Walker County School Board Called Session April 29th, 2025

001Uh we will call the our meeting to order at this time. Um Mr. Williamson, will you do our invocation for us, please? Father, um it is the pleasure to be here again today. You've allowed us to live. You've allowed us to uh enjoy this weather, and we're we're appreciative for that. And I'm reminded of uh not only things that we deal with in this country, but some of the things that we deal with here in Walker County. And sometimes it does appear to be somewhat chaotic, but even in the midst of chaos, it seems as though it's always a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel and when we see that light we know somewhere they got me a little bit of hope and father we thank you for that for each

002person that is here we represent the best interest of Walker County schools with both the teachers and the students father in order to do that we need a tremendous amount of wisdom and we need knowledge and we need help and we need strength and father tonight we ask you for that for each person that is represented here in some way or another represents Walker County schools in some fashion. So, Father, we ask that that you grant us the wisdom that we need to make decisions that are in the best interest to Walker County. And Father, we give you the praise for all you do for it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. We do have some action items that we need to take care of first. Uh the first one is the creative curriculum

003for prek. It is recommended that the W County Board of Education approve purchase of 13 teacher kits and one trainer coordinator kit for the creative curriculum for prek. Do we have a motion? Motion. Do we have a second? Second. Any discussion? And let me just share real quickly. So, we get an allocation from right from the start for prek every year. Includes salary for teachers, salary for pair program as well as supplies. As Rachel was getting to the end of the budget year, her and Debbie sat down and found that we had about $100,000 that we were going to have to send back to the state if we didn't spend it quickly. So Debbie immediately said, "The one thing that's on my list is to purchase this curriculum for our teachers." So it was a

004great way. It's in compliance. The other thing we did is we actually shifted Debbiey's salary out of the regular budget back into the right from the start budget. You can do up to 6% admin cost. And so it was a great way to do it. I hate putting uh action items on a call session because we were here to talk about budget, but these were timesensitive. That's why we put them on there. So, I wanted to give you a little bit of the background, Rachel, if you want to feel anything if I left it out. It was just something we needed to go ahead and get moving on so we could get it spent this fiscal year. And Debbie has been asking for curriculum, but she's never had the money to do the curriculum. So,

005we just don't want to send any money back if they can help the prek program. So, we do have a motion and we have a second. All those in favor motion passes. Um, our second action item, Walker County Career and College Renovation. It is recommended the Walker County Board of Education approve the proposal from RK Reading Construction, Inc. for the construction of the Walker County Career and College renovation in the amount of 2,467,431. This project is funded by the Georgia College and Career Academics Project Grant of $3 million for construction and renovations. It is further recommended the Walker County Board of Education enter into a contract with RK Reading Construction, Inc. for this project and authorize the board chairperson to execute the contract for and on behalf of the board with the understanding that the

006contract documents are correct and have been executed by RK Reading Construction Inc. per specifications. Do we have a motion? Can we get a little more information on that? Where where is the renovation at? What I mean this is and I may be a little late coming in. No worries, Kevin. So, so we we've had this discussion going on for probably nine or 10 months now that all the renovations are in the 500 building, which is the main building right in the center of campus. Okay. So, we have the launch pad that we took over in 2018. We had a couple of adjacent classes that we've been using and an office space. So, we're turning that space and one of the additional rooms. Zach can fill this in so can Chris. turning that into a mechatronics

007lab downstairs where the cafeteria is currently. We're turning that into a culinary arts lab. That's the two main pieces in this. And then there's an empty class across the hall from the launchpad. Doesn't need as much work because it was set up pretty close to what we need. CNA healthcare lab already. Yeah. So, so that's kind of the the process there. We had to go through the properties division with the technical system of Georgia to get a lease on the building. The goal is for us to be able to purchase the building back from G&TC. The reason they won't give it up at this point is because all of their fiber for all of their campuses comes into that building so that that it would it would create the need for them to do some

008additional things. The grant is at $3.1 million. So there's a percentage the the 0.1 part of it can be spent on certain things like branding, marketing, whatever. The three million is just for construction and then Perkins will allow us to purchase equipment for those. And so Justin's been working on the equipment side. Zach and Chris have been working on the renovation side. The reason you're getting this tonight and not Tuesday night, this gives us a week to go ahead and get them mobilized so that when G&TC classes are finished and we're finishing up, they can start the renovations and get busy over the summer. How long do we have a lease for that money? 25 years right now. Yes, sir. So, it's not like we could put this money in next year. No, sir. Not

009at all. Not at all. And the goal again and and Dr. Poppam, who is the current president, is very willing to do this. It's it has to go through the properties division to get the for them for them to allow us to purchase the building. And that's been the goal all the time is because they're not using it at all. Well, one one biology lab. We do have some chair space negotiated in that long-term lease, but they're very accommodating and as you can imagine is we're going in construction. We're going to displace some people and if we need to move classrooms to another building for a certain amount of time, they're very willing to do that. They're great partners in this. an agreement too, Kevin, just to kind of give you the full context. So

010the mechatronics lab, they will also have access to use that during their like their May master, their spring and summer. We're going to give them the opportunity to make money off the lab as well. Um, and so that's that's another benefit that they're going to gain out of that. Same with the culinary if they want to get involved in that. I'll I'll just add and Chris may want to chime in on this a little bit. I believe this is still correct on that. Um, with with this proposal, there's actually some of the kitchen equipment. Is that included? Is that correct? So, that was kind of a unexpected bonus to come in under the bid, having $3 million from the grant come in under and it's including some of the culinary equipment. So, we're getting to

011count that in construction cost rather than use another grant later on. So, that was pretty exciting to me, honestly. So, what kind of a timetable are we looking I know we're obviously want to get this this approved tonight, but what time table as far as the construction calls thoughts on when it would be completed? So, a lot of will determine be determined when when we execute contract for them, but ideally um we they're going to be doing a couple other projects at the same time here for us. So, it's going to benefit us in a way to have them already some of their stuff on site. And I would like for most of the work, especially the basic work um to be going on during the summer and then I would say we would end

012up somewhere midfall probably getting it completely wrapped up because we can't vacate the building completely. So, that does make it a little more um logistically difficult for us and for them. But um we're going to be able to sector off some places and and work with the college. Steuartfields has been awesome to work with over there and involved in this process and and so I would say definitely by the January we open up class of January. I mean I can't imagine that we wouldn't have everything going. I kind of think in semester, you know, if you're getting in December even, I I kind of feel like it'd be really a tough ass to get in there by the start of the semester when they start, you know, pretty early. um in August. So that would

013be pretty tough. But uh I think getting it all trimmed out and everything um in the fall and having already built by January is kind of my idea. The timeline in the proposal says just tell you what it says. So they're going to focus on meatronics and EMT first because those are programs we're trying to start more quickly and they need less work than the culinary lab. They're a separate side of the building and in theory and we all done construction. We always know it costs more and takes longer than any proposal is ever going to say, but in theory it says August for that. But then the culinary lab being later on in the year and that, you know, we can make adjustments there. But just talk from a programmatic standpoint with the ENT

014lab, as Mr. Ray's already mentioned, you don't need much done to that room, but we also got the ambulance donated for that program, and that's actually the lab space, so we can have class if it's not completed in the fall. Also, with this with regards to mechatronics, we've already got $200,000 of mechatronics lab equipment that's stored away there. And as I mentioned, GTC is willing to be flexible with us there. So, we could start we have those positions open right now. We're looking at interviewing. So, we could start the programs even if they're not completely construction. And that half a million dollars that's left over, it's going towards equipment, right? the personal it has to go towards something that is allowable in that grant. I'm sure there's probably a portion of that that can go

015toward equipment, but the the majority of it has to go through fiscal construction. So Justin Kroo is working through some CTA equipment grants. I've been working with state level folks as far as getting uh the they have approved the plans in order and see plans, but they can approve that. There's up to a h 100,000 I think per program that you can apply for equipment in some of this that that's not going to be enough but some of it is going to be more than enough depending on the program. So, with the appliances, I mean, kitchen, commercial kitchen appliances are expensive. So, with some of that being designed in the the bid, that'll help us out. But, uh, it's it's a really nice situation, I feel like, and it's a win-win for both us and

016GNCC. And this is exponentially cheaper than have to go build even if you have the land trying to build some kind. Can you even imagine? It's 40,000 square feet. This build was 20 stacks. 2020 and it's it's a really got good bones. Um and it's been an interesting project just to work with their folks uh with what kind of systems are in place. So, you know, we've got we got to be a little give and take on both ends, make sure it lines up with what what they got in place there, but we're going to be able to do a lot with this gra. I was pleased that it came in at this number. Um we were a little worried with the price of everything how how soon or how how cheap it would come

