001Call this first budget hearing to order. I need a motion to approve the agenda. >> Mr. Tulle. >> Second. >> Mr. Hammond. All in favor? Passes 40. Purpose of the hearing. Dr. Bowler. public communication. Mr. Caul, are we going I sorry, Mr. Adams, please uh present the uh budget. >> Yeah, sorry about that. Uh good afternoon board members and Dr. Butler. Um we have handouts available at the back of the room. Um again just thank you Dr. Butler for the purpose of the hearing but Georgia law requires that the budget be advertised after the board of education adopts the tenative budget prior to the final adoption. The board is required to hold two hearings for public for public hearings for the purpose of providing an opportunity for public input before the tenative budget is final
002adopted later on in August or excuse me so June and then the manilage in uh August. On the screen you will see our fiscal year 27 budget calendar. We presented the tenative budget to the board on May 5th and again on May 11th. Following the presentation and discussion, the board adopted the fiscal year 27 tenative budget. Uh the first budget hearing is scheduled for today, May 21st, 2026 at 4 p.m. in the board meeting room at the instructional sports center, 71 North Main Street in Watkinsville. The second budget hearing is scheduled for May 28th, 2026 at the same time in location. I'd like to note final adoption of the tenative full roll back millage rate is tenatively scheduled for August 10th, 2026. Before reviewing the fiscal year 27 budget, it's important to highlight OC's community,
003excuse me, homestead exemptions for Coney County residents. Voters approved these updates during the May 21st, 2024 primary election, increasing tax relief and simp simplifying the process for homeowners. The general homestead increased to $5,000. In 2035, that goes to $10,000 for the all homeowners. At age 65, property taxes are frozen. And at 75, they get an additional $10,000 exemption. These changes became effective January 1st, 2025, and they apply to both county and state tax school district taxes. These updates provide greater tax relief and predictability, particularly for our senior residents while incurring impacting future revenue considerations for the school system. As I mentioned in our regular session, Aone County Schools received a five-star FES rating. And this slide compares our fiscal year 25 local per pupil expenditures across our resa. Aone county is currently ranked 10th of
00413 systems. This place in us in the lower third of comparable districts. Our low per pupil expenditures reflects disciplined administration of taxpayer dollars for a county schools. This recognition reflects a continued commitment to strong student achievement. responsible budgeting and excellent stewardship of taxpayer dollars as OCS continues to provide a strong return on investment for the Aon County community. While OCS continues to provide a strong return on investment for the Aon County community, the fiscal year 27 budget development process also required the district to make significant reductions and adjustments to maintain long-term financial stability. The following slide outlines the significant reductions in the fiscal year 27 tenative budget. Overall 14 total OCS employees will be through attrition will be lost. This would have been 23 if we had not have the nine that were added through
005the uh literacy law that went into effect again. And this slide also represents a reduction in the fiscical year 27 operating budget of 3.27% 27% or approximately $431,000. I want to recognize our staff and leadership teams for their hard work in identifying thoughtful targeted reductions. This was not a simple exercise. These adjustments reflects reflect intentional decision-making to protect core services while improving efficiencies. We appreciate the continued partnership with the sheriff's office and the county commissioners in working collaboratively to manage these costs. This reflects a shared commitment to both safety and fiscal responsibility. Importantly, we achieve this while maintaining our focus on student outcomes, safety, and staff support. This slide illustrates staffing reductions aligned with the enrollment decline we have experienced in Aone County. This represents a net reduction of 30 positions. Again, this would have
006been 39 if we had not added nine literacy coaches, reflecting the district's ongoing efforts to rightsize staffing in response to student population trends and maintain a fiscal balance for the fiscical year 27 budget. New mandatory budget requirements include health insurance increases, teachers retirement increases, 18% energy increases, and an increase to our local fair share QB withholdings. Our first mandatory increase is a state health insurance increase. The governor's proposed budget included a increase in contributions for both certified and classified staff. The House and Senate finalized proposal includes the certified and classified employer rate increasing from 1885 a month to 1935 a month starting July 1st, 2026 for a cost of 305,000. So what that means for us is that's 23,220 per employee. And I want to please note that in the fiscal year 27 budget, the
007cuts included for for the state agencies was a 9% reduction towards health insurance. So to provide context for that, if you had a custodian working in say Athens Tech, um it cost them and they're making roughly $40,000, it would cost them approximately $8,100 for insurance that they would have to pay their contribution. And again, for us, for that same position, it's $23,220. Just want to highlight the significantly higher benefit costs school districts must absorb. This slide shows a history of our health insurance increases and the classified employer contributions. Since 2012, the cost for health insurance has increased $6.8 million. Our second requirement is our for the fiscical year 2017 tenative budget is the teachers retirement increase. The governor's proposed budget included an increase in the TRS employer percentage contribution from 22.91 to 22.32%. For a
