001[Music] items to be considered at the regular meeting of the board of education held Tuesday, September 30th, 2025 at 5:30 p.m. in the office unit office conference room 500 North Street here in Illinois 62948. A legal notice as prescribed by law was published and the tenative budget for fiscal year 2026 for July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2026 has been available for public inspection since 9:00 a.m. August 27th, 2025. The school code of Illinois requires that a public hearing be conducted prior to the formal adoption of the budget by the board of education. The superintendent will present a summary of the budget and will respond any questions from those attending the hearing as well as members of the board of education. All those who wish to be heard on the budget are invited to make
002your comments after the formal presentation. Mr. Wilson. >> Okay. Uh so for our FY26 budget uh it is a tough budget for us this year um due to a variety of factors which I'll try to explain here in tonight's presentation be as succinct as I can but be glad to answer any questions as we move through this as long start with our financial profile. cost just give you a little bit of history of our uh district and how our district financial picture has looked over the last uh eight nine years. Um tough times there in 16 EVF came into play FY17 EVF the evidence-based funding formula and that's our state funding driver. Uh that has led us to being in some pretty good times financially and you can see took a little dip there into
003the co year but we have been pretty consistent over the last few years getting a financial recognition at 3.6 each of the last three years. Notice that's FY24 as the last year I have a financial profile score for FY25 last year that is not out yet. The district enrollment that is important to us because we have to follow how many students we have in a district because that is going to drive our evidence-based funding dollars, how much money we get from the state as well as we need to be cognizant of that. so we know how to plan accordingly for the number of staff that we need each year, year in year out. Um you can see our data there. It's not been too far off sticking between 2,300 and 2200 uh here in the
004last several years. Um the one thing I will say as I've reported before, if you look at live birth rates for the area, for the state, for the nation, um birth rates are down. People just aren't having babies anymore. That's the trend. It's not just a Heron thing. It's not a Williamson County. It's not an Illinois. It's a nationwide thing. If you look at any larger uh mega districts in in the state and in the country. Um down about 5% on average throughout the country is what the reports are. That doesn't look to be getting any better uh in the next couple of years anyway. Hard to know after that because the live birth rate data isn't available for that. So, uh trending is is what you're seeing there, but we've been holding pretty consistent
005steady. If you look at this, I didn't overlay it with our student enrollment, but our staffing has stayed pretty consistent for a few years. Then we took a jump in 23 to 24. And that is when we added some grant teams to our uh district uh through grant employment. We've added a prek uh staff to our district since then and some other support staff positions such as hall monitors, resource officers, um people like that in our district is included. This does not include special education teachers. This does not include our special education parapros. This is strictly hering unit for employees. Um, if you would mix in the Williamson County education staff within that, you're probably going to add about another 80 staff members that work in our district, uh, but are not paid through parenting
006uniform. So, for total revenue, I just want to give you a snapshot here of what revenues have looked like. Um, and this has been a good trend. We've trended slightly down here the last couple of years, but overall revenues have increased quite drastically. If you go back to FY18, I didn't put 17 on there, but again, evidence-based funding formula kicking in has made a difference for the district as well as any district in the state of Illinois. Uh revenues have been very good in the last approximately eight years uh for our state in particular for her unit 4. So total EBF evidence-based funding again that's our main state funding for our district based on our October one student enrollment. So we got we want to have as many kids in our seats as we can
007um tomorrow and make sure that number looks really good tomorrow. So hopefully no one dropped out today and we'll have them in our seats tomorrow. So that number again consistently increasing each year um from FY20 to 26 is what I have on this particular slide. You can see how the orange with a black on top, a little black cap. The little black cap on top is new money each year. Because the way evidence-based funding works, a district will not receive less money than they received the year before. We'll get new money, which we have every year except for FY21. That year, it stayed flat. You can see in 20 we received approximately $14,000. $14,000 from the state. a little bit more than that, 14 million from the state. And in 21, we received the same.
