001I call this committee of the whole meeting to order on Monday, June 22nd at 2026 at 6:15 p.m. Roll call, please. >> D. Darling >> here, >> Stacy Salt >> here. >> Julie Jetty >> here. >> Katherine Potter >> here. >> Jason Chanzac >> here. Okay. So, items for discussion may be added to the agenda at the start of the meeting at the request of the superintendent or any board member upon majority approval of those members present. Does any board member have any item to add? >> Um, no, but I we we will have to be diligent about updating. I just want to like a reminder to update all those con all of the contact information on July 1st when the policies change in this in the leadership changes. So I don't know if you
002know Dr. Thomas which policies those are specifically. Um >> yeah so we've when we were doing the procedure manual we went through um and tried to grab the policies and there's also a new press packet that's going to be coming out imminently. I don't know exactly when, but sometime this summer apparently. And so whatever we haven't caught already and submitted, we'll be able to catch with the next press update. >> Okay. And then it wasn't it wasn't clear to me if that was just like an administrative update or if the board has to approve those like the change of who the contacted. >> I think those are just administrative updates, but um Mrs. Dorfer still puts them in as a request into board or not board book into uh the ISV system. >> Okay. >>
003Um but we'll we'll double check that. But I anyone that does have to come to the board will definitely get scooped up with the press um release of the next packet. >> Thank you. Yes, I'm still thinking about policy on summer vacation. So, thank you. >> Community input. I don't think we have any community in >> so approval of the previous minutes um from May 18th, 2026. Does any board member have any changes to those? Okay. So, hearing no changes, those will be entered. Um, Mr. uh discussion topics. So, the first one is our treasures report. Mr. Sheepard. >> So, I'm pleased to present to you the month of of May. Um, I think you will find that there's no major surprises in here, which is exactly what we like to see monthtomonth as we
004review these reports. Um, I'm I'm actually eager. I will be uh anxiously awaiting to see how the month of June turns out. uh because I think the the district is going to be in good shape. So, let's dive right in. Um take a look at our revenues. Uh you can see in the month of May, our revenues were were very strong. Uh this is exactly where we we expected them to be. I I will tell you that they came in ahead of where we thought they would be because property taxes started coming in sooner than they had before. Um last year, by the end of May, we had received one uh property tax payment from the county. U this year, we had already received two substantial payments. So they're they're already coming in uh strong
005and on time which is what we like to see. Uh as far as total expenses uh you can see that uh um we are almost exactly uh in line with the historical trend. Uh we know that salaries uh and benefits will catch up because of the payroll acrruals. We run a whole bunch of uh payrolls here in the next week and a half. Uh and then all other objects, the increase in that is accounted for in the construction projects, the the solar project and work that's been going on here at the junior high. Uh so again, nothing uh out of the ordinary uh to be seen in the expenses. When we look at our um monthly cash balances, you can see it it still remains healthy and it is outpacing the prior year. I do
006think that this the the total number is inflated um by a fair amount because uh the system is having a hard time uh determining that all the property taxes it's received is not just for this particular fiscal year. So remember we split the property tax um 8812 uh between the the fiscal fiscal years. So when we look at the month end uh the current year compared to the prior year monthto date uh you can see how um it's always interesting to look at these reports and just see how each month um is different from year to year and there really is no comparing um one month to the next of a prior year. They're just so completely different depending on what's going on in that particular year. Uh but again uh no surprises. Um we're
007holding up very well compared to uh our budget overall. Um, and you can see that the year-end projection is projecting a surplus of a little over $2 million. Again, the grain of salt. I think that number is inflated, but again, the trend is in uh the positive direction. Uh, debt service capital projects. Um, the next debt payment uh is in August. It's August 1st. Um, I have left that on the the whiteboard in the office for Mr. Glansman. It's pinned to the office board. Can't miss it. Um, so that'll be taken care of uh by August 1st. And of course, you know that we're going to have quite a bit going out in construction. Um, which is why you see that uh uh the deficit of over $12 million. That is referendum money essentially uh
008that's going out along with other funds the district had already earmarked for construction purposes. All important cash flow. Uh again, you can see the healthy surplus it is projecting. Um, if I was a betting person, I would say the surplus is probably going to be more in the the $4 to $600,000 range when it's all said and done. You you compile all of the expenses. Um, again, still a reasonable spot for for the district. Uh, um, especially as our resources are starting to get tighter with the uncertainty at the uh the federal and state level. And you can see our operating fund summary, healthy surplus in the education fund that I have no doubt. um operation maintenance uh there is a projected deficit that's a plan deficit and that's actually a smaller deficit than what
009we had originally budgeted a transportation that number I imagine is going to come down substantially um depending on when we actually physically received the last transportation claim payment the state has issued it the comproller hasn't paid it um so they have 8 days to get it into this fiscal year if it comes in in this fiscal year this number actually may break even or might might be a surplus. If it comes in next year, uh this number is going to be a deficit figure. But again, um the balance is high enough to where a deficit this year is not going to be so bad. Um and of course, fund IMRF, the fund 50, uh substantial deficit there. Um probably the only time you will ever hear a business official say they are proud of a