008cost of 248,000. This slide shows a history of TRS employer rate increases. Since 2011, TRS employer contribution has increased over $5.9 million for certified staff. Next, I would like to share a video with you on how Georgia funds schools. This will help provide important context for the state's funding structure, including how local and state dollars work together to support our schools. Tony, if you mind pushing play. >> The decades old law that dictates how the state of Georgia disperses money to schools sits at the heart of most education policy discussions in the state. This video will answer the question, how does Georgia fund schools? Georgia's public schools are funded through a law passed in 1985 called the Quality Basic Education Act or QBE. At its most basic, QBE takes the total number of students and
009uses that number to decide how much to pay out for school employee salaries, known as direct instructional cost and indirect cost, and other expenses needed to run a school, known as categorical grants. Before sending that amount down to each district, QBE subtracts out what the state thinks each district should be paying on its own, called local fair share. We'll talk through each of those buckets here, but first, it's key to understand how QBE counts students. Twice a year, every school in the state counts the number of students present and notes what classes the students are in. Think general ed, gifted, or special education. These programs are funded differently based on things like what the state believes the appropriate class size should be. To account for students in different programs, the state divides up the day,
010then combines the pieces based on the programs they're in. The result is titled full-time equivalent students or FTEES. By counting FTEEs, the state can find out how many teachers need to be paid. Teacher salaries make up the bulk of the first bucket in the QBE formula, direct instructional cost. Each year, Georgia's General Assembly comes up with a base dollar amount to fund for each student. In 2019, it is $2,620.77. Every program that the state of Georgia pays for is given a weight. When QBE was created, it was decided that general education high school students were the least expensive to educate and assigned them a weight of one. Middle school, by comparison, is weighted slightly higher. At its most basic, if you had 100 high schoolers and 100 middle schoolers, after multiplying by each of the
011weights in the base amount, the middle school would be given just under $300,000, while the high school would get 262,000. Once school systems replicate this process for each program, the final dollar amount is how much each should be given for direct instructional cost. The next bucket is indirect cost. These are things that affect the students but aren't the classroom teachers. Think libraries, school maintenance, and salaries for principles. The funds for these positions are tied to the number of schools within the system and the number of FTEEs in those schools. Here's what this looks like in practice for Faget County in the 2018 2019 school year. You can see the calculation for direct instructional cost and indirect cost. At the bottom of these two buckets is a QB formula earnings. Although the state says that Faget
012County Public Schools need $128 million for these costs, this is not the amount the district will receive. To understand why, it's important to look back over 30 years. Before QBE, it was local taxes, not state money, that paid the most for schools. When QBE was being created, there was a fear that some local districts would just stop paying for schools altogether and make the state pay for everything. So lawmakers built in the requirement that each school system taxes their district five mills or $5 for every $1,000 of property value. This is known as local fair share or required local effort or five mill share. It's got a lot of names. So before the state sends down all the dollars needed to run a school system, it deducts the local fair share. After the calculation of
013direct and indirect educational cost and the subtraction of the local fair share, the state provides the fourth bucket, categorical grants. These grants are for services such as paying school nurses or sparsity, which would help smaller districts pay for overhead fixed costs like air conditioning. School bus transportation is also funded through categorical grants, although the state has paid a significantly lower percentage of the cost since 1991 when it paid over half. Equalization grants are also in this bucket. The state provides this money to districts that have less ability to raise money through property taxes. Even though every district has to tax five mills for education, there is nothing stopping them from taxing more. Equalization grants are given to districts with a lower tax base to ensure that all districts can provide a basic public education. There's
014much more to QBE, but that's the basics for how Georgia funds schools. The Quality Basic Education Act was ahead of its time, but that was a long time ago. By reference, you're watching an online video about a formula that was written when less than 10% of all houses in the US even had a computer. The same basic formula that dictated where over 9.6 6 billion went in 2019. To learn more about where those billions of dollars came from, as well as where they're going, head to gbpi.org. So, the local fair share is the required local contributions within Georgia's quality basic education funding formula. It re represents the baseline level of local effort expected from each school district as part of participation in the state's funding system. Our required local contribution is equal to that five
