001indivisible with liberty and justice for allible. >> Thank you all for being here tonight. We'll get started by approving our agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda as presented? >> Well, I would like to add a discussion item. Discussion item number four. I'd like to talk about briefly uh our bylaw regarding public participation at border meetings. Um, Emily raised an issue, a privacy concern about uh asking for uh addresses of speakers and we actually I actually got some guidance on that last week at the Michigan Council of School Attorneys fall conference. So, it's like a two-minute discussion just to show you what I what we learned with that. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as amended? >> President Bancher, I move that the board of education approve the agenda as amended. Thank
002you, Terry. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. All in favor, please say I. >> I. Opposed. The motion passes and we'll get started with the superintendent report. John. >> All right. Thank you, President Van Answorth and members of the Portage Public Schools Board of Education. Uh it's our annual time to talk about our audit. So, our director of finance, Paula Johnson, will uh kick this off for us. >> Good evening, President and Superintendent Edwards. It's that time of year again. Another fiscal year has been closed, the 2425 school year. And Kim Lindsay from Raymond, principal there, is here to present highlights to the board in regards to our 2425 school year. So, I'm going to turn it over to Kim. Thanks. Good evening, board. Uh, I'm here to just uh briefly go
003over the audit results. I met with finance uh prior to this meeting and went over things in a little more depth and particular questions, but if you have any other further questions, you can ask me tonight or if there's something you like to pose out, just shoot it to Paul and she'll get it to me. So, that being said, do I need disconnected? We need to >> got disconnected somehow. >> You have the paper copy of the slides. Would you like me to just go ahead and start? Hold you. >> No problem. right now. >> Yeah. want me to just go ahead and you guys have copies. I'll just run I'll just start run through. First of all, I'd like to thank uh Paula and Sammy and the rest of the team in the finance
004>> [snorts] >> uh department pulling this off another year. I mean, getting ready for an audit is a huge undertaking. Um it's something they probably work on for a couple months uh getting ready for us to get there. So, um, I'm going to run through a few slides here. Um, so kind of touch on the highlights. So, first of all, the the district did receive an unmodified or clean audit opinion, which is the highest form of assurance uh we can give you on your financial reports. We didn't have any findings or reportable conditions, which is also a really good thing. Um, this year for the federal audit, uh, we were we audited Here we go. We had a Thank you. We audited Title One and the remaining education stabilization funds. So about a million5 of
005your $3.9 million total. You'll notice tonight you don't have a federal audit report in your package. So we still don't have a compliance supplement from the federal government. Um, so the state was uh nice enough after much arm twisting to actually write into this year's state aid act that the federal audit is not due until 30 days after we actually get a compliance supplement issued. So the problem they were going to have was there were going to be 740 school districts without getting a November day payment because the financial packages wouldn't have been uploaded timely. So So they were able to work with us and we got we got some things done. Also a board, I think you remember um each year any bonded construction funds and your syncing fund and now syncing funds plural
006um have to be audited with some specific regulations by the Michigan Department of Treasury. So that was done. The only place you see that is in your audit report. There is a footnote that talks about the fact that we audited those funds and everything was good. There's also a separate submission uh that Paula's team does to the state that's basically a series of questions. So they see every year whether or not those funds are being audited. Some items of note in the audit report itself on pages uh 13 to 23 is uh the document we called management's discussion and analysis. So throughout the year, Paula and Sammy are providing narrative information to you all the time on things that are happening, what's going on with the budget. So this MDNA we call it um actually
007is a summarization of what happened this year? Um did things go up, they go down? How did we do against our budget? So that's a really a nice little snippet you can pull out. Especially if a taxpayer is wondering how did we do this year? How did this school district perform? That's a great place to look. The front of the financial statements, I talk about this with you every year. We have um two full acrruel statements, a statement of net position and a statement of activities. When you look at that statement of net position, which is your balance sheet, on the full acrruel basis, you'll actually see a deficit at the bottom of that report, um pretty much like every other school district in the state of Michigan. And that's because you are required to
008pick up your proportionate share of the retirement plans unfunded pension liability. So, as you can see, this year, that number for Portage Public Schools is almost $131 million versus about $175 million last year. The flip side of that is the retirey health care portion of the retirement plan. So, that plan itself came overfunded in fiscal year 24 slightly. So you can see your um you were about $3 million of an asset for that plan last year. That's grown to $23 million this year. The ending result is that we do show a small deficit on that statement. Not a deficit the state is concerned about. They're concerned about deficits in the general fund. Um this is on the full acrual statements. Um and that that OPED asset if you remember this at the end of the
009fiscal year 24 that was kind of the switcheroo that was done by the legislature in the last minute on the budget where they said oh we're overfunded there so we're going to reduce that rate hence we're giving you more money but they didn't increase your foundation allowance. Also still talking about those governmentwide numbers. Uh the change in net position or your net income per se on those full acral statements was increase of about $4 million. Almost all that relates to that change in the pension valuation. The liability decreasing total revenues across the district on a full net net. So takes out any transfers and stuff between funds was about $160 million. Uh this last year is compared compared to about $159 million last year. Last year you had still had some significant ESSER funds. This
010year that was gone, but you have property tax increases and some categorical increases in state aid. So then overall expenses about $126 million this year as opposed to about $132 million last year. Once again, most of that change is related to [snorts] that pension valuation change and those expenses number on this statement actually include depreciation and such s such too which you don't have we don't budget for that. [snorts] All right, looking at some small numbers. Uh these are the fund level financial statements. I'll just remind you board um the columns you see across the top are the funds that are considered to be major for the district. So major just means magnitude. Uh, in that column next to the far right is another column says non- major funds. There are about six or seven
011other funds, smaller funds. Uh, the largest of those being the syncing fund and the food service fund. They're included in those totals out to the right, but on individual basis, they're not large enough to be reported on their own. So, I'll just touch on a couple of highlights here. um general fund at the end of June. Um assets were about $48 million mainly money in the bank, money invested and money owed to us from the state of Michigan for state aid for July and August, plus reimbursements on grants, liabilities of about $17 million. big chunk of that is acred wages for our teachers who are paid over the summer for wages earned as of June along with all their benefit packages including retirement. So ending fund balance at the end of June was just over
012$31 million. Uh the unassigned or the available to appropriate portion of that is about $24.8 million. So general fund is in is in good shape healthwise. Just kind of looking across the three capital projects funds that are showed here. You can see the 2021 capital projects fund is basically fully spent. There was only about $7,700 left. We did close out the 2023 capital projects fund and the 2025 capital projects fund has just begun. So you can see large amounts of equity still there. Looking at revenue and expense, once again, general fund revenues, um almost $126 million of revenue, expenditures of about $122 million this last year, an add to fund balance of about $3.9 million, which is a bit more than what you had budgeted. You can see we spent down those capital projects funds.