010deficit. Uh I have been trying to get this fund balance to go down for 5 years. Uh so if it actually uh goes down by that amount um that will help shield the district from tax liability uh in the future. And finally the the investments uh you can see that we hold a healthy 12 almost 12.5 million in investments. Keep in mind the investment list for the month of of June is going to look substantially different because it's going to start coming down. Uh now, Mr. Glansman, I I know has plans in the future to steadily increase the amount the district is investing, especially when we have those high points uh in the year where we have more cash on hand uh to try to maximize our our revenue. Uh so, you're most likely going
011to see this list grow um and then uh grow in the fall and get smaller in the spring as those funds come back to the district when we when we need them. All right. Uh, and anything extra, of course, we're going to always work to to invest. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Not to make you do a lot of math on your last couple of days here, Mr. Shepard, but do we have a total amount of interest that we have earned as a district in the strategic investment of the referendum funds? I see we're at 33,000 last month, right? Do we have a total amount as as a as a way of saying, "Hey, this is how we've stretched your tax dollars to even a greater value." >> So, >>
012or could you give that to us? >> I I can get you the exact figure. Um, however, the ballpark figure just for the the referendum account is probably in the area of uh $500,000. >> Wow. uh because at one point in time we were earning $50 $60,000 for uh that same pot of money. So it's it's a fairly substantial amount. Um in next year's budget we've actually uh allocated for um uh revenues from interest for the capital fund at about $300,000. So um we we've strategically tried to leave those funds in there as long as possible before we have them get sent back to the district. >> Absolutely. I think it's just a good story to tell our taxpayers, too, that we're able to to continue to stretch their dollar even further. So, thank you
013and nice work. >> Any other questions? >> Okay. Uh 9.2, a first look at our budget for fiscal year 27. >> All right. All right. So, once again, I am pleased to present to you the the first look for the fisc year 27 budget. Um, and you'll see that Mr. Glansman's name is on here because I appreciate the collaboration. This wouldn't be a presentation of mine without getting kicked off the the back. So, as I was saying, you could you'll see that Mr. Glansman's name is on here. Uh, and that uh um is with appreciation. I do appreciate the collaboration. Mr. Glansman has been a part of this process. Um, I believe uh about a week and a half ago, we actually went through each line item of the the budget. It was a very
014riveting um experience. Uh as we went through uh all the revenues and expenses, uh he's had an opportunity to to review uh this budget presentation and I think has a really good glimpse into where the district is at and and I've appreciated uh working with him on on this budget. Uh so as you know one of our strategic plan goals is fiscal responsibility and uh um I think that this budget aligns uh resources to district priorities. Um as you will see it is a balanced budget. Um it uh helps us with our goal of deliberately budgeting for recruiting and retraining of exe exceptional staff and and actually our our prudent budgeting over the last I would say five six years has really allowed us to get to the point where we're able to negotiate uh
015um substantial contracts with our our bargaining groups uh and create a proactive capital improvement plan uh that addresses current needs and financially prepares the uh for the future building needs. Uh again, that is being actively supported uh by this budget. Um shout out to Mr. Martin uh who's got projects going on at just about all of our our buildings and um I'm pleased to see that uh we've got the the thank you banners out at all of our our facilities as well. So the the the goal, the purpose for a budget, uh we know that the the budget is like our road map, right? Um, I like the the phrase of a budget is like all the dollars are like my employees, right? Uh, each dollar has a specific job that I've given it and
016at the end of the day it uh balances out and you end up with a balanced budget uh uh where your revenues uh equal your expenses. Uh the FY27 tenative budget is from July 1st uh to June 30th. Uh it maintains a balanced budget uh for operating funds. We'll talk about uh the total budget in just a minute. And provides the district with flexibility to handle unexpected events uh such as building maintenance issues, which you shouldn't really have many of with most of your facilities being updated. Uh but then higher than expected costs in a variety of of areas. We just don't know what's going to happen in the future. Uh, and I'm proud of the fact that this budget really affords the the district flexibility to handle those unexpected events without having to uh
017pull funds away from our students. So, as always, there are some unknowns with uh the budget. Uh, I mean, whatever is going on at the the state level uh is always of of concern. Um, at the federal, everyone knows of the issues that are going on at the the federal level. Uh this budget does include uh title funds and and other federal funds because those were already allocated. Um we don't know about future years on whether those funds are are going to be there. Um individualized student need requirements, those can vary from year to year. Uh and in many cases, those those costs are most likely to continue to go up as the needs of our students uh continue to evolve uh over time. uh capital needs. This one probably is going to be able
018to come off the list uh at some point uh rather soon. Uh state funding distribution delays. Uh those could the delays in funding could be forthcoming in the future. Uh CPI changes, we know that that has a huge impact on school district budgets. Uh and continued staffing shortages, reliance on contract agencies can have a huge impact. um for the FY26, just for frame of reference, the contracted services costs um for psychologist, social workers, speech paths, uh total to about $1.4 million. Uh and kudos to u our our team here. Uh for next year at this point, it's looking like we're going to be able to cut that figure in half uh because of the the ability for us to hire from within. So that's going to be a huge benefit uh to this district. So
019whenever we build the budget, uh we always make uh some assumptions because uh that's what a budget is. It's a prediction of where you think you're going to go uh throughout the fiscal year. Um we always predict that the levy collection rate is 99.5%. that's actually at the higher end, but we have a community that uh um for the most part follows through with its obligation to pay their their their portion of tax. Um we know that CPI is 2.9% for levy year 2025. Uh for the upcoming levy season, that figure is going to be 2.7. Um and I I wouldn't even wager a guess on what that figure is going to be in December. It could be zero. It could be 10. We just we just don't know based on whatever is going on