017in. Um, but some things like heat and air units, rooftop units, sometimes we're seeing long lead time. So, that could hold us up on some things. But this is where the first step and then we'll start getting down to the the nitty-gritty with the timeline and probably able to report back to you a more specific timeline per program and kind of how they want to uh align this out. But we can't really get there until we we get it approved and start talking and negotiating with them. But we're pretty attuned to how this company works and um they've done really good work for us so far. So, We only had two bids. Um, and then they were the cheapest and rated the highest. And Zach us that day to help us rate it, which I

018thought was a neat. Yeah, that addition for somebody with a different perspective than us to see this stuff every day. So, he he definitely got some education that day and learn a little bit about what what goes on. So, that was helpful and brought a lot of different perspective for from his side, too. So yeah, it was it was really uh I'm really pleased that what this came in at because I was I was worried um that it might not be even in what we had out, you know, from the grant allocated and then, you know, we have to try to figure out how to how to, you know, pay for the other part of it. So yeah, I'm pleased with that grant would security measures be part of that grant. I know, you know,

019with especially what's just happened in Georgia with, you know, the the What am I What am I trying to say here? The is it CX? I think specific. So, we're actually already have that. So, that's I was going to say with our kids in the building, I want Yeah, we are. And that's what JTC uses is some TJ. So, they have strategic this year coming in. Yes. And so now that we're going I mean that's part of the reason too in our county and then the NCC like uh for our law enforcement folks, they're not trying to learn much different. So, that system's already in that building. So, um they also have cameras and some different things already in there as well. And then their campus police is actually stationed in that in the office

020in that facility too. So yeah, it made me feel a lot better um with our kids coming on there because we didn't want them to learn one set of principles and standards for security in our building and then have to go there and be like, "What do we do here?" You know, so it'll be a lot lot more streamlined. That's a good question. Yeah. And I just want to offer I believe most of the rest of the board had the opportunity to come and have a tour. If you ever want to come, just let me know. I'll be happy to show you around, show you what we're planning. I've been years I've been in that years ago, but I'm sure it's changed. Yes, sir. Fair amount over the years. So, thank you. Okay, we need

021a motion. Motion. A second. Any more discussion? All those in favor? Motion passes. Now, it is discussion of FY 2026 budget. here to control the PowerPoint a little bit. And I I would like to say, well, first of all, I want to say thank you again for allowing us to put those two on there. I think that's going to help us um get those moving quicker and it won't slow down the process of getting that especially the prek information. We can have that part of planning going at training and then they'll have that for our kids next year. So, it's a good thing. Um, and then what I want for tonight, especially for our, you know, I I say three new board members. Kevin's been through some budget presentations and things, so he's got a

022little bit more of a background, but this is going to be brand new to you guys. So, I'm I'm really going to I don't want to bore you guys to death, but I want to I want to go slowly through the process. Not because I need to go slowly for you, Travis. I'm just saying I I want y'all to understand that there is a process here in place for a reason. Um, and and I want you to kind of see how we walk through this part of it, which will then dovetail into the public hearings that we have to do before you approve a budget. That then dovetales into the potential of millage hearings when we get to millage hearings. Okay? So, they all play together. So, in this presentation, you'll think, well, they they've

023done one presentation and they've presented it multiple times. What we do, but it's it's it's pieces. The first part is your budget. The second part is for the system and the stakeholders to see it. Then the third part is how does this impact taxes? And so I try to do it that way. So I want y'all to know we're going to walk through that kind of slowly tonight just so and I want you to ask questions because we're going to throw a lot of things at the wall and we're going to see what sticks and and you guys are going to kind of help drive what sticks. So I just wanted to and at any moment if you have a question just pop free let me know what the the question is. Okay. Rachel's going

024to be right here behind me. she she can answer those questions as well. I always start off with mission and vision because I want our stakeholders to know, not just our employees, but I also want our stakeholders to know everything that we do is driven back to what's good for kids. Okay? And does it support the mission and vision? If it doesn't, we're not doing it right. It's got to be connected to the strategic plan, which is automatically connected to the mission and vision. So, it it's all in alignment. Okay? So, I always start off with that because I want folks to know as we're as as we're talking, Chris and I are talking, any of the departments, every time the question is always, okay, how does this affect our kids? Okay. Now, there's some

025things that we have to stretch a little bit because it's employee related, but it's got to circle back to what happened. So, I always start off with that. Gives me a chance to reinforce what our mission and vision is for anybody to attend the meetings. is typical at a budget hearing, we'll have 25 or 30 people between the two meetings. Um, mill hearings, depending on what's going on, you can have more and you you guys have sat through some of those meetings as well. I like to point out where does the revenue come from? Because most people don't realize this. They know property taxes, right? But they also don't realize there's a lot of other things mixed into that that they might not understand and realize. We talk about state funding, so the quality basic

026education, the QBE. Then we get categorical grants, which we were talking a little bit about those Perkins grants. And then of course equalization. All of that has gotten hit this year differently than it has in years past. And we're going to talk a little bit about that. And then federal funding. So we get a lot of federal funding. Title one, title two, title three, four, IDA, which is all of your special needs students with disabilities. then your purpose. All those are restricted for very specific purposes. Now, you keep hearing with the new administration in the White House that they're going to close the DOE, the federal department of education. And what you got to think about is you got to think about and I I saw a clip of Ronald Reagan. Okay? So, that was

027in the 80s, right? And he said the same thing. He never followed through with it. But his whole point was there's so many people that work in that building that we have to take a lot of those funds to pay salaries and that money never goes to the states to the local boards where they need the money, right? Because you're paying salaries for a lot of additional people. So the goal is to decrease the number of people so that the funds increase. So what did they tell us at the end of the year? Expect to get 15% less than you've got this past year. Well, for us, 15% in Title One money is a lot of money, right? So, we're hoping that they reduce the number of people, which will increase the amount of funds

028available, and then that 15% will be back to a normal allocation. But those are where we get our revenue, and that's what we're we're locked into. The only other revenue sources that we have, Rachel, correct me if I'm wrong, is we have the clear wire um data that we own, the bandwidth that we own. We get a monthly amount for a number of years on that and all that money is non, it's not restricted, but we use that for things for students. We give scholarships out of that those funds. We pay for a lot of things that are studentdirected. Okay? It's not a lot of money, but anytime there's money available that doesn't have strings attached, even though it's still part of an audit, we like to make sure people know that and it's not

029enough to make a huge impact on a budget, but it is something that's that people typically don't know about, but I like to make sure everybody knows where the money's coming from. Yes, sir. This may not be the right question, but I want to ask it anyway. Is there is there a calculated formula for allocation of money to the uh that comes to us? Everything that comes from the state and federal is based on a formula. Yes, sir. And so it's based on the number of kids that are enrolled and how they're served and it's based on how they're served. Okay. It's a great question. So I I I share this. When I started here 13 years ago, we used to have a count in October, account in December, and account in March. And they

030put those and average them together. And then that told you what you were going to get the following year or what you might lose the following year. So when I started, we were losing over a million dollars a year every year going into the next budget. Well, you can't stay in business losing a million dollars a year. So we immediately started looking at how are we serving kids. Okay. So most kids come in with a weighted average for the grade band that they're in. Just there's a number there. But then if they require additional services that weight gets higher and higher. Okay? Now that's where you start building your dollars. But you got to be careful. There's a balance there. I'm not going to just throw you into a program so I can move you

031to a higher weight to get more money. Not going to do that. We're going to talk about the kid, what their needs are, and then we're going to serve them. Here's the for instance. A student with a very specific deil uh disability. We can just say right off, we're going to put them into four segments. We're going to keep them self-contained all day long at the high school. They're never going to go out to a classroom, and I'm going to I'm going to knock that one out of the park with the funding that's coming from the state. But that kid needs to be out two of those segments in a classroom with age appropriate peers. Well, that means I'm going to get a lesser funding for him on those two segments, but that's good for

032that kid, right? So, I don't mind losing money there because I know I'm doing the right thing for that child. That's why we start off with the mission and vision. It's about kids. It's about supporting them. So, back to your original question, yes, everything we get is based on a specific allocation. Federal funds, there's a compliance mechanism there, too, that says if you spend it differently, you're going to jail. I don't want to go to jail. I love orange but I don't look good in orange. Right. So, so you've got to fit the compliance on top of with the allocation as well. Yeah, it's a good question. I go into splash funds. Lots of people get confused about eslo and our regular budget. Okay. Two pots of money. One comes from sales tax. One comes

033from all that other property tax, real estate tax, adorum used to be. Now it's a a specific formula. They get confused. They say, "Well, don't go up on your millage rate or don't uh hire more teachers. Pay for them out of ESLs." Well, you can't mix those two funds. East only for buildings. We have pertinences that are associated with buildings and we came up with buildings, bonds, books, buses, and bikes. Those are things that you can spend it on. Has to be in the referendum or you can't spend it at all. But it can't be to offset cost when your general budget can't cover something and you can move money. You can't do that. So, it's very, very specific. A lot of times people come in and they'll they'll want they won't vote for one

034or the other. That's why I had a little bit of a fear factor and I know you shared that fear factor about espos this last time. People were saying, "Well, you're your mill's good. You you didn't opt out. You ought to be okay with what you're getting locally, so you really don't need that." Okay? And so, you know, this project, we would have still gotten it because we got a grant. But if it had come in at $6 million, ESPOS would have had to pay for that different time. Granted, we we would have had to consider otherwise we were going to pay the additional three. But my point being, you can't just take general fund money and pay for all that because you've got other things that that stuff is already positioned to pay for.