013Uh $23.5 million on the 2021 fund to basically close that out. Another $10.5 million on the 2023 fund. And then as I said before, just getting started um on the 2025 capital project. So only about $3.8 million of expenditures. You'll see revenues there of about 44.4 million. That's we sold bonds this year in that fund. So that's the big number there. looking [clears throat] at revenue sources in that general fund. Um, pretty typical district, 73% of every dollar that comes into the district comes from the state of Michigan. Big chunk of that is the foundation allowance, but it's also a ton of categorical grants. As you know board, over the last several years, we went crazy on categoricals and with this budget we have for 2026, we've shrunk those categoricals back significantly. Uh local at
01426% that's property taxes mainly along with investment earnings and such. So there's a piece of the foundation allowance both in the local pie and in the state pie because some of it is funded locally through those property taxes. Only 1% of the dollars that you get are from federal grant programs. very very small for a district this size, but it also is reflective of the demographics of the district. Looking at expenditures, this is what I call the district's report card. So the blue piece of the pie here are direct instructional expenditures. So dollars spent directly in the classroom. That's everything from wages for your teachers and paras along with all their benefit packages, any supplies, capital outlay that may fall into the classroom. So at 59% that's a very healthy number. It's a good comparative
015number on a statewide level as well. Supportive services at 38% is kind of everything else. administration, transportation, operations and maintenance, um all those big chunks. And also a lot of uh professionals, um counselors, things like that who aren't in the classroom are also in that piece of the pie. 2% on athletics, uh 1% on community service. Congratulations, by the way, on your state championship in soccer. I did have to tell board members at the finance committee meeting I live in Byron Center so it's a bad thing but I think central is going to do that to Byron center this [snorts] uh budget results for the general fund um remember you go through a a significant number of budget uh processes through the year the first one was back in June of last year you adopted
016the initial budget and in the audit report that initial column is are those numbers from June of 2024. Then you amended the budget at least twice during the year. The last time being at your board meeting in June. So on the on the audit report itself, the final budget will be that budget from this last June. And then of course actual results. So looking at the the top line there is revenues. Um you actually uh came in about $414,000 more than your budget estimate of $125.4 4 million expenditures came in under the budgeted amount of expenditures by about $4.4 million. So expenditures were budgeted at 126.3 million. So overall um you had in that final budget you had budgeted a change in fund balance to use a little fund balance about 890,000 was actually a
017[snorts] an ad to fund balance of $3.9 million. So, a positive variance of about $4.8 million overall, which was still like 3%. So, a couple of other pieces of information. Uh, total outstanding bond debt at the end of the fiscal year was $221.6 million. You paid back $12.3 million of those bond issuances along with a whole bunch of interest as well. And then you issued $43.38 million of new bonds um with the 2025 [snorts] capital projects fund. Capital assets netted appreciation in the in the year were just north of 284 million. That will grow as you um continue on with your construction projects. You added $ 38.4 million of additions in fiscal year 25 um and you had $7.9 million of depreciation recorded. So, you've been very fortunate. I think I've been standing up here
018for many years. You've had a active bond issuance, I think, for almost the whole time I've been an auditor here. So, um, very fortunate that the public trusts you with those bonds and you're making great use of them. >> Questions? Yes. And this may be for Paul. Um but so so where did we end the year? Um in terms of our uh percent fund balance um general fund >> I don't have my >> un unassigned or overall >> uh overall was it twice >> unassigned was like 22 >> probably. Yeah, that's >> all right. It's I don't have the bound copy with me. >> I think I locked mine in my office accidentally. >> You have uh at the end of the year you had um over $4 million of the state category grants that
019we had received the cash for we've not yet expended. So those will those will get spent in this next year. um most of that being 31A at risk and the 31A funds that you receive. So questions I can answer >> not a question but a comment that your attention to detail both Paula and Sammy is once again incredible. um your ability to predict things. I'm always amazed. But we are so lucky to have you guys taking care of things. >> So you will you will will see that audit for the federal grants whenever we do get that supplement and Paula will be bringing you that you I'm sure for approval as well. So >> I might even ask Sammy do Sammy handles all the federal stuff. So we under monitor report 2.5 we have to
020accept the auditing financial statements and with the federal audit. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for your time board. >> Thanks Kim. >> Thanks. >> See you later. >> Thank you to Paul and Sammy for all your work and appreciate appreciate the good results and the good work everybody does here to make sure they stay good. So thank you. and Paul is going to stay up for um our next uh superintendent update related to our our state budget. >> Tonight, I thought I would just touch on a couple highlights for what actually ended up uh coming out of the state budget for this year. Um at the time that we adopted our budget in June, um we had no hopes of when the government or the House and the Senate would come together and actually pass
021something. Well, they took it down to the wire of, you know, September 30th into the wee hours of the night. We probably closed down for a couple hours. They passed a continuation budget so that the previous year's budget could stay in place for the new year. And the governor signed a budget on October 7th. So, everything ran extremely late as far as timing for this year from what we're accustomed to. And our foundation allowance for the 24-25 year was the $9,68 a pupil. But if you recall, and Kim touched on this in his presentation as well, and I've said it many times to the board, we did not receive an increase in our foundation allowance for 2425. We received a categorical otherwise known as um 147 A4 and um that was approximately $369 almost $370
