Public Hearing and Special Governing Board Meeting - July 7, 2021

001b [Applause] welcome and i will call the meeting to order and this is a special meeting the purpose of the meeting is um oh i'm sorry though you're talking to me um the pup this is a public hearing on dysart's remote instruction plan for 2021 through 2022 and finance related items and adoption of the fiscal year 21 budget dr kellis thank you madam president if we could start with the pledge of allegiance thank you 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 thank you and let the record reflect that all board members are present we'll begin with item b2 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of

002cabinet according to state statute it is required that the governing board have a public hearing to discuss this matter and mr hicks will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members thank you very much for the opportunity to present the proposed budget as presented to the governing board on june 16th and fyi this presentation is extremely similar to the one on june 19th because from our proposed budget to the adopted you cannot change it we can go down but we can't make wholesale changes because this is what's presented to the community for them to review and come to make comments and so there's no bait and switch kind of thing allowed to happen so as also um just to build off of dr kelly's requirements

003in the ares arizona revised statutes it also is required that we propose the budget by july 5th which we did in june and then also must adopt a budget by july 15th each year and all bubble budget adoptions and revisions require public hearings so we happen this again in december and we have this again in may as we have those budget revisions so um not uh so first i'd like to again i know i said this back in june but just appreciate all the hard work that uh miss maridell spidel and her team put together to put all this together as we talk and go through the process and i know you guys have heard this about five times as we've talked about benefits and compensation but they do actually have to put all the

004work together of what we talk about and then put it into the budget and then move it on to the budget form so i just appreciate all of their all the staff's efforts on that so i'm going to try to go a little bit quick just because this is multiple times we've seen this but you could see 176 million budget one of the things that when we approved the proposed budget on june 16th we made some assumptions because the legislature had not passed a budget at that time and so the biggest assumptions were the increase in inflation as required by statute we disclosed there was a slight increase in our student projections for the coming year the full restoration of our district additional assistance and then the new um part that those were all hard

005coded in statute previously but one thing that was common amongst all the budgets that were being presented at the time was an increase in special ed funding we included that in the budget the final budgets that were approved did include all of those measures so the one risk we had was if the legislature approved a budget that it was different than what we made all those assumptions would we need to come back and make changes after we adopt this budget we would then have to come and do a quick revision next month in that sense none of those situations occur so similar to nothing has changed from our proposed budget and that we have a 166 million dollar maintenance and operation budget our capital fund is we said the district additional assistance was restored and

006those are those allocations the classroom site fund so this is one formerly known as prop 301 and i say formally known because that was approved by the voters in november 2001 it had a 20-year sunset it was renewed not by voters but by the legislative so when the legislature approved it it's no longer prop there were one it's now voter the legislature approved it they moved it over and you can see the one big difference um so what they changed instead of having the three areas the base salary performance pay and other menu items when the legislature approved it they collapsed all the buckets and said you only need one fund and so it did not require a certain amount in the performance pay we are still operating as if we were under the old

007rules because working with dea and our teachers everything we did not know what was going to happen and we didn't want to work really hard and maybe make a mistake at the end keep everything as is we'll relook at it as this year goes by and make recommendations to the governing board but i did want to visually show there's only one bucket now and you can see that's a dramatic increase the 8 million dollars is a 40 increase and so that is a huge increase going to our certified staff then under special projects just to highlight a little bit here on the federal grants i know we talked about this also on in june about the federal grants um specifically uh some of the esser um we have sr1 sr2 and sr3 carry forward and

008fy 2021 is just carry forward so that's all not all brand new dollars some of it in fy2021 we're not going to spend 41 million but we budget the full amount re-budget the full amount in the new year so this year we're budgeting the 60 million the primary source of that is sr3 sr3 was the new the new esser funds related to covert relief funds that was approved in march and that had a new component on it and that new component required soliciting feedback from various stakeholders and so i don't know if you have noticed or did not notice last week we pushed out on facebook a survey with some tentative schedule of how we would use some of the the how we would use the full 36 million dollars in sr3 funding we've also

009pushed it on our website and i have emailed it out to all of our administrators for review and for their feedback i believe as of this morning we've received over 160 comments already on it it's going to stay open for another three weeks so that we can collect as many feed much feedback as possible from all the various stakeholders and then we will make revisions to the plan and then make sure it's presented and approved and then submitted to ade in those recommendations but that is new that was not fully known on june 16th when we made this presentation so and then always we do try to put all of our financial reports on our website i try to encourage and push as many people to look at the historical all of our information um

010and so i just try to like to highlight the transparency that we have um and before uh well we could take questions on the presentation i have a few more just points to hit if we want to hit that so the next would be at the proposed budget i did not have the rainbow report ready so i have attached the rainbow report and i don't want to go through it too much but just to reiterate i love the rainbow report because it provides context of pulling away instead of looking at the 200 plus million dollars of funds and all the different funds because so many of the funds are so restricted national school lunch program esser what those requirements are some of the state funds some of the state grants the perkins or cte grants

011the state basic grant knowing with all those restrictions let's peel away all those very specific funds we get with all very specific rules and just look at the essence and so this is looking at our mno fund our classroom site fund and then our district additional and where we're spending it in what category and so it provides contextual of how much is going into the classroom how much is going into administration we just try to i use this report and so i try to provide it to the governing board for any of their contextual review if you just like to see how it's moving and in the bottom half i do produce the percentages from the auditor general report of what in those categories either in classrooms support services or administration what their calculations are

012using all of our funds and so we don't have to go through all of it but i wanted to specifically identify that and then finally what i'd like to also do is this year as well as last year we produced a truth and taxation notice and so a truth and taxation we publish it as required by arizona revised statute this year is larger than last year so last year was about fifteen thousand dollars this year it's a seven hundred and eighty thousand dollar uh request this is for the adjacent waste fund and this is specifically for the west point safe crossing project this is required whenever we're using the json ways and it's greater than fifty thousand dollars we're required to submit it to the arizona school facilities board for them to review to make

013sure that it's legal and appropriate uh for their approval and that was done last week and so the cost to an average homeowner so um the notice that we put in the paper we're not allowed to touch it or change it because i've had a few people within our district say why don't you add this why don't you add that that is very specified in statute of what we have to put in the newspaper and what has to be in the newspaper so we use the templates and we plug in where we're allowed to and we leave it alone from there and we are required after this budget after this board meeting to submit this to the property tax oversight commission all of our documentations as well as to the maricopa county department for their

014calculations and to ade as well as and just to ade the average homeowner so this put in the notice it was a hundred thousand dollars just there so i don't have the tax rolls that were sent to me but i guess in our average home is around 160 thousand dollars this request is about 7.70 per year of the average home or about 64 cents per month for the average homeowner to put in and this puts in just to remind you i know we've had agenda item i think it was in may over some of our safe crossings and our kids are getting to school this is the west point at greenway this is aligning our entrance to the neighborhood across the street to allow the city to put in a street light so that we

015could have a crosswalk a lighted crosswalk for the students to cross right now right now once that's done right now the students have to either walk a quarter mile either way to cross and then a quarter mile back to the school we do run a bus to keep it safe and so we do have a couple buses that go in there for two routes that go into that neighborhood to provide the safe crossing but that does not eliminate students running across the street in a very busy section and so this is the project to create a safe crossing for those for the west point elementary school i do so this is a little unusual it looks like we have a few people that would like to make a public comment just on top of that

