001e e e everyone this it is uh 6:30 p.m. on February 24th 2025 I would like to call to order the meeting of the finance committee for ly Community School District 202 item two is public comment do we have any we do not have any thank you item three on the agenda are the minutes from the January 27 2025 finance committee meeting does anyone have any questions changes or comments no excellent good so we are in agreement that immediate that the minutes accurately refect the January finance committee meeting excellent I'm going to try to keep things rolling on we have a bit of a tight schedule the regular meeting is at o'cl all right so item four is the Skyward business software renewal agreement that information can be found under item 7 A6 of the
002regular board meeting packet if you would Mr Wilkinson uh thank you so the district originally entered into a 5-year agreement with Skyward back in 2017 when we converted off of our old uh kind of general ledger HR accounting software package called DCR and so that was a 5-year agreement we then extended that for an additional three years at a 3.8% increase um that current term is expiring on June 30th of 2025 and so Skyward has offered a renewal of a 5% increase now that would be a 5% increase in the first year and then it would remain constant for the next two years it would not continue to increase each year after that uh the annual license fee is expected to be around $ 11,500 so it's about a $500 increase annually but over the
003three-year period it's just over $34,000 and while software is not subject to the bidding requirements we do have the policy that states anything over 25,000 the the board wants to be made aware of and so I went ahead and included this for approval uh in tonight's board meeting packet uh again it will lock in our rate for 3 years and uh the administration recommends approval of the software agreement any questions no excellent good so moving on to item five the student fees and facil usage rates for 2026 uh this information can be found under item 7 A5 of the regular board meeting packet once again if you were to assist us sure so uh the fee recommended fee schedule is included in the board packet for approval this evening I'm going to walk through a
004handful of the items uh there's there's quite a few items there on your write up um I think it used to be one page now it's expanded to four pages so I'll give you some of the highlights here uh there are a few things to discuss this evening first of all uh we are recommending waving the books and supplies fee uh again this year uh as far as the usage fees that would be our um sports activities clubs some of those other classes uh those would be an increase in line with CPI of 2.9% for the next year kind of rounded to the nearest Dollar you can see there's a historical uh fee sheet uh included in the packet summer might be a little bit more a little bit less it kind of incrementally increases
005by CPI and again we round to the nearest Dollar as far as student parking goes that was something that was discussed last February at the finance committee meeting uh looking at the table that's included in the write up that's actually a table for school year 2425 so the year that we're currently in uh that's why you'll see for example L 202 was listed as $160 for the year but what we're actually recommending kind of looking at that survey looking at the neighboring districts is to actually reduce that parking fee to $70 a semester so it end up being $140 for the year starting next school year in terms of the uh there's a a line item there that's required by board policy called busing of ineligible students that's directly tied to the amount that's on
006our transportation claim filed with the Illinois State Board of Education that would be $422 for next year we we don't currently have any students that are um taking advantage of that that would not be eligible for busing that we were charge and we haven't had any students for the last two years that was one question I received over the weekend in terms of our lunch pricing uh I did include within the board packet uh kind of a breakdown of our our current prices for lunches there's there's three different columns there's paid lunches reduced price lunches and free lunches and um I guess starting with the with the free obviously we don't charge those students at all um and I should say this is for breakfast and lunch if you're looking at the sheet so with
007our free students we don't charge anything but then we get reimbursement uh from both the the federal government and then also a small 4C reimbursement from the state for both our breakfast and our lunch rates and if you look at the table that I included you'll see that um you know for example on our lunches this year we get uh between the federal and state government $456 and Chartwells charges us $455 to prepare that meal so we're actually break e even on the sale or on a free meal uh that's served when we look at reduced I'm just going to focus on the lunch prices um the state sets what we can charge for a reduced price lunch and so in this case it's 4 and then we get a reimbursement of $412 from the
008federal government so again uh charging about $452 that's all we can charge we can't ra raise the price of a reduced meal but it pretty much breaks even with the $455 that chart Wells is charging us if you look at the furthest most column to the left and our paid lunch rates currently we're charging in the school year we're in right now $340 a for a paid student to get uh a lunch at the school we only get reimbursed 51 so in total we're bringing in $3.9 but we're actually paying Chartwells $455 so we end up losing currently about 64 cents uh per meal now I don't want to get too far into this tonight but I have looked at kind of the last few years what we've brought in in revenue and what we've
