001okay so i'm going to call the meeting order do i have a motion to approve the agenda for the regular board of education meeting is published i move that the board of education approved the consent agenda regular agenda sorry oops there we go i moved that the board of education approved the agenda for the august 8th 2022 regular board of education meeting has published second motion by jody second by tom any discussion see none all in favor raise your right hand all opposed same side uh motion passes six zero okay let's move on to receive reports from board advisory committees oh we just have one this evening and kyle hayden will give the finance and operations the finance and operations board advisory committee met on august 3rd via zoom jeremy mcfadden executive director of finance
002reviewed the 2223 state budget forms and publication notices those will also be reviewed with you this evening jake slobodnick provided an update on summer construction efforts he'll be giving a report regarding that next month jason gillam and jake slobodnick presented the bids and contracts that's on the consent agenda for board approval this evening next meeting is scheduled for september 8th in the high plains room thank you kyle uh the next uh item on the agenda is received reports from board members and the superintendent on items not included on the agenda tom got anything for tonight yeah real quick um great times late last week new tincture orientation always one of my favorite events of the year so i probably stole some other people's thunder but welcome 250 new teachers love the energy and excitement so
003it was a great day for blue valley looking forward to rally in the valley this friday it's been three years 2019 was our last one so getting all the teachers together we're at blue valley west for a couple sessions uh reminder blue valley head foundation breakfast is september 1st i know we have a few tables there for with various board members and other staff members and then i was able to sub for jim for finance and operations uh with kyle in that group i just i thought that's a great committee and obviously went through several items on the budget which i know we went through earlier today and tonight and more coming up in the next few weeks but a lot of good things going on in that group so looking forward to appointing several
004of our um patrons to committees tonight as well thank you thank you tom jody oh let's see here um yeah the new um faculty or teacher orientation was absolutely fantastic um big shout out to blue valley north marching band and blue valley southwest orchestra students who were able to share their talents with us absolutely fantastic job and i know there are a few other organizations involved with that too um also um big kudos to the theater department at blue valley southwest they had a shakespeare in the courtyard event a couple weeks ago and it was kind of a memorial to the theater teacher that passed away dan schmidt and it was absolutely fantastic so that was a great event to attend so oh and a big welcome to our the new executive director of the
005blue valley ed foundation susan we're excited to have her on board and can't wait to see what what she brings to the table thank you jody katie tom and jody stole everything i was going to say so that's the best part yeah yes i'll be i'll be tom um no everything was great just like they said so i'm not going to repeat and save us some time thanks thank you kitty gina i don't have anything either i'm good tanya i do have just a couple uh kyle's going to pull this up for me um so we are excited to start this school year uh first semi-normal school year that we've had so hold on a sec so a couple things that have happened this summer uh first one i have up here is blue valley
006north senior joy yan and dr collier we just met with joy and i wish we would have known this information about joy so joy is one of four kansas city students our area students named a bank of america student leader for 2022 and she and two other blue valley north students came in and have a very lofty goal of some cpr training that we're going to work with them on so it was very impressive so congratulations to joy [Applause] we have our ap scholars this is a ap is a program out honestly a national program and you can see the these are the district-wide scholars this year we had 571 blue valley students who were recognized for this honor these are students who have taken multiple ap exams and scored three are higher so congratulations
007to all of these students we did and we heard about the new staff we welcomed 263 new certified educators and so that would be teachers counselors social workers school psychologists anybody who has a certification there were 263 of them you can see the 54 of them had a masters 27 um are blue valley graduates and i got to meet a couple who were former students of mine so that's always exciting and fun to see then you're going to hear much more about this next month but the we just had a meeting this afternoon that i am happy to report that all of our bond construction for the summer is progressing very nicely every building we have occupancy now every building teachers are in their rooms getting ready and that is doesn't always happen 10 days
008out of school so that's very exciting but that's just a couple of pictures and again you're going to see lots more about that next month and then finally i just want to reiterate that we are still looking for several positions so if anybody knows anyone who wants to be a para educator a substitute teacher work in our food service program custodial grounds maintenance we are looking for positions and if you go to our district website we can hook you up if you're interested dr merrigan are these all full-time positions are there part-time positions what are the options we are very flexible we will work with people on their schedules in some cases we have one para professional position i can think of at one of our schools that four different parents are working together to
