001we'll call this meeting to order it's five o'clock and we'll start with pledge of allegiance damn i forgot i'll chuck would you lead us since you're standing i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right just a short announcement before we start we excuse margaret gabby she's out of town uh if necessary she could meet i mean she could uh be with us on a remote call so we'll excuse her today our first item of business is uh presentation of our uh chief financial officer dr wright do you want to do that and the budget i'm sorry i want i just want to introduce kimberly dugdale she's our new chief financial officer
002she'll provide the presentation today and we just want to welcome her to the team thank you good evening governing board president governing board members so i'm here to present the fy 23 um blue ridge budget and i have the clicker all right so just some factors that went into the budget so we estimated a two percent increase that's an inflation increase that's um the legislature sets but that'll be a bigger increase as a lot has happened in the last week but these forms were based on a two percent increase we will do an updated budget um in september with the new forms and the new inflation increase we estimated our student count to go up from 1725 to 1775 and we have an estimated carry forward of zero as you can see here in this
003grid i just have a comparison of our fy 22 budget to our fy23 budget we're gonna have a negative 1.4 million dollar difference in our budget i'll go over those factors here in a minute so like that you can understand what those are for our capital budget we're going to go up about 378 000 for our federal and state grants we're going to go down um about 2 2 million but those are estimates so i just want you to keep that in mind those numbers are purely estimates impact aid we're going to go down about 78 000 and that's just loss of students directly related to students and for other funds they're going to stay about the same so our m o decrease um is affected by a couple things one um by our loss
004of our m o override which was about six hundred thousand dollars and not having carry forward those two things have impacted um our m o carry forward and that's why we don't have any this year because of those decreases on our enrollment we're estimating is going to go up 50 students like i said previously and we did set this at a two percent inflation increase our capital again is going to be up by 378 thousand dollars that is directly correlated to the extra 50 students that we are estimating that we're gonna get and of course our state and federal grants our estimates um and will be adjusted as we go along throughout the year 30 questions we just just done this yeah are there any questions on this slide okay all right ah whoops i'm
005looking at my computer not okay so uh impact aid so our impact date carryover is going to be about 450 000 impact aid will decrease as students from any federal lands decrease that increases as we have more students from federal lands as well and there will be some minor adjustments to our actual revenues depending on grants depending on what the legislature before when i made this powerpoint the legislature had not decided on what they were going to do but they have decided so there will be increased revenue coming in with those increases so we just want to thank the arizona legislature for funding public education this year so we really appreciate that all right question do you have an idea how much that increase will be yes it's going to be about one million dollars
006with all of the different um different buckets of money that we will receive okay so the next step is on july 12th we'll have a public hearing over this exact budget that i've submitted um and then we'll have a then we'll ask the governing board to approve the adopted budget like i said now that the legislature has closed and has given us our new formula they will submit new forms and we will have a revision in september so that that will represent that one that one million dollars all right are there any questions any questions no thank you i just had a few comments not on the proposed budget but well it does impact the proposed budget the increased funding that we're going to get it's not going to be an incremental million dollars that
007we can spend out it's going to help us when the physical cliff arrives in 2024 with the end of the sr funding if you recall we received 5.9 5.4 million dollars over a three year period that made up for the loss that we had without the override and so what we will have some capacity we just don't know how much but it's it i want to be clear we don't have an extra million dollars we're going to meet and we'll look at every line item and we'll look what i mean by that is we do have an extra million in revenue but that's not going to be available to spend is what i'm trying to suggest we're going to need to plan for 2324 and 24 and 25 as well to plan for some carryover
008in order to understand the impact kimberly and i have to go down line by line to figure out what the increase means to us and then look at our adm we'll have that information how many students we have the student count by about the 15th of september level out and then we'll have the opportunity to resubmit the budget make any changes that we need and then we'll come back to the board in july and have a better idea of what the plan looks like going forward does that make sense mr question you mentioned we're going to have a decrease in the m o but we're going up in enrollment by 50 students i we have to take for that's a good good question we have to make an estimate because of current year funding if