020in uh the the political geosphere at that point. Um evidence-based funding will likely increase. Uh the initial budget figure shows about $90,000 increase. Uh we are um a tier 2 school uh which as a result the increase that we see yeartoyear is going to be smaller. I think one year we were classified as tier one and we got almost $700,000 of an increase that particular year. Um and then the following year it dropped to about a h 100,000 and we've budgeted about 90,000 based on the fact that uh um the allocation went up for EBF by the same amount that it did in the previous years. Uh CPPRT funding back to pre-COVID levels. Um it will likely come in significantly higher. Uh so there again is the flexibility that the board is going to have
021on the revenue side. Um, we built in uh revenues for CPPRT at about 275,000. Um, I think it's most likely going to come in at about 450,000. Uh, but until you have that number for sure, again, it's it's more prudent to be on the conservative side of things um and have that wiggle room to go up rather than to try to pair back. uh federal federal revenues are included uh and title funds were slightly reduced from FY26, but the celebratory point from there is that we have title funds uh when that was really looking to be in doubt um just a couple months ago. Uh reimbursements such as the annual transportation claim and Medicaid reimbursements were reduced um by about 10% um mostly coming on the transportation claim side. Again, um I felt it prudent
022to reduce it more than it's likely going to be to again give you that wiggle room in the future knowing that you've got that buffer built in. Uh and then of course we're going to start to draw down the amount being earned through interest as interest rates stabilize. Um as hopefully we will get to the point where uh the nation experiences some calm. Um that will stabilize interest rates. um and the interest rate revenues are going to start coming back down uh to where they more historically are at. So the revenue summary uh and again you'll see that there really is not much change here from the the prior year. Uh the biggest change comes in the amount of local property taxes. Um that's not surprising. That is where we draw most of our revenue
023is from local sources. Um, evidence-based funding again, um, we've got going up about 100,000. I think the previous slide said 90, but the the numbers show 100. That's probably more accurate. Um, other state funding going down a little. That's really attributed to the the reduction in the teacher vacancy grant, which is still going to be around for next year, but going to be reduced probably by about half. So, that brings us to a total revenue of about a little over 40 million $40 million. And again, you can see most of that change is being driven um by local resources. So the next couple slides are just charts uh to to show the the the comparison with the prior year. Again, no major no major changes here. Uh local shows slight increase. State and federal are
024mostly flat. Uh again, this is not uh breaking news to anyone at this table. We are predominantly supported by our community. um we do not have the the ability to um raise other sources from other uh areas. We don't have a huge industry base. Uh so it is predominantly property taxpayers that uh um contributes to the success of this district. Uh revenue by fund. Uh this is the operating funds. Uh you can see that most of our resources go directly to the education fund. Um, and when you factor in the transportation fund, almost 90% uh of our funds go to uh are are allocated that directly impact our students in some way, shape or form, right? Uh so you can see here that the money that we do take in, we are cognizant of of
025the importance of that and we do try to funnel that towards our our students. Before we move on to the expenditures, are there any questions on the revenues? Hearing none, we'll move on to the the expenditures. All right. So, the expenditure assumptions again, we follow the same process here with the expenditure uh expenditure side. Uh the assumptions here are the salary increases for the most part we we know about and thankfully this year we were able to get our contract negotiations done uh prior to the point where the the budget was really being worked on. So that was really beneficial. Um so we based salary increases on negotiated rates and 4% increase for non-union staff. Um benefits uh as everyone at this table knows the benefits were the huge driver of our expense increases for
026the upcoming year. Uh we saw increases in liability and workman's comp insurance of upwards of 35%. Um health insurance and medical dental went up about 17 to 20%. Uh and actually those figures compared with other districts are on the lower end of of what other districts uh experienced. Um those are costs that no matter how good of a budget you have um at some point that's going to put a strain on your your budget. Um retirement contributions remain split 50/50 between employer and employee. Uh no changes to the employee employer contributions toward medical premiums. Um with the exception of for CA single premium um for dental rose to 80%. the following year those contributions are going to change slightly per the the negotiated contract. Uh and those are already being uh discussed and how you
027can fit that into the FY28 budget. Uh so insurance costs will remain a stressing point for for future budgets. This district is not alone with that. That is a stressing point for districts um throughout the area. Uh purchase service supplies and assumptions. most of the supply purchase services were held flat. That is really where the district can really control its expenses is in this area. And I will tell you uh having worked in a variety of districts that this district does a very nice job of using its resources wisely when it comes to supplies and purchase services. Um very conscientious of of the impact on our taxpayer base. Uh we were able to inc uh price increase the the increase for the custodial um services. The bus lease remains at 615 for the 2627 school
028year. Uh that's going to be brought back to the board in the fall. Uh as I know our transportation coordinator is already starting to work on um negotiating new leases uh for the the upcoming couple of years. Uh special education services for outside support is expected to remain high and grow. Um these are for like your your homebound services for any tutoring that's occurring for for anyone who can't be at school for a particular reason but still requires services provided by the school. Uh and the contracted services is projected to decrease uh to approximately $750,000 uh from 1.3 million. Again I I cannot emphasize the importance of that. That is a huge celebratory point. If that figure remains um consistent a couple months from now, the district should be very proud of of that reduction.