009complete because they couldn't give every day but they could give one day a week or a par portion of a day and so we would work with people on that good question and then i'm also excited for our staff to return all of our returning staff will return on thursday of this week and students next week thank you dr morgan i think we'll move on to the consent agenda do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda as published i move that the board of education improve the consent agenda for the august 8th 2022 regular board of education meeting as published second motion by katie second by jody any discussion see none all in favor raise your right hand all opposed same sign motion passes six zero new business uh that'll be the intent
010to exceed the revenue neutral tax rate for the 2020-2023 school year jeremy good evening board of education dr merrigan wanted to spend some time reviewing two publication notices that we're going to ask the board approve for approval tonight both notices relate to budget for 2223 fiscal year the respective hearings are listed on both of these notices we're going to start with the first notice this is a notice that all school districts use for the 22-23 school year if they are intending to exceed the revenue neutral rate at the top of the notice it would notify taxpayers of the scheduled date of our notice hearing which is the september 12th board meeting here at the district office so once the publication notices are approved the public has notice of the september opportunity to address the board
011to discuss budget matters the first notice is their intent to exceed revenue neutral i will say that the statute introduces a little bit of a layer of complexity which might confuse some taxpayers i thought we'd spend a little bit of time talking about how blue valley has approached that statute and our overall mill rate that we're proposing tonight last year blue valley's overall mill rate was uh right around 59 mils uh we're proposing a four mil reduction overall for the 2223 fiscal year down to 54.870 mills so we have a four over a four mil rate reduction on the overall mill levy however on this notice you'll you'll see that there are individual tax rates listed for revenue neutral and the way the law is written and interpreted by johnson county as soon as the
012school district exceeds one of those revenue neutral mill rates we are automatically in the process of going through the revenue neutral rate intent to exceed so i just wanted to reinforce we do have a mill rate reduction based off of the assessed valuation from johnson county there's a roughly a nine percent increase in assessed valuation for the school district our mill rate is fully covering that nine percent increase with a four mil rate reduction which is essentially holding taxpayers tax bill flat from prior year this next illustration jeremy before you go on can you go back to that last slide and just blow it up some can you do that kyle can you help me with that so um i just want to clarify or not clarify but just uh maybe uh expand a little
013bit the way the blue valley's mill levy is aggregate mill levy has calculated is taking multiple line item funds and adding them all up and each one of those individual line items could be adult education could be capital outlay could be cost of living and there's like 12 in there 12 or so if any one of those increases even if the other 11 decrease you have to do this hearing that we're going to hold next month that's correct right so what you're saying is if you take all 12 or so of those categories the overall aggregate mill levy is dropping about four mil levees but in one of those categories it's actually increasing correct the the one that um is easy to illustrate is the second line the capital outlay mill rate the neutral tax
014rate provided by johnson county is in that third column 7.3 mills for capital outlay would be the revenue neutral rate we're proposing an eight mil capital outlay so that line alone would put us in the revenue neutral process however the overall mill rate when you add up all of the neutral tax rates compared it to the estimated tax rate that we have on the far right column overall we are proposing a 4.1 mil decrease which uh the next slide will will show how we're attempting to achieve revenue neutral on the overall mill rate and just to reiterate again we've discussed this last month at the board meeting we discussed it extensively this morning and so there's been a lot of vetting and a lot of questions around it not a lot of explanations yeah i
015think if the statute were to allow you to remain revenue neutral on the overall mill rate i think that might simplify things i think when you do it by a individual mill levy i think that can introduce some confusion but that's that's the way it is and jeremy just that top one the general 20 the tax rate that is set by the state am i correct there correct so even though johnson county says to keep that revenue neutral it should be 18.795 we have no choice but to set it at 20. that's correct and we can come back to that slide if you would like this illustration is showing two boxes the top box would be a calculation of a residential tax bill for 2021 and the bottom box is the same calculation for a
0162022 tax bill and in between the two boxes there's a little arrow with a 9 valuation increase what we're doing is showing the average assessed valuation increase is communicated by johnson county to blue valley being an average of nine percent so if we apply that nine percent valuation increase and then apply our proposed mill rate which is kind of in the bottom right hand corner of the the bottom section 54.87 mills is our proposal you can compare the top box red amount 3121 versus the bottom box 3120 so essentially we're achieving revenue neutral from a taxpayer perspective so that's illustrating really how we're keeping taxes flat in spite of a nine percent valuation increase all right because the expectation would be taxes would go up correct uh can you repeat that well you said we
017have a nine percent property valuation increase right but correct we're keeping taxes the same would the consensus or with the community think with a valuation of nine percent that their taxes would go up to the school district would that be the consensus um well if we kept our mill rate flat okay and a 99 valuation increase their tax bill would go up so we've structured a tax bill to be flat despite the residential commercial all the valuations so if there's a valuation increase in excess of nine percent that would be a true tax bill increase if there's a valuation increase less than nine percent it would actually be a smaller tax bill so nine percent is the average and that's where we've structured a revenue neutral levy so so jeremy real quick so on the