022per pupil, but it wasn't added to that base foundation um allocation. So when you see the reports of what actually came through for the 2526 school year, they're funding us at $10,50, which sounds great. It's a $4.4% increase. But if you look at the numbers from what didn't get added to our foundation allowance in 2425, it's a difference of about a $72 increase per pupil is what we actually ended up getting for the year that they didn't add to our foundation allowance. So, just be careful when you are reading um information in the news in regards to, you know, record funding. They didn't they didn't take into consideration what we're missing out from the 2425 school year. Um the at risk allocation across the state the statewide allocation was increased by 25% but because it
023is based on social economic um status our increase will not be that 25% for at risk but we're still receiving at risk. So that's a positive. um 31A funding still stayed in the budget um at approximately $140 per pupil for districts that do opt into wanting to accept those funds. They passed an they had leftover money from 2425. So, they passed an additional omnibus bill to give districts um a one-time funding that we we will not see in in future years called 274, which is a Miper's healthc care allocation. They're rolling part of that health care cost into our retirement rate now. And so, they're giving us um money to help offset that that expense to our budget of approximately $850,000. But in the process of the new year budget, they took away a miper
024categorical that we that we didn't have to give back to the state of Michigan that we were actually able to hold on to um the 147A1 of $630,000. So if you compare $630,000 that we lost from the Mipers categorical up against 850,000 that they're giving us, okay, it's 200 you know, $20,000 for the good. Um, transportation funding um continued. Um, free breakfast and lunch continued, which is a huge positive for our students. Um, they even threw in uh non-public schools this time around um to receive the breakfast and lunch. [sighs] Enrollment stabilization is in there um for districts that are experiencing declining enrollment, but it's it's intended to be halfacre foundation allowance for the amount of students that you lose. But they only allocate a set dollar amount and they have to allocate that across
025all the districts. And with a lot of districts experiencing declining enrollment, you really don't receive half of the foundation allowance. It ends up coming in less. So all in all, um it's a it's a decent budget, but we really did lose out from the 24 25 year not having it added to the foundation allowance. Um, so it'll take a little while to get caught up from losing out on that revenue, but um, we will be working on amending the budget as soon as we finish up a few of the items associated to closing the year, such as the qualifying statement and the continuing disclosure and count and all of that fun stuff. and then we'll roll to amending the budget to where we can bring you what things are going projected to look like now
026based on the changes that are happening in both revenue and we'll have an accurate fall count number which we're working through right now as well. So [cough] just [clears throat] those are my highlights. Does anybody have any questions? I don't have any questions, but thank you very much for briefing us on all that. >> It's just a cliffnotee version. >> That's that's good. That's perfect. Thank you. Thank Thank you, Paula. And uh last and final portion of the superintendent's report from Russ and Michelle related to our bond update [clears throat] and uh something happening special tomorrow. >> Yes. Good evening board. Superintendent Edwards. I'm excited to bring with you the uh bond report for today. Um kind of jump into it maybe. >> There we go. Uh so we're going to jump right into Woodland
027Elementary. We got a little diagram here for you. This kind of is a silhouetta layout of the building. Uh I talked last time how they broke it into unit A, B, and C. Uh right now the construction uh is they've choice concrete. They did the concrete foundation for the entire building. So the entire building's foundation is in. Um and now we moved on to basically laying brick, putting electrical conduit in walls, not necessarily the wire, but the conduit. And we got plumbing going into the uh the groundwork for plumbing. So any plumbing that's underground, they're running those lines as well. Um but it's kind of most of the work right now is focused in unit B. Um, so if you go out drive by the site, you're going to see a lot of, you know,
028this is kind of a distance away from the site. Right there is the foundation work unit C you see there, but in the distance there, you'll start seeing the bricks and the uh the metal work going up. Uh, that's all in unit B right now. And that's where all the primary work is taking place in unit B. Uh, the reason they're doing unit B, unit B is a two-story part of the building. So, they're building the first layer and then the brick layers will move to unit A and then uh what it's called pre uh prefab pre prefabricated concrete will come in and that'll be the decking for the second floor. So, they'll be putting that on unit B and then once they get that on unit B, the brick layers will come back to
029be build the second floor and then they'll move to another portion of the building. So, what I got here is just some uh samples. I got some outside shots of the building so far. This is looking up at the building towards the playground. Uh what kind of irrelevant really what it looks like. It's just a whole bunch of blocks up right now, but once you get the uh landscape and everything in, you'll really see the building tricks form. But you can see we got nice big windows and things in there for the kids to get great daylight. Um here's the side. This is if you uh know that this is the uh north side of the building uh shooting down towards the playground. If you look that direction, again, this is another classroom view. Plenty