029Um special education outsourced transportation service should remain flat. However, we could see additional savings this year as we expand our small vehicle fleet. We'll talk more about this in just a little bit. Uh kudos to our transportation department. We had budgeted $300,000 in FY26 for outside uh transportation services. Um we of course had bought that small vehicle last uh last fall. Um and we attribute the fact that we have that vehicle to the um the the demand for contracted services did not decrease. Um but because we were able to provide services using that small vehicle rather than a bus, our um contracted services cost overall uh we were able to keep flat um um negating whatever natural increase would have occurred from the the prior year. So um we're going to be talking about how
030we like to continue to expand uh that fleet to continue to provide services for those those students. So our expenditure summary um again you will not see uh you will see a budget here that shows uh overall a fairly stable budget. You'll see that again the biggest driver of increases uh in your expenditure uh budget is going to be salary and benefits. That's not surprising. We are a people business uh and people are our most important commodity, right? Uh that's our our important resource. Uh and so most of our financial resources go towards the people that serve our our students. Um and and that's also where you see the the biggest increase in expenses. Uh you'll see the increase in the employee benefits. Um I went back and looked at prior years and again that
031number historically has been as low as just about 50,000 increase to um $150,000 increase. So that 430 is a huge uh increase um for for benefits. Uh the rest of the numbers will will eb and flow but overall compare pretty favorably as compared to FY26. Uh so there are no major changes uh from the FY26 budget to FY27. And again you can see you you can see that here in the expenditure by object. You can see that the capital budget uh continues to remain strong. You're going to see that for another couple years and then that will be um transitioned into O andM. And I already know Mr. Martin is um busily working on um a five-year plan that's going to capitalize on maintaining your facilities well into the future. Uh so expenditures by funds
032and I included all funds first. Uh you can see that 61.1% go towards the education fund. Th this number is skewed because you're throwing in the capital expenses. So when you take out the capital expenses and you throw in just the operating funds, you'll see that the education fund again uh receives a large majority of uh the expenses. Almost 80% go directly to the fund that has the biggest impact um on on our students. Uh transfers uh starting with FY24, the bus lease was paid out of fund 30. I remember that was um a change that we made that particular year where uh you have to take the money from the transportation fund um send it to its connecting flight at the education fund and then to the uh debt service fund from there. That
033was uh at the advice of our auditor. Um this budget includes that $615,000 transfer. Uh there are no other proposed transfers at this time. Uh that is not to say that there won't be the need to. Um there are a couple of scenarios that could play out that could cause uh you to have to amend the FY27 budget. I imagine those are mostly capital uh related depending on what the exact costs of projects are at the end of this fall uh and also whatever projects are planned for next summer. Um you also um there there's also some uncertainty on when uh a rather large chunk of of uh incentives will be coming back from the solar project upwards of 2 to $2.5 million. Uh those funds when they come back they're not accounted for in
034this budget. When they come back you you would have a variety of options whether you leave that in on&m or you transfer that to to capital. Uh those would be the type of transfers that uh Mr. Glansman would be bringing to you. um in the spring. It just depends on how the year plays out. U but I don't foresee any circumstances where you're going to be amending the budget because something completely unforeseen happened. Uh complete reduction in revenue or some unforeseen expenditure came out of the um came out of the woodwork somewhere. Um it's a very stable budget and I imagine you'd only be amending it uh for capital purposes. So when we look at this slide, this is basically the I've got the operating fund summary, uh debt and capital fund summary and total
035budget. Um operating funds operating funds are your funds that are are funded directly by a tax resource or are funds that the district can levy taxes for. Uh that's education on& and M transportation and IMRF. U this is the your working budget here essentially. Uh and you'll notice that this budget is balanced. It does have uh a projected deficit in on&m. It does have a projected deficit in transportation and again it's much smaller deficit in in IMRF. As you can see, we're starting to whittle that down uh from the deficits uh of the past. Uh the one thing that I would say about the ON&M and transportation deficits, uh transportation deficit accounts for a decrease in state claim funding. This is an area again like this year you could see that um that number be
036much closer to balance, but because we have to take into account that the funds coming from Springfield could be lower than anticipated. So if they come in higher, I imagine that number will not be as high. Again, it's one of those funds that has a higher fund balance. So if it does turn out like that, great. You're shielding yourself from tax liability in the future. Um if if not, um those are just more funds that you can use other places. Uh it also assumes that you are spending every single dollar in the budget. In my 5 years here, you have never spent every single dollar in your budget. Not anywhere close. Um in the budget that Mr. Glansman and I have developed, yes, every dollar has a job. Uh but if the year goes well,
037not every single dollar will be spent. Um it the budget has to assume worst case scenario for every single account item. For debt and capital funds summary, uh this is where your deficit is. So if you're if you're looking at this and you see the the negative $12 million and you're you're wondering, oh my lord, that's a huge deficit. Those are funds the district already holds. Um, if you were to look at our audit from FY25, you would have seen that we ran a huge surplus because we took in $14 million from bonds, right? Um, well, now we're spending that down. So, over the next couple years, this section of the budget is going to look like it's in deficit when the actual overall budget is is balanced. So, that uh ser that deficit of
038$12.2 $2 million. That is the draw down of the capital funds from the referendum. Um our operating funds are in balance which is a requirement uh per um resolution by the board and the um strategic plan goal five. So a couple of the highlights here. I won't go through each and every single one of these. Um the board is well aware of all the the the great work uh that the the teaching and learning side of the the house has done over the the the last uh uh really over the last three years. Um that is seen in all of our academic gains and and both not only uh local assessment data that we see but also from our state assessment data. Um recent note the access scores was a huge uh celebration. So really
039this budget goes into maintaining the the systems that are in place that we know are successful because we've been seeing those those successful uh results. Um the one thing that I would add in here is that um we are going to continue to expand our small vehicle fleet uh and we are going to continue to maximize on our implementation of Skyward uh the business side to really modernize our our business office processes. uh and uh um take this district into the 21st century when it comes to that aspect. So so moving forward uh the current areas of uncertainty um I shouldn't have labeled it that because these are are there are some areas of uncertainty. However, the one certainty is that at the June 29th meeting, um we are going to I'm going to come