018nine percent is is that the amount of increase that the blue valley property value has gone up yes as uh provided by the johnson johnson county assessor's office yep right so that nine percent was assessed on blue valley's property and that's the basis of the nine percent right correct okay it's residents in blue valley yeah so i believe that's the end of the first new business item okay let's see here so we need a motion to prove to simply the publication of this right yeah this is not a finalization this is just to publicize this to the public absolutely correct so next month we'll have a hearing and taxpayers could come and comment yeah and if they comment then the board has a decision to make on september 12th whether to previous presented or make
019any amendments so this is just to improve the publication of the information that would set the rates going forward and hopefully the board's in a position really feel this is a fair proposal but obviously reserve the right to make further amendments if you'd like if you could reiterate to where we publish what publications are we using we're using the well is it the lathe the daily news olathe daily news and the kansas city star yeah and then there would be and on our website and our website website and then in theory there or not theory but in practice there is then a public meeting on the 12th on the 12th to go over what we published correct absolutely correct so the statute for revenue neutral says that a board cannot have a hearing before august
02020th but no later than september 20th so you have a 30-day window to have your revenue neutral right hearing so ours on september 12th fits obviously with that statute so to be clear at the september 12th meeting you will at some point in the meeting in the agenda we will board president will open up the hearing for revenue neutral we will allow anybody who wants to speak and there is no limit so anybody who wants to speak would be allowed to address the board uh at the end of that you have to make a decision on that we would close once you've made a decision we will close the hearing then we will open up a budget hearing which you're going to hear about in just a minute so there are two hearings at that
021meeting with two different opportunities for public comment on each of those agenda items do any more discussion or do i have a motion i'll make a motion i move the board of education approves the publication of the intent to exceed the revenue neutral tax rate for the 2022-2023 school year second second motion by tom second by jodi any discussion on that motion scene none all in favor raise your right hand all opposed same sign motion passes six zero okay the next item on the agenda is the notice of hearing for the 2022-23 budget jeremy this next notice hearing i think kyle's working on the screen i think you had the right item kyle okay sorry yeah that's the right one uh [Applause] same concept here this is another notice that we published paper of record
022notifying taxpayers same time same date this form is a little more complicated more busy but really what it's doing is it's on the left hand side listing out all the funds of the school district proposed funds for use then there are several columns as you work your way towards the right of the page is where we'll we'll focus on the right-hand side but there are two columns for the two prior year actual expenditures by fund and those also have associated mill rates so you can see historical mill rates for each fund as well on the far right hand side there's a column heading 2022 2023 proposed budget what that proposed budget is really doing is getting after two things here we're establishing the estimated tax rate which if you work your way down towards two
023thirds way towards the bottom you'll see 54.87 mills is proposed and then there's also a legal maximum expenditure budget by fund so that's in the third column you know from the right so those two things are essentially what we're asking the board to approve establishing a legal max per fund and an associated tax rate for applicable funds it's consistent uh formatting presentation as years past towards the bottom there's also information on assessed valuation so you can see assessed valuation patterns for the last two years and the estimated valuation used to generate the 54.87 mills i will go a touch above the valuation section and remind everyone that the wreck commission their mill mill levy is listed however they have their own budget hearing and budget process so just pointing that out although it's listed here
024they have their own separate hearings then at the very bottom there's a listing of general obligation outstanding debt for the school district as of july 1 of the three years listed so again what we're asking for the board tonight is approval to publish this in the paper of record and allow taxpayers the opportunity to review the publication and come back in september for the ability to comment to the board and this form is comes from where it's a state budget document released by the state department of education all school districts use the same software so if you were looking at olathe or shawnee mission their form would look exactly like this obviously with just different numbers so at the top of this form there's a general fund line if you work your way to the
025right it shows a budgeted general fund authority for the school year of about 156.5 million for anyone interested in knowing the calculation of that number it's captured on what is called form 150 and form 150 will be posted on the district's website so taxpayers can gain an understanding of the school finance formula that is a placeholder amount because some of the funding for the general fund is not determined until this coming september 20th so a lot of this is estimates setting a legal maximum but obviously you know a step that all school districts have to do every year that form 150 is also in board docs so anybody who is watching this who wanted to look at that could do that yeah thank you any questions on this forum or comments so this is a