015mills mentioned in the video property tax. It's been part of the QB again since 1985 and it ensures local participation in public education funding. Aone Countyy's local fair share has increased consistently due to growth in the local property tax digest and raising wealth factors within Georgia's QBE formula. Local fair share has grown by $6.6 million representing an 84% increase with an average annual growth rate of 9 to 10%. As local fair share increases, the state reduces QB earnings proportionately, reflecting the assumption that local school districts have greater capacity to fund education through local resources. This next slide is a history of that local fair share showing the increase of $6.6 million from 2020 to 2027. The fiscal year 10 27 tenative budget includes an increase in the state local fair share withholdings of an estimated
016$730,000 for a total of 14.4 million for fiscal year 27. Additional considerations for the tenative and fiscical year 27 budget are salary enhancements, school food nutrition program, and salary improvements. Our first consideration for the fiscical year 27 tenative budget is salary enhancements for our TST2s, our nurses, and our athletic coaches supplements for a total of $399,000 to support recruitment and retention in critical areas. These areas were chosen after studies were done and they were targeted as our high priority areas for this coming fiscal year. Our second consideration is the fiscical year 27 tenative budget is a projected school nutrition revenue shortfall of approximately $250,000. To address this gap, the district is implementing a combination of menu adjustments and a targeted price increase. And this targeted price increase includes a 25% increase in meal prices to
017help recoup those costs. In order to fully offset these funds, meal prices would have needed to increase by approximately 75 cents. However, we did not think that would place too great of we, excuse me, we thought that would place too great a burden on the Coney County families. These actions are expected to offset the anticipated shortfall while maintaining quality meal services for our students. The school nutrition program is being proactively managed to remain financially stable without requiring general other general fund support throughout the year. Our third consideration is a 2 point 2% salary improvement for all of Coney County School staff. This adjustment is intended to support employee retention and mean remain competitive in our regional market. Our staff are our most significant resource and compensation is a key factor in maintaining that high quality
018workforce we have. This slide shows a history of pay improvements for the school district for the last 11 years, including what has been proposed for fiscal year 27. Here we have a summary of all the requirements and considerations for the fiscal year 27 tenative budget with expenditures of 2.9 million. Of this $2.9 million, $550,000 is mandatory increases by the state. I also want to point out we also have the additional 18% increases from utilities and the withholdings of the QB formula for local fair share. So, how are we going to pay for this? Let's talk about that next. Our tax digest. This slide shows the history of our tax digest which has experienced steady growth since 2014. The fiscal year 27 tenative budget is based on a projected growth of about 3% resulting in estimated
019tax digest of $3.9 billion. The fiscal year 27 continuation budget totals 119.5 million representing the cost to maintain current programs, staffing levels, and operational commitments from the prior year. An additional 2.9 is included to address mandatory increases and adjustments for the upcoming fiscal year. Combining both of these components is a total of 122.5 reflect reflecting the full scope of anticipated funding needs for fiscal year 27. The current millage is 13.962 mills with a proposed full roll back rate of 13.813 mills based on our preliminary data that we've received from the tax commissioner. This reflects the calculated full roll back required under state law to maintain re revenue neutrality. The district's estimated total fund balance as of June 30th, 2026 is 54.6 6 million reflecting a strong overall financial position. After accounting for committed and assigned
020funds, the estimated unassigned fund balance is 32.7 million, which will provide flexibility to support cash flow, financial sustainability, and unforeseen needs. Again, we all remember what happened at Northoney with our storm water this past year. Fis this budget also includes 12 million in committed fund balance which is dedicated to the series 2021 general obligation bond reflecting our legal committed resources for previously approved capital financing. Again this will be paid from east if the if and when the funds are available. The assigned fund balance is that designated for specific planned uses until east collections become available, allowing the district to move forward with projects without issuing issuing any additional bonds. This approach provides flexibility to begin critical capital projects while maintaining financial stability and avoiding the need for additional debt. The remaining portion of the assigned
021funds includes about 2 million projected budget shortfall reflecting our anticipated needs built into current financial planning to ensure a balanced operations. The estimated unassigned fund balance at 6:30 provides a strong beginning position with projected revenues of 120.6 million and expenditures of 120.2.5. The budget reflects a planned use of fund balance to support operations while maintaining fiscal stability. The estimated unassigned fund balance at 6:30 2027 is 30.9 million, reflecting a planned and controlled reduction while still maintaining a reserve level in case of unforeseen needs or financial fluctuations. This slide shows the district's tenative average month monthly expenditures of 9.7 million with an estimated beginning fund balance equating to approximately 3.3 months of operating expenses. As a reminder, best business practices are 3 to six months of reserves which again supports that financial stability and our ability