040to you and ask you uh like we did the prior year uh for authorization for the purchase of a small vehicle for our transportation department of up to $55,000. Uh that is the figure that we used last year. Um Mr. Kubala has already reached out to the dealership that we purchased our vehicle from last year, which we got a great deal on. Uh by the way, uh they have found us another vehicle. They think uh they are going to provide us with the same type of deal. Uh and uh including free oil changes for the life of the the vehicle. They they threw that in there. So um again, of that $55,000 that we are asking for, um I anticipate that small vehicle purchase being uh right around 37 or 38. Um why are we
041bringing this to you next week? Um because uh as we all know from the joy of car shopping, um dealers generally don't like to hold cars on their lot for a month to accommodate board schedule. Um and so the the the dealership uh um has been accommodating to us in the past to find vehicles uh but to expect them to hold it to the end of July was was just not going to be realistic. and especially if they found something that was going to be a good deal, we wanted to be uh proactive and bring this to the board, seek the authorization, and then uh it will come back to you in July with what we actually purchased because I I believe that's what we what we did last year. Um and again, I would
042imagine one of Mr. Glansman's first actions that first week uh is going to be going to the dealership to to to to buy a car. Um and and kudos to Mr. Kabala and his team. Um, as soon as I gave him the go-ahhead, uh, he he literally called like 10 minutes later and said, "Hey, I think we have a vehicle." Um, the the results of the salary study and future impact and compensation packages. Um, this budget uh also tries to leave space in there for the district to uh start thinking about how to reactively uh address those concerns. Um, state funding. Uh, state is projected to running significant deficits in the near future. Um we're we're just gonna have to wait and see what that holds year to year. Uh review the tax levy and
043make adjustments to address shorefall and on&m and IMRF in the future. Um you cannot continue to run deficits in those. Uh right now they're planned, but at some point you will have to reallocate the the tax levy uh and continue. You didn't think you were going to get through a budget presentation without me mentioning the facility sales tax, countywide facility sales tax. um that uh again if passed uh would free up funding for other district initiatives and I might add would be a way to help provide um relief to property taxpayers because if you don't want to pay the sales tax, you simply don't buy the item. Uh the sales tax would not be on any of your essential items such as food, um medicines, uh that type of stuff. it's simply on stuff that
044people have a choice to buy uh rather than not. So again, facility sales tax, I'm going to continue to harp on that. Um I will be in Lake County and I will continue to be harping on that in your favor. >> Mr. Glman so he can continue to harp on us. >> So Mr. Glansman and I are very much on the same page and in fact uh Lake County is the I believe the trial run because I believe Lake County has this uh is has it on the ballot or going to put it on the ballot uh this coming fall. Uh so uh I I would anticipate that uh Mr. Glansman is going to continue to harp on this. Um and uh we are going to continue to harp on it to anyone who will
045listen. If you want your property, if you want property tax relief or you want to stabilize your property taxes, uh this sales tax is a good way to shift the burden in some way, shape or form to another source of funding. So, a quick review of the timeline. Um again, uh we are taking a first look at the budget. Next week, uh we are going to be asking authorization to place the budget on display. I hope to have the actual budget form to you. Um, it may be on the FY26 budget form at first because the budget form for FY27 hasn't been uploaded to Skyward yet. That is something that Skyward has to to do on their end. Um, so our thought would be we get authorization from the board, place the budget on display,
046which we're required to do. As soon as the budget can be placed on the FY27 form, we will place it on that. We'll let the board know through a weekend review. It will be then available for the the minimum 30 days that it needs to be uh prior to approval in in August. All right. And of course, Mr. Glansman will provide updates throughout the summer uh if there are any uh changes. Um I'm not anticipating any major changes at this point, but we eagerly await the EBF, evidence-based funding figure from the the state along with some other key revenue uh figures. The final budget presentation will be, I believe, August 24th. Um, that will be the full hearing uh and approval. Uh, Mr. Glansman will then file the budget with the county clerk's office and
047he will begin working on the tax lovey on the 26th of of August uh for FY28. Uh, and with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. >> Mr. Shephard. Um the legal requirement to have the budget on um available for public inspection that's just in the in the office the giant paper copy. >> Yeah. So the the the the requirement is it has to be posted on our website which is the the budget is always posted uh the the day after the the board meeting. We also uh print out a paper copy uh that sits right up by our receptionist um and she eagerly awaits the public to come and inspect it. Uh and that remains there until final passage in in August. Um we uh if you go and look at our our
048web page, you can see the um tenative budget posted and you can see the actual adopted budget. So if someone really wants to, they can go in and inspect both and see if they can identify where the changes are at um in the two versions of the budget. >> And then do you know if this budget um accounts for any district investments in artificial intelligence because we haven't gotten the we haven't received the followup from the about the AI pilot not here and not in the committee. >> Yeah. The AI information is coming in July because uh Dr. Burke Meyer uh and uh was not able to be here tonight and she's the person who's going to be doing the follow-through with that. So uh Lynn Williams will be doing the presentation and uh we
049had discussion about we if we didn't have all the people that could be here. So they're going to be presenting that next month. Whether there's any money in there for purchase or not, that I'm not sure of, but it would be part of the uh curriculum budget or the teaching and learning budget. >> Yeah. The thing what I would say to that is that the those type of purchases would come from the teaching and learning budget. From our budgeting perspective, uh the budget did not increase. Um and in actuality, it probably decreased a little. um how they're going to use those funds would still be subject for debate depending on what the conversation is in July um up to the approval of the budget in in August. >> I didn't think that was your question
050though. Is that your question? >> What is what did you think? >> I thought your question was do we have investments in companies that specialize in AI? >> No. But do we? >> Okay. Okay. I misunderstand your question. Okay. No, they understood. Okay. Um, but yeah, I I was curious about that because uh we were we were expecting that in May and then we didn't get it. So I didn't know if it was on hold or if we were waiting for the state or if we just weren't going to go there because we had that presentation. >> No, it was actually ready in May, but we had conversation because of the long term of what this is and the changes in policy and things like that that were needed. So Miss Rivera and Dr. Dr.