016i know you received an email from one of our citizens but we also received a letter also in opposition of that so i believe the email that was to all the governing board was in opposition to this we also re received a letter from a citizen that is also in opposition of this uh they did indicate in the letter to me not the email to you that it was unconstitutional it is not unconstitutional this is done that's why we send it to the arizona school facilities board to follow the process they basically said 15 19 15 905.1 is in itself unconstitutional throwing out the whole statute that is not the case and so this is a legal and appropriate way to move forward on this but so i'll answer any questions on the budget before

017we allow the public to make any comments we don't ask questions during the public hearing we wait until oh to the agenda item right um thank you thank you very much so we will listen to public comment now thank you very much do we have anyone in the audience that would like to make a public comment go ahead sir good evening everyone i'm here because i am opposed to any kind of tax increase of any kind we're just emerging from this terrible china wuhan virus and i think we are pretty well spent if you will and i think it's uh actually i thought when i saw this in the paper i thought it was some sort of peculiar joke i said really you're kidding right i mean aren't the teachers the ones who said that

018they didn't want to go to class they didn't want to go well what what's so important now about raising taxes uh it's just terrible i mean i i plucked out two articles yesterday dated yesterday and one of them's um the american retirement insider and they basically say this says education systems are failing all over the country they're failing because teachers aren't teaching they're failing because they want to suffocate kids with masks they even failing because they'd rather teach race theory than u.s history that's just the beginning of it but there there's others another article that i found that it says public school enrollment drops three percent across the nation um and i don't think we're unique here that we're increasing maricopa county i doubt it very seriously but um i i just have real problems

019with this this this whole concept of taxation i don't think it's fair um i have put well about 40 years now i have put a lot of children through the public school system i think i've done enough and i just think the whole tax system is ridiculous and it needs to be redone there needs to be tears or something created for older people who are retired we're not working anymore and this is crazy we're having to pay the same taxes of the guy across the street who's working full time and and usually making pretty good money but this is what i'm saying this is some of the reasons that i i object to this i mean the curriculum i think needs to be looked at i don't believe that critical this whole crt concept is

020a good idea i don't get it i don't want the kids to hate each other i want them to like each other okay and so i would appreciate it if you would consider my thoughts on this because i feel very strongly about this and [Music] most people don't are not willing to take the time to come down and share this with you but i think it's important not just for me but other people that follow me there there's we're all we talk about social justice a lot around here throughout the community well social justice should include justice for those of us who are well into our waning years we would like a little justice too anyway i appreciate your attention god bless all of you thank you thank you can we ask your first name

021sir can we have your name please no that's okay i am dr wendell fountain uh you want my address no that's not necessarily usually they asked me the dress thank you thank you dr fountain do we have any other comments go ahead and state your name for us please thank you mr teacher out of illinois and indiana thank you sir i've supported the nea and the aft most of my life but right now they're doing things that we don't want i saw on newsmax today they said that they're going to support any teacher that gets in trouble for teaching critical race theory okay i'm against that totally i'm against them teaching anything that's divisive now on the tax issue we had well i have a couple grandchildren they happen to reside in their own mirage

022they also happen to go to a a little school that isn't connected uh anyway they had class most of the time they did take a little time off and then figured out that they could get by without doing it online and so as soon as they could they went back that wasn't the experience that i saw with the dysart schools and the local ones they wanted to stay off for the whole year and then have a super good plan to get back in well the good plan is that according to everything i have read the kids have a much lower susceptibility to the covet thing and so they should have not had to stay out masks on kids that's ridiculous the kids don't need it and on the the tax issue you say well it's

023only a hundred sixty thousand well a lot of people have houses have gone up a little bit in value i bet it's a little higher than that whenever the taxes hit whatever it is though this tax increase will go on forever and then two or three years down the road you'll probably ask for another increase and that gets added on top of this one it keeps getting added on one of the reasons i left the chicago land is because the taxes on real estate for a three hundred thousand dollar house were about seventy five hundred dollars and that was in two thousand four well i've noticed a gradual increase since i've been here we've got to watch that because many of us have retired and if we are retired we have to pay just as

024much as everyone else that's working does in april we had a inflation rate for just that month i think of 4 it's going to be higher than you think well we don't want to add more taxes that we don't have to dysart has paid people for not working we have we have to support our families help our grandkids where we can and you guys are not making any easier it's a little bit more difficult for people that have retired please keep that in mind i'm against the tax increase and critical race theory is a definite downer it divides b thank you for your comment do we have any other comments okay thank you madam president um if i could just interject that we will offer to reach out to those who have spoken and addressed

025some of the comments that they and concerns that they've raised about dicer thank you very much okay moving to item b three dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet again based on actually very new legislative action and new statute we are required to have a public hearing on the matter of school scheduling and dr pulling will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board cabinet and community this past school year we did offer parents that the opportunity for online learning and that was under the governor's executive order from last summer that has expired and as dr kells alludes to there was a new law passed that if we want to offer remote learning in the coming school year for our k-8 students then

026we need to have two public hearings and have the board adopt that and so this is the first of those two public hearings what i'm going to talk about and present tonight was presented to the board in april i believe and then it was presented to parents through a facebook live event soon thereafter and this is that same information and our plan moving forward so the overview for the public hearings a dysart kid online would be an option for parents for them to have live teaching throughout the day they would follow an early school start schedule the dysart teacher would be in the classroom and the students would be at home and depending on the numbers ideally we'd like to have one teacher per grade level but right now our numbers are very low we

027have about 170 students enrolled in that and so it is very low this past school year we had over 3 000 students enrolled in that which is about 20 percent of our k-8 student population and the rest were in the classroom learning um so depending on the numbers they're trending low so we could have grade bands such as k1 students would excuse me students would take their core classes math science social studies language arts as well as art and pe and florida virtual would be the online curriculum resource as it was this past year sorry to describe the teaching and learning environment enrollment criteria we did see a large number of students struggle in the online learning for k8 this past year and so we created enrollment criteria and that students to enroll in this

028program had to have passing grades in math and reading at the end of the school year as well as not be on the retention list some students were recommended for retention unless they passed summer school in math and reading and so we want to make sure that those students would need to come back in person learning in terms of students with an iep or a they would need to meet with their school-based teams and the families to look at their needs and or accommodations to see if those could be met through this remote learning and that's a similar process that we followed this past year in terms of attendance attendance will be taken twice per day so not only would we ensure that students are are participating in class but then also we could get

029the proper adm and funding from the state and ad is still working on our process and we'll be in communication with our finance department mr hicks team on what is the process so that we can get funding for these students a movement we told parents that a deadline of july would be needed for enrollment into this program so that we could properly prepare and make sure the teachers are ready and students are ready for the school year and this past year we had students and families wanting to switch back and forth a lot where they come into the classroom for a few weeks and then go to remote learning and back and forth and that was very difficult in terms of the consistency for student learning and also for for teachers teaching and so we

030created the process that movement back and forth to remote learning and personal learning could happen quarterly and to remain in the program students who need to be passing their classes in terms of testing the major tests such as dysart benchmarks or azm2 would need to be taken in person and so that students can be properly supported and proctored in those examinations and finally extracurriculars students will have the opportunity to be involved in school extracurriculars before after school but they need to come to the campus to participate in those then finally we have a have had a web page live for quite some time we have been emailing this information out to parents and doing auto dialers um our website is dysart.org kate online and um also if the community has any questions they can certainly