030of windows into the classrooms. Now, we're moving into the building. Not a lot to notice what part of the building you're in, but they are starting to build the interior walls of the building. A lot of metal work going up for frame to brace that second floor once they start bringing the pre-cast uh concrete in. going to flip through some pictures. If you want me to stop any more, let me know. But you can see there's there's a lot of structural work going taking place in the building. Here's a view of inside of one of the the classrooms. Kind of what I got for you today. It's not a not a lot because there's a really kind of this is kind of the slow part of the building where they have to the brick layers
031are throwing up the brick. There's about eight guys on the crew right now. Each brick layer throws a little over 100 bricks a day. So about 800 bricks being laid per day in the building. Um so it will take a while. There's a lot of bricks that make up the building, but uh they're moving. They're right now they're tracking for uh all the timelines are tracking. So you should see that pre-fabricated floor decks coming here in the next by the end of the month. So we're excited to see that. Then you'll start seeing go up on that second level and then you'll start seeing the height of the building come into play and those sort of things. Um but that's all I got for the construction side of it. Is there any questions on the
032construction side? Oh, thanks for the photos. That's great. Appreciate it. >> Okay. I'm looking forward to uh having some more exciting photos as we get more further along into the project. These are kind of see a lot of gray brick going up right now. So, >> um how much does winter weather slow things down? >> It will slow things down because with brick laying you have to has to be a certain temperature. So, you'll start seeing uh basically tents being built around the building with tarps and everything and then they heat that area up. Uh and then they'll keep laying brick. It's not going to slow the br not going to they're not going to stop laying bricks. It's just going to slow their productivity down a little. Um but all the days we have
033like today we kind of joke like oh you're making money right now because you get beautiful weather like we've had all all fall you can make some good money as brick layers because you can get a lot of bricks laid and then that just means you get completed faster and get completed faster you can start the next job and make more money. So they're kind of really talking like let's keep it moving. You know they're doing good work too. very impressive how they would they they have um basically jigs they use to put over bricks they got to put a an outlet in or something they'll put a jig in so they know exactly how to cut it. So in theory when you go to see like see like so the outlets over there they'll
034be perfectly cut in. There won't be any extra on the outside where it kind of looks funny. They're doing a really good job really attention to detail. Um they scrub the bricks after they're done laying them for the last day. So some brick layers will wait weeks and then go back and scrub. They scrub the next day and they evaluate their work and they keep moving on. They're being very attention to detail right now. So hopefully they can continue that process and give us a nice product turn over to the next groups. >> Thank you. >> There's no other questions on the construction side. I'm going to hand it over to Michelle. She's going to give you kind of an update on the marketing side as we go into tomorrow's vote. >> Yeah. So while
035Russ and Johnny have been building buildings, we've been focused on the next phase of finishing the job. Um, so I think it was back in August I kind of came up and gave you an overview of how we were going to, you know, educate the community on what we had going on with our bond. And so it felt appropriate the night before election night to kind of give you a roundup of of what we've done um over the past few months. Um, so as you know, we we produced a video uh with our uh partner Rick [snorts] Chambers and Associates um to inform the community about the bond and then we took that longer form video while that certainly um lived on our bond website. Uh we we chunked that into chunks uh shorter form
036about if different topics about the bond, what it would accomplish, u how COVID impacted our finances, the financial impact, and all those things. split those up into little videos that we've been running regularly every two or three days along with other static posts um since September. Um we've done a total of 44 different posts um over the last what 12 weeks or so um on both Facebook and Instagram. And there's some really interesting statistics here. So I'd like to share them with you. Um the reach is individual unique people clicking on you know looking at that uh particular post and so um throughout those 44 our indiv our average reach of each post was 1,29 unique accounts. Um so that's pretty exciting. Some were more, some were less. There was higher engagement at the beginning
037and then it started to drop as people obviously saw those things and were familiar with them. um likes, comments, and shares um which is kind of reactions. The next phase of engagement with a social media post um averaged about 21.7 um likes, shares or um comments on all of those posts as well. Um we also did uh we had radio um spots on three different radio stations in the area. We had a billboard on electronic billboard on Westidge by the meer there by the highway that rotated through. Um hopefully I I never did see it. Hopefully somebody saw it because I didn't [laughter] I just was not over there when it was was going around. Um so that was to drive people to the website to find out more information. Uh we had it on
038all the school websites, all the news news feeds. Uh we had something in the district [snorts] extra that went out to the community. Uh Johnny did a radio interview with every case. um a live radio in studio and uh he also held two informational sessions. Um in addition um like I said some of the engagement in our social media posts had gone down over time as people saw those posts. So last um Thursday we had a wild idea and we we recruited Johnny to come meet us at Woodland and do a quick little video um just encouraging people to get out there to vote. And [snorts] if you didn't know, you almost went viral. >> [laughter] >> He that video since last Thursday has had a total of 7,473 views. Um 119 of those viewers