035No, you I want you to ask, especially now that I don't have to hit that buzzer and shock you know, I mean, you're you're good right now. This is great. If I start moving forward closer to you, Dr. Wilson, you know I'm coming after you. So, well, I I don't I don't mind telling you that that coming from Bradley County in Tennessee, I'm obviously ignorant of a lot of the uh uh issues that take place, but and this may be one of those ignorant questions, but sometimes I I see a sign that says TLS. What's the difference between Tespluring? Yes. And that's county money that they get. Keep in mind too, if you remember in House Bill 581, if we decided to opt out, the cities and municipalities weren't going to opt out because that

036that gives them the option of passing another splot that gives them an additional penny. So, they weren't going to lose that. We didn't have that option, but we still did the right thing. So, but no, T-splot is for transportation. Yes, sir. So, I go through that so people will know what that looks like. Then I go into QVE because I think this is one of the most important pieces. Quality basic education. It's been in place since 1985. It's never been adjusted. So when you hear your elected officials say you fully funded you guys again, it's a joke. I mean it's literally a joke because they do not fully fund education at all. Do we appreciate what they do to help us? 100%. But you cannot look at that funding formula and say it hasn't been

037adjusted for inflation since 1985 that you're fully funding anything. You're not. Okay? And it's hard to say that when you've got billions in the coffers this year, too. That's a little bit of a struggle. However, historically, it's supposed to provide 60% of your funding and local 40%. This past year, we were at 34%. I think it was about I think it was higher than that. It's in the PowerPoint way later on. We'll see that. But the way we're spending our local dollars and our QBE dollars, local still not at that 40%. Not even close. 37% plus. So 37. So we're doing a really good job with that. So I kind of point that out to folks so they'll know it's not we're getting more from the state than we are from local based on that

038formula. So and then I told you that it's based on how we serve the kids. I think it's 31. 31. I thought it was closer to the low end. So, yeah. All right. So, this is where we kind of start getting into where we're going this year, right? QBE earnings. If you see the first column is the fiscal year 2025 that we're in. Those were the numbers we got in at the midterm. The middle column is what we have gotten so far. It's still tentative. They haven't approved anything yet. The governor just signed the safety bill yesterday, so he's starting to get his pens ready. So, we're going to see whether things start getting approved. So, we'll continue to track that. But if you just walk down through there, you can see that we we

039received from the state this past year $73.4 million for enrollment and how we serve kids. Okay. This year, the allocation has gone up by $2 million. So, you say, "Okay, how did we get $2 million more in QBE?" We had a slight increase in enrollment and the way we're serving kids. That's where that money comes from. That's why I stay on my principles all the time to know more and more about FTE. Learn it backwards and forward so you know how you're supposed to be scheduling and how you're serving kids. The next one is the local fair five the local fair share. Okay. So every year they take the equivalent of five mil from our budget and it goes back to the state to put in a large account and then it's divvied out by

040formula for equalization. So the districts and you you back me up on this. I know you will. The districts that their values around in property are lower than the comparison across the state. they get additional money that helps offset and gives almost like title one. It levels the playing field for some of our kids. Okay. So, last year, this current year, it was at $8.2 million. This year, what we're sending back to the state is the equivalent of $9.5 million. So, you can see already there's a difference of $1.3 million. And that's based on our tax digest, that local 5 mill share. Then you go to equalization. This one's skewed a little bit in our opinion because we were predicting last year that our equalization was going to be somewhere around 9.1 $9.2 million. It

041came in at 128. You remember what the governor did last year? He got criticized because the coffers were so full that he made a one-time donation to equalization and we picked up an additional $3 million last year. that increased to $266 million in 25 statewide. So that's why we didn't lose money and that that equalization is based on what we do with the tax meal rate. So that's why and it and it's like two years behind. So this year I kept telling the board last year that we would lose probably about a million dollars. That's just an estimate because we went from 17.404 404 mills to 16.404 mills two years ago. And that's the effective rate, not necessarily the rate we set. Right. It it's but it it impacts equalization both either way. But you're

042right. It does. It does. You're right. The effective rate is based on how much tax money we revenue we actually receive and they calculate. But the tax meal rate is what you set to to do the taxes. But then there's an amount you actually receive and sometimes you receive sometimes we have people paying delinquent taxes and it's kind of they might go back and pay set they owed the year before and you don't know when they're going to pay it. So So you can see the equalization went down this year. The estimate right now is $9 million. So based on the inflated number last year and the number that we actually thought it was going to be at, we're losing $3.8 million right off the bat in equalization. That's that's a huge hit. Yes sir.

043So So what's what's the prediction based on stock? I mean when you're you tell you not you said that that what you had predicted here. What's the prediction? So the FY26 the middle column we get an aotment sheet but it's a sheet from the state. Okay. They send us all those numbers. Yes sir. And that that equalization is based on your your two years ago digest. So that that's the number that they send to us. And this is usually pretty that's usually pretty solid when they send this. At this point, it's not even on the allotment sheet. It's on a spreadsheet that they sent where the state has actually calculated our QBE formula, but they're still before they put it on the allotment sheet, they're waiting for the governor to sign the budget and approve

044it and make sure that these are the the correct numbers that something's not going to change or he's not going to veto something in the budget. So, and this 3 million deduction actually three that 3 million is the 3 million that the governor put in last year. It is. That's exactly right. So, we had predicted last year that it was going to be about the same, but he added the money to it. So, you're exactly right. And this one actually should be calculating two years ago when we went from 16404 to 14.982 in the mill rate. um that's what they should be using to calculate this year the equalization for next year because it's always two years behind when that what they calculate it which they won't share that spreadsheet right now either I can

045usually get it from them but and not till the governor signs it up to this this may be simplistic because I'm a simple money but are all these calculations based on overall enrollment in North County the FTE the QBE earnings yes and the equalization has some play with that as well and how they're serving. Yeah, you're right. So, you can see nursing went up a little bit. I don't understand that unless that was something the governor chose to do because the nursing dollars come from the Philip Morris lawsuit years ago and that money has been decreasing exponentially every year. So, $196,000 for nurses is just a drop in the bucket and it's hard to get, you know, true health professionals. But anyway, we're appreciative of the 3,400 additional. Transportation went up again. You can see

046that by $536,000. So, we're appreciative of that as well. But when you run those numbers, you can see as we started budget building, we're already at a $2.5 million deficit. Okay? Not deficit, but we're facing a reduction in in revenue from the state at $2.5 million going into the budget. This is just a chart showing revenue changes over the years and then I think local five mill share. So you can see as revenue has gone up as as the assessed value of property has gone up then we've seen the local five mill share that we send back to the to the to the government for that equalization. And it used to be that, you know, we sent back a number eight plus million. We were getting 9 10 11 12 13 million back. So there

047was a three4 million difference for us on the plus side, which is great, right? And if you'd gotten the same equalization this year, think about that. We wouldn't be starting off in a deficit this year. It would be more of a positive. This is the first time when they the local 5 mill share has been what we're giving up is more than what we're getting back. And that's on the next on the next slide too. So So you can see from FY22 all the way up to current numbers uh what the local 5 mill share was. So in 22 you can see it was $7.2 million to the projection for 26 is at 9.5. So it's definitely increased you know substantially. And then you see on the other side if you'll compare FY22 you lost

0487.2 but you picked up 8.2. 7. So you had a difference of a million5 on the plus side. 7 million 8.4 you had a million4. So it was it was running pretty comparably between what you were giving up to the state for equalization but what you were gaining in equalization. So we were still the beneficiary of decent money. Last year was an anomaly. We gave up 8.2 but we picked up 12.8. Right. This year we're getting back to normal unless now again the governor hasn't signed anything yet. So he may put some money back in there again to equalization to offset some of these costs. We're just having to give you what we have right tonight so that you'll know as we're going into the rest of this discussion where we're starting. And so you

049can see we're giving up 9.5. We're only getting back nine. So we're losing a half a million dollars right off the bat in equalization. And that's that's going to be difficult for us to and you guys know the only place to make that up for us is only two choices. It's either in people or it's in property tax. That's the only two options you have. So, you either start cutting your people and your programs or you start considering what the millage rate looks like. And you're, you know, we're sitting in a really good place right now. 14.982. It's the lowest in the history of Watford County. True. So, we're in a great place, but there may be you may end up having to consider looking at that as you go forward in the future. Is

