001Hello Falcons. Mr. Fleshner here bringing you our video update of our March school board meeting. Pretty heavy agenda for the school board this month. That's pretty typical. We're putting a lot of things in place for the next school year um with budgeting and and all kinds of negotiations, conversations, those things to talk about. But let's get into it. First, we started out with a public hearing number one. Now, it's required of schools in Iowa to hold two public hearings on their budgets for the next school year. So, this was our first one and we held that uh March 23rd. Um, with this, many of you received a tax statement or all of you should have received a tax statement in the mail, okay? where the school district has to publish the highest property tax rate
002that we can anticipate as we build our uh budget for the FY27 school year. Okay, I think that's important to note because we have to we cannot raise that rate once it's posted. We can lower it, but we cannot raise it. All right, so it's really pretty early in the budgeting process when we have to have all that published. school board met last night, started to work through some of the pieces uh for the budget next year, anticipating that we can do better than that rate. All right, but when you see that, that's the top rate that we could actually ask from our our property tax owners. So, more to come on that as we kind of refine things and get contracts in place for next year. Um but so, lots of work to do
003and we think we can get better in the property tax rate. um but you know there will not be an increase of what was published. So good conversation around the 27 um budget for next year. Let's jump into some of the agenda items and I'll kind of work down my list here. Pretty lengthy list too. Um we set our next hearing, our hearing number two that I just mentioned and that will be on April 20th. That's a regular school board meeting at six o'clock held at the high school in the library and we'll finalize all of our budget things. um for the FY27 or the 2627 school year. We also approved our calendar, our school calendar for next year. Okay. Now, couple of things to note inside of there. We have to remember we cannot
004start school earlier than August 23rd. Well, if we look forward into August 23rd, that's a Sunday next year. Okay? So, start of school will be August 24th. Um we will maintain full day dismissals for professional development for staff. Um received some real positive feedback on on having the full day versus you know partial days. Um with that everything else in there pretty typical, pretty straightforward looking uh as far as that goes for the calendar for next school year. Several agreements were put into place for bonding. One of those was with the attorney, our legal counsel that'll help us through all of our bonding work um for our save bond and our general obligation bond that we're putting in place. That was taken care of. The board also moved forward with bonding $8.77 million against our
005save dollars. For some of you, remember the state penny. Okay, this is not a property tax implication for you. This was all part of the bigger plan in building the facilities and the things we're going to do here. Um, but we did set a date of April 16th for the bond sale and the schools will be prepared to sell $8.77 million um in bonds. Next agenda item, our school district belongs to multiple pools um with other schools. Um and we ag we approved an agreement uh I think this is our third one I so I think with a natural gas risk pool uh really you buy natural gas in advance. It keeps away from kind of spikes and drops and all those kind of things and you know what your your bill is going to
006be going into the school year. So we approved the agreement to stay into that pool. Um, some extra architect agreements were also approved. Some of the work we're going to get done or hoping to get done, um, is really a lot of roofing work over in Appton to try to get in advance of the heating and cooling work that'll be done starting the spring of 2027. I know I've had a lot of people ask me, you know, when are you going to kind of get started? Well, we're going to get hopefully get started this summer with some of the roofing work over in Appton and then the bulk of that work will be in the spring of 27. Something else that's been kind of really uh on the schedule, if you will, is to resurface
007the track here at the high school. Gets lots and lots of use in the spring. Um it's really starting to kind of show some wear and tear. So, we're hoping to get that all bid out and taken care of this summer. So, we put those agreements in place there. There's also a district developed service delivery plan. Really what this is, every five years, school districts are required to review how they put special education services in place to support those students and families. That's what this document is. It was set to be renewed. We worked through a group of teachers, community members. it was out on the on our website for any comments really of how we offer special ed services here at AP. So, that was also approved by the board. There's another agreement in
008here. Uh it's really kind of a some work with it's called -ate. It's really a program that lots and lots of schools in Iowa belong to. It helps us get better funding or better costing for internet service and also some of the fiber connections we have throughout the district. We did make a choice this year to switch photography vendors. Um we did switch and move to a different vendor for pictures next year. More information to come on this. One of the reasons we chose to do this, okay, is school pictures have really changed over the years. And one of the things that was really enticing, one, it's a local vendor that can help support this that's in the area here. It'll also offer some more alocart options to parents. So you don't necessarily have to
009buy full packages of pictures. Okay? But if you're just looking for that 8 by10 or that 5x7, those can be options for you um versus maybe buying a a larger set of of pictures that you may or may not want all those things. A little bit of a change though. It's a smaller company. They're going to have multiple picture days. And again, we'll advertise all this out. So, one day might be at the high school, the next day might be at Parkersburg Elementary, the third day might be in the Apple App building, but we'll get all that advertised. That'll be a little subtle change um for school pictures for next year. The board did also approve um buying an autonomous floor scrubber that'll start here at the high school. Uh you've seen these if you've
010been out in stores. Really kind of a robotic thing, if you will. Really just looking to kind of help uh our our custodians out. Uh for those that are in and around the school quite a bit, you know, there's a lot of activities held here at the high school. And that means there's a lot of foot traffic, particularly in the winter. It makes getting things cleaned up and ready for school the next day kind of a challenge. And we're hoping this machine can kind of help with some of that and keep the school looking great. And the last piece as far as an action item for the board, our DECA program, which is our business club here at the high school. We really want to congratulate Emma Han and Ellie Rein. They went to a
011competition here a few weeks ago. Won that competition, actually were selected to go participate at nationals uh in Atlanta. So, we just approved their out of state travel. So, congratulations to those two and Mrs. Asher in business. Other than that, really just some con consent agenda items. Several hiring still going on. Really looking uh good. We're really excited about the new folks that'll be joining us here at AP. Uh, and really just some fiscal items that we're taking care of. Things are tracking along overall really, really well. So, some upcoming things, we've got a special board meeting on April 16th. That's all going to be around uh bonding the save dollars. Okay, that'll be a sale that day. The board will approve them that day. And then we'll be back onto our regular meeting schedule
012on April 20th and May 18th. That was a lot of things through the March agenda. The board did a great job working through all those things. So, pretty heavy things, but good things uh going forward. And as always, you've got questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me. I'd love to talk to you about those things. And go Falcons.