031email me or call me and so again this is the first of two hearings on our remote learning option for k-8 students for next year madam president as dr pauline just said this one's a little bit different than the finance public hearing and that we are required to have two public hearings so no action is being requested tonight on this item and i will be asking for comments correct yes okay thank you so do we have any um public comment for this item regarding the remote instruction plan go ahead mr templeton okay it's clear once again my grandchild is seven he goes to charter school right now my grandchild had to go through some remote learning now he was fortunate because he had a grandmother and he had me that was able to help when

032his mom and dad were otherwise occupied what happens whenever a kid can't get online any problem comes up what happens when the kid doesn't understand something what happens with this remote learning is it becomes very easily no learning now i have done remote learning myself college courses that's fine because we are motivated we understand we've got a little more experience but young kids with remote learning i do not think do well further they are losing the interaction with the teacher because the teachers way out there somewhere and may not even be looking his direction even if he waves his hand second they're not having any children with them to work with further my grandson has a little grand daughter and not granddaughter a sister that is four now she is always in the way now

033somebody's got to watch the kid someone's got to help the other kid someone's got to keep the computer going and like i said it's just difficult for you to do this with kids that may not be totally motivated some of them as you pointed out me on the beyond trouble with the dean may have been suspended had a few other issues they probably are not do a good candidates for this and i think you should be very careful about robbing the kids of the school experience that's traditional and has been successful and substituting something that might easily become little or no learning thank you thank you for your comment are there any other comments okay thank you next we're going to item c1 dr kellis thank you madam president based on the presentations that are

034given and the public comments this is the opportunity for the board to make a motion and to vote on the one action item thank you and i can open this up for discussion correct yes that is correct thank you um i would like to open up for discussion i just have a few questions ken you mentioned that this was based off of the conversation we had around the school safe ways to school conversation i thought that as part of that we had agreed that i think it was maybe miss lawyer sink bill that uh recommended that we look into the possibility of of making those changes ourselves and not necessarily going out to taxpayers for something supplemental and i think that there were maybe more than once there was maybe more than one school involved

035in that conversation and when i looked back at the meeting minutes i thought that we were going to have a cost and timeline presented to us at a later date madam president members sorry i didn't know if you were done or not um yes we're still working on that that specifically when we in my mind we were talking about the shadow ridge and can we put in a light there or pay for the light ourselves we would not be able to we don't own the property or the land we'd have to work with them but that would also be an adjacent waste it would also be an adjacent waste project so not a separate so a little bit different because we're talking about multiple things so um i don't remember hearing and so i did

036not read the minutes of not ever going to taxpayers for this because that is the only legal valuable way is through adjacent ways on that so i might have known that internally and never said that out loud but i've always assumed that yeah for the shadow rich when we're talking about that that's me paraphrasing and what i heard yes so um and so uh specifically when we were talking about that corner and that dangerous corner at shadow i thought that we were discussing more than just shadow i could be wrong no you were not wrong okay madame president members we talked about shadow we talked about the crossing i think it's at reams and also so we had three troya right joya um so we were talking about three different ones in that presentation okay

037and um madam president um part of it was what is the city doing and we've reached out multiple times to see if they would accelerate putting a light there and they continue to say at the shadow ridge corner of peoria there that they will not accelerate because it does not warrant even though we believe that it does warrant a light there the city we have had an extensive conversations with them putting in a light at west point acro at the 137th crossways and this is putting us in place for the city to put in a light so we will be preparing and getting our entrance in grassy egress aligned with the community across so that they are able to put in the light and the city would then come in and put in the light

038okay so did i answer all those questions maybe okay so um with the city putting in the light can you maybe paint a picture for us i know that there was an attachment on here um perhaps hold on a second i may have seen that on the school facilities board um where there was a an actual map of where the the light would be moved to or or put madam president members of the board that is not on this agenda okay i think you were at you must have gone to the school because i probably did because we had to submit a lot of documentation and drawings from vendors and quotes for cost to determine to get their approval and so that did have the realignment of the entrance to align with 137th straight across

039so based on what you were saying that the city is going to take on the cost of the traffic light and then we're just paying for like the egress construction the ingress ingress is realigning the entrance where it is does not align with the community across the street so until it lines they will not put in a light okay and so because it just wouldn't physically work with a light and a crossing walk so we would realign our opening across the street they would put in the line which wouldn't allow us to put a crossing guard and have safe crossing across this across greenway okay um and then you also mentioned that again based on you know 160 000 you said it would be about 700. i'm sorry 7.70 per year uh 64 cents per

040month and is that for one year does that expire after one year or is this a forever tax so madam president members of the board that's a great question that's a great question because we hear that all the time we know it we've talked about it in overrides we've talked about it with other education measures it is so the truth and taxation notice if you notice there was how much was there the previous year it assumes it goes to zero every year it is only a one year this is a one year project it our hope um now construction timelines are getting thrown out where our hope would be this would be done by the end of september for them to get materials i don't know if anybody's doing any construction and seeing everything the

041timing and everything is pushed out so it could go longer this is once we levy the tax it goes into our bank account from the county treasurer and that is what we have to use for this project and then it is done it goes away the tax goes away for next year automatically the only way it continues is if the board comes back and we have to identify another project or explain a current project that didn't work and then you have to approve that going forward if you don't approve it it doesn't continue i will tell you this is only one year it'll be done our hopes is by end of september i'm not that optimistic about it but i do hope it is done in the first semester so that we are in alignment

042and get that light up and get a safe crossing as quickly as possible okay i think that was that was all my questions for right now go ahead um just as a follow-up for what densboro was talking about i did want to know if it was for one year is this a separate line item on our tax bill um madam president members of the board it is not a separate line item it's just embedded into the district primary tax okay so if we don't collect enough because construction costs i mean you're guesstimating it's going to be sixty thousand no well um madam president members of the board we have quotes in hand from vendors so we would be able to enact that um there could be a change order but that would have to depend

043on change of scope of when they're in there something under the ground is not the same i do not believe there be a cost increase but at the end of the year then that goes away 7.70 per year 64 cents per month goes goes away correct okay i think that was all on that particular when we talked about something else then i have other questions okay i do have a couple of questions um maybe this is just my first rodeo so i'm not quite familiar but throughout this whole process of discussion i didn't realize that us approving this project would require raising taxes so i don't know maybe that was discussed and i just missed it but i don't ever remember hearing about us raising taxes um and then did we have a traffic study

044done i can't remember if we actually had one in front of us madam president members of the board we do a safe school working with maricopa association of governments and also the cities and i think that's done every three years and we have a safe study to help guide it we also met with the city because we we tried other alternatives first on a safe crossing we tried i know we met multiple times with the city asking for hawk lights other provisions to help and they denied and said none of them met their criteria for the safe schools and safe crossings and so they ultimately said the only solution that they would fund or help support would be a light at that point i'm sorry what was your first oh so um let me um

045so at the last board meeting i and maybe this is just terminology and i apologize for that so at the last board meeting june 16th i did say this is paid for by our property tax payers um so maybe that's not inherent of that so i tried to disclose that and i think i've given some weekly updates to the board about that this is covered by our property taxpayers so not exactly saying this is a tax increase and i could change my verbage going forward okay because i understood it was coming from property taxes but i didn't realize we were going to have to vote to raise taxes in order to cover it and then maybe just a point of clarification when we vote on this budget are we voting for the truth and taxation

046notice so if we approve this budget does that mean we're approving the truth in taxation notice or is that something separate madam president members of the board the truth and taxation notice is what's required for us to request this to post in the newspaper and online in the various socials approval of this budget we send it to the county and then it goes to the county board of supervisors for their approval to increase to set the tax rates so approval of this board the board has authority to with approval of certain budgets to increase taxes much like if we were a district in central phoenix or down in tucson and a dseg budget when you approve the gseg budget it sets the tax rate for that dseg budget to be funded and so then that

