001But I just didn't know where y'all of the linkair school board for Tuesday July 8th 2025 come to order. I would ask us to stay remaining as we sit uh out of respect for Mr. OA. Mr. O is going to pray for us and then we will rise and I will lead us in the pledge of allegiance. So Mr. Oa if you would be so kind. Thank you for that and I run out of breath, someone would take up and and finish this for me. This is one of the greatest privileges that the Lord affords us that we have royal priesthood and it's not the departure physically to part of our hearts when we approach his throne. Those who will join with him. Almighty and most gracious God, our father, the eternal God and father
002of him who endured Calvary, him father God by an oblation of himself actually bought my pardon. And I say thank you Jesus. Father God, we thank you for your love and your grace that compel you to offer him to us. We thank you for this day and all of the new mercies that are included therein. Father God, we thank you for this board, these members, for this staff, the entire Lincoln system. Looking in retrospect, Father God, you have been favorable toward us, especially our efforts, our provisions, our practices. You have kept us for a long time, Father God, from micromanaging. You've kept us in our lane with all of the legislative things passed against us. You've inspired us, Father God, to utilize the great open door policy we have here in Lincoln. We can get
003our homework done, get our questions answered, list and discuss complaints, items. We can even make suggestions and recommendations because of your leadership, Father God. That's before we sit around this table. Father God, keep us working together as a unified team. And as you have done in the past, Father God, we were able to get the support of over 144 educational partners by unity, by working together. And we ask boldly, Father God, for your continuence. We invoke your presence here tonight. Forgive us where we faltered. And Father God, we ask all that we ask in the name of him whom you told the angel yourself to tell Joseph to name him that name which means savior to name him Jesus. and it's in his name and his couples that we make this petition that we offer
004this prayer and we say thank you. Amen. Uh we need the choir to come in and sing off the offering. Play rise. Salute. Pledge. Pledge algiance 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. And I don't apologize ever for when I talk with him, whether it's a short talk or long. Amen. I'm just thankful for the privilege that he paid for for me to do that. Thank you. Yes. What a privilege. Um okay. So I would um ask you all to um review the agenda. Hopefully you've had a chance to do so. And if so, I would ask for a recommendation that we approve it. I do. Nothing from the public. Yeah. Nothing we approve.
005So moved by. Do I have a second? Thank you, Donna Doss. All in favor say I. Any oppose? Say no. No. All right. We also have hopefully you've had a chance to review the minutes from last month's meeting. And uh if so, I would accept a motion that we approve those unless there's changes that need to be made. Make a motion we approve the minutes as presented. Thank you, Joe Mitchum. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Miss Linda Henderson. All in favor say I. I. Any oppose say no. No. Thank you, sir. All right. Now, we're going to move on to any unision unfinished business before this board. Seeing and hearing none, we'll move on uh to item number six, which is to approve the CA with Lincoln Parish Police jury. I've asked
006Mr. Young if you can help me with that. Thank you, Mr. Phillips. All right. in your packets. Uh this is an agreement between the Lincoln Parish Police Jury and the school board for the clearing and grubbing of the area that's highlighted in your board packet. Uh it also includes debris removal. Uh the school board will pay the police jury uh for time and equipment for the clearing of the land. And in the future, we hope this space will be used uh for either additional parking for shooting elementary or playground space. The recommendation is to approve uh the CDA. Please hear. Thank you very much. Does anybody have any uh questions? Any comments from the audience? Seeing none, all in favor say I. Any oppos say no. I got to get a motion. I'm sorry. I
007was just rolling through there. Can I get a motion before I approve it? Thank you, Mr. Hancock. I appreciate that very much. And Miss W. Abram with the second. Now we can officially vote. All in favor say I. Any oppose say. Thank you very much. All right. Um, we're going to go to item number 6.2. Approve the budget revisions for the fiscal year of 2425. Miss Wita Good evening. Um, you received your uh packet I think electronically this afternoon and then you have the budget document in front of you. Uh, and I would like to kind of just go through the document and just present uh the revision. uh whenever we passed uh whenever the board adopted the budget at the start of the school year uh back in July uh it's adopted with and
