001we do have a full quorum here today no one absent we'd like to recognize some donations give them to the lord school district dr wright would you go through the host and we have made sure that we have said thank yous yes sir soon as we approve we send the thank you notes yes sir the first one is the donation foster financial and current shared sires backpacks with supplies pennsylvania markers for students k-6 valued at over 2 000 next john hobson center for american indian health and others helped to secure 4 000 masks for students 10 buckets filled with cleaning supplies by the way those are hard to come by and the value of all of these materials in total likely exceed five thousand dollars but very much needed and very much appreciated and then
002jen youth of the america emergency school mill deliberated this is a safeway grant that was secured the amount of a thousand dollars to help our food delivery program so each of these entities and individuals will receive letters of appreciation thanks thank you dr wright we have a motion to accept these donations with a heart full of gratitude and a motion for margaret on the second from check all in favor thank you next item on the agenda is recognition of our vr star winners dr wright yes the uh our employees will be we will receive these awards from their respective principal uh tomorrow at school and what we're trying to do to keep the numbers down so it's not from a any disinterest in their part first heather fuller could you come up for just a
003moment and give us a little bit about heather and some of the things and she's been in the front office and so all of our families know her and she just works so well with the families especially during the last six months while we've had this pandemic going on she has been very genuine with all of our families and reached out and tried to help she truly cares about the kids and she knows them all i can say who's the kid that's the tall kid with the glasses and the orange backpack and she names the name immediately so she's just truly in all of our students we couldn't run such a successful junior high without her she's amazing thank you i was asked to speak a little bit about alexis vito alexis has moved to
004the district has done an outstanding job she's a hard worker very friendly super organized and anyone that's ever worked those front desks know how challenging those jobs are i will add today in today's environment they're among the most challenging jobs other than perhaps a 9-1-1 operator and they must feel like 9-1-1 operators at the level of frustration and anger they encounter and it's they do a great job remaining organized and professional so we extend our appreciation to both of those ladies we had an extremely unusual event where we've had two of our high school seniors an effort created by dylan baca over two years ago to have native americans recognized for their numerous contributions over centuries uh among other things of course the code talkers which only kept us from speaking german the rest of
005her life and other things that had significant contributions and uh also in the arts and so dylan came to me and asked me what he should do how would he go about this i gave him very rough outlines he took the bull by the horns and made this happen he and matty jones have driven this effort and two high school kids have secured a state holiday and if you let that sink in for just a second it's pretty amazing pretty amazing what two youth can do in a time where adults probably need the reminder of the importance of working together and valuing people and each other i was able to attend i was one of dylan's guests i was able to attend and listen to him speak i actually believe he did the best job
006of all the speakers including the adults and maddie also did a wonderful job within the organization so we wish to recognize that he's not here tonight but we'll make sure she gets this flag matty jones and the president of the indigenous people's committee and that is dylan baca a senior here at blue ridge high school dylan can you please come on so it's not often that we recognize our kids as we are stars but when they're started and donna okay thank you for raising the divine young man for your support and involvement on community thank you very much [Applause] i have to brag on bill a little bit he's my next-door neighbor and i've known him watched him grow up from his uh pirate days to his being a senior in high school he used
007to get off the bus and sometimes come to our house before we go home because my wife made excellent cookies thank you dylan for what you've done thank you donovan for raising him and raising such a fine young man anyway thank you we'll move to the next item on the agenda which is the consent agenda which takes care of the minutes from the previous meeting vouchers and reports some personnel items and just regular items like that some recommendations or policy updates are there anything are there any items that anyone has seen in the consent agenda that you would like to take out vote on separately and have a discussion on [Music] thank you the next item on the agenda would be item number 4.1 presentation and request for the approval of the annual financial report
008afr for fiscal year 2019-20. would you like to take over for that [Music] i think dr mark said he was going to give this presentation all right i have the i don't have any of the stuff right all right as you know the annual financial report is just is basically the what it is the annual financial report it provides all of the financial information for all of the funds for the district for 1920. and what i want to do is i want to go through since you don't have the annual financial report in front of you is i want to go through the summary page and the summary pages is the page that's going to be published on the district website it used to be published in the paper but it's going to be published