009had in terms of expenses and we're still positive this year so far we are also still positive but I want to see we finish the rest of the year to know kind of what the path forward might look like but to start closing some of that Gap I would like to increase the lunch price by 25 cents for this upcoming school year there's something called the paid lunch Equity requirement which we've talked about in past meetings that probably would have required at least a 10cent increase because we're not at that Target meal price of $3.85 that the federal government sets for us so we're looking at at least a 10-cent increase in I would propose a 25c increase to start closing some of that gap between what we're charging and what we actually pay Chartwells
010um so that's what's included for the lunch pricing for next school year a 25c increase to get to $3.65 breakfast would just be um a small 5cent increase which is kind of typical with what we see from year to year uh milk we increase that price last year so we will again keep that steady at 65 for the upcoming school year are there any questions about the lunch and milk prices kind of another thing we'd like to try um or something that would be a little bit new for this upcoming school year um talking with uh the high school and in particular the fine arts department we'd like to try something a little bit different with the fall and spring uh musical prices we have uh increased the student prices in years uh well over
0115 years I think we increased the adult prices a few years ago and so we don't want to increase the prices right now we want to leave it at $10 for adults and then $5 for seniors and students but we would like to encourage people to get their tickets sooner this will allow the Fine Art arts department to plan for audience sizes as well as kind of more importantly knowing how many programs to print so that they can hopefully save some costs there and not have extra programs that they end up not needing and so what we're proposing is that ticket prices will stay the same if people order their tickets more than a week in advance and so they'll do that through the online ticketing platform that we now use for these shows um
012and so if they go early they will get the same price that we've charged the past few years however if they wait till within the last week of the show that's where there would be an increased ticket price of $15 for adults and $8 for students and seniors yes sir yeah have have they considered using just a QR code instead of printed programs I think they've done it for a couple performances but yeah we didn't specifically discuss that I can certainly go back and ask them that question um I don't know if that'll impact if we want to not have the earlier uh registration the early discount I think that's something they're still interested in because I still think it helps them from a planning standpoint but I can certainly follow up with with the
013Department ask them why they don't do QR codes for certain things and maybe do for others yeah sure thanks for tcd uh the only thing there is I did receive a question about courses that have fees over $100 I did reach out to the high school and cosmetology is the only one that currently has a fee over the $100 the $100 is what basically the district pays for um and then there's the additional price over that and then lastly facility usage rates uh we didn't increase those last year we decided we wanted to kind of incrementally increase them every once in a while by $5 to keep the rates uh a little bit more round in terms of the numbers and so this year that would be increased by uh or for next year that
014would be increased by $5 and so the projected revenue from our student usage fees is approximately $100,000 and then meal receipts are expected to generate around $230,000 as a followup to our discussion from last month's Finance meeting there was a question about if we decided to reinstate the books and supplies fees what would that mean in terms of uh if we wanted to reduce our Levy by a corresponding amount what would the tax impact be on a homeowner and so you'll see in the right up I included that and so we generate approximately $200,000 uh when we were charging fees kind of looking at inflation over the last four to five years since we last charged fees we would be receiving about $230,000 in revenues if we reinstated those fees so if we lowered our
015Levy by a corresponding amount uh a average homeowner the average home in ly is about $400,000 would save about $37 on their taxes and so that's all I have if there's any other discussion or questions although the but if you're a taxpayer with a student it'd be per student would be like $250 so you know they might save $37 if they have one child they would be actually paying $223 more a year right so 17 or whatever yeah I'd have to let's see here I guess two kids I don't remember what the student fee rate was it's not on here anymore I did a quick summary if you had a fifth seventh 9th and 12th grader your fee would be 1,015 so not not that everybody has that I just thought of that as somebody