008we always bring back a revision to the board whether or not we have uh exceeded a 5% variance uh in our uh revenues or expenditures or not um just so that you can see the whole picture of how we've ended the year with our budget. So that's what this document is. It's our budget revision one. Um, in this document, um, it's just a summary of all of the funds that we manage across the district, not just in the finance office, but throughout the all the offices and administrative offices throughout the district. Uh we've got supervisors who administer funds and they really do a great job and they they put forth a great effort to spend money wisely uh and make best use of it for uh the education and operations of the school district. Um
009so this is just a summary. I know it's uh real b real real high bird's eyee view at how we spend our funds. There's not a whole lot of detail in here because if we did, it would be over 17,000 lines of of accounts that we'd be looking through and we just don't have the time to do that. So, I'll go through it pretty uh quickly um or succinctly just to kind of give you, you know, an idea. So, the report is um it's presented in the same format that you received the monthly financial report. So, hopefully all of these funds will look familiar to you. Um, if we open it up and you can see on page uh, one, the landscaped page, that's the summary of all of our funds. Just real quick, the
010general fund areas. We have fund groups that make up the general fund. Uh, we are projecting to end the year with a 6.2 million, $6.3 million surplus in our general fund with a $42 million fund balance. And then the next section down, we have our special revenue funds. We have some local tax funds who fit who fit this category and plus several grant groups of grant programs. Uh and then our district operating maintenance funds. Um these funds combined um will net an a surplus of 1.1 million across those funds uh and with a $23.5 million fund balance. Okay. And so if you flip over to page two and three in the book, this is just a combined summary of all of our operating funds. It does not include any of our capital project funds or
011bond funds. It doesn't include our debt service funds. Uh we have several of those. It doesn't include um internal service funds. We have a workers comp claims fund. We have um uh our self-funded health insurance fund. Uh it doesn't include those. This is just strictly the funds that we have for operations, special revenues, grant programs, tax, dedicated taxes, etc. So combined here, we have our general fund and special revenue fund. Our overview total uh budgeted revenues that were anticipated to close out the year is at $18 million. Total expenditures to operate uh for this for the 2425 fiscal year was 94.5 million of an exp in expenditures. Overall, we have a total uh fund balance of all of these funds and programs of about 65.6 million. um encompassed in all of these funds, we have
012about 81 different funds that we're managing for the district that actually comprise the funds that you have listed here in these groups. So, we have dedicated group count groups for special things. Uh lots of little um grant programs that we take advantage of in every chance that we get because we want to be able to uh utilize all the resources available to the school system. Um so but o overall I'm going to just give you a view here of what our total broad spending categories are and on page three it summarizes that in our salaries employee benefits purchase professional services uh purchase property services um and uh other supplies and property. Overall our total our highest cost is people because we are um a people uh profession. Uh that's the service we provide is delivered
013by people. Uh total um employee salaries and benefits is 74.7 million of our total budget operating budget of 94.4 million. That's approximately 79% of our operating budget. You can see our employee benefits that total is 25.2 million and for every to equate that what that cost is for every dollar paid in salary it's about 50 cents 51 cents actually uh is what it costs to provide the benefits for retirement health insurance um for our employees. Okay. I remember quoting that several years ago and it was like 42 cents and now it's really crept up. It's 51 cents now. Um so and also looking at these funds I wanted to uh draw your attention to the bottom of page three. This shows the designations of our of our fund balances. And we have some funds of
014course and all the funds that are grouped together here that are restricted for salaries and supplemental benefits. um that's designated can only be used for that purpose. Uh our school food service account can only be used for that purpose. Um we have some restricted funds that are available in federal and state grants. Not much because the majority of our grants are reimbursement type grants. Um we have a dedicated balance of what 961,000 for that. We has we have funds committed for retirey insurance. This is mainly in the 2000 ad valorum where you're seeing these committed operation uh committed fund balances uh for technology property loss retention and operations and maintenance. Um we do have some other uh funds assigned for other one-time type costs. Uh that's some we have some flexibility in spending it but
015we want to designate it and use it for a certain purpose. That's for instance like textbook funds that we allocate to schools. Those would be all assigned costs. um when the allocations that we make to schools. So that leaves us with an unassigned once we take all of those dedication commitments and assignments away, we have an unassigned fund balance of $27.8 million of the total 65.6 million. Okay. Then I did want to talk to you a little bit about some of the costs that we've incurred. Um just to kind of give you an idea some of our main costs, fuel, um that being uh diesel or gasoline to operate our buses, um and our uh district vehicles for the year across all funds cost approximately $394,000. Uh utilities is always a big ticket and this