009on the district website once the board approves it tonight so this is just it shows the beginning balances and shows all the revenue that's been taken in for the year any transfers in or out all of the budgeted expenditures that the board throughout the year the actual expenditures and the ending fund balances for all of the funds and as you can see there are there there are areas that are blue blue basically means that that we've that i've transferred all of the data from our accounting system into their spreadsheet itself and there are several areas that i want to point out to you um if you see on maintenance and operation and i don't know if you can see it pretty well not if you can expand it a little bit on maintenance and operation
010you'll see that cash balance wise we started out with 1.2 million that's cash and revenues the district took in 14.1 million dollars in revenues we transferred out 220 000 and that was the transfer that we made out to the energy water savings account actual expenditures for maintenance and operation was 13.4 million i don't know why that didn't come through and what we had was cash remaining was 1.8 million and there's there's nothing there i need to put that is 1.8 million dollars so at the end of the year on june 30th or after all of the encumbrances we had a cash balance 1.8 million and basically what's happened is that's been what's been sustaining us to now we haven't had any we haven't had the need to borrow any cash from our line of credit
011because we had this large cash balance and i just want to tell you a story from uh i got a call from the auditor general's office wanting to know why we're carrying a large cash balance and i told dr wright about this is that the auditor general's office wanted to know why we had a large cash balance and i told her that's because we don't have to rely so heavily on borrowing from one line of credit and they wanted to go you know oh okay well i guess i've never heard that before because you know you don't want to borrow from a line of credit and you don't want to pay interest and she said okay well as long as i know that you guys have a plan for it you're just not sitting on
012your lawn on your cash balance so things like that the auditor general's office is watching out and wanting to know why you're sitting on a large cash balance because they want to make sure that i guess they want to make sure that school districts are spending down their cash balance down to the penny so um the other thing i want to point out to you is that right in the middle of the page it shows for food service it shows that we had a negative 266 556 revenues for the year is eight hundred six thousand sixty seven dollars we had an expenditure of seven hundred and ninety three thousand four hundred and thirty two dollars and our negative cash balance is two hundred and fifty three thousand nine hundred and twenty dollars we qualified for
013a national school lunch program equipment grant we had about 32 000 we spent out of that equipment grant we're still waiting for reimbursement from the national school lunch program for that equipment grant once we receive a reimbursement for that equipment grant that negative cash balance is actually going to drop down to negative 221 000 once that is received the difference between that is going to be negative 266 down to negative 221 which basically means that this southwest food service is actually making money so even during this pandemic they actually made money um which is you know pretty good um i was really thinking that we're going to lose money during this whole last year because we're serving all this food we're running the buses to all the kids we're serving all these lunches and serving
014all this food out to the kids in the community and they actually made 45 000 last year from the district and we're still you know making money and we're still trying to cut away our negative cash balance so i was i was happy to see that and southwest is always doing ways coming up with ways to try to figure out how we're going to make money for the district so i was happy to see that and one other thing impact aid um impact aid federal projects federal projects up on the top there impact data is rolled up into that federal projects line item 301 643 impact aid is rolled up with title 1 title 2 rlis all of those other federal grants and you'll see that the district received approximately 2.9 million dollars in revenues
015that includes impact as well it also includes forest fees so we have have approximately 1.3 million dollars sitting in that account and that's just not all impacted but that includes all of our federal grants so but overall i think the district is sitting pretty well we only have a few accounts that have negative cash balances without building renewal funds a little uh down to the bottom there we have a negative eighteen thousand dollars so that's just because the timing of some revenues that still have to come in from but overall i think the district is doing fairly well as far as revenues are concerned are there any specific questions in regards to this page at all i mean this is the whole meat of the page it tells a whole story of our revenues of
016our expenditures of all of our where we sit as a district any questions comments about the budget thank you brenda so we need a recommendation to to uh approve the budget as presented for the 2019-20 year i have a recommendation that you have a this is your night this would be a presentation of our monthly financial report thank you okay i have the student activities report up on the screen for you the balance is as of september 30th 2020 in auxiliary operations we have 117 348 tax credit account we have six hundred fifty six dollars and then the student activities account we had two hundred to eight thousand nine hundred and fifty eight dollars and some change the next page shows the fund balances it's this is the beginning balances as of july 1st 2020
017the revenues that have been taken in since that point time the expenses since july first and then the fund balances that i just mentioned and then the next page are all of the checks that were written for the month of september for all three accounts auxiliary operations tax credit and student activities and the checks written for the month was 12 212.69 the next report is the operating statement and cash flow statements for maintenance and operation and capital if you go to the second page next page you'll see that the adopted budget for maintenance and operation is 14 million 23 445 this includes the transfer out to the energy and water savings account of 225 955 year-to-date expenses is 2 million 529 400 464 what we have in comfort from now until the end of the