016called and had those do we know of any other districts in the area that have waved all fees I'm not aware of any yeah I I looked online I couldn't find any either I know that's not always the best way to search but I I would I couldn't find any that didn't have them I kind I look at it like we pay the park district right we pay that in our taxes too but if I'm going to go use the pool I'm going to pay a fee to use the pool right I'm I'm using it my tax dollars are still paying for it so but if I'm a user I understand that I may pay a little more and I just think of everyone who lives in our community and I think everyone's very supportive
017of our school district but as I think of the people that live in ly not everyone has kids so you know from the perspective of all the people who live in this community you know me as someone who has children here to pay a little more for my child using the services um versus other people who may have children in parochial schools homeschools retired no children I mean there's a large variety of people who live here so just thinking of that I'm more comfortable with the fees returning and having the you know those of us who are using because even if um if there's a a financial need they those will get waved correct right like free and reduced lunch if you qualify your fees get waved so just to be clear we've waved the
018general fee like registration fee some might call it so it's not tied specifically to anything but if somebody did uh qualify for free and reduce we would eliminate that fee but the only fee that we've waved over the years is just the registration fee if somebody is on the football team or in a particular program um they pay a fee this is just that that registration fee that we've eliminated but I'm not aware of other schools doing that um I had a question so that 237,000 I think that was listed on here did that account for if we have students who qualify for free and reduced lynches or was that just we have this many students so we would gain this much money so again I'd have to refresh my memory as to when we
019started waving the fees but the year before that if we look on our financial statements we can see here's how much we had in terms of fees that we charged just for the books and supplies fees and so that I've increased kind of steadily by CPI to come with come up with the dollar figure it would have been and and again I know I'm repeating but it to me it feels like when you buy a car and they say oh registration fee are like what does that even mean and so we've we've kept all the fees that we could tie to specific things but just this registration fee seemed very generic and so I think when we looked at our fees uh at one point we felt like if we can't specifically justify it for
020a particular thing then then let's wave it there's not a right or wrong that was just a decision the board has made and we will follow whatever you decide to do but that was some of the rationale as to why it was waved at one time because it wasn't for a specific thing I thought historically I thought we pulled it in the 20 to 21 school year when we switched to remote learning is that am I recalling correctly I I don't we can we can look to see when we started to wave it but I I do know was Co so that would it was when we weren't using the buildings and all those Services we waved the fees I believe 2020 21 school year 2020 2021 was the first year we waved the fees
021yeah I was curious because I wasn't here for that decision so I looked and the notes for the finance committee meetings in 2020 21 said it was due to covid also in 2022 but there was a shift in 2023 where there was no mention of covid as the reason and 2024 there was no mention um of a financial impact and I I think something um Dr fak you said last meeting that really made me think was do we believe in a free education right like do we and while I I personally have to go to the pool or my children will like be very upset with me I don't have to go to the pool but I have to send my kids to school so it's just that's something that I think about as well
022um when thinking about weighing the financial contribution of the of various community members with various needs but I also think that it's both a philosophical decision and a financial so if the Phil if the finances can support the philosophical decision that's like one way to think about it versus if we really have this lovely philosophy that we believe in but we can't afford it and then we have to charge fees is like another question so I don't know where we stand I think I know where we stand financially um but I don't know where we stand philosophically we could talk about line by line like there's certain ones that trigger me I think it's ridiculous we charge our students to park but we don't charge our staff that doesn't mean I should think we should
023charge our staff to park here but it's the same parking lot like it costs us the same to maintain so why does the staff Park here for free but students have to pay $70 a semester like I want every student to come to every performance every game that's why we waved the fees for all games for students a few years ago um but when I look at this list and talk you see that the Fine Arts that were're still charging students I I think students should get tickets are free so I could go line by line and say why I don't like us charging students and families for specific things but there's not a right or wrong decision I think this was put into place when we waved the student fees for the athletic events