039clicked through to the board website uh to get more information and there were 119 reactions. So if you look at everything over the last few months um our total reach for the last 30 days was over 96,000 [snorts] accounts. Um now those some of those might be repeats to different things. And then uh the reach for the very top post um was 27,000. So hopefully the community is aware and has understood our why um with finishing the job and we'll find out the results tomorrow night. I'll answer any questions if you have them. >> That's great. Thanks for sharing [clears throat] that information with that was really interesting. [laughter] >> Wow. Good work. Thanks a lot. >> That concludes superintendent report for tonight. >> Okay. Thank you. We'll move to our comments and communication se
040section and we have one speaker this evening, Cat Frank, our PEA president. Welcome, Cat. >> Good evening. I'm pleased to share some exciting highlights that the spirit and dedication of our staff and students. First, from the classroom, Sarah Miller at Northern High took the time to meet one-on-one with every freshman and senior in her classes as quarter 1 came to a close. I don't know how she found the time. Uh during these conferences, she asked each student how they're doing as readers, and the responses were inspiring. More than half of her students lit up when they talked about reading. Many have read more books this quarter than ever before and enjoyed exploring new genres. Sarah credits this growth to 10 minutes a day of sustained silent reading and most importantly letting students choose what they're
041reading. Thanks to Sarah and all of our ELA educators. IB coordinators at PC and PEN organized time for almost all IB educators last week to do a data dive where we looked at detailed reports on how our students performed last year. Although it's tough to be pulled out of the classroom, this analysis was extremely worthwhile and will help us make adjustments for this year's students and testers. Thanks to Jason Frank for being part of the organizing team. Haverhill's annual pumpkin book character contest was a success. Families did a great job creating some amazing character displays. Big thank you to everyone who participated and to Rachel Sllamon for organizing the fun and creative event. And now from the field, as was mentioned earlier, Porter Central Mustangs are 2025 Division 1 state champions in men's soccer. From
042the first whistle of the season to the final kick in Grand Ledge, this team demonstrated heart, grit, and true Mustang pride every step of the way. Congratulations to the players and coaches, including head coach and PC teacher Tim Howerin, KV coach, and Central Middle School teacher Andrew Marvel, and the entire coaching staff. This team brought home the first state title in program history and we are so proud. Uh, one of the players who I won't say here for student name confidentiality was also just named Mr. Soccer, which is the highest individual honor in Michigan high school soccer. And I believe he's the first goalkeeper to ever receive the award as well. Great. >> Super. Uh, thank you to everyone who continues to make Portage a place where all students can thrive in the classroom, on
043the field, and beyond. >> Thank you, K. Great report. We appreciate it. Thank you. Are there any comments by board trustees this evening? >> Well, congratulations again to PC. I think it's been 25 years since we've had a state champion team on the other side of town. So, it's great now that both of our schools have had state titles in soccer. Great to see. >> For sure, Carrie. Thank you. Anyone else? I wanted to say well done for the entire team that produced Alice by Heart at Port Central and I'm looking forward to seeing Young Frankenstein at Porsche Northern. Um, I also wanted to give a shout out to both marching bands on very impressive seasons, not necessarily in scores or wins because we're just proud of them in general, but I was impressed with
044both shows and wanted to give a shout out to both bands and to the hard work that goes into producing those. Um, students have worked very hard and it shows. >> Thank you, Kimberly. Anyone else? Randy, um just a quick uh comment. Um Johnny, um your team, Michelle, I mean, what you all have done in terms of communicating um the bond that's that's on the ballot now has been everywhere you turn, you see something. So, it's uh it's it's notable and it's it's very much appreciated. >> And I did see that sign. It was fun to see. Okay, then uh we'll move to our consent agenda and this evening we only have one item and that's the minutes from the October 2025 policy governance retreat and regular business meeting. Are there any exceptions to the
045consent agenda as presented hearing? None. The consent agenda is approved and we'll move to assurance of district performance. And we'll start on page 11 with uh monitoring report 2.2 two, treatment of staff. Jenny, >> thank you. Uh, Randy, uh, this is the first of three monitoring reports tonight. Uh, the first of which is, uh, related to, uh, 2.2, our treatment of staff. There are six subsections underneath our treatment of staff and, uh, the board has had an opportunity to to read this in its entirety. So, I'll just do a highle overview. Uh starting on page 13, uh a few years ago, we started a um a staff academy. Uh first of all, uh Brad Gayen and his team leads the overall onboarding process for all new staff members, including teachers. In addition to this work,
046our CIA team has instituted the PPS staff academy for new teachers and they meet periodically throughout the school year uh after school and they receive training on various topics from different um uh different departments within our organization. Uh moving over to uh page 14, our work, we call it rounding. We've been trained by uh our consultants, our leadership team uh with student education in which uh we do what we call 30 and 90day interviews particularly related to our new staff. So for example uh even I as a new superintendent I round with our entire exec team but specifically there are two new members cabinet members and Russ and and an who's on the exec team. So I do a different version of rounding with them and two of the questions is there anything we can
047do better and what are your ideas for improvement. Obviously uh Ann has been with us for several years. So but she still have good great ideas for us and obviously Russ coming in from another community another school district again another opportunity for us to improve by hearing what that is like. uh beyond the rounding um we talk about the employee experience survey uh this is given to employees uh in the spring of each year and what I've shared on page 15 is some data points uh we've been fortunate now to uh get our number of participants up to 580 a couple of years ago we were 475 so that's good and with us increasing by over 105 individuals Our numbers have name have remained pretty steady or constant overall. As I may have shared the
