001e e e heard from Kevin today I'm doing the uh week of Memorial Day taking that week all is it it day week spring fever and then I'm taking uh it's 6 o' I probably should get our show on the road okay let everybody get situated good pep talks I like that okay some days I just want the fourwheeler and some days I want the all right well I'm GNA waigh it because you know that's that I knew that oh okay I wish I had this anyway all right we good Jeff's traveling for business okay all right we're gonna do this good evening this is Thursday March 30th Welcome to our finance um budget meeting for um Thursday March 30th 2023 at 6 PM I calling the meeting to order would you kindly join me
002for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the FL of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands indivisible liy and justice for all all right um please note that um School Board member L Fortune is making an entrance and School Board member Richards is away for business um the rest of the school board is present for our meeting um and I believe superintendent Ray our first item is additional State subsidy memo so take it away okay good evening uh uh as I informed you via email uh and here in the memo tonight on Tuesday at about 4:30 in the afternoon the Department of Education released an updated Ed 279 um we had been looking at um the subsidy that was out there at the state level and there
003were some questions about that and as the doe dug into their computer system they recognized a duplicate entry which inflated the mil mill rate so the mill rate was set on the original 279 at 7.29 and has been dropped to 6.97 so the higher your valuation the more subsidy you're going to get back because you have a different factor in so that helped us pick up $887,000 uh more in state subsidy uh which will be very valuable as we look at the $2.2 million increase to taxes that we had in the original budget draft so it's a good day for us okay um item number two is the new Ed 279 this just any questions about that yes good school board member Truman no questions I just want to say that this is really uh
004exciting news any other questions for the superintendent all right so let's move on back to where I rushed us to we are at item number two new Ed 279 and this is just information this just is the latest print out we had included the other printouts uh in the budget report uh and this just shows you with the increased subsidy on page four then now with the lower mail expectation what happens is basically your required local that you're required to raise decreases in this formula which increases your state subsidy so it's a it's a dollar for Dollar on your mandatory local to State subsidy and that's just more informational so that you have the latest copy all right any further questions for superintendent Ray on the new Ed 279 calculations all right moving on to
005item three class-size document with teacher ratios superintendent Ray so one of the things that we put forward um is that we just wanted to have some information as we looked about some of our possible future reductions Andor additions uh and looking at what our class sizes would be for next year on the left hand side is your current enrollments uh and you can see that there's 104 teachers and then if you look at projected enrollments uh for next year we've added that up to 102 teachers the reason there is two left is that we will be recommending um for classrooms that we had a one-year position that we funded out of Esser this year as the new neighbors came in uh we had to make a decision in August and we added one to first
006grade I'm that is a one-year only position I think that if we got into the same position next year we know that the population may change over this summer we don't necessarily know what we'll need or when we'll need it but we do have available Sr funds to add back a position in August if that is needed the second piece is that you'll see in the recommendations is that typically in grade six we lose a few students in the transfer from Burns to SMS and typically that is anywhere between 10 to 20 students choose their families make the choice to attend Tams which impacts our enrollment at SMS we currently have an 190 students um so we have figured in at least a five reduction which I think is probably maybe will be much more
007than that um but when as we look at class sizes by eliminating a classroom teacher that is unfilled right now we would have the ability to add an art teacher at the middle school in that place because currently we have one art teacher at the middle school for 600 students uh and I think if you look a in the area we are very low uh for art at the Middle School uh Marie Megan and I have talked about that and looked at what would be the need there and I think that's an area where our students deserve an opportunity to have more art education at the middle school level as they row through rotate through their uh uas so that is where we are class sizewise as you can see um ratios are fairly solid
008throughout the district a little higher in some places than we would like especially three through five but we don't have another classroom at three through five unless we want to put people on a cart uh and I'm not sure that that's uh what's Best in those situations either um the current fifth grade classroom uh with 190 students has nine classroom teachers and so still going to sixth grade we would be plus one in that scenario um so I I think that looks like a fairly reasonable trade-off at this point any questions for superintendent Ray regarding the class-size document with teacher ratios School Board member Gil so I guess just to clarify for me so it sounds like even though there's going to be a reduction in the overall number of teachers there's going to be
009an addition of a art teacher at the middle school for the 2023 2024 yes school year Fitz fied yes that would be my recommendation to you guys any further questions all right moving on to item number four recommended budget reduction superintendent right okay well certainly after after um the great news on Tuesday night this put us in a much better situation of what we would look at for overall impact to the local taxpayers and there are some additions that we headed to make through this budget based off information that came in after the first draft and that starts at the top of the page that fuel uh the fuel bids were received by the city which add adds $35,000 to our budget there's also an increase in insurance cost for uh cyber Insurance to make
010sure that your data is protected and that if you know you've heard stories of people who you know or organizations that will get locked down and um people kind of steal their data and stuff and that that results in insurance claims and that's a $155,000 increase and that cost is split by the city and school because we fall under the same um policy we also notice that we only had five buses in the state approved list when we are approved for six so that's a $222,000 ad when you look at budget reductions of where we are now addition uh there were some other things that we're able to do one is that as we look through the coding in the budget we can reallocate and move a position into title One funds we're getting some
011increased Title One funds um as part of a change in the funding subsidy formula from the state because now that the city of Sako is over 20,000 residents you now fall under a dist a different distribution model that brought us about $70,000 more Meg in in uh Title One subsidy and so we're able to move a position at Fairfield under Title One funding no change in anything that it relates to just different funding category it has to be at Fairfield school because they are a title one school and the money has to be spent in that building and looking at our tax rate and our Capital Improvements I am recommending that we decrease $50,000 from Capital Improvements that still leaves us over a half a million dollars to make sure that the roof at the