008We were consistently getting somewhere between $800,000 and a million dollars new money each year. This year, that decreased. We got uh slightly less than $600,000 in new money this year. And that is on this next slide, I believe. Yay. Remember that. So, there's what our new money has looked like over the years. That's tier funding. T I E R. There's four tiers in here in excuse me in the state of Illinois. Tier one, two, three, and four. Parent is a tier one school. That means we are furthest away from being able to meet our financial adequacy target based on our local funding. So we get more of the new money each year than let's say like a tier four school. So a tier four school, you're pretty much looking at your Collar County schools, your
009suburb schools that have 8% free reduced lunch rate or less. They don't get the new money each year. So that was a big development in the state funding mechanism, but again for Heron money was pretty good. New money each year was looking pretty good. Uh you can see this year we took nearly a $400,000 drop in EVF. Why did we take that drop? because Chicago public schools entered tier one. So they just kind of like a big kid jumping in the pool and they splashed the water out. CPS took all that a bunch of money from other tier one schools. So that's why the draft is there. Uh will that bounce back? Don't anticipate that. I would say we're probably going to be looking at this 550 to $600,000 of new money each year being
010our norm. I don't know that for certain. Um the powers that be have not made any comments about that. That's just my speculation. The equaliz assessed valuations for our county EAD. This is another source of revenue. Now don't we don't get $235 million from local. This is the equalized assessed valuation. You can check there in 24 that EAD was 190 million approximately. And then it jumped last year to 218 million. That was that big 16% tax bump everybody saw in their taxes. That was the county's job. That was not here in Unifor any school district bumping that up. The county made a blanket almost all blanket bump of 16%. Some little areas didn't get that bump. Um but it did increase the EAD for the district and again this year uh EAD is projected to
011be at 200 is projected at 235 million. So local assessed valuations continue to increase because we do pull our property taxes from that. But remember we're only going to get CPI or 5% as an increase because we're a tax cap county. So we're we're not going to grow leaps and bounds with our tax local tax revenue, but we will see some increase from our local tax revenue. So kind of to put it here, all of our funds together where we're getting our funding from um 20 million 20 and a half million coming from state sources, the bulk of that coming from EDF, 14 million almost 15 coming from local sources. That's not all property taxes. There's some other pieces to it. And then the federal piece of the pie there is a pretty slim piece
012of the pie. Um I would anticipate that federal piece of pie will also be decreasing in the next couple of years if you've listened to anything going on in the federal government and possible dismantling of the US Department of Education. Again, Cassie spent some time in Springfield last week trying to gain more information on that and there's just not answers at this point in time. It's still a wait and see. So again, this is just a recap. Total revenue where we're at this year, anticipating 38,133,63 in total revenue this year. So for expenditures, this is our trend in expenditures over the last few years. You can see last year was a a big year for us. That's because we were paying that junior high edition. Uh we had junior high edition completion going on. We
013had our prek going on. We had those two pieces and so we had increased quite a bit of spending last year, but we had been receiving money from ESSER funds in the years prior that helped us to pay for those things last year in FY25. This year we're anticipating $40,600,562 in expenses. That is a drop, a little over $3 million in a drop in expenditures. However, you flash back a slide, which I'm not going to ask Cassie to try to navigate that right now. Can you go back really easily, Cassie? 40 million on expenditures this year. Yeah. There you go. 38 in revenues. There's a gap there. That's what we call a deficit, unfortunately. And that is something that is concerning. Um, and I'll point out to you some ideas about that and what we
014can do and what we can control and what we can't control about this budget deficit. Thank you. One of the things that has increased quite a bit is the cost of special education. So, uh, I won't get in great detail about how this is calculated. Basically, all the students in Williamson County are thrown into a pile. How many special education students are there in the county? what's the cost to do business for the county special education and then we pay by the number of students we have which is somewhere around 460 students we have in special education right now. So for us this year, our assessment cost that is what we pay to Williamson County for the teachers, the parapros, um the program pieces like school sites, um school social workers, OTP services, all those
015types of things. That's going to cost us uh $4,26,546. That is an increase of about 13% over last year. As you can see, we had a pretty big jump from 24 to 25. That was about a 20% increase we had. And the year prior, we excuse me, I got my years backwards there, but over the last three years, we've had roughly a 43% increase in special education costs. Um, I I don't know that we can have absolute control over that. Can we cut down on special education referrals? We are. We're making gains in that regard. And um at the same time, we have several students that move into our district with special education and IEP needs, which we have to serve them. So, it's a really tough thing. We can't 100% control what's going on