047that allows the tax rate to be set the county assessor to call to assess it the treasurer to collect it the treasure then to disperse the funds to the district so if we approve this budget tonight then essentially there will be a tax increase madam president members of the board yes and then do we have funds other than doing a tax increase i mean is there a waiver to pay for it without raising taxes um madam president members of the board we've allocated out our capital budget um there could be partial portions of this yes we're taking this entire project and putting it on adjacent ways because it falls completely within adjacent ways there are some capital improvements we could make that could be funded from uh regular capital district additional assistance yes i do

048believe there's some that couldn't because adjacent ways it's not on our property and it's in the easements and other areas that we're using and improving and that it's not our property so we can't do capital daa out of that so partially yes so you said that the truth of taxation last year was about 15 000. so that has dropped then so it's at zero now currently madam president members of the board yes and that's what the notice says is that we start off at zero every year so with the 15 000 can you give us the breakdown of what that was yearly and monthly um i um ish what's the is it like 20 cents or buck uh buck a year 16 cents a month or okay i mean just to try to make this

049sound a little bit sweeter instead of being 770 a year might be like okay okay yes so just going along your lines if you're going there technically from adjacent ways to adjacent ways it's not a full increase because we already assessed some last year right but we're required we cannot understand i understand that per law we have to say it's a full increase as we just want to look at it from every angle yeah just for clarification though so but there wasn't we did not approve a tax increase last year because it was under a certain amount um madam president members of the board it was a tax increase for the 15 000 we just did not have to submit it to the arizona school facilities board because it was under the 50 000 threshold

050so that's why this seems this seems fairly new to me as well i don't remember doing having like an official meeting to talk about increasing taxes madam president members of the board probably and when i start hearing more people i want to disclose more so that nobody thinks we're not disclosing so i'm i purposely draw attention to it so that nobody thinks that we're sliding anything under the rug or trying to hide anything i like full disclosure and sure try to be as transparent and accountable as possible i think with that piece of it though too just moving forward and maybe this is a procedural thing that you didn't have control over um but it seems just as far as the optics of it too to have it published saying that this is going to

051be i don't think the word was in effect but basically going to move forward with this tax increase july 1 yet the board's not meeting on it until july 7th feels a little improper even though it may be totally pro it might be procedurally correct but i'm just saying that part of it was a little just didn't feel quite right um as far as that piece of it and then i think too i was under the same impression when we had that other discussion that we were going to be getting information back to talk about how we could maybe fund these other adjacent waste projects i didn't realize either that this meant i mean as as crystal had said i knew it was being paid through taxes but not necessarily thinking that it was going

052to be a tax increase um i thought we were waiting to get some of that information back because i remember when mrs sawyer singapore mentioned well can we just cover this i thought i remember thinking then if if the city wasn't going to cover all of it i was worried about it being a slippery slope of we need to either have a study or something to justify you know why we want we don't want to just randomly decide which things we might just cover on our own we need to obviously have the data to support it but i was thinking that okay well let's look and see if there's other ways that we can do it i did not realize it was going to be and if you can help me with this because here's

053where i'm sitting is that i just feel very uncomfortable raising tax or voting through this budget to raise taxes and put a tax increase on the voters without it going before the voters that's where i'm struggling especially if we can find ways to cover it in ourselves um madam president members of the board so there was a lot of comments that i hope to address all of them if not please restate them so number one after the fact we are following the exact process and timeline tax rates are not set to fund this until the maricopa county board of supervisor approves that at the end of august so and we can't there's timelines of when you could do a proposed budget when you do adopted budget you have to have the adopted budget to submit

054to the county so that they could submit it to the board of supervisors so i know it feels like oh the year started no taxes have been levied for anything for this year as we're going and so until the board of supervisors actually approves it nothing done so it's all it feels after the fact but it's we're following the exact process and timeline as stated in statute and with the maricopa county um that is provided to us um to and i apologize because i heard it now from another board member um of the timelines and i really thought that was all just about shadow because when we said at the choya there's nothing we could do there and the city said absolutely not we were talking about that very difficult intersection of peoria and getting

055timelines and can we what is the cost of a light can we do something we can't do anything could we give the city money to do something that's different so i apologize for the terminology and some of that the first rodeo i think i would also like to say we really haven't done adjacent ways really since we were building schools so back in the 2000s when we were building two schools a year we probably were doing about two to three million dollars of adjacent ways every single year and every single year and this is not set up just for adjacent ways like i mentioned the dseg small school adjustment there's probably i think about eight different ways that with the approval of the budget the governing board sets a tax rate that is a requirement

056in statute based on if it's a primary or secondary secondary tax rates tax rates are covered by the governing board meaning you could reduce the taxes by approving a budget for two dollars we would have to fire everybody get rid of everybody and there'd be lots of lawsuits and do everything but you could reduce the taxes by let's just have a two dollar budget which also then just eliminated the override what governing board's approved budgets at their amounts that do set tax rates and that is historically always been the case and so i apologize for not uh overtly stating it clearer in that way and so i apologize that so there's many mechanisms that control that the quickest easiest way is primary tax rate is covered by normally covered by governing board members secondary tax

057rate is covered by boaters in that sense so hopefully that also did i cover everything in your comments i think so other than well as far as the the dates go could we have or should we have perhaps had this discussion or hearing prior to july one so it would seem like then okay this is it would have it would have been settled and voted on before that publication went out to say as of july 1st this is going to be so it wouldn't feel so after the fact or it's being done before the governing board even hears it or votes on it is that even possible um madam president members of the board at this point any delay would change everything so your hands are not tied you you're a governing board you could

058do whatever you want um no i'm talking about this particular situation where it was published saying that july 1st this is this is we're moving forward with this yet the meeting wasn't scheduled until july 7th is that something that theoretically moving into next year or this year we could have done anything about because that's the piece that's not settling well with some community members is that it sounds like it's backwards we should have done this in june and uh madam president members of the board i'm sorry about that i i don't know a single case so let's just say there's probably 200 to jason wayne's projects and about 100 districts across the state right now every single one's done the same way this is done almost the exact same way in every single district i

059hear that so so that's why you know yeah so that's why uh living in it i don't hear or feel what you're saying i'm just following the timeline the rules could we do anything about it now no um because we have to approve a budget before the 15th we can't go back in time and have a meeting before july 1st to do that the only option would be to wait around till next year which then would change the cost and uh i'm guessing i would not have to resubmit it to the arizona school facilities board i would have to be we'd have to start the process all over again for next year because the governing board with the adoption of the budget is when they set tax rate that is only one time a year

060so there's one window to do it and then it would roll around to the next fiscal year so the only other thing that you didn't um quite answer yet is that is there a way that the district would be able to cover this without going to increasing taxes to our voters uh so madam president members of the board i think we could partially do it as member chafin asked i do not some of it is where the construction is happening adjacent ways allows us to go outside of our boundaries of our property adjacent to anything next to our property for that construction and going in if we're not using adjacent waves we don't have the legal authority to use a fund to go outside of our property so we could not do all of it

061we could do some more of it and we'd have to re-look at our capital budget that we've met with all of our departments to go through and all that so that's possible and or could we also continue to lobby the city to help cover it we could always do that yes um i just want to make a note that that last year i happened to look back at the the meeting time frame so last year um our meeting was june 24th and the notice date was july first um so when was when did we have our meeting was in late june or adopted budget was so that would be the case that we could do it sometimes thank you that's done properly and time-wise well um so uh the only uh madam president uh um