048last time about how these numbers work, our top box percentages are those who rate us a five or strongly agree. Our top two would be uh employees who uh either agree or strongly agree. And then that net promoter comes from a particular question that says, "What percentage of respondents would strongly agree or agree with the prompt? I would recommend that parents select my organization. So, of the 580 uh participants, uh roughly three4s of them rated that as a four or five. Beyond those pieces, we obviously continue to have professional development for our staff. Uh November 7th, this Friday, is our upcoming professional development day. Uh an area that we uh added to this monitoring report relates [snorts] to number four and u the the national turn teacher turnover rate uh dating back to 23 24
049school year was approximately 7%. And uh what I've done is I I I wrote a narrative, but I used a chart on page 16 to show while the overall um um district numbers for our uh teacher turnover rate was as high as 7.21% in 22 23 school year, 4.62 in 23 24 school year, and then last year year two 6.656%. All of those numbers essentially range at or below what the national rate is. And if we were to exclude retirements from this teacher turnover rate, because as we know, every year we're going to have some retirements uh two years ago that uh would have been a 2.2% turnover rate and then 3.64 uh last year. Uh in addition to all of that work related to our treatment of staff, this year um I've started the
050superintendent educator circle comprised of 28 individuals from across the district uh selected by their peers to uh meet with me uh once a month to talk about different topics related to our school district. It's a another way to get some great uh two-way communication. And even though we've only had one meeting thus far, it was well attended. 26 of the 28 were there and uh people provided some good feedback to me related to how we can improve the circle but also ideas around uh improving our school district. So I'm really looking forward to that experience uh throughout this um throughout this school year. Uh lastly just finishing up the other subsections uh related to personnel. Uh we definitely have board approved miola policies that we uh follow as well as administrative guidelines which uh relates
051to some elements of how we uh work within each other. Uh we also have uh master agreements and those master agreements contract uh transportation contracts all of which contains a grievance process that's clearly laid out and uh based on the data and things of that I've seen related to those grievance process related to uh any type of discrimination against any staff member or the like um we have had less than five or so of those which is less than a half % um when you think about the totality of the employees in in Portage public schools. So, but that's a high level overview of uh of my uh of my uh report and I would be happy to answer uh any questions the board might have. >> Um not a question, but a comment. Appreciate
052what's going on. Um uh so in our retreat last month we were talking about 2.1 treatment of customers and a part of that discussion bled over into 2.2 treatment of staff and um I would encourage us as a board in a future retreat to spend more time on this and to and to really take a look at what our expectations are in terms of treatment of staff. And I think we I mean we've we've adjusted some words here over the years. we put kind of high performance in here. Um, I'd like us to be clearer about that. And sometimes I I think I look at 22 and what we've stated is we we don't want to fall below a threshold of performance, but I would encourage us to wrestle with the language to say that
053we aspire to higher level of performance. and um you know and and the phrase kind of best place to work. Um would we would we be afraid to aspire to that? Um and the work and frankly the patience that that would require and we have a new superintendent whose values are there and whose skills are there and you know if if given the right target and some time um we might we might be able to get there. Um and and so um so right now, you know, we're at a you know, on a fivepoint scale, we're at about a 3.9 and the really highest organizations can get to a 42 or a 43. Um and I hate to reduce it to numbers, but we're asking our staff and kind of that's that's what it boils
054down to. And so, um this was my one opportunity this whole board year cycle to talk about this. It's on the agenda. And so I just I just wanted to plant the seed. Um, and you know, maybe at a future retreat we can get back to it. And as we do at retreats, a lot of we spend a lot of time kind of figuring out the specific words and kind of, you know, where are we? But uh, anyway, just wanted to take the opportunity to do that plug and uh, Johnny, just wanted to support your efforts and all the good things going. I have really appreciated everything you've talked about both retrieving here and now about the superintendent educator circle and I am looking forward to hearing really good things continuing from that and just
055hearing the results that you receive or you know if changes occur because of it or you know positives that come from it. I'm looking forward to it. Anyone else? Uh, there's a motion to approve this entry report on page 11. >> Mr. President, I move that the board of education accept monitoring report 2.2, treatment of staff as a reasonable interpretation and evidence of compliance with policy. >> Thank you, Mark. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. All in favor of approving mounting report 2.2 treatment of staff, please say I. >> I opposed. Uh the motion passes and uh we'll move on to page 23 for our next mon report compensation and benefits. Uh thank you again President Vaner. Um monitoring report 2.3 compensation and benefits uh has five subsections under there. The person
056which talks about superintendent contra uh shall not change his or her own compensation and benefits. Uh, as I outline in the report, um, my contract was entered upon July 1, 2025. The board approved that June 30th of 2025. And that contract is a is a three-year contract. And uh both uh our payroll and our salary benefits departments um they have a copy of those human resources and payroll to make sure that the compensation agreed upon between the board and myself uh is enacted properly. Moving on to uh other um other things beyond the superintendent talks about superintendent shall not promise or imply permanent or guaranteed employee. That's for all staff. Uh we have for example administrative contracts. Those administrative contracts are approved on a two-year basis. The board uh approved those every other year. Uh