018year is 9 million 472. 9 472 236 and our budget balance is 2 million 21 745 and that's maintenance and operation next is capital outlay the adopted budget is 657 year-to-date expenses is 276 414 what we have encumbered is 433 580 and what we have left or budget balance is 52 572 cash flow statement is the cash that we had at the end of september which shows we had 100 negative 185 042 next page is the cash for the end of september for capital we had a negative and then the last page is the cash balance that we had with the county treasurer's office it shows that we had a little over a million one million one hundred and twenty one thousand six hundred and eighty one dollars as of friday which was last friday
019october ninth the district had not borrowed any money from its line of credit so again i don't anticipate borrowing any money at all we have taxes coming in so i hope you don't borrow any money from our line of credit maybe until next spring so are there any questions thank you very much it's great that we don't have to borrow money like we have to in the past appreciate your efforts next time on the agenda would be our superintendent report dr right now thank you i want to discuss briefly our staged return to face-to-face instruction among our elementary students presently we have our kindergartners and first graders in person four days a week the fifth day being preparation for teachers and also cleaning the facilities that's the rationale for having the four days we have
020had and have uh parents on both sides of the equation meaning there's a good percentage perhaps as many as 22-25 that want their kids to remain online all year and that's a k-12 mix and that it's sort of it surprises me there's as many elementary kids that wish to remain online that number may change as as the year grows for this semester they need to make a choice online or in person and then they'll be able to read they'll be able to declare what they wish to do in january for the new semester so we're we're having a stage approach and every week we'll add another grade level next week we'll add second grade if things are still going well our county still isn't a spot where we're not seeing a big spike and there
021are not any new concerns raised and everything else cooperates we continue to have low levels statewide in our area then we are contemplating not this next monday but two weeks from monday bringing back third and fourth grades simultaneously if permitted and then we would bring the remaining rates back the following week if it works well if we haven't had a spike in cases or if we have a problem at the elementary school then we'll stop and leave it our energy is to get for sure the primary grades in as quickly as possible k through three while all of the students do better in person generally we understand that the younger the kids are the more difficult it is on both families and kids teachers parents in most instances are not educated teachers they're trying to
022maintain a household earn a living and also support their kids it's tough online learning is difficult i don't diminish the frustration and aggravation the parents have suffered as a result of the last six months and it is it's evident i spent i think i mentioned i spent more time conducting meetings holding phone calls returning email text messages the last six months i did the last six years and i understand that while i don't pretend that i understand individual situations i do sympathize with them and i understand that they're well intended parents working really hard to provide for their families it is also interesting that complaints are normally opposite you're not enforcing the masks you're not enforcing social distancing and then i'll have another call saying my kids being forced to wear a mask they're forced
023to social distance it's a very divisive topic so we're trying to navigate this through and focus on removing the politics of any energy and just saying we want to do what's best for kids a majority of the people believe what's best for kids is to have one school if we can do so safely we're trying to honor that and so we're taking a cautious approach are there any questions from the board on the staged approach or anything that we have planned in the future i have asked the principals going forward beginning with this week to provide a weekly update to parents i think we've been doing a fairly reasonable job but we can even we can i don't think you can over communicate in this environment we're going to ramp up our efforts to ensure
024that the parents understand what's going on and the rationale behind that we have made administrations made themselves accessible for parents to talk and i would say a majority of the principles they spent people trying to help if parents have individual concerns they need support we do have supervised areas where kids can go and learn independently until they return in person that goes for high school kindergarten through well kindergarten first grader in person but the remaining grades all the way through high school the parents feel their children can benefit from supervision we've made that available we have a good number at the junior high in high school attending four days on that basis two of which are hybrid in person direct instruction the other two they're on their own and they're participating virtually but they're here
025on campus there is great effort made by our principals to try to meet the needs of families we'll have to admit we can't meet all of them and in some cases i've overstated our ability and desire to do that and it's causes problems we initially wanted to go face to face to hybrid or also online it's difficult for a teacher to handle all three groups of students at once in fact it's unfair to ask them to do that and eventually parents are going to need to make a choice at the elementary level we haven't figured it out yet at the high school and junior high our hope is to be able to say hybrid or in person that's our hope we've always provided online and we have an aoi and are able to do that