050that is that making sense? And there's a state law basically that equalization money that we received 12.8 million this year. Um there's a state law that was passed the year I started here. I think that if you drop your millage rate or your effective millage rate below 14, you're no longer eligible for equalization funding. So when they calculate equalization as you each time you lower the millage rate you actually lose equalization funding. But if you go in the past it's been if you go below 14 mills then you lose equalization two years from that. The last two years our roll back rate for the millillage was below 14. It was 13 something each time they calculated it and we didn't want to lose that equalization because we would still have to give up the local

0515 mil share. Now they have passed a law this just just this year I think changing that dropping it to 10. But every time we lower the millage not only are you losing property taxes but you are also going you know losing shaving off a million or more of equalization and not to throw our neighbors under the bus because I don't like that's not you know I don't like to play like that but just as an example and as a factual example is all I'm giving you. So they chose five years in a row to roll back. They lost $7.5 million in equalization and now they're having to borrow money to make payroll. That's a scary place to be. They have less than a million dollars in the bank right now. That you can't operate

052a a a budget of a hundred plus million dollars with a million dollars in the bank. It just doesn't work. I mean, and so then you're having to have a tax anticipation notice and you're borrowing money based on collections coming in and you're living monthtomonth off borrowed money. And you know, I I've done that before as a a person working in a homeowner. I know how that feels. There's a lot of pressure there. You can't run a business like that. You just can't. So that's why there's such a balance. And you guys will know. I'm never going to tell you what to vote on. I'm going to give you numbers and options. I'm going to give you the backup for it. Then I'm going to ask you to make a decision, but I'm always going

053to present it to you with some level of balance that says if we do this, then here's what offsets the balance. And that's what we'll try to do. I just needed you to know that we're already before we've even started talking about dollar raise, step increases, all of that, you're losing $2.5 million right off the bat. Okay? Now, everything that we do is based on projections. like our budget this year. We projected a number last year. We're already seeing that we're going to be under that budget. Part of that's because we had a number of positions that we couldn't fill all year long. And so you budgeted for those positions and their benefits, but you never hired them. So the money is still sitting there. Okay, that puts you in a better shape with your

054financial reserve. But when you know you're losing 2.5 million right off all that you just saved, it's it's going away. And in the last few years, we have also, including this school year, we've used er funds to a lot of times for continuity of services, which helped build fund balance. We used 2.5 million at the beginning of this year for something, you know, that's helping this year's budget come under what we projected. So, let me ask this. the the 2.5 million we would be starting in the hole so to speak. We had the anomaly the governor gave more last year for that that money where is it in reserve now? Was it spent already? Where is that that 3 million plus that the governor had put in extra equalization? So, I don't know if we

055could I don't know if you could track back, Kevin, that exact amount of money. I mean, that exact money, the equalization money because it goes into your general fund. It's either been spent or it's winding up the sun. Yes, that's exactly right. And then on top of that is the the remaining er funds that we were able to move back and forth. We were able to pay for some things that would have been coming out of the regular budget that didn't. And so that's why that fund balance continued to build through the course of this year. Yes, sir. We knew this was coming. That's why I kept pushing whatever we can do with esser funds to get our fund balance built up because when co money's gone, we're back to normal. We're going to be

056in a world of hurt if we don't have a good fund balance. And so that's that's kind of why we've landed where we have. There's been a strategic plan to get to this point so that I wasn't standing here tonight going, we got a $2.5 million cut coming and we got a million dollars in the bank. I mean, that would have been, you know, I would probably just packed up. I'd left my laptop cuz it doesn't belong to him left. I mean, because that that's just not good planning. I think we've done a really good job of getting to this point. I just need to tell you the worst of the worst as we're about to throw out some other things to good question. These things I like to point out for folks that are

057especially in the audience during a budget hearing. We get no funding for any of those positions. People think, "Oh, you get all this for this, this." No, no, no. We don't. We get limited funding for extra, not extra positions because a custodian, a school bookkeeper, payroll accounts pay, all of those, those aren't extra people. Those are people that you have to have to make this business work. Okay? But you get no funding for that. And then states funds less than 20% of transportation cost. Even though they gave us 500,000 more this year, it's still probably going to be 23 24% max. So when they say fully funding, they're missing that mark by a mile. Don't mean to use a transportation there. And then everything keeps rising. And just like we were talking about earlier, Travis

058mentioned his company buying nets and the the the margin the price hasn't gone up at all with the tariffs. And he said, "Well, it's because they were gouging this with the price overpricing it anyway." When the tariffs do come and the prices go up, this affects us just like it does any other business. We're in that same boat. Just like Mr. Wallace said, HAC unit back backlog on those. It might be two years before you're getting something because it's coming overseas and the price has gone up exponentially. All right, so now let's get into the weeds a little more. All right, you ready? Is everybody okay where we are right now? I don't want to go too fast. I want to make sure you're getting your questions and keep interrupting and asking. So wait, go

059back one. Go back one. Transportation in this budget. Have you built in this like buses and stuff? Are you going to go through that in this slide? Chris, we we don't, but what in that budget that we get from them? They also build in an amount where we qualify for bonds, okay, for to purchase buses. We typically, Chris, we qualified for one one year. We've qualified for as many for the last two one two total for the last two years. for the last two years. Yeah. Yes. Have we bought that? Two buses every two every year or we're buying more than that. Okay. And and I think three years ago never mind. Yeah. Now keep in mind the bond amount is $88,110. Okay. These exist. Yeah. So we usually split it the 88 110 and

060general fund where the where the state funding picks it up and then the rest was making stop. We did have eight from the state though about three years ago. And you try not to buy too many at one time because you have to replace the same amount and so you try to even it out over the course of the years. And we try to also have uh east fill in the gaps with buses because it's an allowable expenditure and it's easy to keep get on a a system so that you're replacing enough to keep your fleet. You don't want to have the best fleet in the world, but you want to have a pretty good fleet since we're traveling a million six million 600,000 miles a year. You're putting a lot of wear and tear

061on buses and so you've got to keep replacing. I was I was just curious. Can I add one thing with Yes, sir. So, what he was saying about you don't want the fleet to get too new. Um, they don't give you you'll qualify for bond money if you're too new. And we ran into that where I came from. They don't have a bus on the road over 10 years old, which sounds great and it is that is good. Um, but there's a cost to that, too. And then you can work yourself to new to get out of even qualifying for those those bonds. So, so it's a game. I mean, it really is. You got to you got to make sure you maximize how well you can get the funding. So, there's a little bit

062of a strategy. So, this slide starts a little bit of of a question that Rachel and I asked you guys a month or so ago about some direction forward. Uh, there were a couple of things that came up. One was the consideration of a dollar an hour and a step increase for our non-certificated employees. And then the the thought of adding experience levels after it's actually after year 21. 21 and 22 is when they stop getting experience. So 23 through whatever they were 30 there's no additional bump for experience. Right? So we started doing some checking. But I want to I want to go to the last bullet there. C certificate of experience under the current scale. If you're eligible for an increase this year for experience you get that every two years. It's every

063two years is when you get it. But we'll have it's just for numbers sake. Half of our teachers will get a bump, half of them won't this year because where they fall, right? That always costs us about a million every year. I mean, we that's something we budget in every year. We tell you guys that every year. It's always going to cost us about that amount of money every year for that experience increase. Okay? That's just up through that 2122. That's when it stops. That's on a state scale. All right? What we did, we'll explain the two above that. We started looking at systems around us that go all the way to third. Okay. The only two we found so far are Calhoun City and Gordon County. Calhoun City did it. Gordon County was losing

064teachers. So what did they do? Because they're in the same neighborhood. They had to do the same thing. That's the only two we found so far. Now that doesn't mean there's not others. That just means in our region those are the only two we found so far. So what they do is they go 23 24. So that means when you hit year 23 you get the bump, but then you don't get it at 24 because they're together. 25 26 you get one more bump and then they do 27 plus. So all the way to whenever you stop at 27 you get your bump. That's your last bump. So you you you're going to get three more experience bumps by doing it that way. Okay. When we looked at that, that's a substantial increase for folks.