016with special education. We can help and do some things, maybe be a little bit stronger intervention services to control that cost, but it's a really tough thing. Um you can see from 22 to 23 we're just looking at two to 3% increases in those years. Uh a new contract was settled. We had a jump 24 25 26 and now we'll be having negotiations for the Williamson County Teachers Education Association in this summer coming up. And so I would anticipate another sizable jump in our special education costs. something that's costing us and I I really can't control it, so to speak. Overall, just a snapshot here, revenues versus expenditures. Um, a lot of years there where the orange is better than the black, which is what you're looking for. Last year, kind of explained earlier, construction
017projects were the reason we had those expenditures. Um, and then this year, our expenditures at the end are outdoing our revenues. One good thing what's going on? We have been decreasing our long-term debt. Uh we've been paying that down. That's good for overall finance. That's something that the state does look at. What is your long-term debt capacity? We will be voting likely in the next month to restructure our long-term debt as those bonds are coming due. And uh we will have to refinance those against our sales tax. Um and we'll talk about that a little bit more next month. But long-term debt is decreasing. Another piece of good news, our sales tax is increasing. Thank you, Marian. And so, we've grown quite a bit. We're right now that might be a little bit of a
018conservative estimate, but about 2.6 million we'll get. Now, remember those bonds I just talked about, they're going to be refinancing. They're going to take up a good chunk of the sales tax revenue payments uh or the sales tax money we receive each year. Um, also important to note, sales tax revenue can only be used for facilities. We can't pay staff from sales tax revenue. It would be nice to be able to swing some of that over and take care of some of our staffing needs, but that's not permissible, and I think the district is pretty familiar with sales tax dos and don'ts as a lawsuit went through here just a few years ago, and we don't want to enter one of those again. So, sales tax revenue is a good thing. We can, you know,
019pave our parking lots. We can fix windows and roofs and HVAC's, but we can't pay for staff out of that. Again, just financial profile score again, just showing we've been consistent over the years. So, deficit reduction required to do it by the state, need to do it anyway. So, one of the things we can look at, and I didn't have a slide for this in the other one in the in the prior, is prek changes. So, our prek, we've opened it up last year. We have a half day program. In our half-day program, we serve two classrooms, 20 students in the morning, 20 students the afternoon. In each of those programs, so that's 80 spots that we offer to our community. Out of those 80 spots, we keep it running right around 68 70 kids.
020We leave a few spots open for our uh homeless and special education students as we're required to do. So, the prek program right now not paying for itself. It's just not paying for itself. Um, matter of fact, it's about a half million dollars. It's not paying for itself. We've got a lot of to gain there. So, what can we do? How can we make more from our prek? We can go to a full day program. So, a half day program, we get $34 per student. A full day program, we could run three classrooms running about 55 kids in those classrooms and get paid $84 per day. So that would give us a an increase in funding of prek which would not quite cover that full gap but it would give us some time to maybe
021see prek hopefully help out with our special education cost. Now this is just a Mr. Wilson theory. So, you can shoot some holes in it if you'd like. But hopefully by keeping our prek, getting our students into prek, having more students in prek at three and four and years old, by the time they hit kindergarten, they're more prepared for kindergarten, first grade, and we'll see less need for special education services, which is one of the biggest costs that we have in servicing our students. Um, it's going to take a little bit of time to see if that pans out. Uh, I hope we are going to see those results from it and we'll have to get some good data together from the kindergarten, first grade and prek and and take a look at how that's
022working. But immediate changes for our prek half day to full day. I say immediate that's moving into next year that we're going to be doing that and that'll help us monitoring special education. I talked quite a bit about special education earlier, what we can and can't do in special education. Some of it's controllable, some of it's not. Uh but we'll do everything we can. Again, we've continued to make improvements in special education in the district. Uh and we'll just keep on after that. Another piece of this is the attrition due to declining enrollment. Attrition when teachers retire, not filling them necessarily with another position. So for example, let's just use some simple math. Let's pretend we have 10 teachers in a grade level that normally we have 180 kids in there. 18 per class is
023a pretty good ratio. But if the number is decreased to 150, it's 15 kids per class. At that point in time, we probably need to start thinking about maybe if a teacher retires from that grade level to not necessarily fill that position. It's not a hard and fast 100% or getting rid of anybody that retires. That's not the point. It's we need to look at positions that we can make gains in this because it's one of the only ways we're going to get back to balanced budget. We can not buy computers. We can not buy new uniforms. We can not buy new whatevers and that's going to save 10,000 here, 10,000 there, 10,000 there. But in attrition we save hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of dollars very quickly. So, we'll have to continue looking