024because we wanted to encourage people to come and then I think when Co hit we looked at our finances and said what are these really going to I don't think it because we weren't using the buildings I think we just said it's hard times for all why are we charging this fee let's pause for as long as we can but we'll there's not a right or wrong like we can each have opinions on all of these this is what when we looked at the comps it seems like the parking this aligns of the comps but the other school districts do have a registration fee we do not and I think like with the parking when I look at it it right we all use the parking lot but thinking just personally reflecting on having a
025student that parks right had to register the vehicle had to have a tag someone from the district was monitoring to make sure that the student was parked in the spot no one was using that spot if someone was in the spot the followup on that not you know so there's extra work on the district if I CH because I chose to have my child Drive their vehicle to school right and so I'm I'm completely fine I understood the service we were receiving for that payment um and and and didn't think twice about paying it so that they could bring their vehicle to and from school so I I understood that there was additional responsibility for the district there so I just and I hear what you're saying philosophically I I feel that if I'm going
026to be using something like parking for example and having those extra Services be provided to my child when I send them to 202 I'm I'm okay that I cover the cost of what that needs to be the district and not look at my neighbors and ask them to cover my decision for me I feel like you're looking specifically at me like I'm arguing with you I I I feel like those are the other six people you need to convince do whatever you guys okay that's everyone I just you were here and that was the angle I was sitting at so that was for this example parking if we didn't have buses right and we children the students have to by law go to school it's just required if we didn't have buses then I would
027say we'd have to wave the parking fee but they have busing options they have they could commute with other students you know they have but when it comes to education they have to be there and it seems going back to you you your comment last last month is you have to have this stuff right so that's not a free education the so there's nothing more philosophical the but I think we've balanced in our district between elective items and non-elective items right and in case of the park district we all kind of pay for the park district for sure and I go to a private pool you know I don't but I still pay portion of my taxes to the park district but venan that's having that Park District there and sea line Park really helps
028my property value you know so I am benefiting there from that so um I just think it's you know just part the philosop philosophical part I agree with so I just suppose it's it's what you value where where your value is you know if you think your values in you know Shoring up or not supporting like a school district for property values that's cool if you think value where your values are in like you know these are services that people should be paying for because you know that burden shouldn't be shared amongst everyone else because it's unfair then those are your values so goes back to that philosophical argument you know what's important to you and then vote your values I think the other thing which I may be repeating what others have said is
029I I come back to that word elective a lot of what we've talked about with the pool at the park district that's elective you're choosing to do that most of the items that we're still charging fees for are elective when I look at the basic what we're calling books and supplies fees that's for your textbooks that's for your Chromebook that's for the things that you don't really have a choice and so at least now those are what we're waving is those things that are in the classroom the supplies that the teachers are buying for the kids to use the textbooks that they're using the software that we're P that we're paying for for all the kids to use so it's they don't have a choice it's not elective with all the other items that we're
030charging for those are all elective items I think if I look I mean even some of the classes those are elective classes that they can choose to take or not so I guess that's where my head is at is elective versus non-elective and that gets back to I guess the philosophical argument a little bit as well so if if of the $230,000 how much how many how much that would be weighed for students onree and reduced none of the 230,000 because that was only the nonfree and well we're getting some from the reduced but that was paid in the reduced that was the total revenues back in 2019 2020 with an inflation factor of what that would be in today's okay so you Bas on a revenue there even though we are waving a fair
031amount of other that was already in that original number is the waved amounts so we wouldn't be getting anything more for the waved students what's the percentage of students on free and reduced it's like 25% I think at this point 25% that's pretty significant but they're not I know they're not I'm just saying if when you look at the student population one in four students would have been waved anyways so um I I just want to make sure we're clear on what Dave said though he looked at what we used to get over a period of time and that's and he increased it a little bit so it isn't an estimate based on the number of students and what the fee would be it's looking at the Historical Trends which would already account for the