016is a large uh portion of our cost um to operate our schools. Natural gas costs have been kind of low. uh in the last year or so and that's 218,000 top rate uh for our schools that have natural gas uh across the district. Electricity is of course the largest cost and that is at $977,000 for the year is what we're estimating this past year. And then water uh $95,000 and you just think about all the water it takes to operate our schools across the district. And we're paying 95,000 for that. That mowing lawns, bunch of kids in and out all day long, water, uh bottle the bottle fillers that we have going on. Um then we get into our benefits for our retirement systems. Uh the teachers retirement systems, our employer contributions are right at
017$9.1 million uh for all of those who are participating in it through and this is across all of our funds, grants, everything. um our school um Louisiana school employees retirement system. This is this is a retirement system that only custodial staff, maintenance staff and bus drivers can be members of. That cost is for employ for us is $970 I'm sorry uh $850,000. Uh Medicare cost across uh all positions $656,000. And then we get to our group insurance. Okay, we know we've talked about that. We've got some reports here. Hopefully, we're doing good with the plan that we have and trying to save dollars uh for the district uh because those costs just seem to keep rising. Um for our active employees, we contribute approximately 8.4 million of our um in contributions towards our health plan
018for our active employees. For our retirees, it's at 5 point right at 5.3 million. um that we contribute. So that's a large cost just as retirement is um but those are all valuable benefits that we are glad to offer to our employees. So that's just some information there. Uh I do want to just kind of u just skim through here. That's just a big overview. Uh the overall performance for the year uh across all funds we have a net surplus of $7.4 million. Okay. And then um we'll flip over to the general fund and just an overview of that on page six and seven. This is our major fund and it comp it's comprised of other funds that make up the general fund. This is going to be uh the general fund and several of
019our accounts. I have those accounts listed on page nine at the bottom. uh just our regular general fund account where we take in some adorn tax money MFP money total MF MFP revenues that came in for the year was 35.5 million and um we have some various other state and local foundation type grants that are we all we lump into the general fund as well that accounts for a very small portion of what our total obligations are or operations are in the general fund Uh then we flip over to page 10. Uh the 93 ad valorum fund. This is also considered part of the general fund. It's just another uh local revenue source uh for operations. Uh in the performance in this fund uh we have a we're expecting a posit. You have to still
020go through audit and we're making adjustments to close out the year end. Uh we're estimating about a $ 1.3 million surplus there. the 1967 sales tax. Uh this is another fund that's um based on how the propositions written. It's kind of uh not as restrictive as some of the other tax propositions. Uh we net u a change in fund balance of two $260,000 to the good. Uh we have the 1979 sales tax. that one too. This one's a dedicated proposition where one-third is dedicated for instruction and two/3s is dedicated for salary improvement for employees. Um, and so we have netted a uh positive uh change in our fund balance of $196,000 in this fund. So, breaking even there. Uh, then we have our 2020 sales tax. This is their newest tax, of course. And um
021we do have it's paying a portion of the well, it's it's paying for the $3,500 pay increase that our salary supplement that we gave to our employees in 2021. Um and we are netting a surplus in this fund of 1.1 right at $1.2 million. We have our Medicaid programs combined together total um total income from Medicaid and we you know um it's a waiting game in getting reimbursements. So um at some point we'll get reimbursements for last year. We were hoping we would get it this year. We still have a couple of months. We hope we'll get those reimbursements from the state um by then. But we did net a positive change in our U Medicaid programs of 28,000. And then we have our special revenue funds. This starts another section. So we've included all
022of the funds are included in in our general fund. And then we have our special revenue funds. Uh the next statement on page 22 and 23 are just an overview of all of these funds combined. I do want to and you see on page 23 at the top, we do have salaries and benefits that are being paid. We have employee positions that are being paid out of this fund just not near to the side to the size and scope as in the general fund uh because a lot of these other positions are supplemental but I did want to point uh out at the bottom of the page unassigned fund balance we have no unassigned fund balance in this category because it is special revenue funds and they're all have a purpose specific purpose in use.