024at that in the next few years and see what we can do. Um, go to the next slide, Cass, if you will, please. >> Slide 17 of 17. >> Okay. Anyway, so I had some assumptions on my last slide. Assumptions of that our enrollment continues to be poor. That that's just an assumption right there. We'll see if that happens. And an assumption that our funding will remain where it's at. there's still a chance the state could cut funding and the feds could cut funding. That's that's not a given right now. It's just a little bit scary in that regard. Those are a couple of big assumptions that are being made. Um so we'll continue um we as an I will continue to study and and utilize Rachel in this process to find out areas that
025we can make gains. If if we have um you know, we always overdo our expenditures in the budget. Budget for more than expenditures and what we think we're going to have. Not we're not just throwing loosey goosey numbers in there. There's some rhyme or reason to it. And we're always going to underdo our revenues a little bit just to try to give ourselves a little break. And and typically in year we come out with a little bit more revenue than we anticipated or a little bit less than the expenditures anticipated. We're hoping that this year continues to remain the same as it has in the past. Some areas where we can gain. Looking at that half day to full day prek program, adding some money back in there, hoping maybe at best for a flat
026year or a minimal year in special education cost. I I don't see that happening. Hopefully our funding continues to go at least a new $600,000 in EVF and not a decrease in EDF again. Um and then again looking for spots where we can save due to uh the declining. So it's going to take a couple of years. Um if you're asking what progress is going to look like this year, it's finding those spots where we can a little bit. Um take for example our tutoring and our summer enrichment. We've been spending a couple hundred,000 almost a quarter million dollars a year on after school programming and summer program. We're going to have to pair that down. We're just going to have to pair it down. um it's not nobody's losing a position, but some teachers
027may not get quite as much of that extra love. So, looking at things like that, um you know, I had an order for five Prometheium boards. We had to pair that down. I can't just order five. I had an order for 150 computers. Can't order 150 computers. We're going to take care of things that in that regard. It's going to take a couple of years. Um if if everything can go as I can forecast it at best right now, no. have a deficit budget you get next year. I don't think we can catch us all up in one year unless something really crazy changes. Um so let's cut it in half. Cut it in half this year, cut it in half the next year. Back to a balance budget again. If there's a silver lining,
028it's that we do have some reserves that we're able to use right now and we're not going to have to go out and bond. But reality of it is I can't raise taxes like property taxes, nor do I want to. Um but it that's the way you can generate some revenue that is sometimes is the necessary evil and that did occur about 10 years ago. So it's cyclical and uh we'll ride that wave but uh not the best news. It's probably the worst budget presentation news I've ever had to give in any district I've been in. Um I I just hate it. But I think if we all just continue doing what we can where we can, we're going to make it. What kind of questions? >> I had a question about when did we
029know that Chicago? >> It was late in spring. >> We had no idea what kind of impact that would make numberwise. We knew they were coming, but we didn't get our EDF like August. I did not anticipate that. They're higher than I anticipate. I missed it. Yeah. Absolute error on Mr. Wilson. Yeah. I I shot >> I don't think so. You have to run the school year start. >> Yeah. No, we have to run. We are on a three-year grant and so we have to finish up this grant year and then we can reapply and starting in March. I can reapply for this. >> We had a lot of conversation back in December, January, February of last year about moving on to a full day program at that time. It just wasn't feasible. There's too
030many hurdles and obstacles moving to full day for this school. It just wasn't something that was for us at the time. Is there a waiting list of some type? Right now we're two classes and next year we're looking maybe three. >> Is there a waiting list? >> So two classes right now or a >> three classes next year we'd only be able to serve 60. >> Okay. >> So >> Okay. So there would be enough >> would be enough bodies to fill the seats. >> Okay. I think as long as we continue to maintain the full day status, uh that's what parents are really looking for. >> Sure. >> As opposed to Williamson County half day program and we'll continue to offer morning care and after care once we do a full day program. >>
031Did we take anything away from your side? >> A few but not the tremendous amount. when you're talking about we know since 2020 the impact it's had on the kids and their advancement >> are we going to have that kind of thing again we don't offer kids the opportunity in the summer to catch up >> well I think if we get down to it really and you have to pick and choose we offer tutoring or remedial and enrichment. If we needed to really cut cut, we would probably have to cut the enrichment part of it so that our students need the remediation services and the ting services and benefits so we wouldn't see that loss >> and the referrals for special education. I would hate to see that we don't serve students, >> Right. And