051Burke Meyer and I met with Miss Williams to talk about the presentation and what the follow-up was going to need to be and July was the first meeting that we could have both Mrs. Williams and uh Dr. Burkemeyer at the same meeting and because this goes into next year that we just decided that would be better to wait until so that's coming at the cow in July. So anything else that's coming um through that whatever recommendations and things like that and then the follow-up would be there's policy that would need to be looked at um that will come along with it. So that is all scheduled the uh cow will have the presentation of the AI and then if there's any updates or things that need to be done that can be done in at
052the July board meeting or August meeting or future meetings. >> Thank you very much. >> And I just like to say uh Mr. Shephard, thank you for another solid budget and for your very uh solid stewardship of our district 26 finances. We've always felt very comfortable with what you presented to us. So, thank you very much. >> Any other questions? >> I do have one. Okay. And I'm sorry, Mr. Shepard. I'm sorry. I know that um there was a going an an anticipated deficit in the transportation fund. Um was there discussion about the cost of fuel and is that coming out of the transportation fund for the district and the uncertainty in that? So I I will tell you that the cost of fuel when we look at the projected uh the projected deficit the
053projected deficit has is it's it's a revenue it's a revenue issue right it is not on the expenditure side it's it's simply because we have to we have to assume the state is not going to be able to follow through with all of its payments right uh for its obligations for transportation when we look at the like fuel and I I know that there's been a lot in the news about the the cost of of gasoline and whatnot. Um we have actually done a very good job of of weathering that storm. Um our fuel we budgeted um about $150,000 for fuel for this past fiscal year and up until recently we probably would have come in under budget uh with that. Uh and actually I believe we're going to basically break even which is is
054pretty phenomenal considering the the volatility of of gasoline prices. So, I I would I would uh um look at that deficit. Yeah, that deficit uh in in the long run, you're not going to be able to sustain that. You might have to reallocate some funds via the tax levy, but in the immediate short term, it it's not a structural thing with us spending too much money or having money um you know, not being able to control fuel costs or outsource services. It's simply because our revenue projections are incredibly conservative um just based on the the the current economic forecast. Anything else? Okay. Okay. Okay. We'll move on to 9.3. Um branching minds. An update from Dr. Tatis. >> Thank you. Give me just a moment here and we'll get this up on the screen. It
055says it's connecting. Here we go. Um, so Branching Minds, uh, as you may remember, is the system that we use for all of our data. um so that we can uh sorry this is going to pull a Mr. Shepher presentation go through slowly but what we do with this is this is where we have all of our data warehouse basically so this is information that comes from uh the academic side it's the social emotional side and behavior um all the information that we have in infinite campus actually can be filtered through uh branching minds um the way that we use it it centralizes all the student um data uh again academic attendance behavior social emot emotional so that we can uh take a look at what students needs are. Um and this has been very
056helpful. I'm so sorry that the picture up on our screen is not looking good right now, but um it's really helpful in taking a look at what the student needs are and trying to identify what types of interventions might be needed. Can go to the next page. It's going to do the same thing. Sorry. Um so let me just talk for a minute about this uh student data and the progress monitoring. So we use this to do things like it integrates I Ready assessments. It brings those in. It looks at student level, building level and district level reporting for the I Ready data. Uh it allows the staff to monitor academic progress over time and supports the datadriven instructional interventions and decisions. It actually has in it a a system of being able to through
057I Ready have students be able to do intervention based on what their needs are, what's showing up in the I Ready uh uh scores that will work with the students. What we use this data for when we're trying to look at the data across time, and I'm sorry the pictures are a little bit small, but we wanted to include some of our actual data. This one's a little bit easier to see. So this is some of our student progress monitoring information. On the left hand side you'll see we have reading information. This is for the district. This is actually our district data from this year. And on the right hand side is math. And this is the top line there is fall then uh winter then spring. And what we're looking at is this is
058pulled directly from uh branching minds. We're looking at students. We want as many students and possible to be in the green and the blue. So you'll see there's the green and the blue are the smallest in the fall and as we did our teaching as we did interventions the students who are um meeting and a seeding essentially in the their grade level actually it continues to grow. So in the middle the blue and the green grow a little and by the end of the year the blue and the green have grown more. That was true in uh both math and in reading. And these are the types of things that we're able to look at. This is the whole district but we're able to drill down into looking at grade levels. We can look at
059a classroom. we can look at an individual student in the same way to see what kind of progress that they're making. >> So, does somebody like look for each student like in fourth grade or something and see where they fall on this? >> So, there's a couple of ways that that's done. So, that is uh the way that we're using it the most right now are through uh mostly grade levels. They're done at with our instructional coaches at grade level team meetings. Also at the building level, the principles are working with their uh BLT teams to take a look at the data to see where are the issues, where are their concerns, what things do we need to focus on. And teaching and learning, they have the instructional framework. So they can take a look
060at this and then go, okay, we need to shift on these particular types of topics. And then they can structure their intervention groups or the win groups that we do so that they're addressing the specific skills that are um showing deficits. So they may have uh the win group shifting by a trimester to address the different skills that are showing up that we're seeing because even though I don't know if I can get back to it. um even though it's showing uh the the blue and the green shifting, we can again drill down into the student level and drill even further to see, okay, what types of things are our kids missing and are there large pieces that many kids are missing that we can then go back and retach? Is there something in our