026that's not all that unique for the high school and by the way high school learners are better independent members they they're more mature obviously at least we hope they are and they they tend to learn a little bit better on their own and the hybrid is a model that is growing in popularity i would say among the high school students especially and parents and that is a model that i would anticipate 25 to 30 of our students wanting to remain on for the rest of the year we'll need to work on that we know we will remain at junior high school on the hybrid system as is presently constituted at least until we return from january the first of the year uh i also i want to reiterate and i've said it before i believe
027in the heart of my heart so our teachers are doing an amazing job without exception they're working exceptionally hard they're working from their home they're working at school they're working wherever they're at they're taking phone calls in the store they're following up with their parents the work that our administration principals and our teachers have have invested is significant and i hope and by the way i will admit we do receive messages from parents of appreciation and we try to forward those on and it is understandable we're in a global pandemic there's economic struggle this is the most divisive presidential campaign in my 58 years of memory and these are unprecedented times our families are stressed we understand that our teachers are people too i think some parents believe we listen too closely to what they
028think and i've responded we better listen to what our teachers think because they're not replaceable parts there's not a line standing out here well qualified teachers we're very fortunate to have good teachers and we're making every effort to retain them uh we want them to know that we stand behind them and if it puts one or two or three of them at risk in their life or health at risk we're not going to do that i will relate to the board the teachers have asked them repeatedly to relate to the board their appreciation for your support and your concern for their health safety and welfare having said all that a number of them are still worried about getting sick but they love kids so much to say bring him in you know i'll be okay
029it'll work out we're still doing the best we can italy we will not be able to physical distance once we're in person and at any of our schools if there's just not space sufficient to do that within our classrooms every effort is made however to keep the kids apart as far as possible physically and to wear those masks if teachers aren't striking they're allowed to take them off if a kid has a question they can lower the mass to ask the question and we're encouraging our teachers at all grade levels to get outdoors as much as you can i don't care if they're sitting in a large circle in one of our fields or outside that's great we want the elementary kids outside of recess and playing and as long as the teachers keep their
030classes their distinct group separate from the others we can still track and protect kids and so that's the energy behind that are there any questions on any of the requirements or anything and then we've i've outlined from the board that i might elaborate hopefully on the district on the update side our athletic teams are doing well uh for the volleyball there was going to be a game saturday michelle obama the team down south next to next ea starts with an s exactly thank you sanford has said that their their program for volleyball for two weeks have been suspended because of kovac we're supposed to play those girls along with thatcher i think we're playing just stature i'm not sure i'll have to confirm that i know we have a soccer game going on right now
031at home our teams are doing well we're doing the best we can our kids have been amazingly compliant and working really hard to deal with all the others now also i want to express appreciate your advance for working with us it says uh on the big science mascot so they can suit it and i have not encountered any parents that are being obstinate or are trying to make life difficult there they're working really hard to support so we appreciate that general admission is not available we have a limited number of seats and so that's not available i will tell the board that we've calculated what those seats are we found out we had about 10 extra we've told the opponent in this case snow snowflake this friday that if they have 10 long-standing community members
032or former board members or people that go every week like the romans and the wall lanes and the folks that have been here forever that we want to try to help so we're we're doing our best to be accommodating to our visitors they've done the same for us and we appreciate all the work our athletic directors and principals have put on uh gail and also courtney and lauren have worked tirelessly as has brian and becky and all others that have been working here to support kids and we extend our opportunities to go as well if there are no further questions mr president thank you anyone on board to have any questions or comments you'd like to bring out right now i have one question regarding the high school uh scheduling like right now there's a
033monday wednesday and a tuesday thursday are there classes that have perhaps like 25 kids in the same class on monday and 25 kids on the same class on wednesdays so that if they went face-to-face daily it would be a 50 kid classroom are there any circumstances like that come january we shouldn't have that problem should we no in january we should but we would now have that problem especially our cte classes because we don't have my other electives our cte classes are full like our digital photography classes i think uh if there's no further questions the next board meeting will be november 10th at 5 00 pm uh we have a motion to adjourn and also from chuck we have a second from diana all in favor of a journey everybody says we're ready to
034go thank you