032some of it's 100% out of our control. We've had kids move in from out of state. Nonverbal can't >> but even to say to people cut back on your referrals. >> Yeah. >> Trust the student teachers to say to us really having a problem. >> We want to be careful with that. All I'm trying to >> Right. Right. And I understand what you're saying too. It's a tough process but you know we we are making you know concerted efforts with their RTI process and revisiting that. That's just good practice on our end too. >> I don't know that's even a possibility honestly. Um that's just the system. It's the way it's built. And um I think another part of the equation that they didn't really talk about was that higher education also wants a piece
033of EDF. And so they've not been on the same type of system. And so your colleges and universities, they want a similar system. They've not had that. And so there's only so many dollars to go around. So I I think it's almost gonna be like let's just hope we continue to get a flat is what my worst fear is. But that would be kind of prepared for that too. >> You anticipate EVF going away? >> No, I don't see EVF going away. I could see it >> changing flattening. 350 million's always been the new money every year. 350 350 350. This year I think it was 305. Is that right? 305 new money. >> Anybody? So we did see a decrease in EDF total funding this year, but that was the property taxes that Go
034ahead. I would just another um piece to the Chicago issue is it isn't necessarily Chicago's fault as much as in the formula that's been around since EBS came. One of the local sources is the corporate personal property replacement tax and that has been really high the last few years and what happened is all of a sudden it decreased and nobody really has any control over that as far as the school districts and when that decreased their local sources then decreased so it moved them up into tier one. So it really wasn't anything that Chicago schools did or anything that he control. It was just the way the formula is set up and what plays in that formula. >> It's the way the system is set up to help all districts and just have a CPS.
035It's huge. >> Yeah. >> And so when they when they all of a sudden moved up, it took a huge chunk from everybody else or huge chunk of that one. >> We're just fortunate we're in tier one still. >> Yeah. >> We tier two. It's just less money. also mentioned several teachers that >> Yeah. Yeah. We have a lot of teachers that are are going into higher education. I think this year is probably uh 15 teachers got their master's degree. So that's that's a good thing. Is it is it feasible for us to have some be completing so we can anticipate what the budget would look like for all the people that might conversely. Yeah. able to compensate for that based on the trend that we're on right now. >> We have six million reserves.
036If we continue on this course, there's three years worth of dollars or three years worth of money. If we have $2 million each year, >> we have to look for down. We got to look, you know, picture just what's right here in front of us right now. Any other questions or conversations with regard to the budget from the board? Any questions or concerns anybody from the audience has? I have a question. So, we're not looking to cut any services. We're just looking other than possibly summer program. We may be looking to cut some for the enrichment. Um, I'm with Miss Wilson or excuse me, Miss Miller that, you know, we definitely wouldn't want to cut services for I don't want to use the word underprivilege, but because otherwise we're going to end up increasing our
037need for special education. So, I think that was a very good point that was pointed out. So, we're not looking in the coming year about cutting anything other than possibly adding into the prek program where we do full time. Am I correct? >> From a district position, if there's anything in the district that we have right now, we're not looking to cut something. Now, if there's a grant that goes away, which there's a big grant that goes away, I'll have a hard I don't know that I can keep that service going. That's too significant. >> How would that happen or what would that look like for a grant to go away? So if the grant funding that we get from the federal government, for example, if it's $100,000 or $500,000, if that money were to
038go away, people are being paid through that grant, I can't guarantee that district because obviously a $2 million budget already or two million deficit already to incur additional costs. We couldn't sustain that. It's not sustainable. Will we look at all our alternatives to try to find ways to keep as many services provided to our students? Already doing that. Already working on that. Yes. >> And how is our So I'm assuming um that we get state grants then. So that's pretty stable. >> I wouldn't even say that. I wouldn't even see a state. >> Do we get notification if they're not? >> Not much. Is there >> I I think anybody's guess is good as another person right now. Yeah. I just got back from the state superintendent conference. Mom's alert. Cassie got back from a
039state conference for title one federal. Nobody knows that a lot of it's hinging on what the federal government does and because so much money the state has to operate with is coming from the feds one way. So we're we are So I just want to make sure I understand this. So federal grants, we're not sure what's going to happen, but it's >> pretty stable at this point. State for what we know. For what we know, state grants are pretty stable for what we know at this point. But we're not looking at anything going away. I'm just concerned because there was conversation about increasing our prek to full-time, but we're going to have to apply for that grant. Do we anticipate that that grant's going to go away before that? >> Very likely could. Very likely.