061scope and sequence that we need to adjust? Is there just a skill that is been has been tough for kids to pick up? So, those are all things that's we can look at. again student level, class level, district level um across the board. So building teams that are working on uh identifying interventions for students are doing that kind of uh drill down instructional coaches are doing a lot of that work with the grade levels that they work with and then individual teachers that they're working with. I would say we're in the early stages of teachers doing this individually for each of their kids. The big change this year was administratively coaches um and then grade level or I'm sorry the building teams taking a look at the data. Teachers are using it but they're using
062it a little bit differently right now. They're using it more on the social emotional side which I'll talk about in just a minute. Um this also has something in it called the early warning system. The early warning system is the system that takes a look at the things you see on this page. the attendance concerns, behavior concerns, course performance and completion. Remember, we've got academic and we've got social emotional and behavioral data in there. So, we can set the thresholds that we have. And then it codes students, it's hard to see in the screen, but it codes them uh red, yellow, or green. Green if everything's going fine. Yellow if there's something we want to keep an eye on. Red if there's something we're concerned about. So, if there's a red in the attendance that's
063an issue, we can look at the attendance and also look at the academic performance. Is attendance an issue? but academic performance is fine or is attendance an issue and academics academic isn't fine and also behavioral data. So we can take all those different pieces of systems and pull those in together to take a look at an individual student or a grade level. We can even drill down and look at is there a time during the day when more incidents are happening behaviorally or is there is it during lunch? Is it before or after school? Is it before lunch when kids are hungry and maybe they're not able to attend as well. So there's a lot of things that we can look at patterns to try to figure out other strategies to intervene um not only
064just for an individual student but maybe there's something that we can see a little bit broader in the building or across multiple buildings. >> Dr. Thomas is this then is the branching minds integrated into the district's MTSS process? >> Yes. So our all of our and I think that might be the next slide. All of our SEAL uh and this is where teachers use it for every single student. Our screeners are embedded actually in branching minds. So when we do the DESA, which is what we do uh kindergarten through 8th grade for all students, it's just a a mini screener that we do to look at social emotional needs filled out by the teachers. Uh the teachers filled it out. If anything is flagged, then let me see if that's the next slide. Um, sorry,
065I'm a little ahead of myself. Oh, was the slide before. I'm sorry if I can. Let me see if I can get back. Oh, it just disconnected me. Okay. >> It says it says, "How is this screener results for students in grades K through eight? Sorry, it's trying to get back up. Okay, try to make that a little bigger. So the student data and progress monitoring this is where we use it for MTSS for the uh the social emotional side for and behavioral side. So this has our screener results. The teachers actually report it right in here. Um and then it gives information back which is information used by our building teams and particularly by a team that we have in every building of social worker, psychologist looking at results for kids that might have
066shown up as having a concern. If there's a concern that's flagged, there's a another DESA that's a more detailed DESA that the teacher fills out uh for the student. Our students who are in grades 5 through 8, there's what we call the SECA. The SECA is actually a student completed form. Um and then that information comes through and we can take a look at what are the areas where the kids might be um having some struggles. So this is also then used to progress monitor if we're doing an intervention. For example, a common intervention we do is check and checkout, which is this at the bottom of the page there. And we'll look at what are the things that we're monitoring for that student. So, for example, are we looking at respectful, responsible, safe, and
067how did they do that week? And then we can log that over time. And we can graph that over time to uh see how they're doing with their um social emotional uh on the social emotional side. for students that there are any um major concerns that come up when we do the more detailed DESA that's something that we have interventions to check and check out. We have social work, we have groups that we do with the social workers. So there are a lot of different avenues that kids can get help and support there. >> Do you um Okay. So it's I Ready, it's DESAC. What other data sources are they integrated? Infinite campus is our infinite campus data is pulled into uh branching minds as well. So that's how we can look at things like
068attendance, office referrals, behavioral incidents, things like that all get pulled into the same system. >> All of it happening in real time and it's being integrated automatically. It's not getting put in manually. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> Mr. Fitz Simmons actually could probably speak to that more, but that does update regularly. >> Okay. are parents is are is family communication incorporated into any of those integration? >> The family communication is on each of those things separately. So the academics, the um the social emotional screener and things like that, if we have a student who is up for any kind of intervention or any kind of support services, parents are informed of that as well. uh especially if there's going to be any type of well when they go to win they parents are aware of
069what win group a student might be going to or if that's changing. Um so that information is included. It's not parents don't see branching minds. They don't see the data that's in there but they know what the outcome is of what all that data is that we're looking at and what that means for an individual student. >> What do you mean? Because I >> Well, because we would Right. But if you're if you have a child in the school and they need an intervention, this is where we're pulling the data from that tells us there's an intervention that may be needed because all of that academic, social, emotional, behavioral, all that is in there that we're looking at to create plans for kids. >> Okay. So, like if there's an attendance issue or if if
070your child's solid on attendance but there's an academic problem, then we don't have to worry about the attendance issue. There's some type of academic intervention that needs to be done rather than a social emotional intervention that needs to be done because one is green and the other is yellow. That'll that'll give the school the dis the the direction to go based upon what what is happening with that student. Those are teams looking at the student. >> We have building level teams that look at that. Grade level teams in the elementary are the ones who typically look at that information with the principles, assistant principles and then with the interventionists as well. >> Okay. So are the teachers grade books do they feed into here? >> The grade books I don't believe feed directly into branching