023So we don't have un assigned in special revenue. Okay. The next fund included in our special revenue funds is our 2000 advalorum fund. And we netted a positive change in our fund balance of 960 thou I'm sorry $690,000 in this fund. On page 25, you can see where the commitments are um and how we use these funds. This was through board resolution at the time the tax was passed uh where we uh allocate a certain percentage of the proceeds to these various programs. This helps this fund helps support the technology needs in the district all across the district uh retirey insurance um operations and maintenance and also helps to pay uh 50% of it goes towards helping to pay a salary supplement for employees as well. Page 26, we have the 1993 sales tax fund
024and netted a positive change of 165,000 in this fund. uh and the majority of this is fund is used to pay for salaries and benefits and health insurance costs for employees. The 2000 sales tax uh again another salary supplement fund uh we had a decrease in our fund balance of $75,21 in this fund. So we maximize the use of that and um also helps to provide cost for insurance. Then the next programs is our title one programs. Our federal programs um who do not carry fund balances because it's a reimbursement program. Expenditures are made and we request reimbursement from the state our pass through agency uh to be reimbured for our costs. So we always net out to zero at the end of the year. School food services. Okay. This is our um this is
025where uh Mr. Parico is managing our school food service program across the district. Uh we have uh with a contribution that the general fund made to the program this past year. We do have a we we're planning on ending the year with a positive balance of 93, uh 296 uh dollars being added to the fund balance in that program. Okay. Then we have our special education programs. are several grants that make up the special education program. You see that listed on page 35 at the bottom. Again, this is just a few of those 85 81 u different grant activities or accounts that we try we manage. Um again, another reimbursement grant. We have our early childhood program on page 36 and 37. Uh we get reimbursements from the state for for qualifying students who and
026seats during the year who meet a certain minimum attendance uh percentage. Uh we receive monthly reimbursement from the state or I'm sorry monthly payment from the state not reimbursement for um for this program. I have a question. So page 35 when we go to the supplies for special education. Um how we are we so what are we using as far as those expenditures like how we what are we purchasing for example supplies? Are we doing like um wipes and stuff that they need in the classroom? Is that what we're utilizing? It's it's a it's a wide wide variety of things and it can be anything from office supplies to um materials needed for for IP writing type type things to wipe to as a pre we don't have any teachers that are have to come
027out their pocket to spend any type of money when it comes to no we give we actually what we do is we kind of give I hate to call them allowance but we basically set aside a certain amount of money so that um when things come up teachers can request those things like it really like it's it's a it's kind of an as needed type thing. So, I might have some people who uh would request those wipes. We we do purchase quite a few wipes, but um you know, some some teachers don't need those for the students that they serve and so their requests might be for like I said for for um all tests, they'll write IP. Okay. So, I can't I to to answer your question specifically, I I mean I can't say
028that nobody's spending money out of their pocket, not I did as a as a special education teacher, but uh we do have fun set aside to for them to use. That's what I was just concerned about that we have allocated for them. They just made a request, right? Sir, I just made the request what they need. Yeah. Yeah. They'll we have a uh request process that they'll fill that out and send it to us and Okay. And so moving on, we have our Charlie early childhood program. Uh we now we move on to page 38 and 39. Our education stabilization funds. This is the ESSER money. The last year of that it ended September 30 uh 2024. We're going through audits now. So they said the audits will come and we're going through I think