040>> And is that a state or federal grant? >> State. I do have a question with that. >> Good. >> Um, what happens if we don't get the full day next year? Are we going to be able to sustain prek with this limited budget? >> I don't think so. We'll have to figure out something, but I think we can sustain as it says right now >> because I know we will not know until October if we get the grant or not. >> Um, yeah, next October. Um, so we'll be able to ride that until we know or are we just going to not start prek until we know if we got the full day or not? >> You got to answer that question right now. >> There's a lot of water to between now and
041then. >> So then that would be a concern then >> if we don't get that because then we're just going to increase our special education need which is part of the reason why we're putting in prek is to prevent that from happening. Am I making sense? So we're trying to increase we're trying to be proactive with the younger >> generation or the younger students to prevent the need for the as they age and um so just got to do a costbenefit analysis. How much money can we sustain to put into preventative services of any kind, whether it be prek, social work, uh, school safety, hall monitors, SRO, etc. How much money can we afford to put into any of those services before it's too great of a cost that that outweighs the benefit? Right. >>
042So, it's and there really needs to be an analysis. >> Oh, absolutely. And and so to do a good accurate analysis, you kind of have to know what the cards are that are being played. And that's the hardest part about this is right now, hey, it's pretty early in our fiscal year and it's still not certain what this year will play out to be. Let's let's hope we get all of our reimbursements we're supposed to get from transportation to special education. Let's hope those reimbursements come through. >> Now, does that come from federal or state? >> Okay. So, we shouldn't probably see a huge amount of that. Okay. My concern is a uh resident, a parent, is that we've really brought in this prek. We may be taking steps back. And that's concerning. um that
043we've really put ourselves out there to say I mean I know in my position you know that I've really been encouraging of the prek prek clearly uh but that I really think that's been a positive step for the city of parent and I just hate to see that we may take a step back and then we may see a very negative impact as our students get older private education services. >> Same way. Yeah. I'd hate for I'd hate for us to make the investment we've made to this point. >> Um but at the same time, we get to the end of the day and if you have a a major gap in funding, which you can't cover, >> it's just the reality of it. So, we're not nobody's in the chopping block. Nobody's been eliminated
044today. This is here's what we're dealing with. We'll see how this year unfolds. Where can we save? What does next year look like? There's a lot of variables in the play here and I try to succinctly state what some of the variables are without getting into great depth. Um, and that's the best that I can do at this point, but you know, everything could change honestly tomorrow. Um, you know, September 30th today. It's a pretty big day for federal government. I don't think they're going to take anything going on. We're not going to have any answers. Maybe we do. >> So, yes, it's a lot. >> I appreciate your input. So, at this point, we haven't eliminated anything. positions or >> that's something that the group will always be prideful of is that they've never
045had to like cut things. We found a way to get it done otherwise. >> I know people are asking what they might be able to do the federal government. You have people in your district that you can contact and say, you know, we're concerned about federal funding for education. You can send that to your state legislated. We areing out a response to the cuts that are forecasted to keep our funding here. Um my boss's office has been working with us. Um we're hopeful that we can hear something out. >> It is our full service grant. hired the grant office and five additional outreach advocates each working in the buildings. Um it has a communications director on that grant. >> Actually it has we spent $60,000 prek equipment last year. Um we have funded a advocate
046to be out there to help support the students who are needing assistance. She all 68 students >> um had oneonone with them. In addition to that, it also provides that after school activities. We have funded clubs. I've spent $40,000 here on CT programs, construction, any of the things that you see our students, whe Those are important things. But there's also a point we have to get down the bottom line. We got to make sure that we can pay for those things too. So those are what I would call gosh that would be really nice if we had kind of things but we got to get down to we got to be able to pay with what we've got. So we need to focus on we got to pay for what we got to have that