012middle school is replaced when we look at the other good news that I emailed you on Tuesday the max health insurance rate um for School departments in the state will be 6% um now we could be lower than that but at 6% this allows us to cut $110,000 from planned health insurance increases in the budget workers comp rates uh when calculated in combination with the city we were informed that we would be able to cut $43,000 I think that 25% of the we were 25% of the figure Jason um so it's a $43,000 change when you look at the unfilled classroom position at SMS and converting that to an art teacher that should be a savings of 2,971 just based off the average that we use for a new position versus the person who took
013a position elsewhere in the district um we had a teacher move from SMS to burn school so we looked at the salary of the person that was leaving Burn School versus our average rate for a new uh teacher in the district and it's $21,000 and then we looked at legal costs and we believe that we could um decrease $5,000 so the recommendation would be to make a change of an additional reduction of $246,000 in this piece we do not touch any current employee in the district it gives us the ability to rehire the literacy specialist that we didn't fill at uh young school and the special ed position at Fairfield school so no change there uh and we could post that which would bring our overall expenditure increase in this budget to 1.83 million or
0143.84% questions for superintendent Ray regarding the recommended budget reductions Schoolboard member Gail and so that 1. eight um that doesn't include the the 890,000 in extra correct we'll get we'll get to that piece on the on the next page okay this is strictly expenditure on this page oh gotcha okay yep do we have any idea on what we would cut for that $50,000 Capital Improvements is there a project that we are looking at doing that now we wouldn't be doing no I think that that will wind up being the piece of the roof that we probably hold for another year based off that ventilation that goes in uh but we're in pretty good shape this year um to cover some other things so I think that we're totally fine any further questions can you go
015over the uh adding one bus again real quick yep so we were appr approved for six bus leases which means that what you have to do is you have to the price of a of a lease over a five year period you fund the first year plus four more after and then the next year's budget uh in next year's subsidy report we would get the lease price that we paid back we only had five in there by accident and we needed to have six all right any other questions all right moving on to it item number five Revenue sheet including recommended budget reduction okay so this sheet is based off everything that's on the page beforehand we have not made any changes to any of the revenues from last time uh still operating with the
016main Care at $400,000 uh i' just rather be safe than over anticipate that and when you look at a 3.84% expenditure then you take the $887,000 in increase subsidy that we received from the state it now puts a1121 million increase to taxes which would be 3.85% on the tax rate and this is a probably about as good as a scenario as we could have hoped for in a year where inflation and other costs are certainly um through the roof any questions for superintendent Ray regarding the revenue sheet including recommended budget reductions School Board member Gail sorry Jeremy so H uh where does the the discrepancy in the EPS you said it it doesn't show up on this sheet it does sorry we didn't make any other show if you look right at State share EPS
017okay okay and while it only said only showed $626,000 of an increase that is because the 887 that we got more the other day was we were working in the negative of $260,000 got it okay any other questions for superintendent Ray last call for any other questions for superintendent Ray all right I believe that is so go ahead I think this is where you open up to say is this something that we're comfortable at is this something we're not we have a joint meeting with the city council on Monday night to talk about some of this new Revenue that's come through um and I think it would be you know appropriate to get an idea in their you know on their plate or or on their you know forecast of where we may be as
018a school department and help them make the decisions that they need to make on the city Side as well as a balancing acts between both and um where I think this what we have here looks pretty decent if you're looking at a lot of other school department or Municipal budgets at this time superintendent oh not superintendent it's been a busy day um School Board member Archie uh so I am not in favor of um you know increasing the taxes on our town but I guess given the circumstances and inflation rates and price of fuel and how much everything is costing I think that we're in a in a in a good position as we could have been um I would like to recommend that we submit these documents to the city council on Monday so
019are we looking for a formal motion no we can't have a I think we have to have a consensus here of what we're going to do on Monday because at a school committee meeting we need to adopt um a formal budget but I think that we can talk to them about what we're considering okay any further comments School Board member Gail um I guess just two quick things so so with the increase in the EPS allocation and the 250,000 in budget cuts we've seen about a million dollar swing in our budget since we presented it to the council which yeah about $1.1 million which is pretty pretty amazing there and then the other item too so the health insurance rate is that could we see additional savings on that in the future as that gets
020firmed up so on we were told that on April 7th yeah um we would get the final final so you could um again you know at 5.5 you may be looking at you know you're now looking at you know 12 or1 13,000 um I don't know that at this point you'd want to take too much more of a a savings on things knowing that again we could have unanticipated cost based off you know how many kids do move in uh to the Hotel this summer we have oura funds that can cover some of that stuff um which I would recommend that we would use if we needed to add an additional classroom teacher like we did this year I do think we'll know a little bit earlier uh in the summer as it sounds like
021transitions Meg that was going to start around June they were going to start making transitions we also probably will have a good idea as soon as andless it happened this afternoon the budget is passed by the the governor there is funding for um the next two years so this may be extended more than um just right now they have funding until December 31st of this current year and you may see further extension so could there be a possibility then kind of halfway through the year that um we find or we can peace meal for instance the $50,000 on the Capital Improvements that we can find that kind of between the C couch there and get the I think you could um roof again I think we're going to be in pretty decent shape on that
022stuff okay awesome thank you any other questions at this time for the superintendent all right um anything else we need to cover superintendent Ray other than we will be meeting with the council Monday night at 6:30 um I guess we can entertain a motion to adjourn at this point so moved all right second all right I have a motion by School Board member Truman seconded by School Board member Johnston roll call vote Schoolboard member Archie yes I myself School Board member Preble vote Yes School Board member Le Fortune yes School Board member Gail yes School Board member Truman yes School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 70 thank you so much and have a great evening