026form that we're required to publish and it outlines our budget and so it has the expenditures it has our budget and it has the assessed valuation numbers correct um is there anywhere on here that shows our total budget for the year um this would not include like bond projects those are not included in the state budget document so that would not be reflected in these figures um so it would not encompass that but everything else should be in here okay any other questions comments so just i'll just make a couple comments that um from uh maybe a layman's perspective i think you you've said them but i was reiterating because i think they're uh important is um these f this budget are all maximums that are established and it's a kind of a unique aspect
027of public entities that the public entity can't spend can't exceed whatever that maximum is so generally speaking these budgets public entities never actually reached those maximums in practice if they were to a district would have to do another budget amendment and have another hearing they do happen although they are rare most districts provide some contingency legal max tolerance in the amounts just so every month the board isn't having to republish the budget every time you know maybe 10 teachers were hired to start school that doesn't require us to go republish the budget if we have a high utility bill that was unexpected in december we're not running to republish the budget for that so we try to provide a reasonable legal max that we think we would not exceed but in the event that we
028were to reach that maximum then we would have to ask the board for another hearing and revise that amount right so then the other uh just really general point i would make is is that there are like in this case like 20 or so maybe more funds quote funds that are listed down especially under special revenue which are accounting they're they're not they don't represent a bank account they represent accounting um buckets effectively where money is allocated and from which money can be spent um but it's um those aren't ones that we dreamed up those are driven by um state statute correct um a good example let's take the at-risk fund at risk as a special revenue fund the school finance formula captures all weightings in the general fund line and if we get a
029certain amount of weightings for at risk then we transfer that down to the at-risk fund and devote those expenditures towards approved at-risk expenditure categories so you're correct it's it's designated for a specific purpose whether it's at risk or bilingual but it does come through a transfer from the general and there is a a line i think it's two thirds the way down it says less transfers line 105 that second column number it does show an overall transfer amount mostly from general to to other funds yeah thank you tanya the lob also has transfers as well so maybe just one other general point for kind of uh general layman's consumption is that one aspect of school finance that's um confounding to to a degree is that in in most let's say private enterprises you know money
030in budget buckets is fungible and it's fungible to a degree in a public entity but it's less fungible than it is you can't just go dip into the bonded interest fund to hire more people exactly right so we do have some limitations in that regard yep so if there's a meal lunch meal price being paid by a parent that is not finding its way to paying for bus service you know so there's specific restrictions on a lot of our revenues if not most so yes that's correct okay let's stay on task folks over here though do i have a motion jeremy he says that word every day motion um i moved the board of education approved the publication of notice of hearing for the 2022-23 budget second second katie motion by tom second by katie
031any discussion scene all in favor raise your right hand all opposed same sign motion passes 6-0 okay next is the early redemption of the 2012 a callable bonds kyle i might need you to help pull that one up uh no it's under 4c i believe uh i don't think it was a part of that pdf file are you able to while he's getting that loaded up i'll i'll prep the action item the district issued bonds in 2012 that are now eligible for redemption this coming october so the 10-year period will be october 1st where we can either call or refinance the bonds but what we're proposing is taking idle funds in our bond and interest account for designated for debt repayment and using funds to early call those certain 2012 bond maturities the schedule is
032showing is going to show about 10.8 million dollars of principle that we're proposing to be redeemed on maturities ranging from 2023 to 2026 i believe by doing so we're basically saving future interest costs for blue valley uh to the tune right around a million dollars so um we are not earning uh similar interest on our idle funds therefore using those funds to pay off debt that's carrying a higher interest rate i think is a pretty easy decision but obviously one we're going to propose tonight yeah the details are in that yellow section those are the bond principal amounts that we're proposing to call and then the bottom section is a quick calculation of the amount of interest savings to blue valley so in order to early redeem these bonds we need board approval to pass
033a resolution so that we can notify the state treasurer's office to then work the process for early and redemption saves a million dollars yep um just um so most of our bonds which are 10-year maturities uh 20 years eligible for redemption after 10. okay so basically the bondholders want to earn a certain level of interest but at some point in time these ones are now eligible for re for us to buy back at par and save the interest expense correct yeah any other questions jim i don't believe these bonds are fungible or mutually interchangeable okay do we have a motion i moved the board of education to prove the resolution for early redemption 2012 a callable bonds is there a second second motion by gina ii by jim any discussion seeing that all in favor
034raise your right hand all opposed same sign motion passes 6-0 okay next one is appointment blue valley recreation commissioner um so the blue valley rec commission is i guess overseen by the board they have staggering terms i believe there are seven commissioners and uh before us tonight is um the appointment a reappointment of an existing commissioner there's you can serve up to two four-year terms um and um the uh recommend recommendation was um as a result of interviews that were performed by um tom and jody and jan and jan along with lynn sprates who's the chair of the blue valley right commission and so they did several interviews and so they have a recommendation um do i have a motion yeah i move that the board of education reappoints mike lewis of the northeast district