009you guess and and there's more students show up than actually you've budgeted for you don't get funded for that so the current year funding makes you make some assumptions and so we're anticipating we're just looking at what the past has been here's what makes it confusing we don't know how many of the white river students will lose because we're not running buses it may be 25 it may be a hundred we have new students moving in we don't know if that's gonna be five students or fifty students so we just have to take an educated guess and so we're budgeting purposes we're looking at fifty an incremental increase on local students but somewhere along the line we're getting a decrease from the department of ed is correct yes we will that's when you do your
010revised budget if in fact that we don't have 1775 and we have some lesser number then we come back with that lower number we make those adjustments before the okay before the so basically you're budgeting very conservatively yes sir good i think so i think it's a good idea any other questions i i have one comment with the funds that are coming i'm hoping that we'll be able to funnel those some of those funds into teacher wages increases i don't know if they they'll be earmarked to the point where we can't use them that way but will that free up some money so we'll be able to funnel some more money into teacher salaries that's the hope but again we're using esser funds we've spread 5.4 million over a three year period and my guess
011is it's not going to be a lot different if we do have the capacity to do it then we certainly will but if you remember the approach has been to keep class sizes small which requires more teachers and also we're trying to avoid layoffs and so we could provide a big increase this year next and third year layoff 30 of our teachers we want to avoid that that makes sense yeah but i think part of the problem is is i understand that this extra approximately a million dollars that we're going to get is coming from a state surplus and so that's that's not going to be there every year this is a one-time thing correct no sir the these are the good news is this base level support okay and it goes to but there
012are certain areas some of that funding that goes to our special ed programs some goes to district additional assistance but this is funding we can anticipate uh the point i'm trying to make is we've always taken a conservative view to say the last thing we want to do is lay people off oh yeah and so we want to make sure that whatever we do is sustainable so what i think this extra million will do is sustain the head count that we have and the programs and people that we have and it might to mr merrill's point it might provide a little extra capacity where we look at him and say you know we are comfortable we can provide a little more increases than we anticipated the other thing in this proposed budget it provides increases
013for all entry all people all levels we've recognized that the inflation has hurt everybody and of course those at the lowest end of the weight scales have suffered the most yeah so we want to make sure all of our classified folks that are non-certified are being taken care of as well and this budget incorporates that as well so teacher pay is always an important part but the larger picture is the entire organization that we look at okay thank you dr wright thank you kimberly we appreciate the work that you put into that um next item on the agenda is the consent agenda after reviewing your packet are there any items in the consent agenda that anybody would like to remove and vote on separately all the items uh two point there's a 2.1 through 2.1
014[Music] do we have anyone here representing football so we're good at them right we're good that's their yeah i don't yeah i don't i don't have anything personally as anybody else anything okay if not we have a motion to accept the consent agenda as contained i have a motion to have second from diana all in favor be good i'll get you next chuck next is the business section of the meeting item 3.1 recommendation to approve the proposed budget for the fiscal year 2023. dr wright you want to just explain to everybody here what we just did with the sure and in fact in kimberly phil and the gaps are for the city the process is you have to provide a proposed budget forms are completed and submitted the board has all that material in the
015back of material and then now before the 15th of july the board has to approve a final budget so we'll come before the board on the 12th of july with a proposed final budget making some revisions and some changes if necessary and then we'll move for that approval as well right kimberly is there any gaps i left in no but it will be the exact same budget okay so what we're doing right now is approving the proposed budget that will be presented for final approval on the 12th and submission to the state okay so can i have a motion for item 3.1 have a motion from chuck a second from diana all in favor and be unanimous thank you all right uh recommendation number item 3.2 recommendation to approve the hire of uh new employees
016are there any of those new employees that anyone would like to we don't have any of the new employees here um we don't need to go through those do we unless there's somebody that would that remember the board would like to point out [Music] can we have it right we have a motion to accept item 3.2 i have a motion from chuck have a second from diana all in favor all right thank you all right uh item 3.3 a recommendation to approve the memorandum of understanding this is with um well dr wright you want to just explain this is with the test sir we have uh this is a yearly thing we have to do this is actually a new opportunity there are really three it's okay this is the old love kitchen facility that