047federal grant. we cannot um sustain any programs that existed before that grant that is the federal. So I can only support new things or things that we've added to. So I just want to make sure that I'm not trying to say that we can help with some programs that existed before that grant. We can't do that. But what we can do is we can assist if a program does go that we can uh create a program that might help. >> There's no grants available to help with the prek program exist. So the prek program back in March we tried to do that uh extension and had we done that we would have been guaranteed for next year as well can't go back to look at the future and so her and I have already had
048a conversation today about that what it looks like for us and I think we will continue to go on that extension correct there's some things that can't be discussed here but there's some hiccups that will exist saying that we need to write a letter to make sure every possible [Music] district I think it's also a challenge for everybody doesn't have to be Mr. It doesn't have to be our administration. These people that put your thinking caps on and say, you know what, what can we do? Each one of us sitting in this room to trim where we can and have an idea that might be beneficial for the whole district. So, it's going to take all of us. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, have the um budget hearing adjourn at 612. So, the
049budget hearing is now adjourned. And with that, Everybody of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. John here >> Robinson >> here. >> This time we need a motion, a second and a roll call vote to adopt the budget for community school district for the fiscal year 2026 which runs from July 1st 2025 through June 30th 2026. Green. >> Yes. >> Robinson. >> Yes. >> This time we recognize anyone who would like to address the board. We recognize that person should give their name. Statements are limited to five minutes. Is there anybody that would like to address the board at this time? Not moving on to the consent agenda. A motion second to accept and approve the items listed and not extracted
050on the consent agenda for September 30th, 2025. >> Green. >> Yes. >> Robinson. >> Yes. >> Young. >> Yes. >> There's no to consider. Moving on to special reports. Um for the prek center, there were several guest readers from the junior high softball team that served as guest readers at the prek. Many students achieved perfect attendance for September. And there were terrific tiger awards that were um awarded for respect and they were Norman, Gatlin Turner, Isa Taylor, and Williams. Moving on to North Side Primary Center. Mrs. Workman's class won the attendance traveling trophy. The class had attendance percentage of 98.3%. 78 kindergarten students had perfect attendance in August. 75 first grade students had perfect attendance in August. The parent police department gave a a demonstration of the K9 police officer program. Gave them an idea
051of what K9 officers actually do. And that was done on se Friday, September 19th. and there will be several students for the month of September who show respect in the classroom and throughout the building. Moving on to elementary school. Um August attendance trophy winners were for second grade Mrs. third grade Mrs. Mozy fourth grade Mrs. Johnston fifth grade Miss Trexler and for Mr. Walkers. Way to go for our Tigers on that. Congratulations to August accelerated reading trophy. Those went to Mrs. Hartley's class in second grade. Mrs. Fenno Spennial's class in third grade, fourth grade is Mrs. Milin and fifth grade Mrs. Isel. The top five readers for the month of August were fifth grade start over. Fifth place Mayel Ro, fourth place Julian Davis, third place Miles Williams, second place Gavin Lemons, and first place
052Blake Lemons. August kindest character award winners were given out as well. Um and then there were several readers um who excelled in all the different grade levels. So congratulations to all those letters will be sent out to everyone on behalf of the district. For junior high soft I'm sorry for junior high the softball had a great season did not end up the way they would like for they ended up 193 losing to nothing at the regional championship game on Saturday. Cross country boys continue their lane streak and have not lost a meet yet. Boys have been ranking the state as high as number six after week number four according to running news. So congratulations to our cross our cross country runners for the junior high level. And then moving on to the heron high school
053boys cross boys and girls cross country um on the the boys won the Murphy Invitational. They placed first out of 18 teams. Boys cross country placed first in the invites including Murphy and the boys cross country team member second team math team. 12 of the heron high school math team members competed at Belleville for week one of the southwest math conference contest. Those earning medals and ribbons for the Tigers were freshman Walker, Cole Brandon, Trip Mano. Sophomores Nathan Jones, Miles Elllet, and Terry Eggmire. Juniors were Logan Grove, Sylvia Johnson, Michael Bergman. Seniors Tyler Dodson, Jack Harris, and Teley. Volleyball, the Lady Tigers competed crown preview and finished the day with a 22 record. Congratulations to Junior Shia Johnson for making the alternate team for girls tennis. Tigers finished fourth invite with third place finish by