065Okay. So, we we I say we got a mouse in the pocket. I went to Rachel and said, "Let's think about this. What if we took the local teacher supplement?" If you remember, for those of you that were on the board in 23, we brought a proposal to the board that said, "Let's move up." And I think I've got that here. Is this the proposed one? Yes. Okay. So what you're looking at there is our scale currently has two columns less than 15 years experience 15 to 22 years experience and that's where it stops right now. Okay. Well, it actually is just at 15 and over gets this call and well it stops at 21 but we we we book in 21 and 22 because you don't get us you don't get a bump at

066year one and then year two and then year three. You get one two you get one bump. Three four you get one bump. buy seats, you get one bump. So it's not every year that you get this. So 2122 sit together, it's one bump. Okay? So that shows you the potential of introducing and getting approval from the board on a third tier. And that's the tier 23 plus. What that means is let's just take a T4. Okay? Currently at a T4 and it says on there is a bachelor's degree. It's $2,000. That's what a T4 stands for. It's a teacher with a four-year degree, bachelor's degree. They're getting on this scale, we're we're showing this is a proposed scale. So, last year it would have been how much? $1,500. $1,500. So, we propose moving everything

067on tier one $500 more than it is right now. Okay. Everything on tier 2 $500 more than it was right now. Okay. So, a T4 is going from this year, if I'm less than 15 years, I've got a four-year degree. My local supplement is $1,500. Next year, based on this proposal and your approval, that T4 teacher is going to get an additional $500 for $2,000 for their local supplement. So they get a state salary schedule based on the number of years they've worked and their certification level and then we add a local supplement of the proposal would be $2,000. And since since FY2020 the state has bumped the teacher scale um in 2020 they had bumped to $3,000. They bumped at $2,000. They bumped at $2,000. They bumped at $2,500 this year. a total of

068$9,500 on the teacher scale on the state portion. And in FY23, the last time we looked at the local salary scale, um the state had not given an increase to teachers in FY23. So we actually we proposed to the board bumping $1,000 or 500 and we bumped it 500 on the local portion. So basically basically this scale that you're looking at our local salary supplement gets added to the state scale and that's what's on our teacher pay scale. Got a question. Go ahead. Just for clarity. Um so if it's less than 15 years the scale is what right now currently for a T4. Um, it might be helpful if I give. So, right now, everything on there is a proposal. They would all be they would all be $500 more. It's currently 1,500. Yes. So,

069I'm taking 500 off one of these. Yes, sir. Got. And then the third scale, the 23 plus, we don't even have that currently. That's a proposed scale. That would be in lie of doing the experience. That's the only reason I threw that out there is because the experience, if you look at the number of teachers that we have currently that fall in the 23 or higher, it's 270 teachers. Okay? They all fall at different places. There's some of them that are 23, 24, 2. They're also at different certification levels. So, as we looked at this and Rachel, you help me with the numbers right at the low end to get everybody from where they currently are right now 2122. I'll I'll wait just a second. Go. Go ahead. So this year Kevin's a 2122. He's

070a 22year teacher. He gets no more experience bumps. He's a T4. Next year he would be at 23 years. If we did a 2324, it's going to cost him by formula. It's going to cost the district. He's going to get a raise of about $1,400 is what it's going to end up being. Okay. But Kevin, all of them aren't going to land at 23. They're all over the the years and they're all over the certification. We've projected that this would cost us at a minimum of about $650,000 to get everybody on this new scale on these new experience levels. Okay. To a high of almost $2 million because we've got to figure out where they all fall. That was if we added if we added the experience levels three bones. Okay. So you if it's

071if it's $1,500 a year each experience bone, right? Let's just say for for whatever reason, that's $4,500 if I'm on the end of the scale right now. If I'm a 29y year teacher with a T7, we're adding a lot of money to that person to get them to that point. That's why I backed up and said, "Wow, if we're going to be in the whole 2.5 starting off and we we're potentially going to have to add a million nine just to get everybody on an experience level, why don't we back up and look at this from a local supplement?" Because right now, if I'm at 23 years, my local supplement for a T4, it stays at well, it would have been less than 500, so $2,700. That's all I'm getting every year is that local

072supplement. This would create a new scale for them. It would increase them a little bit more and it would give them something that can be added to TRS as they get every year. They get that local supplement every year, not just those three bumps. It ends up being quite a bit less in overall pay for them. I think it's about $4,000 less on the tail end, but it's still something to consider. You know, does this uh include, let's say we bring back teachers after retirement, we bring them back part time. Does this include them too? Are they in this scale? The local supplement, they are, but they don't take benefits because their benefits come out of TRS. Um, so it saves us $22,000 right off the bat because we're not We don't have to pay

073any on their TRS, right? Because that's going up, right? We still do. We We still don't pay into their TRS, but we still pay their 6%. We pay our percent and we pay their 6%. But what we do is we negotiate that out of their salary. And it depends on what part-time. I mean, if they come back 435 435 is the magic number that I use for anybody coming back part-time. We negotiate with those that uh came under that house bill under the um the high need areas that actually took a year off uh and then came back and worked full-time. And that's a different category. And what we did is we did have to pay the TRS, but we negotiated with them and actually backed it out of their salary. So if you were

074making X when you left us, we brought you back at that, but we took out the 6% that was going back to TRS. So we don't pay coming out of their checks previously years. So their teacher supplement had already dwindled down, but now when they come back, they would get this new teacher supplement, correct? of over 23 years. They're right. Am I thinking they would get 4355 of it? Not all of them, but yes, you're right. They would get the new higher rate. They would. The only argument there I would have is all of that knowledge base is going out the door and we're not replacing it with anybody coming in. So, in order to save that knowledge base and keep that experience there, it it would be worth it because you're automatically saving $22,000

075plus 6% on every teacher that you bring back because you're not paying their benefits and you're negotiating out their TRS. So, it's it's it's a I mean, it's a good deal. We get the experience, we get the the knowledge base, we get all the training for a lot less of the cost. So ba basically anything that we do beyond this I've got the our scale for this year on top and then the next thing the next page is the state scale and then the next page is what our what that local supplement currently looks like. So if you were to take our local supplement and the state pay and add the two together that's what's on our pay scale on the front. So for anything anything that we add like if we were to add

076like those like he was talking about Gordon County and Calhoun city they have added to their pay scale but they went to 21 years and 22 then they added a a layer for 23 to 24 years then they added another layer for 24 to 25 and then they added a 27 plus. So they added three rows on the bottom of bears. But everything that you add above or below what the state is giving us, anything that you're adding is local. And so is the teacher supplement. If you go, it's the same thing. So what you're looking at is the the whole goal of considering this was retention and and attracting quality teachers. That was the whole goal. Well, one of them is going to cost you the first year to get everybody where they're supposed

077to be. It's going to either cost you 685 or 1.9. We don't know that yet. That's why I'm giving you the information. This is not going to cost you that much money. It's going to give them something for every year. It's more than they're making now because think about your 23 year and plus. They don't get a higher local supplement after they reach 23 years. That it stays the same. So on this on this pay scale, I'm a prospective teacher. I'm I'm coming from somewhere else. I moved into the area and I'm I'm weighing the differences between Walker, Katusa, Whitfield. And I look at that pay scale. I'm going to see 21 22 23 plus. It's there's no distinction in here between local supplement or just that they can go pull that state scale and

078kind of see that and compare how much we're adding to it. But what this local supplement on the screen would do is it would take this pay scale and add $500 all over it. Right. And then if we decided to go with the 23 year bump in the local supplement again, we would change this 21 and over to 21 and 22 and then we would go 23 and over and add another level here with that local. So I mean just throwing something else out and and I I don't know where this went in legislation, but I know there was talk of the 25 year plus retirement at one point. I don't know if that's dead water. It it's it was approved to go into an actuary study for a year. Okay. So it it almost

079would seem to fit if we were going to do this to go up to 20 have 21 22 23 24 and then 25 plus at that point to if that if that's going to come about to have an additional step in there with this. It almost made sense in that, you know, for it to be seamless. And if we did have folks that retired that wanted, you know, that we could get their knowledge back, you know, plus I think the more we could more opportunity we have to have experience, add that extra layer in there, I think you have a better chance of retaining folks, especially as they're getting close to that retirement age. If they can get that little extra bump, they're willing to hang on here. compared to going somewhere else and chasing

080money to get those highest two paid years toward their retirement. I don't know if that makes sense. It does. It does. And that that's the whole thing as we started doing the comparison in the local supplement going up $1,000 that T4 if they stay in there till 30 years versus the experience bumps. It's about a $4,000 difference on final year pay. two highest years about $4,000 for that for that teacher. Okay. Then what you got to do is you got to look at it and go, "Okay, if I work 30 years, what was $4,000 going to get me in retirement?" When you start looking at it from that perspective, it becomes negligible. However, they don't see it like that. They just see $4,000 versus $1,000. So I was just trying to make sure that what

081I brought to you was is there something we can do this year and then continue that study going into next year with that actuary study coming out where they say yeah it's 25 because then you're saying 21 22 23 24 25 plus that's your idea not mine it makes sense but the timeline would work better for us then you've got a better idea of what your budget looks like next year and the house bill. We're at 581 and all the local exemptions, but do they approve this at 25? Because I think that 25 and 60 days off, not a year off, you're going to have more people come back for that. So, and to throw one other thing at you that is just great for the state of Georgia. back in, oh gosh, it would

082have been in the early 90s, they gave teachers a way to get themselves off of that lowest scale as a beginning teacher. And there were components that they had to do to get themselves salary bumps or experience staff. And that happened and then actually the state of Georgia did away with that requirement and they said no if you are a fully certified teacher and you start out in Georgia you're going to start out with zero years of experience that you have all of your certification and you complete your first year teaching in Georgia then we're going to start bumping you up. So on some of our people this is really where it gets really interesting on contracts. If you look at me, and I've been here my entire career in Georgia. I was fully certified