062i wouldn't say done properly in your sense um i know dr kelly properly dr kellis optically yes so um from the after the fact feel proper yes yes because i would not want anybody to think we did it illegally understood yeah thank you totally get it just for that clarification thank you so many president if i could just summarize that to mrs prichard's comment that while procedurally and legally this was done appropriately optically it could have been presented earlier just that while procedurally and legally this has all been done correctly optically it could have done been done a week earlier or in june as it was done last year thank you so to clarify i just want to make sure i'm understanding i know we're kind of going in a circle here so we all

063understand every year when the board meets to approve a budget and they pick a ti there's a tax rate presented it's a tax increase to the public every year is that correct um madam president members of the word kind of could be definitions but so the assumption so this is kind of the conversation that happens around bonds or overrides is it a tax increase there's a not tax increase if it continues right if you assume it goes no when it goes down people feel it's a tax increase if it's continuing it goes on so some of what is approved by a budget a board on the budget is just a continuation and some of it would go down so maybe it's semantics in in that sense and i understand assessed values i mean we could

064keep the tax rate the same but if your assessed value goes up you're paying then your tax rate goes up your tax rate does not go up but your taxes go up and even though we didn't increase the tax rate the assessed value did and the tax is based on your assessed value and assessed values are off the charts now anyway um or whatever madam president members of the board just for clarification on tax rates so the tax rates that are used are from about a year and a half ago so everything's in arrears because you have to give time for the taxpayers to appeal their evaluation so it's not a prospective look at what your values are so if you could sell your house today hey that's my value that is not the value

065that's on the books for the county treasurer full cash values and that's totally different than what you sell your house for i understand that just one but as a follow-up so if hypothetically you say okay we can pay for a portion of this project maybe sort of out of current capital funds could you give an example of a couple of projects that would not happen that need to happen that would to pay for this madam president if i could just interject i think it would be premature to suggest a project that wouldn't happen without having broader conversations um education dysert has um often been told to tighten our belts and to use the money we have to live within our budget i think i i know dysert as evidenced by award-winning financial recognitions has done

066an extraordinary job of maintaining our budget it is illegal to go in the black or to go in the red we have to stay in the black to go outside of our our our budget we can only do that with permission from the process from the legal process that allows us to to go through these things we have lived within our budget we continue to live within our budget to say that we are going to increase by seven dollars we can increase that to ten dollars a year but as administration has pursued the options on the table it has been the best judgment of administration to make this recommendation that a ten dollar per year per household would be more prudent than and it's not ten dollars it's less than that but is more prudent

067than cutting seven 700 000 from our our budget and to i have said it before where we've been told to cut the fat i i will stand and say that there is no fat in dysert and we're we're operating very leanly we have awesome schools we were open all year long we did not close our schools all year and pay our teachers to sit at home all year dycert was open this year and the things that we are doing to support our students is what is our charge to do what's best for kids this opportunity to provide a safe crossing is important and our kids need to have that safe crossing to west point elementary the city suggested that they walk a half mile past multiple business drive-ins through the intersection at litchfield and greenway

068and cross very very unsafe pathways to school so if there's a question about whether this is the right project to do if the money is worth it the safety of our students is important there is a situation in peoria where this discussion happened the city meetings happened and they were denied the crossing and a student was hit and killed now they're paying the eight million dollars it's a lot cheaper to make the safe call now rather than deal with the consequences later so yes we could cut the fat if there was fat to be cut at this point we will be cutting if we don't use the adjacent ways we would be cutting money from existing allocations to other capital projects and that would not be good for for the students i just want to

069clarify i was not saying cut fat i want to make that video thank you i appreciate it i'm responding to other criticisms that was not my question at all i just wanted an example of capital projects that would be affected and that's not fat that's a safety issue as well if you need an air conditioning unit are we going to say oh no you're not going to get air conditioner that's all i'm saying i bet i i want to make it very clear that my question is and if i could just expound upon that comment about air conditioning and the extraordinary effort that dicert is taking to find additional funds without increasing tax dollars this year alone we have found about two million dollars through the school facilities board which is designated by the state

070to pay for some of these maintenance projects that schools can't afford to do on their own we have qualified for these because of they will not fund it if it needs to be repaired it has to be in complete failure and because of the complete failure mode of roofs and ac units we have qualified for over two million dollars of of capital funds i think for me it's not a matter at all of whether or not it's worth it of course nobody wants to see a child die or get injured so to me when i speak about this issue it's not about well let's decide whether we want to spend the money if the money is worth it it's a matter of principle and process and i know it's only seven dollars a year very

071minimal amount of money so it's not about the money it's about the principle of school boards just deciding on their own to raise taxes without it going before the voters is number one my what i struggle with as far as the principle of it the process but the other piece of it too is you know we're partners with a city a surprise and if it were about buying buses or something else that only benefits dysart unified school district even though it impacts our children but still their buses that only we're going to use the city is not going to use our buses i could understand that's our expense and we have to figure out how we're going to pay for those things but those children that are going to be walking to school are surprise

072residents they are their responsibility as well and and should be just as equally concerned about their welfare as the school district is so i know we used to have meetings in our liaison and we meet with the city and we'd have this collaborative relationship i don't think to my knowledge we've been doing that at least not a board representative being there perhaps those types of discussion and then lobbying from the finance department whoever gets involved in the lobbying to help with that i just feel like if we have some of the money without going to you know approving a tax increase and the city can take some responsibility which i believe they should because again i think it's a shared responsibility um i would rather see what we can do in that regard rather than

073just be like uh let's just talk to the voters i just i don't like that madam president if i could also respond to that that the city is playing a part in this this is not all on the district um what you're suggesting could be an ongoing conversation but you're asking the city to come on to our campus and redesign our parking lot no i just want them to help pay for a safe way to school for the surprise resident right so we're paying for the renovation to our parking lot to align with the traffic signal that the city is going to pay for so they're taking care of everything on the city property the streets excuse me and we're paying for what is on our property so it is a joint venture with the

074city they're they're not charging us to go out into the street obviously if we have to put a curb in that's what ken hicks is saying that if we have to do a curb that's on city property that's where the adjacent waze comes in where we can't do that legally using our money we're asking permission to put a curb in because that's city property but we're not i don't think it'd be appropriate to ask the city to remodel our parking lot no but do they have a bigger budget than we do i don't know what the city budget is i can't answer that but the division of responsibility for this project is the city's paying for the city property we're paying for the district property renovations miss pitcher i just can i interject just for

075a second so i just heard two different things i heard it's not our property and then i heard it is our property so we're talking about doing things with our own parking lot but i thought the whole purpose of adjacent ways is because it wasn't our property so is it our property or isn't it our property madam president oh go ahead madam president uh miss chaffin currently there's an entrance to west point elementary to the parking lot that entrance comes off of greenway road the entrance is misaligned with 137th avenue that comes out of litchfield manor residential area so this misalignment needs to be lined up so that the traffic light can allow a free flow of traffic so we have to change our entrance to the parking lot which is on our property to

076change the entrance to the parking lot we have to tear up the curbing the sidewalk the ditch there's a culvert that goes along there all of that is city property so the answer is yes and yes it's our property it's the city's property but we can't disrupt the city's property without using the json ways thank you it's wonky it that's a perfect word for it it's wonky the entrance and then litchfield manor so they have to actually align them so is there yeah is there a reason that we just didn't align it in the first place or did we just not see a need for it when the school is built madam president miss chaffin we built there first okay and just to follow up with that um does this have anything to do with