017was that shut down some time ago and incidentally the people that were being fed there were then redirected to the re-center and have been serviced there the re-center's done a great job with that so there's not a void of food delivery and there are other organizations as well the senior center and others that have been delivering and some churches we have in addition to that though this this building itself is a property of the district and so our approach has been we want to try to use our buildings to its highest use this memorandum is between a non-profit organization that's going to be working with gaining grants other entities including like npc for housing excuse me for child care in the area that is the love kitchen and it has a sizable grant but the
018first part of this in order to get the ball rolling so to speak an mou has to be in place so the grants can be written and the funds generated and so our hope is within a year or so is to have child care in that building that used to be the love kitchen and that will be available for uh community members and then behind that is where the teacher house and we hope to expand it and that might be a good pairing for somebody looking for housing and child care that's the idea for the teachers that we sir i mean any questions in regard to that is this for like the entire community or is it our school you know teachers that are at our school first and then if there's capacity or is
019it just whoever wants to be involved with it for the child care we'll have to wait to see how the grants formulated to see if it's income based i bet for the housing it's only blue ridge teachers and then if we had more if the demand outstrip the supply we just have a lottery to select currently we have two teachers living in what used to be the old cte office for mr waldo and that was we refurbished that and remodeled it and there's two teachers from the philippines that are living there and they have this past year this next one would be the old necog building that was donated to the school that we want to try to get prepared for a family and then we're looking at how do we what type of structures
020do we want to put on that space between the nacog building the playground and the love kitchen we have a pretty decent sized piece of property to accommodate that did that answer your question yeah and then that is you know do we have we are we going through the process right now for approval for development oh districts don't aren't bound by town and county ordinances we can pretty much put up on there within reason um if it's a district asset you can put it up there it's it's a different zoning rule for for school for schools yeah cool any other questions we can have can we have a motion to accept item 3.3 the memorandum of understanding between the beverage school district and secretary's community development corporation [Music] i have a motion second try check
021all in favor thank you item 3.4 recommendation to improve the food service management contract this comes up every year seems like every month goes any questions in regard to that or dr wright you want to explain that one too we we have uh we have barb here and we have southwest food here i will mention that inside that contract we've addressed a couple of safety concerns we're going to update the door that comes in and out of that facility with camera and and some locking keypads to make sure the door is not prepped propped open and left open anywhere where we receive deliveries that's been a problem and so we're addressing that we've addressed that issue inside this contract and we've been reassured that southwest will work with us to to do that we do
022have funds in the food service account to provide those updates to that door in that area to secure it and so we've had a great relationship as long as i've been here we've used them and had a really good relationship if you do have any specific questions though barb simonton is here and stephanie is also here from southwest mr walker this one is that keypad arrangement for the uh porter mountain campus as well yes sir both of them yes the junior high in high school share that same facility and so that's delivery but for the elementary school the same type of setup will be there as well good yes sir any questions any further comments we have a motion then to accept item 3.4 i have a motion from chuck a ii from diane all
023in favor and also ginanis okay item 3.5 recommendation to review and approve the food service meal prices i there were no increases from last year right that's correct any questions from anybody yeah it has been great i was looking at these costs so when i went to school we we had to come up with 35 cents and that was all you could eat and you could smell the food cooking all day so it was really made you hungry smelling rolls anyway enough of that we have a recommendation to approve item 3.5 ever okay i'm sorry i'm emotion 3.5 a second all right all all in favor and also unanimous okay i'm 3.6 a recommendation to approve the 2022 summer food program would you like to talk to us a little bit about that or no
024so we've just received word that they did extend the waiver program for summer food so this the dates here do say a limited time from 11 july 11th through the 14th and the 18th through the 21st so we are able to extend that time through those waivers and we will be able to offer the entire month of july through the waivers that congress just extended um i so we will be able to do that and that will be free to all students for the month of july we are plea we've been extremely lucky and happy to do that and i just want to give a great handout to stephanie and her crew for the amount of meals that we've served this year through summer food so that's that's really where we're at right now and