071minds. >> Final trimester grades feed into branching minds but that is all grade books. >> Okay. Okay, Dr. >> Thomas, I have a question. So, say you're an accelerated student and you're bored to death and you don't you're not getting challenged enough. So, in a lot of instances, you're going to your grades are going to seem like you're not doing the work or you're how are we how are we calibrating what the actual it's really that we're not challenging them enough. I think that shows up in a couple of places because we would see in I Ready we would see that their scores are quite high. We might see somewhere else that um there might be issues on like the DESA for example how they rate themselves on the SECA or how the student is
072rating them with areas that they have concerns about that might not be academic but it might be that they don't seem to be engaged and there's other things going on their grades. we look at that. That might not be reflecting the test scores we see with I Ready and with our daily types of assessments that we do. So, all of those are things that we would take a look at because if we have a student who's kind of getting mediocre grades and they're off the charts on the assessments, we know there's something else going on like they're not being challenged, right? So, one of the things that uh we like about this, it's a collaborative student support system. And there I there's a list here of the many people who use it. As I said,
073the teachers right now are using it more on the um social emotional side or with the group data. Some of our teachers are actually drilling right down into the individual student level. That's something that is on Dr. under Burke Meyer's radar for next year is to continue to help teachers to understand how to use branching minds. But for the first year of like big implementation, I would say it's being used pretty widespread in a big way, which is really helpful. It's the first time we've had the ability to integrate the academic and the social emotional sides together with behavioral data, office referrals, attendance, all those things. We've never had the ability to just pull all that together in one spot and look at it um cohesively. So, that's been really helpful. And it's done a
074lot in groups. Like I said, psychologist, social workers do this a lot. Interventionists, the coaches use it a lot uh with the grade level teams and also with individual teachers that they're working with. >> Is it creating extra work for the teacher or streamlining the process? In my opinion, it's streamlining the process because they can look at all of the information at once to more tailor the intervention for what the student needs, which is really helpful instead of trying to do an academic um you know, if we have a gifted student or somebody who's really accelerated and their grades aren't reflecting that, it might not be because they need an academic intervention, which is what we're doing because we see poor grades. It's really because they need the challenge. It's really because there might be
075something going on at home. they need social emotional support, whatever the case might be. So, it it helps us streamline and get the right supports in place just and it's fluid so we can update, change and adjust those as needed. >> Okay. And then how do we monitor if I'm sorry, how do we determine if um it's making a difference? So that's where it has the progress monitoring feature built in that we actually can have that data in there. And so we can chart uh across time what intervention we've done and take a look at the trend line and if it's trending up that things are getting better, great. If it's not trending up or staying flat, we can adjust the intervention and then again collect more data and the progress monitoring data is actually
076kept right in branching minds as well. >> Okay. Does this do you know if that data follows the students like through their >> career as a student? >> Once it's in branching minds you can see that data going forward. So from teach from year to year teacher to teacher that information is there. So you can see if there was an intervention when that went in what worked what didn't work. So that gives a the next year's teacher and the next year's teacher that information. We don't have a lot of historical data right now because this is the first year it's really been widely used. >> Is do you know is the high school using branching minds? >> I don't know. >> Okay. >> So continued areas of growth and implementation again analysis of whole child
077through multiple data points look uh the use of the check and checkout data tracking system. We've used that a lot this year. That's something that we continue to refine. Um progress monitoring as we talked about academically, social, emotional, and behaviorally. And then goal setting for interventions and supports. And in general, we've got the big picture that we're using really well. And the more you drill down, we're getting better and better at that. So, it's a matter of getting everybody to be able to use it equally well. And anytime you have something that's new, um it's just it's there's a little bit of startup to that. I would say that it's much more widespread than I anticipated and I'm really glad we did. This is really the second year that we've had the program but the
078first year was all training and this year is the first year it's really all implementation. So now we just work on refining implementation so that we can really tailor to meet the needs of the meet the needs of the child. Is there a yearly cost to this? Oh, a license, yearly license that we pay for this. I'm sure that there is. I don't know what it is that goes through teaching and learning. I believe Andy, you look like you might know. >> I as I recall, I think we signed a three-year to start and it'll I I would guess we could reup for another three years or we could switch to an annual, whichever is more budget friendly. Okay, thank you. >> Is this just I'm sorry. Is this just is branching minds only using
079um the I Ready as the student progress monitoring? >> It can pull in any uh data that we have. So, it can pull in our state testing scores. It can pull in other assessment scores. It can pull anything. I is a big one that we use because we use it frequently >> three times. Yeah. >> And it gives that fall, winter, spring which we're always looking for trends across time but it also any other information we are putting in the data from uh an intervention for example and looking at scores there that's also embedded in branching minds as well. >> Okay. Um I guess how do um how do we know that the progress well how do you monitor the progress student progress between the IR assessment in th in those windows? >> So there
080are other interventions and assessments that we're doing that we're recording in branching minds. So for example, if I'm doing an academic intervention based on I ready scores, those scores are being recorded in branching minds so that we can track over time are they getting the skills that we're working on addressing through the intervention. So there's not just the three data points, there's a lot of data points in themic for whatever interventions that we might be doing. A pain.