077any other of our boundary changes that we're implementing this now um madam president members of the board the district made some boundary changes a couple of years ago previously the students who lived across the street from the school went two miles away to then parkview elementary and we bust them the intent was you and ashton maybe or park parkview parkview the intent by doing this was to save some cost to the district so we wouldn't have to be bussing students two miles away when they lived literally across greenway from the elementary okay so currently we would be saving some money because right now we're we're shuttling two bus routes across the street because we don't want them walking safely we would discontinue those two bus routes and they could be used more efficiently for other

078other needs and that would become a walking zone only so could i ask one more question well maybe not one more another one um so we're talking we're going you know i think it was joe said we're going around in circles we're kind of talking about this whole truth and taxation that we're really just i feel like we're just peeling off layers and trying to understand it so it is possible to propose a budget without increasing the community taxes am i did i understand that correctly um so madam president members of the board if i could restate it are you asking can we not approve an adjacent ways budget budget that has the truth and taxation notice of an increase in taxes no no i'm just saying because there was a discussion of last year

079um apparently it was under 50 000 so there was really no notice and no hearing it was just added into the budget and i'm understanding from what you're saying and correct me if i'm wrong that this is common practice with all the school districts they're just kind of proposing this budget and every year they propose it there is some sort of tax increase that could or does happen and like i don't even know if you guys knew what was happening last year when you voted on it i don't know i wasn't here but i'm just questioning if that is common practice i mean it is possible to present a budget without having any tax increase is that correct madam president members of the board in general sorry so right now embedded into this budget is

080we follow statute that there's a funding discrepancy between the district support level and the revenue control limit that difference is picked up by local property taxpayers that's the difference in transportation so the state does not pay fully for transportation but they said you could budget to the higher amount and let the local property taxpayers do it so if you were to pull out that it would be pull out another couple million dollars and that's in the mno budget you'd reduce by two million over two million dollars so it is possible the governing board as i said could adopt a budget of two dollars okay actually i think technically legally you might only need one employee the superintendent because so many things are required by statute for a superintendent so you could just have a budget

081to employ the superintendent and cut everything else is that the prudent thing does that mean you're not going to get lawsuits in many other ways it's probably not the prudent thing so right now to reduce so it is legally possible to adopt a budget lesser than what was presented you cannot increase um what is presented so it cannot go up anywhere first asked whether or not the question was um to approve the budget less the adjacent ways project was that what was your answer to that so that uh madame president members of the board and i don't know if this is semantics but i hear different things so could you approve a budget without the json as you could we would have to start all over with the sfb so our windows our fiscal year

082windows to set tax rates and we cannot set one say two weeks later a month later two months later the window is now so if you approve it without the adjacent ways project we'll have to start the process again increase our communication for community and governing board and come back next year at this time for that start the process meaning for that project but not redo the whole budget mana present members are correct correct for the i'm sorry for the adjacent ways project the safe crossing at greenway that would have to be started all over through the sfb through the process because everything would be a year old quotes wouldn't be vendor's not going to hold a price for a year in this environment and stuff like that so with the sfb is can you

083only propose this then in june or july by july first uh madam president members of the board no uh you could uh if you look at the sfb agendas you'll see adjacent ways throughout the years okay some of them have cash balances so there was a time in other districts where i had a million dollars that wasn't fully allocated you could propose a tax or propose it to the sfb at any time once they approve it anything over 50 dollars you could then engage in and spend and then we would just have that conversation in the truth and taxation communication or publication put out at any time uh madam president i believe that has to be in and around when we propose and adopt a budget so no that notice wouldn't be so we could

084submit to the sfb say in february they review it it takes them up to 60 days to review it and then we could get the notice back okay and then just hold on everything if that's what you're asking gotcha and i know that you are required by law by the stat by the statute to make this proposal through the s p and get that approval um with that are you only able to do this through a tax that i just want to i know we're it's really circular here but are we only able to do that through an additional tax or could we potentially find the money in our own budget so i think you said maybe a percentage of it correct and i do not know the exact so going back to dr kellis

085that curb is not our curb per se where it is and technically we have to go out beyond the curb that is definitely not our property that we legally could not use our 610 fund for that what percentage of that i have i we would have to then re-look at that with the vendor vendors know the adjacent ways process and they would be able to identify what is legal on one on the other side and be able to give us a proposal with that more definitive split is what you're requesting okay um because you know like you mentioned uh the in years prior we had much smaller amounts you know um we had conversations around much smaller dollar amounts uh versus the i think 780 000 this year um so i know that that triggers

086a lot of thoughts and emotions in people with that said i i just think that there should have been additional communication or better communication because when i look at the school facilities board submissions that were happening you know in may and june and then conversations that were happening with the city of surprise and then those same conversations weren't being shared with us um so this is to me was it was quite a surprise um not having an agenda review um it was this was a surprise to me yeah um and obviously to some of our community too um mr president if i could just talk about the communication as mr hicks mentioned this has been uh presented to the board uh several times previously through weekly updates and in a previous budget presentation but not

087that there was going to be a tax increase like i i will i will agree with miss densmore that i i was surprised that we were coming tonight to vote on increasing taxes to voters without voter without it being on a ballot measure or something i wasn't aware that that that we've ever really been presented with anything like this before so i know mr hicks you had said that in your mind you kind of went with some assumptions or you know the process so maybe it wasn't articulated the right way um and maybe that's what it was but in fairness with you kind of acknowledging that piece of it i think that's what happened is that i certainly was surprised um madam president members of the board for clarification i never use the words tax

088increase i think i continue just to say um the prop our property tax payers would pay for this so i never use that words that you're saying i never saw that i never um put that in any update well and i think if you if we would have heard the word tax increase we could have had this discussion several months ago and we you know would have been more prepared for this budget meeting and for this rather than feeling like we've been blindsided like oh now all of a sudden we're gonna vote and we could increase property taxes because i also don't feel comfortable you know voting to increase taxes for our whole community you know i just don't feel comfortable making that decision for our community madam president i empathize with your position and

089i appreciate your sharing that that is a difficult task for a board member to take on that is that is one of the challenges of boardsmanship yeah and i agree it is a challenge and it is our job but i still feel like if we would have actually realized that this was going to be a tax increase for our community we would have had different conversations several months ago and since then and i feel like we would have had more time to discuss further you know avenues like was ms pritchard was talking about maybe working a little bit with more with the city and so i guess those are my thoughts because clearly we didn't realize this was going to lead to a tax increase mr hicks do you happen to know the last time

090we had an adjacent ways issue um man of present members of the board but you know it's been a while well uh when we were building our two schools a year in the 2000s is that what you're talking about we're talking probably what two thousand from 2004 to 10 okay i think it went all the way through 10 and that was a couple million a year yes at that point i think the the statute would shape was changed in 2015 when it needed to be submitted to the sfb um and so i don't think i don't see any records on sfb of us submitting something since then yeah the madam president members of the board the legislature changed it to require there was a perception out there that there were a lot of legal adjacent

091ways projects going through and they wanted an agency to verify and vet the programs or the adjacent ways projects prior to governing boards just assessing attacks and so that is now the requirement of the 50 000 threshold so that they didn't just go through every sometimes you have a 500 or 100 adjacent wage project so to limit theirs they just picked a threshold the legislature did and they picked fifty thousand dollars for any project expense and just for my own knowledge they um there was recently something that appeared to be an adjacent ways project if you were to head south on parkview just outside the countryside elementary school looked like there was a crosswalk moved and then an ada compliant sidewalk put in place is that considered adjacent ways and was that something that we