035as northeast commissioner for the blue valley recreation commission for a term of four years beginning august 8 2022 and expiring august 7th 2026. second motion by tom second by jody any conversation or discussion about reappointment of mike lewis to his second four-year term on the blue valley rec commission scene none all in favor raise your right hand all opposed same sign motion passes 6-0 and we're going to move on to appointment of patrons to board advisory committees so tonight we have five board committees that were making appointments to for patrons to serve on and so the first one is the facilities planning committee so we have appointments and reappointments do i have a motion katie since you and i are leading this committee do you want promotions for the facility i move that the board
036of education reappoint the following patrons to a one-year term on the facility planning board advisory committee syed hussein of the south area robin dunbar of the northeast area paul schmidt of the south area appointment matt schmidt matt schmidt sorry of the south area paul taylor of the northeast area erika sheets of the northeast area through a second second motion by katie second by tom any discussion seeing none all in favor raise your right hand all opposed same sign motion passes 6-0 to the appointment of the five individuals for a reappointment for the five individuals on the facilities planning committee so they also have a two-year limit uh right two-year term limit and i think it's two years yeah and they have one year left so these are reappointments so they have one year one year
037left okay so now we have some new appointments and these have a two-year term right correct okay do i have a motion i move that the board of education appoint the following patrons to a new two-year term on the facility planning board advisory committee travis barta of the south area john chambers of the northwest area ryan carhart of the northeast area do you have a second second motion by katie second by tom any discussion on the new appointments of the three individuals just named see none all in favor raise your right hand all opposed same sign motion passes six zero okay now it's going to diversity equity inclusion board committee on the reappointments do i have a motion uh yes um so these are reappointments um i move that the board of education reappoint the
038following patrons to a two-year term on the diversity equity and inclusion board advisory committee kawani uh doosan and for the north northeast area chris gray of the south area fariha shafi of the northeast area and cecelia fritz watson of the northeast area a motion by jody is there a second second second by gina um ending discussion uh scene nine all in favor raise your right hand all opposed same sign um motion passes six zero okay new appointments for the diversity equity inclusion committee i move that the board of education appoint the following patrons to a new two-year term on the diversity equity and inclusion board advisory committee dennis selznick of the south area chuck cordray of the northeast area angela mosby of the south area and nefertari kirkman bay pros of the northwest area is
039there a second motion by gina second by jody any discussion scene not all in favor raise your right hand all opposed same sign motion passes six zero move on to student activities drive a motion for new appointments to the committee i move the board of education appoint the following patrons to a new to your term on the student activities board advisory committee amy thomas of the south area motion by tom second second by gina any discussion seeing not all in favor raise your right hand all posts same sign motion passes 6-0 amy is here thank you amy for joining that health and wellness new appointments i move that the board of education appoint the following patrons to a new two-year term on the health and wellness board advisory committee yvette nguyen of the south area
040christine white of the northwest area jody jones of the northeast area there a second okay uh motion by katie second by jim any discussion scene not all in favor raise your right hand all opposed same sign motion passes 6-0 communications committee do i have a motion for new appointments to that committee let's go i moved the board of education appoint the following patrons to a new two-year term on the communications board advisory committee jeff nessel of the northeast area mary jo tenlin of the south area pam shernock of the south area kristen gambala of the south area clinton odell robinson of the northwest area lisa mary sears of the north east area and lisa mcmahon of the northeast area is there a second second any discussion seeing none all in favor raise your right hand
041all posts same sign motion passes six zero thank you lisa and welcome yeah we have both polices are here we have three new committee members here perhaps thank you also lisa yeah appreciate it so the follow-up from here so they know everybody they will get the emails from the dates and when we're meeting and all the information right that's our next steps i know i'm speaking out loud and these are normal so the administrators who work with the board on that committee this week we'll be sending out emails welcoming them and making sure they know dates times and locations of meetings awesome if i could just um katie and i had worked on the curriculum and instruction committee and um i apologize to those appointees um because uh it did not get into the agenda
042this time so that is that is something i i i failed at um but we'll make for sure anna gets it in for the agenda next time so no panic for those who are interested in the the cni um i i thought i had sent it but uh we'll just get that fixed so they've all been notified they've all been noted yeah and yeah yeah so it'll be good okay um do you have a motion to adjourn the august 8th education meeting be adjourned second motion by tom second by katie any discussion scene none all in favor raise your right hand all post same sign motion passes 6-0 thanks everybody thank you thank you you