025i am invited to participate with a town along with usda tomorrow and my contacts with ade are saying that it is possible that they will extend summer food for the rest of the remainder of the school year for next year but until we hear that for positive we're just on hold so we may be back before you asking for participation in that as well i'm curious how many meals do you serve during the summer um well if it's a typical they have to come on the site and eat it it's it's minimal it's probably yeah 5 10 20 kids if they have to eat it on site now when we are able to extend it out and people can come and just pick up the meals and take them home where we can deliver we've
026served to 250 ish yeah so it just varies on the avenue that we're able to offer it all right thank you appreciate that any other questions we have a motion to accept item 3.4 i mean 3.6 the motion from jennifer a second from diana all in favor good okay item 3.7 recommendation to approve the talon iga dr wright you want to explain that to us also yes sir yes sir this continues to be a great program for our high school students npc provides the instruction at no cost we have a fee of about 2 300 a year for the technology and we end up owning the technology at the end of the period and i don't know 60 kids i think was the last time i looked at it we have 60 students that participate
027in talon alone it's been a program that's really evolved over the last five years and so i i would strongly recommend we continue its use and provide some additional high quality instructional capacity for high school kids questions i heard that they now allow sophomores to also take classes through talon is that correct mr webb sophomore the eligibility have those rules changed last year met some student sophomores that are doing spanish and so they're they recommend that they you know somebody's gonna be motivated keep their grades up and because it is a lot more rigorous than very good classroom work so but they did open it up to them and it's like english 101 and 102 and all of you know math classes and things so we'll have more of our kids graduating with an associate's
028degree are close correct that is correct we're still waiting for them to be able to open up a science course that would give them their completion for to be able to get their aea or their general studies was it because of the lab requirement correct and lack of a teacher they just can't fill that position any other questions or comments if not then we have a motion to accept item 3.7 the motion from chuck second from jennifer all in favor that's good thank you okay item 3.8 a recommendation to approve the intergovernment the iga technical education courses and nabit programs dr wright you want to explain those also yes sir this is an annual requirement there are no substantive changes to the program and again this provides our kids with uh some job ready skills
029when they graduate and so this has been a a great partnership for our schools and i would encourage its continuation check questions in reviewing the the agreement i noticed everything is listed as c a v t uh instead of navit what is the c standing for that acronym changes i don't know but i know it's the first time i've seen that it's been nabbed for 20 something years i don't i honestly don't know cool the cool through the whole thing for an explanation i didn't see anything and they changed the acronym three years ago and they changed it two years ago and then this last year i honestly don't know what i know it's i know it's still a jted and navid as we know it but they have a different nomenclature well at the
030end where it calls for signatures it has matt webber's name and it says navit there but everything else above it says season yeah i don't know i don't know i honestly don't know i can look out you know you you pink my interest though we'll figure it out and report back to you what that acronym means matt can do that as next presentation he gives right isn't he coming in july we'll ask matt whatever that question in july yes sir thank you chuck so we have a record and can we have a motion to approve the item 3.8 emotion from chuck segment from diana all in favor thank you uh item 3.9 this is a recommendation to approve the iga dual enrollment school year dr wright this is more of the same but can you
031explain it yes sir the only change is a positive one npc is returning back to providing the stipend for teachers so it's less expense for the district and it's still at 68 dollars a credit hour which is a bargain for the participating students that want to take it for college credit those are the only changes and that's our teachers that are certified that are teaching like on campus that is is the dual enrollment yeah this is different than the talon which is an online yes program and our teachers have to have the credentialing in order to teach that course which is tough but we're doing it also the the curriculum is the college course curriculum and it's taught by our teachers that are community college certified so it's the equivalent of the college class that's
032correct yes sir so that's like our calculus and all of that correct yeah and a lot of the cte courses oh yeah as well any other comments questions we have a motion then to accept item 3.9 a promotion from diana a segment from chuck all in favor thank you okay item 3.10 superintendent's report dr wright want to give us an update on what's been going on so far in this summer yes sir yes sir foremost we wish to offer our our heartfelt condolences to the mcgowan family there'll be a celebration of life at at 3 pm at the junior high and we're encouraged to wear green i hate that color but we're wearing it for liam so this i pulled out this tie this is got a little bit of uh it's either scottish or
