull for them and that's what's really really pushing
070it. And uh Collins McGowan, well her dad wanted to come to Bronson. So but uh I'm glad y'all had a good time. I'm glad we're enjoying our summer. And if nobody has anything else, meet Jer.