083when I started. I have 28 years of experience. That's what it shows in our program. 28 years of experience. That's what TRS has me at, 28 years of experience. But if you look at pay, I'm actually paid for two additional years. Some are paid for one additional year depending on if they came from Tennessee and came here. So we have that you have that differential sometimes of from zero to two years. You don't really need I can give you all these different scenarios. But that's something else Kevin that when you're talking about people moving up I've had to tell people well I'm being paid on 30 years. That means I can retire. Well, no. That's something the state of Georgia did a long time ago to help teachers, but for TRS, how long have you

084been paying into TRS? Does that make sense what I just said there? So, sometimes you see some people say, I actually get paid for more experience than I have. They do some based on their credentials and so forth and how they started and where they started and if they were certified. Sorry about that, Mr. and correct. I was going to say with that, correct me if I'm wrong, but that was done pretty much to reward folks for staying. It was it was most definitely and to be fully certified. That's another reason when you have people that come to us that are doing an alternative program, it's very advantageous for them to get that program completed because if they take two years to do it, they're not eligible for that bump. But if they can come

085in, do what they need to do, get their uh certification fully certified after their bachelor's and do the um Georgia's TAP program, they're eligible for a one-year bump. So again, um there used to be things that you had to do, courses you had to take, but Georgia did away with that. And this is something Georgia does. This is something HR departments have to report. I have to report when somebody leaves us, they ask us, were they advanced on the salary scale? If so, how much? So with with this again you said somewhere from 650 to 1.9 that's if we're paying the experience part of it with supplement you said it would be less correct. So, so it it is So, what is our number for the 23 plus one? So, that's the one that's in

086front of you now. Certificated, if you increase it by $500, you create that scale. I mean, the the for everyone, that's about $700,000. That that bumps $500 on less than 15, more than 15. If you add the 23 plus local supplement scale, it adds an additional 300,000. So, that's a million dollars. So, you're looking at a million if you up the teacher supplement already. that flavor because you're adding a tier plus the certificate experience that they right that's already in there. I mean that's that's going to be you got to do that. You don't have you have a choice. Yeah. But if you look at and just the low end was $646,660. That's it. Everybody is right now at 2122 and that's not the case of the 270. The middle would be 1.3 and the

087high is 1.9. So, I would safely say we're probably somewhere between the 646 and the 1.3. Yeah. To to get everybody where they needed to be on the experience scale where you're at a million with just adding. So you put if you put a second step to the 25 plus and I know it's not an exact correlation it be exactly double but you're you're probably you know another you know double that or 2.1 or something like that with the extra additional and and basically what what I did is I took I took the difference between the 19 and the 19 to 20 and the 21 and over and just kind of okay, we would increase them this if they're on this. And we basically we have in this year's stuff, we have like I think

08830% of our teachers are at the 21 plus, but I don't know exactly all of our reporting pretty much stops at 21 plus. Um that's the 276 that I Yeah, there's 276 teachers right now and that can change of course next year. Let me give you maybe a better example. So Kevin, you're a T4. So at at 30 years on the scale right now with the current uh local supplement, you're going to you're going to retire. Your highest two years are going to be $63,587. You're going to get 60% of that for the rest of your life. If we do the supplement increase and add the 23, it's going to be [Music] $64,587 because you're going to get $1,000 more on your supplement. But you don't I mean, you get that same thing for the

089remainder of the years that you're under contract, right? So that's your highest two years. If you do the experience for that same teacher, it's going to go to 68175. So you can see there's about a little less than $4,000, 3,000 plus. And then you've got to take that and go, okay, what's 60% of that? And is it worth the board adding that? It's worth it to the employee, don't get me wrong, but can you sustain that into the future? And that's the biggest issue right now is just sustaining it. Then when you get to a T7, highest person on the scale, they've got their doctor, right? And they're 27 or they're they go 30 years. They're $93,27 is what they're going to get 60% of. That's that's what the scale says. we would take them

090to $88,80. So you can see there's about a $5,000 difference for that higher education attainment, you know, same number of years. So all I'm trying to give you is things to think about the experience for the first year to get everybody where they are. It's going to be an exponential cost to you somewhere between 700 and a million three. This one is going to be a million dollars. We can calculate that one. And what that does, it adds a scale for 23 up that we've never had before. they've never they get the same supplement when they tap out. They get that same supplement for the rest of the time. So that that was the the first stop and I know that's a lot to digest. I I understand that. I just felt like we needed

091to talk through that as we started off where we started off so that everybody would know because there's there's a big difference in the experience to third and not the teacher supplement if that makes any sense. And when we did this in 93, we got very competitive with those around us except for Whitfield, except for Dalton City, except for Gordon and Calhoun City. We're just not going to compete. But when you go to Whitfield and you go to to Dalton, you're going into a school that's probably 75 at least 75% ESL population. So there's a different dynamic that you're going to have to deal with that you're you're maybe not dealing with here in Walker County. That's not good, bad, or indifferent. It's just it's a fact, right? So, we did the 500. You guys

092gave us graciously said 500. Um, we we asked for a thousand, we did 500 because we weren't sure where we're going to be with the budget. U, that made us a little more competitive. So, right now, when you look at like districts around us at different areas of the scale, we're really competitive. So, you're back to your question about the starting salary, they're beginning to look at that and go, okay, the state says this, everybody does that. What's the local supplement? if it's attractive enough and the climate we have in Mar County, we have more teachers coming for that than they do for the money sometimes, especially your young folks. So, does that all make sense? I know that was a lot to digest and but I mean I just want you to begin thinking

093through because the goal here is for for our new folks. The goal would be Tuesday night based on your instructions tonight, we'll have something else for you to begin to react to because what happens is when you go to the June board meeting planning session, we have to have a premeating open to the public to go over the full budget, the tenative budget. So you have to be in the next month. You have to be close enough to say, "Yeah, we're good with this right here. These are the things we're ready to move forward with so we can present that to the public." Then we come down here to the board meeting and we have one of those budget meetings again at at 6:00 and then at 6:30 you vote on the tenative budget. Then

094you have July off, not off, but we wouldn't be talking about because you're waiting on the tax digest, the millage rate, and then we go into August and you're starting to talk about the potential of having millage here. And so that's kind of why we wanted to walk through all of this. So, let me move on to a couple other SL slides. This is the non-certificated that you guys had mentioned, the $1 an hour plus a step if eligible. So, if you go up on the scale, a dollar an hour for all of our certificated folks. And what that does is we did that a couple years ago because our starting pay was lower than, you know, Wendy's, Chick-fil-A, places like that. And so, we had people jump and chip and go make $15 an

095hour. What they didn't realize is they were going in $15 an hour, but they were only getting part-time. They were getting no benefits. They were working weekend to night and they hated it. So, they came back. So, we decided, let's adjust our scale. So, if you add a dollar, it adjusts every scale across every amount across the scale. The step increases based on their experience level. And so, some people are out of steps. They've crossed the line of all the available steps. We don't want to keep adding steps to the the pay scale. So, it's easier to add the dollar amount and it affects all the scale. So, if you're topped out of the scale, you still get a dollar extra on your pay, if that makes sense. Okay. You can see a dollar an

096hour is going to cost us about $1.21 million to add that to every pay scale across the certificated. And then if you did if you did I'm non-certificated. And then if you do a a step with that, that's another $490,000. so you can see what you're looking at if you do that for your non-certificated folks. The other thing that we've talked about is the potential of looking at our bus drivers. And so I had Rachel go through and give me and this is just on drivers. And the only reason I parked on drivers again another time that's right in there in the transportation, right? We're having a hard time finding drivers, right? Okay. So, a lot of districts around us are their starting pay is $20 an hour to drive. Okay, we're we're at $16.97.