029we're one of five districts in the state that's being reviewed because we do such a great job and we do. Um but uh we're working through that. Um so this is the stabilization funds. Um so this is contributing to 4.7 million to towards expenditures and 5.2 million in uh revenues to the overall total for our operations. So we're going to see that go away next year unless something comes. uh to replace it. Maybe Bies will open next year. Who knows? Um let's see. The next uh oh, also the very last page, just for your reference, I include this in our uh audited financial statements as well. It's on page 53. It's just a summary of the funding that we received for ESSER. Uh it's really kind of a landmark thing and we're just very unique
030to have lived through this period of time uh and be in education and receive that. So, this is just a summary of the funding that we received over um over a total of 30 33.6 million in funding over a three to four year period that was utilized and uh we've done great things with it, but I think from a work standpoint, we're glad to see it go. Um let's see, special programs federal. This is just several other federal grants that we just kind of lumped together in one program budget Carl Perkins title three just because of the size of the of those programs are just relatively kind of small um that are reported on page 40 and 41. Then we begin looking at our maintenance and operating funds. We have our parishwide maintenance and operating
031fund starting on page 42. And this fund netted a positive change of $41,681. Um, so again, we're spending those funds that we take in collections for once a year after property tax collections are received in January. And Mr. Edmonson, our supervisor, is planning and spending those funds wisely. Then we have our Rustin School District um maintenance and operating fund. On page 44, you see we have a net change in fund balance of 84 uh well84,776 of total collections for the year from property taxes of $972,000. So we've spent when you see that category maintenance of plant, that's utilities. There's the only thing we pay out of this fund is really just utilities. Uh and and um so we've had to transfer money in. uh sad to say that we're not going to make it to
032the end of till December for the next collection and it goes up really um we have about 200 and I'm sorry $334,000 and that that'll probably get us through maybe October November u utilities but that's why we have to make a transfer from our general funds to help and support this the west school district uh maintenance and operating sour school district on the next page uh 400 $191,000 fund balance and a positive change of 103,000. And uh they are in the in the positive as far as utilities go and they've been able to do some other projects uh with their maintenance and operating money throughout the year. Dubac school district really kind of in the same situation. um they have decreased their fund balance by 36 uh,000 uh but they again had some projects that
033they completed with the extra funds that had above their utility costs to help them out as well. Shooter school district again is another fund that uh we have to provide support and funding for. Um the change in fund balance is a positive $7,800 uh out of total collection of revenues of 154,000 uh in this maintenance and operating fund. As you can see, utilities are running around $200,000 a year and we end with a fund balance of right at $50,000. Okay. And that is the budget revision. And I'm pleased to say that um we did not have any funds that exceeded uh a negative variance of more than 5% where we required to bring that to you uh before now during the year as that happened. So uh with this we'd like to point off to
034the board for consideration and approval at this time. Thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you for your efforts in that to you in your office. I know it takes a few minutes for you to work on that. So, I appreciate an hour or two spend on that hour. No questions. Do I have a com uh a motion that we approve the revisions as presented? So, moved by Hunter Smith. Do I have a second? Did I hear a second by Danny Hancock? Again, any questions? All in favor say I. Any oppos say no. Okay. Thank you very much. Let's move on to our report section. Dr. Lewis. One administrative retirement, four administrative point forms of reference, nine faculty and staff resignations, three faculty and staff recommendations, five faculty forms of reference, and two maintenance recommendations.