033irish but if this is in honor of liam this his favorite colors are grainy like gold so i'll be wearing this ugly tie for at least two more days in honor of that that young man so three o'clock a celebration of life three to four o'clock at the junior high i think to allow the gathering to be really from two to five is that right miss courtney and the celebration will be from three to four and you're encouraged to wear green i will add this that in at every campus junior high and high school especially with emphasis on the the pre-teens and teen grade levels we are ramping up the resiliency and also the mental health aspects next year we have two certified counselor positions that we want to build back we had two social
034workers we feel strongly want certified folks in that role that are school counselors and then we're also looking for student support people that are have had experience working with kids that can connect with kids this is another example of why we need to keep our class sizes small too you have to know your kids and and we do but we'll know them better if we have fewer students to in in classrooms so this is a you know this is an epidemic uh the mental health and the resiliency the these youngsters are up against a lot and so we're gonna do our best we're gonna redouble our efforts in this area we'll have more information on that on the final budget present presentation and those positions will be included in that in that proposal the uh
035i just wanted to make clear too our goal is to always always compensate our teachers our support staff administrators classified certified to the greatest level we possibly can since we have started this effort almost eight years ago our teacher's salary went from forty six thousand to just it depends on which report you read fifty two six are right at fifty four depending on what report you're reading but they have increased our 301 payouts are also increasing but we have to be responsible in the decisions we make we went through layoffs before we've done it before it happened right before i got here it happened again in 2010 they're they're not fun excuse me 2020. it they're not fun we want to try to avoid those so a lot of it is just planning and making
036sure that we're using these dollars directing them into the classrooms as much as we can we've pulled out 125 000 of expense from the home office and at the district office we're we've removed 2.5 positions and we're putting that back into the classroom we want to give increases we but we also feel extremely responsible for uh making sure we don't put ourselves in a position where we have to let people off it doesn't make sense and so if you're looking at the budget maybe we have all this money no we don't 80 percent of the funds that we have go to salaries and benefits 80 percent so you're really only talking about 20 percent and that 20 percent is earmarked or directed towards specific areas and programs like special ed for instance federal programs they
037have requirements and so you know it's easy to look at and say we have all this money you should be paying more it's because they don't understand what school finance is complicated it's not a simple business and we're not a business to begin with we're a field and part of that mission that we want to try to do is provide certainty for our employees and our staff members and teammates so we while we have provide increases if there's capacity to do so we absolutely will but we will not do it or make a recommendation to the board in any way that we believe to be irresponsible and so it's last eight years it's served us well and we continue to take a conservative path but we also recognize that we're not going to hoard money
038either if we can invest it and it's responsible we'll make that recommendation and ultimately that's the board's decision of course i want to welcome kimberly she's just that she's landed completed all of her work and has been great to work with and so we welcome her to the team she's highly highly qualified she's a teacher a classroom teacher and a math teacher that my good friend ed be going stole and turned into a business manager and she grew into an executive in the finance and she comes to us from a large district as well she has small school experience as well so we're very fortunate to have kimberly and we welcome her with open arms we we don't have any other we don't have any other items we'll have a thorough presentation on the 12th
039for the final budget proposal and then as always any questions feel free to reach out to me and i'll be glad to answer them if there any more now that i have mr president welcome i'm free to answer anyone questions comments all right thank you dr wright next item on the agenda is call to the public we invite the public to make comments too or requests of the governing board regarding items that are not listed at this time elsewhere on the agenda those wishing to address the board are asked to submit a request to address the governing board form available from the secretary mary ford to the governing board members of the board may not discuss items not on the agenda therefore action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing
040staff to study the matter or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date the operating rules of the public are as follows individual time limit is three minutes per person and time cannot be seated to another individual so we open the this meeting right now to call the public if there's anybody that would like to address the board we'd love to hear it going going gone all right thank you uh do i have a next item is uh as a executive session item can i have a motion to go into executive session will convene an executive session which will not be open to the public pursuant to ars 38-431-03 a one for the discussion of personal matters second could i have a motion first a motion i have a second a
041second from diana okay all in favor of going into an executive session that's unanimous thank you we'll excuse the public this time but we're not really going to excuse you we're actually going to go to a different room where it's private so you can stay here if you'd like to