092funded um madame president members of the board i'm not aware of that project at all the cities and president the city uh my understanding is just as a recently took on four traffic improvement projects on city streets only so the i believe that's one of them there are a couple more over by cimarron springs and canyon ridge along surprise farms loop north and south so these are proactive measures that the city is taking on projects they've taken on themselves okay but they happen to be adjacent to our schools um kind of i mean the one on surprise surprise farms loop north is down the street a couple of blocks but it was to help students get to school safely but it was nothing that had to do with us that we had to the district

093hasn't expended any funds on those projects i know they added a stop sign right which i mean it's i think it's on cotton and surprise farm loop something because there were two stop signs and then the next one is not a stop sign so it's kind of confusing i always stop because i never mind i think that's what you're talking about um i just have one more thing i'm sorry if this gets approved tonight is this project on track to be ready for this school year no madam president members of the board we will engage and start it as soon as possible but it will not be ready for the start of the school year august 3rd because it will take a while for the construction project it would probably be happening and just uh

094go dormant for drop off and pick offs pick up so if you see our schools during that time it's very hectic we would do no work around that time and then maybe some nights and weekends to get it done as quickly as possible okay i do have a couple of other budget questions i don't know if you guys want to keep discussing the adjacent waves project my questions are for other areas of the budget i only have two okay i don't know all right go ahead oh okay so it's open you can always go back right um so good at that do we know exactly how much interest we're spending on our debt on our bond that we took out i mean the actual interest not just how much we're spending on debt yeah madam

095president members of the board in this budget what you'll see is the principal and interest payment if i had to estimate when i last saw the numbers the interest itself might be around two million dollars would be my best guess okay annually uh this year just this year it adjusts each year depending on what repayment schedule has been approved when the bonds were sold and that's just the interest that's not the whole yeah because i think the principal reduction is probably close to 13 million dollars and then this particular budget i know in the past principals have started to they've needed to start doing their staffing in january so with this particular budget for this fiscal year are they still going to have to figure out all their staffing needs in january or are they

096going to i mean how does that work so we approved this fiscal year for this year to that year so when principals start doing their staffing in january is that for the fiscal year 20 to 23 23 200. madam president members of the board we start in about october working for the next year's budget and so in january is when it comes to the principles to work for the july meeting so they have already put in all the work and got their staffing and then is there any way that we could give them a little bit more time to figure out their staffing and then another question is is why do our contracts always come out so early especially when the state budget is improved for a couple of months afterwards um i'm just kind

097of curious why everything has to be done super early adam president i'd be happy to answer that question it's kind of been creeping earlier and earlier and there's multiple reasons for that dysert competes with all the other charters and districts and private schools for the same teachers and one of the challenges when we are out late is teachers have already signed contracts for the following school year and so to make sure that we know who's here and who's leaving and to be able to get out there and and find the teachers that we need to fill the gaps there was a time when we were hiring over 300 teachers a year because of the the turnover um this year i think we're down to oh just over about so we cut that in half so

098the that's one reason is to be able to to land our employees in seats in in classrooms there's a lot of planning that has to take place as we're looking forward to the following school year so it helps with with the planning one of the things that we have done to help teachers because we know that once you sign if you sign a contract in february life happens and so at least in dicer and this is not common to other other school entities in dicer we have extended the the opportunity for teachers to get out of their contract until may 1st so without any penalty so we want to just get a commitment so we can know and start planning but we don't want to make it difficult for for teachers who they signed in

099february but are stuck and that was one of the concerns that teachers had is but what if i'm not ready to commit in february for the following august so we extended that to may it used to be april 15th and so they actually have more time now than they used to i know it just that that makes total sense it's just kind of difficult to uh it's difficult to give an accurate representation of their salaries if the state budget hasn't come out yet so even if they have until may 1st and we don't give them a commitment of their salaries until like what june 1st that's still kind of a you know what's my salary really going to be so when they sign on they're signing on for x amount 100 for sure with the

100possibility you might get a cost of living increase or something of that sort and that happens all over the state thank you madam president members of board you also ask about starting the process earlier so we do work with our mr kevin shipman planning and our demographics to try to get projections rolling over the data to try to get as soon as possible we start it in december and work with hr finalize it all and then work with the principles um i will definitely take the comment back to see if we could start that process a little earlier well i i'm thinking later give the principles more time so the earlier we start the projections and then our staffing ratios to tell gives them more time because once we get to that point they normally

101have a two-week window to figure out and start talking to their staff and place them like if a if a grade went down and you lost two teachers where are you placing those two teachers they want to know their other staffing to do that so that's why we would have to start the process earlier to provide more time to do that but i definitely hear that comment now too so i appreciate it all right so i'm going to jump in here um my questions uh really just had to do with the other funds they were on page 8. why uh and this had to do with career and technical education um priory was about 2.3 million and budget year is 1.7 so i'm just curious why um 600 000 difference madam president members of the

102board what what page are we at six of eight no i'm sorry well it's eight of our slide here yeah page six of eight excuse me sorry i see eight up at the top uh line number 23 other funds oh other phones i'm looking at it right right oh uh i'm sorry madam president members that is a great question um so that is our westmec uh funds our funds that we're getting from westmac and um we uh mr greece haber looking at all his projects and what the greatest needs are he decided this summer to remodel the dysart high school automotive center cost a lot of money he used a lot of his reserves and so this is what's left is it's a huge decrease because he had a huge increase in spending this summer

103oh so he carried forward for some reserves and he he well that means that he'll have less money to spend next year so the really the difference is is he's sinking uh six seven hundred thousand dollars into the dysart high school automotive remodel okay and last one i just wanted to make sure that um i know you you and i had talked about the compensatory instruction that there's nothing there and dr montano is going to continue doing what she's doing as far as not having anything in our budget so madam president members of the board compensatory instruction is when we've gone to ade mediated and lost and need to provide additional instruction for our special ed program because we ran the summer school all june to cover it and because we were in person for

104essentially the whole year the whole state had to close down the first two weeks then we put a plan in place to phase back coming in with our special ed students coming in first so we were ahead of the curve of almost the entire state and because we're providing full robust uh special ed program the entire month of june we every hearing that's gone we've won every hearing and i think her statement is fear above vape above fear we provided a fair and appropriate education to every single one and an opportunity if parents choose to kept their students home they cannot use that as an excuse to get additional uh instruction because we had opportunities in person for every single one and what she's done has allowed us not to have anything in there as

105far as that so um that's that's a huge feather in her cap and we've won every single hearing um madame president members on board i know i repeated that a couple times i did talk to her i think there's only been three or four so it's not like the volume of going to a.d is so huge it's a small number but she has won every single one and it's vape above fear thank you what would happen though if we needed that like where would that money come from is it okay to not have any money in that so some of it is the state might provide additional funding here or we will have to provide it and carve it out of our budget or comes out of a federal fund that we'll have to redirect

106over to that but we have not in any compensatory situation whether special ed or ell have to do anything sorry no sorry but the public comment time period is over thank you so um i'm going to be looking at two different devices two different screens here but the one i'm on now is the budget okay so back and i'm sorry i don't remember the meeting it was either may or june we had the whole conversation about board members and travel and unused funds they get so much for used funds for two years and then what isn't used goes back into the budget could you please now that we're looking at it show what line item that it would go into um so madam president members of the board so uh on the page one of