032fact that probably 25% of our families are not paying those fees so it's already incl baked into that yeah I understand that and I would even say I know we're saying that this is an elective but people do have choices right they can be financially restrictive but you can choose where to send your child to school you could choose to live here and not send them to our schools right you could go to St Jan you could homeschool your child you could opt out of these so I know we're saying well you have to go here so you have to you know these are things that are going to happen but people do have choices and they are able to opt into other options albeit much more expensive options but compared to those other options
033this is a minor Financial we're still looking at even if we if we reinstate the fees the average home getting back like $30 to $50 in that range yeah I think the math I did I again I used our upcoming Levy that hasn't been finalized but the amounts that we're expecting it was $37 for the owner of a $400,000 home understood um well it seems uh uh like perhaps we're getting a bit in the weeds here uh should we simply uh pull out item 785 for a separate vote in the regular meeting you yes okay okay all right well then uh we can move on after making that decision uh the next item is item six the intergovernmental agreement with the Lyall Park District that information can be found under the finance committee packet item
034six so the current five-year intergovernmental agreement with the park district is set to expire in on April 1st of 2025 uh this governs the shared use of our grounds facility grounds and Facilities between uh both the school district and the park district uh it does include Provisions for the park district to reimburse the school district for any overtime incurred as the result of the park district using our facilities um and then on the same token uh the school district now maintains its own grounds that was part of the restructuring 5 years ago uh that we put in place and so we did uh meet with Park District Representatives uh we feel that the IG is functioning effectively and both agreed that we'd like to renew it for another five years the draft of the IGA
035is included in board books I would also mention that the park district discussed this um at their February meetings and they actually approved it at their February meeting um I'm not asking for approval this evening just wanted to get any thoughts or any feedback um and then the plan would be to uh have this for approval at the March meeting before we had this agreement we used to have some difficulties working with the park district in terms of controlling our Landscaping correct I don't know if it was difficulties we just had kind of our own um Ambitions in terms of things how we wanted it maintained how often we wanted The Lawns cut and it's nice to have control over that yourself um and so that was part of the restructuring 5 years ago and
036in exchange for the fact that we're now we have our own grounds keeper uh we Outsource some of our mowing uh which we can then control how often that takes place in exchange for that there are situations where the park district uses our facilities uh on the weekends when we don't have custodians on staff and so we obviously um accumulate those through our payroll and then we turn around and build that back to the park district so that we're not incurring those costs for those programs all right any uh questions or comments no okay all right and that will bring us to item seven the update of the Lyall junor High School Renovations for summer 2025 that item uh pardon me that documentation can be found under item seven of the finance committee pend so
037the focus of our work this upcoming summer at the junior high is to uh replace the HVAC units in both the commons and the auditorium and then also uh some Life Safety work for the replacement of stairs in the Auditorium to make them safer uh and then also looking at some camera system upgrades and so our original estimates for the HVAC and stair workor um kind of working with pepper and Perkins will were about $650,000 now keep in mind those estimates were baked within the larger renovation budget so they weren't specifically um carved out as a standalone project but more of the overarching large project but we tried to without going through the process of getting another estimate done we tried to extrapolate from that to get an idea of what we thought this project
038would cost and those estimates ended up being $650,000 so we recently opened the bids um in the middle of February for the project of both the stairways the HVAC and the commons and the auditorium and we had a good bid result we had seven biders that showed up and um four of those biders were kind of all within the same hundred or $200,000 of each other but the bids didn't end up the lowest bidder ended up being just over 1.5 million so quite a bit more than what we had originally estimated kind of a another component to that is as we were working through plans for the project in order to replace the commons unit in kind uh we were going to have to get a customade unit and then that unit was going to
039be just because of the new requirements it was going to be much larger it was going to have a much larger footprint right on top of the kind of the uh it's the used to be the teacher work room now it's I think like the detention room it was going to have a much larger footprint much taller much wider and we were going to have to figure out how to put a railing Up on the Roof because it was going to be closer to the the sides of the roof and so we just didn't like kind of the aesthetic of that the fact that we were having to buy a custom unit and so we did change the design a little bit to go from from one unit to three smaller units spread out throughout