057we have other collecting and bargaining agreements with different uh employee groups including our teacher association and even our new teachers uh are considered to be probationary teachers during their first five years of employment with the district and then upon that 5-year probationary period they are uh subject to the teacher tenure act. Moving down to 2.3, subsection three talks about the superintendent shall not establish uh current compensation and benefits which deviate materially from the geography or the geographic or professional market for the skills and employee. And I want to say that um our team uh HR as well as uh our business department has done a a great job of making sure that they evaluate every single employee group's compensation related to neighboring districts and particularly within our market within education. And I feel really comfortable
058with what uh we've been able to do. Um, and I believe that we are on the forefront in many areas that uh some districts are even following suit with us with what we're paying or offering to our employee groups. So, I'm I'm really proud of that of the work that we've done. Obviously, people always say we can do more. We also have some limits or constraints financially that we want to favor with that. So I want to say that our um employee groups uh in all subject areas or all areas are within our geographic market there. Uh moving over to uh 2.3 section 4 uh talks about our uh financial obligations [snorts] and uh I think we've done a great job with those projections. Uh the board last approved uh 2.5 October 14th, 2024. Tonight
059we'll hear a little bit more about 2.5 the external portion which you heard from our auditor today and there'll be a recommendation from Paul the next and um I feel really happy and comfortable with where we are financially as a district. We have made uh a number of uh great financial decisions long before I became the superintendent. So hats off to the board, our previous superintendent as well as our business department, all those that play integral role in managing our our funds and our resources. Uh so that would conclude my elements related to compensation and benefits. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have about Monty 42.3. Very good report, Jen. I I would just add on on the uh um competitive wages and you know in in line with the market every February
060MDE publishes bulletin what 104 >> 14 I believe that's yes >> and it gives right all the districts average compensation procedure and um we look at Cal County and PPS and KPS are always the two that are separated from the rest of the pack and we're always a little bit ahead of KPS um proud Proud proud to see that. >> Any other comments on this report? >> There's a motion and please to approve it on page 23. >> President Benwer, I move that board of education accept monitoring report 2.3 compensation and benefits as a reasonable interpretation and evidence of compliance with policy. >> Thank you, Mar. Second. >> Second. >> Thank you. Whoever Barb captured that all those in favor of approving monitoring report 2.3 compensation and benefits please say I >> I opposed. Uh
061the motion passes the monitoring report is approved and uh we move now to our mod report 2.5 financial condition and activities and this is our external report. The internal report will be provided next month. And um there's a motion on page 31, please, to approve the financial report and management letter from the audit. >> Uh Mr. President, I move that the board of education accept the 202425 financial report and management letter is presented. >> Thank you. Bo, is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. Paul, did you have some comments? Actually, I don't. [laughter] >> It's always good to see you. Thank you. >> Okay, then. All those in favor of approving. Uh, monitoring report 2.5, financial condition activities, the audit report management letter, please say I. I. I. Opposed. Uh, the motion passes
062and the audit is approved. Our next uh item is a discussion item on page um 36, our summer tax resolution. Paula, >> good evening board of ed and superintendent Edwards. Included in your board pack this evening for discussion is a formality of an item that we bring to the board each year. Um we have to pass a resolution before the end of December to notify the city of Portage of our intent to levy um property taxes in the summer. A large portion of our property tax revenue is generated through the city of Portage. It does help us um with cash flow purposes. Um for example, had we not received, you know, state aid on time, having that money come in um over the summer allows us to not have to borrow as well. Um it's
063just it's for discussion tonight and then it'll be voted on at the next meeting. So, any questions? I just because I I don't understand um just just clarification for me like a tutoring here in in the third paragraph it says in conjunction with other districts in Kazoo County who levy taxes in the city of Kazoo continue to analyze the possibility of collecting summer taxes with them as they have updated their charter. Um, we collect tax revenue from the city of Kalamazoo, Pavilion Township, and Texas Township. We could have we could pass resolutions to also receive tax summer, move all of us to 100% all of our municipalities to 100% summer levy. But we only choose to um do this with the city of Portage because it has the largest um it's our largest collector regarding
064property taxes. Uh the city of Kalamazoo Pavilion and Texas Township are very small percentage of our tax revenue and those are levied in the wintertime and we receive those payments in December, January and February before they close out property tax collection and settle with the county. So, we always look at that as a possibility, but it still hasn't grown large enough that it's going to be worth it for us to do. So, that's what that means. >> Okay. Thanks. >> I think it's important that this allows us to not have to borrow uh operating fund in order to do to pay for teacher salaries and the variety of things that many districts have to borrow for. Um, as someone who doesn't like debt, that's a good thing. >> A lot of districts were anticipating having