035[Music] Miss Duke, while you're available, you want to go ahead and do your part? Sure. Okay. So, we have our uh regular monthly reports. uh our sales tax report. This is a final collection uh for our June report. We'll start a new fiscal year report next month for July. Uh for the month of June, we've collected uh 9.4% more in collections than we did last June. Uh for the year overall we've collected uh an additional 2 point right at 2.3 million over and above the previous fiscal year's collections altogether for an increase of approximately 8% overall the collection. Our next financial report is for the month of May uh period ending May for the general and special revenue funds. I've just given you the whole year. So, if you want to listen to the May
036report, but at this point in time, um, we have expended approximately 83.6% of general fund expenditures, mainly because in May we have not run all of our summer payrolls. We did that last week. Um, so that puts pulls in for our nine-month employees, three months of payroll in the month of June. So, that kind of really gets us back to 100% of spending there uh for the June report. Um so then in special revenue funds looking at that as well we have spent approximately 89.2% of the program budgets there collected approximately 94% of the revenue in in that program as of the end of May for all of our special revenue programs. Okay. And then for our health insurance report, uh this is for the again for the report report for the month ending May
03731 of 2025, five months into the uh health plan year. So what we're seeing now is that we have our total claims expense for these five months being at 4.3 million compared to 5.4 million at this time last year. total plan expenses altogether including administrative costs at 6.1 million compared to 7.1 million last year. So we've had a um I don't want to say a decrease but we can see that our costs for the plan are lower by close to a million dollars. Changing net assets for um the year is 1.2 2 million. And we have not received our drug rebate program for this report, but it came in a check in the mail today uh for our first quarterly uh prescription drug rebate. So, we will be glad to report that in our June
038report next month and see how the plan fares out then. Thank you very much. All right. By the way, I forgot to mention this. I'm sure all of you noticed Mr. Dur has changed since the last meeting. Mr. Dur is out uh the family uh family funeral issue. So we pray for him obviously, but we also welcome Mr. Young. So Mr. Young, your report. Thank you, Mr. Bill. Uh last week the LE did release uh student and district level reports for uh third through 12th grade testing. Um the district was tied uh for 10th in the state with three other districts. Proud to announce that we are top district in North Louisiana for title 43% proficiency. Uh not exactly where we want to be but we do think we are moving in the right direction.
039Uh next month we plan a full report on uh complete subgroup performance um and also district performance at the August meeting. Uh we also will give a summer learning update. I know a few board members that wanted to know exactly what summer learning looked like uh in terms of number of third graders that were um having to be held back. About 98% I think that's correct is how our third graders will be promoted on to the next grade to fourth grade. So that's pretty good achievement. Um it's just due to the hard work of students, teachers, families, and the community that we get these results. Like I said, I can't say enough there some some performance in groups that we need to improve upon and I think we can. uh but also some bright spots
040as well. Uh another thing uh there are proposed dates for 2526 for school boards for schoolboard meetings. There are three sites that we have there to visit from schools. Uh that would be Russ Junior High School, I lean elementary that's four and so those there if you have any questions or comments about that you can talk with Mr. Phillips or Mir. Uh then the last thing there there is another ethics disclosure for board members. This one is dealing with immediate family members who also employed by the board. I think that is it for very good. Also in your um your folder you should see a a thank you note a copy of such um that we were able to do for Mr. Alaton for his passing. We were able to give a gift in his
041honor. Um and so hopefully you'll see that in your packet as well. Um any other comments from Morgan? Yes. Um what other you said it was three school district two other who are the other two? Oh we are tied with uh the stood at 43% uh let's see here Lafayette. So at 43 it's the Latia Senate Living and toprated district is essential. Where where was that ranked? One, two, three, four, five. Any other questions or comments from the board? If not, do you hear a motion be second? And now. Thank you all very much.