097That's our starting pay. Okay. So, if we went to $20 an hour on the low end, that's $3.3 increase. You'd have to increase that on all your staff across the board. Okay. If we did that, right now we have 67 drivers. That would be about $316,000 for us to increase the drivers to a the low end $20 up to a high end of 2537. We feel like that that would start attracting some more folks. Kevin, you were in that business before. You know how that is. Um we're just not attracting drivers at this point because it's a difficult job. But that's $316,000 just with that group. Is that does that include the attendance on the special? That does not. That's just the attendance would be included in a dollar an hour, but they wouldn't be

098included in this. And the only reason we say that, Kevin, is you know what that looks like for a driver. It's CDL training. It's on the road. They're the ones behind the wheel. I mean, there's a lot more at stake than the person sitting in the bus behind them. So, that's kind of where we are with that. The dollar an hour for that group is 104,000. It's in that 1.21 that we had already in there. the 313 from the additional 211 would be you know and the additional funding from the state for transportation was right at 500 500,000. Yes, sir. That's exactly right. So I mean that that's that's that's kind of where that whole thought process came from when we saw that 500,000. So So do you think that uh at $20 an hour

099we would uh I mean what's the realistic expectation of of how many more drivers you think that would bring in? Travis, I would safely say that right now. Chris, you you correct me if I'm correct me if I'm wrong. Is Chris over there? Oh, yeah. Sorry, I didn't see you. I would say 40 to 45% of my drivers currently are 70 and over. So, at any time, I can anytime, shoulders, knees, backs, uh caring for someone else, heart attack, stroke, I mean just At least 40% over 70. Yeah. How many? 60. 67. Yeah. We used to have what 90 or something. We had 92 routes before and coming out of CO it dropped to about a third. So I will say community stops are a jewel. They work wonderfully and that helps when you've got

100lesser staff, but it also decreases the level of service you can provide to your to your clients. Right. I'm okay with a balance there, but I also know that the driver that's the um um that age that shows up every day, whether they're sick or not, we're losing those folks. And to replace them, you got to offer them something or they won't drive. So that's kind of where we are, that 60%. So if that 40% leaves, we're in a world of hurt. World of hurt. So, so it was just a way to try to find something that attracts more. Hoping it works. Hoping it works. That's exactly right. I think it's a great idea. And I know in in factory life, we start out at 20 and we still can't find anybody and we're not

101driving kids around. Right. I agree with you. And I'll be honest with you, and these are the things you got to think about. That's why you know you guys are in charge. Is it is it split the difference? Is it a buck and a half? this year with the intent to look at something next year. I don't know. Or $2. That's right. So So you say, "Okay, we're going to do this just for drivers to try to attract more." And then if we have the ability to do that and get it to 303 next year or get it to $3 next year, we're going to we're going to move forward. It's kind of like the supplement 93 you did 500 with the thought you would do 500 more. Here we are asking for that again.

102So So that again, I'm just throwing out a lot of stuff to see what sticks on the wall. And you guys say, "Hey, I like that. I don't like that. We need to really reconsider or proceed in budget for Rachel. Yeah. So I think this I mean thinking logically this is probably the biggest uh need bus drivers. I mean yes or no today obviously but that's a major component right of people who work getting their kids to school and I just don't think 168 or 16 whatever the number was as a living wage 20s not even living wage but it it works and Travis to think about this it used to be that our drivers were self-employed had their own business and they needed benefits that's the only reason they drove so they didn't care

103what they They got a CDL out of it. They were able to work their business in between and they got benefited. That those days were gone. We just don't have those folks any longer. Yeah. So, the next one is is just huge. You guys know this. It has been going up. Um 7% um for certificate. This is for certificated. Anybody that's a certificated employee, we have to offer them insurance. Whether they take it or not is a different story. And if they do, it costs us now from 21120 to 22620 a year. That's paid on every employee to offer them insurance. So you can see that's an estimate of $1.5 million to this year's budget just for health insurance for your certificated folks, which is 900 plus certificated employees. And you can see since 2000

104since 2023 coming out of CO insurance has gone up 99.47% 47% for school systems 11,340 to 22620. I believe when I started in 98 the system was paying maybe $3,000 for my insurance as a teacher. And so you can see what it's gone to. It's cost the system $22,620 starting July 1. So part of that's going to impact this year's budget when we do payroll acrals for July and August. Then they started hitting our non-certificated folks. So you can see that's 30% this year folks going from 17 for and they teed it for us. They did 11 15 now 17 now they're going to 22 just like our certificated employees. So that's $3.2 million that they'll add to the budget just for our non-certificated employees to be offered insurance. Now again, we budget an amount.

105That's if every employee were to take it. Actually, we budget estimating on what people have done in the past. Because if we budgeted for every employee to take the insurance next year, it would be over $32 million. But if they all decide to take it, guess what we got to pay? Let me tell you what it is. A budget is a budget for a reason. It's a projection based on previous experience. But what worst case scenario? Worst case scenario is everybody comes in and says, "Hey, your benefits are pretty good. We're going to take them $32 million." I mean, it is what it is. So, and that's the whole reason in the past you always heard of someone that retired and came back 49. You're probably familiar with that. Well, now you keep hearing this

106435. Well, it's because state health came back and said, "Well, you know, if you're a certificated person and you're working 49 uh or 48, you're eligible for insurance still." And so, they would still be retired, but their insurance would not come out of their TRS check. It would come out of their actual employment check. and then we would have to pay that employee, excuse me, employer portion, hence 435 for certificated people. You're not going to hear49 anymore in that respect. So those are just I mean those are costs that are going up that that nothing to do with us, has nothing to do with millage rate, has nothing to do those are just costs that are being passed down. And if you think about it, all of Georgia's under state health benefits. And so there's

107a level of a monopoly there. And they they control how much they charge us. And so it's kind of like TRS. Remember, they stuck at 20 for years and years. When I started TRS, they were paying in less than it was it was less than double digits, but the system was making we were paying six, the system was paying about nine. So you know, I mean, you're going to see that in just a second. It's gone up again as well. Now again, that has to do with the number of people that are retired that are on retirement and the number of people that are coming in that used to contribute and they're they're not coming into the profession now. So there's fewer people contributing. So that means you can still put in 6%. But the

108districts are making up the difference for these retirements. I mean, it's so benefits are are definitely going up and and Rachel gave you kind of an idea of what that's looked like over the past few years. um where our expenditures are, where state health benefits are in our budget. And and basically that graph and this right here, which I noticed, I just noticed I had FY25 in the graph behind it. But anyway, this right this right here is our expenditures that we paid out in health insurance until FY25. And that's basically what our budget is this year. And then FY26 estimated there. But on the column on the right that the state gives us funding for health insurance for certificated. It was part of that QBE slide back in the beginning um that we've lost

109$2.5 million in. But that's the amount of the QBE payment that is for teachers health insurance that they give to us. So you can see there's a $10 million difference in this year's budget. That's that's all local funds. Okay. So, everything we've talked about so far has been all coming on the back of our local funds and what that revenue is. So, but you're limited in where those funds can come from. Teacher retirement. There you can see 20.78% this year. It's going to be 21.91 next year. So, that's and that's not that's like the teacher experience for those that haven't experienced that $1.1 million. That's a that's a you don't have a choice in that. You have to pay that. Same with this at $725,500 that the local system pays into TRS based on that

110percentage. And we thought it would come down. It came down to 20 and it stayed there for maybe two years. Then it went up just a nudge over 20 and then it started again. Um so, you know, it's one of those pieces that are in there for us regardless. So, this is just an estimate. Now, this is not again going back to our original conversation with when we got into PU about experience versus local supplement. This is just on the increase of $500 to the two tiers. Adding the third tier, the certificated steps, that's the increase in their experience that they're still eligible. non-certificated at a dollar an hour and their steps if you add that the health insurance increase and the TRS. So you can see right now we're with just those in there

111we're at $7.7 million that we're adding to the budget plus we're starting off with a $2.5 million loss. So you're you're looking at somewhere around $10 million that this is going to enable the B in order to balance. That's where your reserve balance comes in and you offset those those costs to balance your budget. Now give you this little speech and I gave you a speech. This was my 20134 faith budget and we were laying off my first year we laid off 52 employees. My first day on the job we laid off 52 people. I was the most popular superintendent in the south. 52 people I I laid off. Okay. Um, we had eight furlow days that were those were work days that you didn't come to work and you didn't get paid for it.

112Um, just to make our budget work. Okay, that's what we had to do. And we had to do that. It was fine. It worked, right? But I kept saying, concentrate on your FTE. Really look at what you're doing and we'll we'll we'll grow out of this. And we did. We got out of that. Um, this was before increases in benefits just exponentially took over, right? But this is what we've done for the last four years with COVID money knowing this was coming. So, you got to build that fund balance to get yourself to a place where you you're going to be okay. That's where we are. We're in good shape. The other thing is keep in mind when we project out expenditures every year and we project out bud uh revenue every year, we underproject

113revenue every year. It always comes in more than we thought. Okay? We do that purposefully. We over project expenditures. And every year that I've been here, it's been somewhere between four and 7% that we fall under in expenditures every year. Those are millions of dollars right now. Well, Mr. Ranger, you're inflating your budget. Not at all. I have to put in there positions because during the course of the year, 500 kids show up at the door. I got to have teachers for them, right? Okay. So, you've got to have some people built in. But over the past four or five years, we've done that and we can't hire them. We can't find them, right? So, it's that expenditure, that percentage that we're saving, it's gotten more and more. So, I say all that to say

114this. We go into these budgets every year where we're underproing here, overp projecting here, and at the end of the year, we always balance and we save our fund balance. Or in some years, we've actually gotten more revenue than we had expense. Think about $30 million influxed into our our budget with COVID money and we spent it wisely. That's why we're sitting at a place where we are now. So, I say all that to say there's shock value associated when I say $10 million. I get it, right? But I want you to know we always overp project and underp project the revenue because we typically end up in a balanced state. And if we have to use some money out of our fund balance, guess what? By the time you get to an approved tenative