065to pull state aid notes um in case we didn't get our October state aid payment. That's how tight cash flow can be for some of the other districts. >> So, so Paul, is is it correct that are we the only district in the area that benefits from this? I mean, could we say something to that? Would that be true? I don't know if any of the other um school districts that receive the city of Portage property taxes go for a summer levy. I'd have to check with them to ask. But, you know, 95% of our tax revenue comes from the city of Portage. So, it's worth it for us to for us as a district to do this. Is it worth it for any of the other school districts that receive um tax levy from
066the city of Portage? I'd have to check with each individual district that does receive City of Portage taxes. >> Yeah. Um I I mean I suspect the answer is we are the the district who benefits from this and it's it's fortunate fortunate. >> Very good. Thank you for that explanation, Paul. We look forward to taking action on that at our next meeting. Uh our next discussion item is purchase of school buses and after that purchase of pianos and Russ has got both of them and most of the time when Russ comes up he needs money. That's [laughter] probably a truer statement. Never been said expensive. Sorry. Um so uh looking at the buses uh right now the recommending the board of education first five buses uh to keep our um rep replenish cycle for the
067transportation department going. We have about 61 buses in the fleet. Uh the goal is to try to get 12 years out of the buses. We actually have six buses coming for renewal this year, which means they're on their 12th year. We're asking to replace five of those buses because one of them has pretty low mileage right now. So, we're feeling we can get one more year out that bus and next year is kind of a lower year for number of buses that would get replaced. So, we're delaying that extra bus one more year just to try to balance it out a little more, try to get a more even cycle as we go. So, of the five buses we're recommending, we're asking for 477 passenger buses and then one bus with a lift for special
068needs students. Uh, for the grand total be 765,622 and come from the 2025 bond funds from the 2021 vote. New buses obviously will have all the security cameras, the safety features that we we want in our buses just to keep our kids safe coming in coming to school and going home in the evening. Um, is there any questions about this purchase? >> I don't think so. >> I think we're done. >> And then the next recommendation is the purchase of two pianos. uh piano dollies and piano benches for the choir programs at both southern and central. Uh this is the final step of the uh music item refresh. We did a this is like a three-part process. This is the third part. Uh this will replace the pianos in those two choir programs at both
069high schools. Uh so this will become from the 2019 unallocated contingency bond fund. Um that these these will benefit our students tremendously. A lot of this equipment we've replaced of this was aging. Uh so it was time. This is just the final step in that process. This is kind of the last harrah, so to speak. And we'll once this is done, we'll have all the items replaced and we're feeling pretty good about where the music department sits districtwide. Is there any question on these purchases? >> Is the board agreeable to take this to action this evening? There's a motion to do that on page 49, please. >> I have a vested interest in music education since my daughter is a music educator. So, I would love to offer the motion. >> It's all yours. >>
070To move the purchase of piano's discussion to action. >> Second. >> All those in favor of moving the piano purchase item to action, please say I. >> I. Opposed. >> Uh this is now at the action stage and we need a motion. Please. >> I'll do that one, too. [laughter] >> Um, Mr. President, I move that the board of education approve the purchase of two pianos and piano equipment from Sweetwater Sound for the total of $34,388, the funds for which will come from the 2019 unallocated contingency bond. >> Second. [laughter] >> Yeah. Very good. >> Any discussion? All those in favor of approving the purchase of pianos, please say I. I. Opposed. The motion passes. And the pianos are on the way. Thank you, Russ. >> Okay. Um, our next item is to go into
071close session. I believe we're going to stay in this room and we're probably not coming back for any action. Correct. >> We have We had added an item to the agenda. >> Oh, I forgot my discussion item. [laughter] >> Moon item. >> Yeah. Will you see it at your place? Um Emily advised us uh at our last retreat that um we might want to look at asking uh public participation uh folks um might want might not want to ask them about their address given privacy concerns and uh you know streaming of our meetings and all those things. And anyway, that just happened to be a topic at the uh Michigan Association of uh school attorneys conference at the MASB fall conference. And if you look down to uh see here on the uh on the
072bylaw, uh there's language that they suggested. instead of asking provide their address, ask the question whether or not they reside within district boundaries. So, um that would be the change we'd have to make. And you notice after that it says specify the topic of their remarks and that's because other things feed off this policy like the signup sheet and we want to know what the topic is so we can arrange the speakers. But anyway, uh so this would also uh change in the summary read by the secretary and also would change the welcome to the board of education flyer uh uh that we have and uh if if you guys are good with this uh we can put it on the agenda for our next meeting and approve it and make that change. >> Sure.
073>> That be okay. >> Okay. Very good. Thank you, uh, Emily, for pointing that out. Okay, now we're going to go into close session. Motion on page 51, please. >> Mr. President, I move that the board of education move into close session under section 8H of the Open Meetings Act to consider attorney client privilege material. >> Thank you, Terry. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mark. And this is a roll call vote, please, Mark. >> Mrs. Roar. Yes. Mrs. Crawford, >> yes. >> Mrs. Novaria, >> yes. >> Mr. Vaner, >> yes. >> Mr. Snder, >> yes. >> Miss Larson, >> yes. >> Dr. Stevenson, >> yes. >> Thank you. The motion passes and we'll now uh go into close session in this room. So, thank you very much. question is answer [laughter]
074question from