054Brooklyn in the constellation championship by Payton Billingsley girls golf craft placed fourth in the high division of the s conference. I do know that she finished today and qualified for sectionals and open heat Monday at Jacksonville. And for the scholar bowl, they started off the season by traveling to SIU to film for the Scholastic IQ. Varsity captain led the team. Charlie, Tyler Dodson, Chris Banks, and the match against opponent Sydney and the end result will congratul I just heard so many say I can't believe it's the last day of September already. Been a great start to the school year. You know, we've been at school for two months already. We're looking for first quarter coming up in a week and a half. So, it's been a great start to the year. That best stretch of
055learning taking place. I'm sure the teachers ready to jump into fall break here in about 10 days. Um, but it's been a really, you know, I can't give you a data point or anything else, but it's been a great start. So, thanks everybody. Good job. >> Could I add that cross country? >> Congratulations. >> Okay, moving on. Um, any conversation with regard to the activity account, Mr. Wilson? >> No. >> Okay. We need a motion, a second call to approve the hot club at the high school and authorize the high school bookkeeper to establish the hot club account. >> Steve, >> yes. Mr. Anderson, you want to talk about the hot? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> So, Mr. Alro, um, he has extensive background not just in like auto mechanics, but he also knows how to
056build like he has some of his former jobs, he actually built cars from the ground up. So, he's teaching those kids how to build cars from uh welding frames together, putting everything piece by piece. So, it's not just like going in, hey, how do you change oil? How do you change tires? How do you do brakes? It it's the whole shebang. He also knows how to do body work. He's teaching kids how to do that. He's had some really cool guest speakers come in the past couple weeks, guys, how they promote their business in YouTube. Uh there was a really big like old truck show uh in Marian at the pavilion a couple weeks ago, and he actually brought trucks over. one actually broke down and they came in and I think that one he
057he showed it to us. No, that was a different one. The one that he showed us, it was like $110,000. Like he was opening it up, showing kids like how to put brakes on, how to do all that on those old vehicles. So, a lot of those kids that want to be in the hot rod club. 45 minutes to an hour and a half is just not enough for them. So, they're wanting to know more. So, he's opening that door. Like he tells them, there's a lot of ways to make money in the auto industry. and he says by no means he's been a certified auto mechanic. He says there's just a lot more avenues for them to learn. So our kids have really picked up. He actually did a summer enrichment on that and
058kids are really enjoying what he's doing back there. Said it's a lot more than just one piece of auto mechanics. >> Mr. Wilson, can you tell us what is going on with South in the old gym. We had a water leak um kind of down underneath the stage, the PE office. There's a a crawl space back in there. We had a water line bust and like Friday the 19th at about 2:00 and water came out and uh got on the gym floor down there in the norththeast corner kind of in front of the visitors bench. And so that floor down there has got sustained water damage. It's got a It's pretty. You can see the ripples from the sideline. You can feel the ripple all the way out to about mid lane and that runs
059up to about three-point line, something like that, Brad, would you say? Yeah, it's a it's a pretty good chunk of that corner to floor. >> We wait to see what can be done needs to be done on it to get it repaired. Right now it's not uh it's not like it's buckled up horribly, but it's more it's it's got a pretty good rise in the deep corner there and then it's rippled across there. >> We hope so. >> I don't have an idea yet, but I'm thankful we have another replacing the entire floor or just that section? >> I I have no idea. No idea. >> Still pretty early in this. We're waiting for it to dry still. >> Okay. This time we need a motion second and roll vote to close the meeting in
060accordance with section 122A of the open meetings act citing the following exceptions as contained in section 122c to discuss disciplinary cases. Consider approval of closed minutes to discuss the appointment. compensation discipline performance evaluation and dismissal of specific employees and to discuss >> yes >> motion Yes. >> Young. >> Yes. >> Need a motion, a second roll to adopt the closed minutes of August 26, 2025. Yes. >> Robinson. >> Yes. >> Green. >> Yes. >> Sydney Miller. >> Yes. >> Need a motion, a second, and roll call vote to approve the following personal recommendations as presented for employment. Darren Taylor, parent bus liaison for the district. John Deose as a dollar basketball coach for the junior high school. Spring coaches for the high school, spring coaches for the junior high school, and fishing boat captains for
061the high school. >> Second. >> John, >> yes. >> Green, >> yes. >> Young, >> yes. >> Robinson, >> yes. Having completed the items of the agenda, I need a motion, a second, and a roll call vote to adjourn until the next meeting of the board of education scheduled for Tuesday, October 28th, 2025 at 5:30 p.m. in office conference room 500 North Street. >> Yes. >> Robinson.