115budget, we're probably going to be sitting somewhere around $44 million in our fund. Now, a lot of people are going to go, "Holy smoke, that's a lot of money. That's probably less than eight months of operating capital. I mean, but my point is if you're running a business, you're going to have a lot more money in reserve hopefully to keep your business running. We've got enough in there to where we can make our payroll payments all through the year. Even when we're not getting taxes, tax collection, that's really only about four and a half months because right now we're running about 9 and a half million a month in expenditures. So the point being the point being you got to have a healthy fund balance. If you don't, you're not doing what's wise with your

116dollar. Okay? So just giving you a lot of information. The other thing I'll just throw out there is you guys have to make the decision at some point when the tax digest comes in. What are we going to do about the military? Okay. So currently you're sitting at a great spot. We don't think the assessed values this year after three straight years of them going like this. We don't think we think it's going to cap out this year, but you've got House Bill 581 at play. You've got some other exemptions at play. We don't know what it's going to look like at this point. So that roll back amount may come in less. Last year we kept saying can't go below 14 because we lose equalization. Now you got a new bill that says now

117you can go to 10 and not lose equalization. You're going to lose it incrementally just like we talked about, but you're not going to lose it totally. So, your tax base is going to start pushing to say, "Well, hey, you got $44 million in the bank. You need to take the roll back." That's coming. I'm telling you, when you can sit here and tell them that state health benefits has gone up 94% and it continues to go up, you've got to have money somewhere to make sure that you're doing business and doing it the right way. And I'm preaching to the choir. You guys know all this. I know that. But I try to provide you with at least the talking point so when people are asking those questions, you can you can answer them

118with a legitimate answer. And I I hope that helps. Is that I'm making sense at all? Okay. Okay. So, I just need you to be thinking before now and Tuesday night, what are the things that we want to move forward with? Um, great idea about waiting on the actuary study and if it's 25 then doing maybe a couple of steps and then 25 plus. That helps on what Phyllis was thinking where the um the number they come back getting in retirement would be at a maybe a little lower rate, but it's still beneficial for them and it benefits us. You save the 226 and you pull the 6% out of their their salary for TRS. doesn't cost us a whole lot of money at offer that employee the gain on it exponential too. Um local

119that's something we need to think about. Bus drivers if you separate that out to try to get that a more marketable position and we've done step increases and um hourly rates for several years and we've got our folks closer to a place. We're still you know under the mark if you look at school systems around us. You'll see in the personnel list tonight. We still have folks that are leaving us and going to other counties. Some of that can't be helped. Some of it's moved, some of it's family related, some of it's generational, whatever. But it it can't we can't let it continue to be about pay. If it is, we're never going to catch up. We're always going to get what's left. And that's not a good way to to address our kids. And

120it's not a good way to keep our graduation rate high and keep our readiness scores going up. It's not a good place to keep culture and climate the way it is. I'm going to pause and just let y'all I know you I'm giving you a time. Is can you think of anything that we've missed that we've talked about before? Is there something that still is like I just don't understand what he just said? Can I, you know, say it again in a different way? Or is there anything else that you're thinking right this second that I might be able to address? I've got a couple of things. I know we've got a personnel list and um we've got a potential litigation I need to talk to you guys about, but there's a couple of things

121that are very specific about positions that I do want to talk to you about that might help with some of this when we get into executive session that I didn't feel comfortable u and with I don't need to share it in in public. So, I wanted to make sure that that was covered. So, you know, if there are questions related to personnel when we get back there, then definitely we could talk about that. But a lot of this is wide open right now. So, I'm give you that opportunity. So, do you want recommendation from us right now what to look for or what to work on specifically before So, here here's the here's the biggest thing for us. If if we decide to go with increases the salary schedule, then the process is to roll

122all those employees up to that new level in our system, right? Once you do that to print those things, then if you don't choose that, you got to roll them all back down. And it's it's it's a lot of work. And so that that's that's the main thing, Kevin, is to say you guys feel comfortable saying, "Yeah, let's push this out there." Now, keep in mind, even if we did all that and we get to that tenative budget moment and you go, "Ah, I just I don't think we can do that. We can pull it out." I mean, it's a lot of work, but we can do that because you've got to be able to you got to be able to pass a budget that you can go out and explain and justify. Okay? And

123so, and then you got to go into potential discussions. So, I try to give you all that before you go into those conversations. But, but you're 100% right. It's a lot of work to get it there, but again, that that's what we do. So, we we're happy to do that. I just need to know, yeah, that sounds good. I think this will work. Maybe we wait a year on that or we cut it in half and we do half this year, half next year. Um, those are the kind of things that you guys need to really be having conversations together about, and then make some decisions. So, it gives us kind of our margin order. And all of these are all of these are rough projections. Once I get in there and you know a

124different number of teachers may be moving on experience once I get in budget prep and do all the detail level work these numbers may come out a little bit different just depending you know I I would like to see an estimate of that extra step. So 2122 23 24 and then 25 plus as far as a local supplement not and are you talking about the local supplement that we had on our proposed local supplement or okay the the $500 increase or whatever what that would look like with an extra step involved in that to keep in step I don't I don't see where government's choice really Well, and I Dr. Wilson, I think you're you're hitting right where I am. You got a choice, but it's it's either the experience side or it's the supplement

125side. Either way, you're adding to the employee. So, they're gaining from this one. They're gaining in the long run. It's $4,000 more than it is on the supplement side. But, it does make us competitive either way. The experience makes people perk up and go Walker's paying more experience. That does add a level that we've never had before. But the local supplement we've been, it's been a complaint for years that our local supplement is lower than everybody around us. And so that's why we started addressing that. You got a lot of folks that that's important, too. Um, so your to your point though, you got to do something to attract the retaining. That's exactly right. Now you've got two choices, but both of them are there's an addition to the budget for both of them. It

126sounds like two choices, but really not choice. No, you're you're right. You're you're right on. I I appreciate that. So, but you know what I'm always trying to think of, you know, it's kind of happy wife, happy life. It's happy teachers, better students, better service to students. and and our teachers are are looking around now and finding that they can do that same thing somewhere else and get more pay. But you're also looking at if you go experience you're talking about roughly what eight times the cost. I mean if you're talking about 4,000 you know 500 for each month so minimum by by to your point Kevin you're right. So by formula, we took where they went from, you know, the the end of the scale and took that percentage and then did it over

127the next three. So for a T4, it was 1560. Those were the differences. So right now you're adding a new scale, which if they stay right now where they are, it's going to be $500 more. If we move and add a new scale, it's $1,000. That one you can see is $4,500. Yeah. So it is it's three times basically. Yes. But anything that we add to the scale needs to be sustainable with, you know, because the state's not going to add levels to the scale. To my knowledge, they haven't. And that doesn't include if a new governor comes in does like Governor Kemp has done and given some races along the way. They all get that. That affects their everybody's scale. But if you're doing the experience, you've added a you've added a component that

128not a lot of people have done. Now the reason they've not done that is because it did cost and four out of five years they have increased the state scale for teachers and the year that they didn't is when we bumped our local up $500 and conversely they also allowed districts to go in the hole and do furbo days for teachers too. So I mean they've gone from one end of the spectrum to the other on this. I just I I to me if I'm a politician right now in Georgia, I have a really hard time talking about not funding education when you look at what's in the bank down there. I mean, it is what it is. When you got billions of dollars sitting on it and you're not using that to help, that's

129a problem, right? And but they'll tell you they fully funded us. So, and we all know that that's just not true. So, so direction would be good. I think that would be good conversation between the five of you. to to kind of see where everybody's sitting. You know, our goal Tuesday night would be that we have a level of direction so we can start bringing you concrete numbers instead of these rough projections and that way when we get to next month and we may have to have another work session. I hate that I do. But just to solidify a tenative budget going into because when we put it on the agenda, you've got to be in agreement on it and we've got to present it to stakeholders as that's part of the law. needs to

130be on our website and all that before we have the public hearing. So that those are those are all coming. We're a month ahead so we're good but this was a lot. Typically I'm not starting off with we're losing $2.5 million. Remember last year we got an additional three. So we went into that budget thinking oh this is fantastic. We're getting three more mill $3 million more than we have ever gotten. This is great. This year was a little different and we're starting off with that big hit. So, other questions or comments or um you want to throw something at me or I just like giving you as much information as I can so that there's no surprises and it gives you a chance to kind of ruminate a little bit and think about it

131and then write questions down as well. Mr. Chairman, other than that, that's all I have on the budget. Um we do have need for executive session for personnel and for potential litigation. We do have a need for second session. Do we have a motion? Second. Second. Okay, we are back in session. We have a recommendation of personnel for certificated um non-certificated uh nutrition workers, custodians and pair of professionals. Do we have a motion? Second. So those f I need to abstain from one of the uh certificated recommendations. Uh Davis Richardson, I cannot vote on Okay. You're good with everybody else. Good with everybody else. All right. All those in favor? We need a motion to adjurnn. Motion. Second. All those in favor? Thank you, boy. They can always