022to manage unforeseen circumstances. We all know where we are with gas prices right now and they continue look outlook on those being as high as they are through the beginning of when school starts. Our fiscal year 27 tenative budget for federal funds includes 6.3 million in anticipated revenues and expenditures. This equates to about 5.2% of the overall budget and includes about on average nine grant programs. And again, these are reimbursement based, requiring the district to front expenditures and then receive payments on a lag throughout the year. And we were told by DOE today that the state is going to a new uh payment system upgrade. They're getting rid of their Peopleoft and they have told us to go ahead and start planning for that. They'll be doing once a month draws and that are going
023to be drawn out a little bit further. So, it'll increase the lag time for getting reimbursements on some of these grants. So, we'll have to front that money and then wait a little bit longer to get our money back. >> And that concludes my report unless the board has any questions. >> I have a couple questions. Can you go back to the uh employee reduction slide? >> You spoke of adding nine instructional coaches and seven of those were going to be funded, I believe you said, through state funding. Is that right? >> Which >> seven of those nine? >> Yes. >> How are the other two going to be funded? >> Through federal funds. >> Through federal. Yes, sir. Um, are there any local funds going into the remaining two? >> No, there'll be federal
024funds. >> So, we'll have nine total to support middle school. >> That's the plan right now. Yes, sir. >> Okay. So, and that's through the literacy program. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. Any other questions? >> I have a comment. Once again, thank you for the robust and thorough presentation. You'll be able to do this in your sleep by the time we get to the third one. That was pretty good. Brock and I were talking about this one pager and I just want to compliment I don't know if it's Mr. coquit or or Peter, I'm sure a lot of you work together on this. I think this is a great visual representation of the increased pressures on the school system this year as far as funding goes, but also some of the efficiencies that you guys
025made. So, I think this is a great educational tool. Thank you for putting that together. And then second, I just wanted to say, you know, over the past couple years, it's been really apparent to me that our taxpayers, our community, they want to see our local governments work together. They want us to work with our partners like the county commission and the chamber of commerce. And I've personally noticed a increased collaborative spirit in that way. And I think looking at the nearly half million dollar savings when it comes to the SRO's is proof of that. So thank you to Dr. Butler and team for really taking that on. I think it's going to help taxpayers in the long run. >> The board of commissioners and the sheriff's office really working with us um on that
026agreement. >> Any other questions or comments? Thank you, Mr. Adams. Now, Mr. Cork with public communication. >> Thank you, Mr. Ransom. We have one Okone County resident signed up to address the board. Before I invite him up, I'll read this. Policies BCBI and BCBIR1 state that only Okone County residents or school system employees may address the board and that members of the public shall conduct themselves in a respectful manner that is not disruptive to the conduct of the board's business. The board allows three minutes for those who sign up prior to the meeting. Please state your name, address, and topic. The board requests that you refrain from making any disparaging remarks about school system personnel. There will generally be no response to comments or questions posed by citizens at the meeting. All comments and questions
027will be taken under advisement by the board. However, any board member shall be free to respond and make public comment if he or she elects to do so. To any citizen wishing to provide documents for board members, please submit them to the director of communications prior to addressing the board. Please remain at the podium during your public comment time. Our speaker is Olan Wood. >> Welcome, Mr. Wood. >> Thank you. Um, my address is 1091 Melissa Drive, Watkinsville. Um, I am the owner and operator of A1 Fire Extensioner here in Watkinsville. I was talking with Chris Young, the maintenance supervisor. Uh he decided that they may wanted to go with a one-stop company to do all the fire extinguishers, that kind of stuff. I was here to try not to do that. Everybody will say
028stay local, buy local. I'm about as local as you're going to get. Done extinguish work for the county and the board office for 32 years without interruption. Um, I provide top-notch service is what I'm thinking. I've never had any complaints from anybody at the board office and I just love to keep it local if there's any way possible. >> Yes, sir. Thank you. Um, Dr. White, correct? Correct me if I'm wrong. I believe Elves has the upcoming agreement, right? >> That's correct, sir. >> And they they're local, right? Aren't their office located near uh in Bogart near Malcolm Bridge? >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you. Yes, sir. We try to keep it local whenever we can and we um you know we got to look at whatever the the best value is going forward and
029if that works out to be local then we always try to go local as much as possible. >> I'll be glad to provide some figures for you if I need to uh at the next meeting. I can email those to y'all. I'll do whatever we can do. >> All right. Sounds good. Thank you, sir. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Ransom. We have no other speakers signed up. >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Cockpit. We have no further business. We're adjourned.