040the roof so they would be smaller they wouldn't have that visual impact and we wouldn't have to build some kind of railing for safety so we really like the design there was a little bit more steel work involved in that design um but unfortunately with the fact that we structure that with our Auditorium we don't know specifically how much that piece of the design cost and so what we'd like to do is we're actually planning with the to go back out to bid just for the commons unit cuz that's the one that's end of life that's the most pressing one the auditorium units are still running pretty well and we don't need to replace those ASAP the other thing we tried with the auditorium units is we tried to break them from one into two
041different units so that we could have HVAC just on the stage area and then HVAC in the kind of the audience area so we would be able to be more efficient with the use of our units but again we don't know exactly how much that change has cost us and so we our next steps is we're planning to rebid the project with just the commons unit in that three unit smaller unit configuration along with the auditorium stairs uh it's going to be a quick bid process we're hoping that many of these same vendors uh will rebid on the project and that'll allow us to see not only what the critical work cost would be but also get an idea of what the audit a atorium project would be that will give some options for us
042we can then because the the the larger project the one that came in at 1.5 million that will still be something we could accept if the board would like to because they have to keep that out there for 60 days so if we have the smaller project the reduced scope and the larger project the board can make a decision between those two projects and if we decide to just go with the commons unit at this time we can then defer the auditorium units into phase three once we look at the kind of remaining work that needs to be done I know I kind of covered that quickly um I guess one last thing is we're still looking at doing cameras over the summer at the junior high that was part of this phase two work
043and we'd like to paint the lockers kind of add a better aesthetic to the hallway we got some quotes for that it's going to be around $20,000 so that's not a a large expense relative to the rest of the work did you have anything you wanted to add to that Keith no vote tonight we just want to have some things to compare and so we'll bring something to you at the March meeting but if it looks like it doesn't really save that much money to just focus on the commons we might as well just do all of it but um I think we really did think it'd be closer to 650 but as Dave said we kind of changed the scope of the project for efficiency reasons but um the estimate was a while ago
044and it wasn't even exactly what the final design was and even if we went back to the original design sign we don't think it would be 650 at this point so we'll bring you some options but we thought at least we could let you know where our head is at so when you hear it again in March you'll see why we bid things twice you look like you have a question Mr lesnak okay well and again I I wanted to stress we did get seven biders and four of those kind of were all within 1.5 and 1.7 so we got good pricing we got a good response I think it just ended up being obviously more than the original estimates from a few years ago is there did any of them provide like return on
045investments with increased efficiency of those units on our monthly bills uh they have not no that that's not part of the bid documents I did I know you asked that question before I I talked to the Architects about it I I think we'd have to find a consultant that does that kind of work um I don't know how much that would be but uh in talking to the Architects and MSA they they I think there was a lot of variables a lot of different factors so it's not something that can just hey here's the cut sheet here's what it looks like there's too many other variables going on with putting them into how it's installed how the controls are set up what the space is like what the building's like so I I think you'd
046have to hire some kind of consultant to provide that kind of information um a lot of times these companies have you know they have Engineers that work for them they're able to usually give ideas on some sort of efficiencies right like a reduction of your monthly electric bill or something like that when you say these companies cuz these are just the contractors contractors but they work with the the person they get the product from and and the person they get the product from um I I'm aware from other things I've done outside of the school district that they're able to give information like that about the efficiency of those items manufacturer estimate manufacturer estimate there we go yeah well um again I I reached out to our Architects I I guess I'll reach out to
047them again and see if they can provide us anything but the first time around they they did not have that information but I can certainly try again okay thank you uh are there any other questions or comments on this at this time so we'll revisit this again in March excellent all right so that brings us to agenda topics for future finance committee meetings does anyone wish to add anything no excellent good all right with no other agenda items I will entertain motion to adjourn so mov second so that would be Miss alond Miss Foster excellent that means the finance committee meeting is adjourned at 7:05 p.m. thank you everyone