107eight is our m o budget okay in that is embedded a line where board member travel is budgeted and so if you went to general administration which is line four and then went over a few columns to purchase services that's where that's embedded in that is where the superintendent uh who also covers all of our governing board expenses and such is coded to is there and so what our process is is that each year our department meets with every department our my department mary dell and her team meet with each department to look at their budget from last year and justify it's almost a zero-based budget with departments not based on student not bit like schools because that's based on formula students here it's justification what are you doing and how that is for governing

108board travel the two-year balance that's looked at is automatically put in and put embedded into that budget so it's not taken away and unless it fell off from the previous year but that two years allocated directly to that that the governing board secretary has control over anything excess that was left goes back into the whole budget to be reallocated amongst the whole process okay thank you and then on the budget adoption portion the summary and i know you've talked about this but just as a refresher for me please um because we weren't sure about the legislature and then we were when it says the m o funds and this 40 million includes the extra money we got from the state right correct if we did not get that additional money from the state could you

109please tell me approximately what that number would look like madam president members of the board between those group b weights that they that i mentioned at the previous and i can't remember them off the top i had what they increased from it it generated about 1.1 million dollars okay thank you and so but so if i could clarify that necessarily doesn't mean that that number would go down we overspend we don't overspend anything um the amount of money that's allocated to us in special ed does not cover the needs of special ed because special ed has so many ieps and statutorily driven we fund and do everything that's appropriate there it might mean somewhere else we'd be cutting a million dollars but this helps and that's what i'm just asking is that's what the name

110did get an additional million ish to go towards madam president um sorry madam president members of the board and i didn't i don't say a lot of things with emotion or something the legislature provided a lot of additional funding this year so not just inflation funding the full restoration of daa capital the special ed funding there was a lot of areas that benefit school districts greatly in that sense and we benefited in at least one million dollars just on that special ed that all came together at the end thank you i know that miss grant mentioned the board member travel and some of the cost savings that we had associated with that but i would assume that we also had quite an extensive savings with employee travel as well right madam president members of the

111board that's a great question if i would say savings i would say in our grants yes because we don't allocate and say you have to spend this in a in your mno fund so maybe we give professional development to schools five thousand dollars um that could come in a number of different ways so we had tons of savings from covid the previous years and a lot of restrictions a lot of it was just repurposed and so um so i guess there's layers to that conversation in that sense but a lot of the federal grants very difficult because it was very specific of attend they wrote the grant to say we're going to this conference this conference is no longer available or at a reduced rate for an online version and so yes there was definitely

112some savings more in federal programs where it was specific and written into the grant but it did impact a lot we just may have repurposed it in the mno for the previous year okay um i guess just from the outside looking in i i think it might be difficult for some people seeing and hearing all of these you know extra funds coming in um cost savings happening whether it be from utility bills you know for certain months you know when we were forced by the governor to go remote um so you see all these savings and you see the the federal and state dollars coming in and then you see something like this and you struggle well you know why quit why can't the district cover that with all those savings and additional funds that

113they received um and i know that you're saying that those funds were simply repurposed for something different but i just want to give you another perspective on how that might look to somebody that is looking from the outside in so i think that's a great perspective i might frame some of my conversations a little bit different when we give budgets to schools it is not you have five dollars for travel in downtown and if you don't spend it we take it right you're given an allocation school principals are responsible for every single thing that happens on that campus their total discretionary budget might be fifty thousand dollars which is embedded in that is travel to make sure that they're successful and they have all the tools we allow them to make the judgments that are

114most appropriate to them to purpose to make the decisions of how they would spend their money to make the most success at their schools to address that so even though we have allocation formulas so this is going way down into what we provide our principles they see actually here's how much you get for instructional supplies art supplies nurse supplies front off we show them how we built their budget so that they could see but we do not hold them to say you were given 850 for nursing supplies you only spent 820 we're taking back 30 dollars if they see the greatest need to purchase something else that solves a problem that makes them successful we're going to encourage them to make the best decision possible what i do is i make sure all that's public

115so everybody in our district through our internet can see every single every summary data of every single other schools and how and where they're spending their money yes there might have been savings through travel and other savings when we weren't in session but that money was spent a man and president members of the board repurpose and that's through every single year and we allow them to roll over a hundred percent of their money so that they're just not forcibly buying something just so they don't lose the money because if it's if we're going to repurpose it and take it back you know how marketplaces adapt and somebody says if you don't go on some travel we'll take it they'll just go on any travel just to put it in to take it just so they

116don't have to lose it because sometimes some government's not that i started but my wife works for the county if you don't spend it your next year budget's reduced because they think you don't need it and so people have a hunker mentality of which is wasteful i i personally believe i'd rather them do the right decision and not take for them or create an environment that they're going to be wasteful with the exception of grants and federal projects that that doesn't apply to madam president members of the board some of our federal grants are very very detailed of every single thing and every line and yes that does happen so i'm sorry my statement was in general of mno and capital allocations our greatest allocations to our our schools thanks for the clarification working on

117my communication here hearing uh you know what i mean a little different to and from thank you and this may have already been covered and i apologize if it if it was but so i know that i think maybe it was last year the year before um the legislature had increased the amount that we were able to carry forward as a district in our budget um can you clarify what that looks like uh madam president members of the board uh not last year this might have been i'm guessing too um year before maybe six years ago oh okay i was thinking it was um more recent um everything feels recent when you're old um to me not you sorry sorry i know this is being live stream i apologize that was my own comment i

118am 50 now uh that was no way intended about that so it was approximately six years ago and we used to have a four percent cap that you would not require you were not allowed to carry forward more than four percent okay they took that away and it was unlimited so there's no cap at this point if we wanted to carry forward going back to my example right a two dollar budget or to spend only two dollars on 176 we can carry forward 175 million 998 dollars if we really wanted to okay so can you um just speak to what the amount is that we're hearing forward um yes madam president members of the board this budget is assumes a carry forward of about 7.5 7.6 million dollars okay actual will be different so when

119we do our afr in october and we actually approve because in the month of july and august we start paying bills and making sure and a lot of things came in on june 30 so we have to make sure it came in in the right year we have to refuse it if it comes in july because it didn't come in the fiscal year so state law allows us 60 days to clean all that up make all the payments and then put the report together before the board so at that point we'll know the exact amount of our carry for it this budget assumes a 7.6 million m o carry forward thank you you're welcome uh for context madam president i believe last year was uh nine around nine or maybe a little more than nine

120years so that's a little bit less we're caring for it less so we as we had a reduction in students we had the esg grant yes sir but we did have an increase in cost on some of our ppe or some of our program enhancements and technology driven it ate into some of that and so with the loss of students we absorbed it through our carry forward in this budget is it assuming that we're going in with the same amount of students as we ended with last year or are we assuming like a higher kindergarten enrollment this year what are we looking at statistically um madam president members of the board um it wasn't my june presentation okay remember it off the top of my head if i had to guess right now i'm getting

121the numbers i'm thank you [Laughter] i think it's about a 300 increase from okay this year okay so it is a growth of students projected for next year great thank you do you need a cane yes okay i'll entertain a motion on this one so just a point of clarification approving this budget is improving the tax increase madam president members board as presented yes as presented okay i moved to the governing board to adopt the proposed budget nope sorry recommend to adopt the proposed budget for the fiscal year through 2022 second where'd my cursor go where'd it go motion passes okay we'll make a motion to adjourn the meeting second something wrong this is just doing it my cursor doesn't work