001[Music] the Ferguson floron School District located in Suburban St Louis serves more than 10,000 students from preschool through 12th grade with an excellent comprehensive educational program fully accredited by the state of Missouri the Ferguson Floris School District operates seven pre kindergarten through second grade schools six intermediate schools two sixth grade centers three middle schools including a Cutting Edge steam Middle School which was ranked the number two School in Missouri this year 2 A+ in NCA CA SI accredited high schools The Innovation High School a big picture learning school and a steam High School focused on preparing students in fields including science Technology and Engineering in August US News and World Report named steam Academy at McClure South Berkeley High School as one of the best high schools in America placing the school in the top
00212% of high schools in Missouri and in the top 35% of high schools in nationally as a district leading the charge in high school transformation there are a lot of Pathways to success all of our high schools our Project Lead the Way schools we offer many programs and opportunities such as dual enrollment dual credit International borate Avid in Elevate St Louis our red tail Cadet program has also secured private Pilots licenses for students before they even graduate the number of ffsd students enrolled in advanced placement courses has also dramatically increased the district has intentionally focused on College and Career Readiness and has increased the four-year graduation rate to 93% besides the secondary school coursework the district ensured opportunities for each population of students in an effort to support the goal of college readiness in addition
003the district includes a nationally recognized Early Education Program the award-winning Challenger Learning Center space education facility and the Little Creek Nature area a 97 acre Nature Preserve that offers experiential learning opportunities for students in Science Biology ecology and related areas of study through our partnership with University tutors all students and teachers will have access to live tutors on demand the district has also transformed alternative education with the restoration and Wellness Center recognizing that well-being is vital for academic success the district prioritizes the health and social emotional well-being of its students and staff the district has a partnership with hazel Health that offers comprehensive healthc care and teletherapy services ensuring that students have access to Medical Care and mental health support during the school day additionally Ferg Floor Care Health Clinic provides free health care services
004to District employees demonstrating the district's commitment to the well-being of its faculty and staff the board of education has made Equity a priority in the Ferguson floron School District in 2018 the board adopted an equity resolution and between 2020 and 2022 the district examined inequities and racism in policies and practices culminating in the board's adoption of the Ferguson Flores and school districts anti-racist standards for social justice in anti-racist schools from early childhood education to Advanced scientific exploration from personalized learning opportunities to Comprehensive Health Care Services the Ferguson Flores and School District continues to lead the way in providing an exceptional educational experience that truly is providing equity and access for all [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] oh [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] the Ferguson floron School District located in Suburban St Louis serves more than
00510,000 students from preschool through 12th grade with an excellent comprehensive educational program fully accredited by the state of Missouri the Ferguson Floris School District operates seven pre kindergarten through second grade schools six intermediate schools two sixth grade centers three Middle School schools including a Cutting Edge steam Middle School which was ranked the number two School in Missouri this year two A+ in NCA CA SI accredited high schools The Innovation High School a big picture learning school and the steam High School focused on preparing students in fields including science Technology and Engineering in August US News and World Report named steam Academy at McClure South Berkeley High School as one of the best high schools in America placing the school in the top 12% of high schools in missoui and in the top 35% of high
006schools in nationally as a district leading the charge in high school transformation there are a lot of Pathways to success all of our high schools are Project Lead the Way schools we offer many programs and opportunities such as dual enrollment dual credit International Balor Avid and Elevate St Louis our red tail Cadet program has also secure private Pilots licenses for students before they even graduate the number of ffsd students in rolled in advanced placement courses has also dramatically increased the district has intentionally focused on College and Career Readiness and has increased the 4-year graduation rate to 93% besides the secondary school coursework the district ensured opportunities for each population of students in an effort to support the goal of college readiness in addition the district includes a nationally recognized Early Education Program the award-winning Challenger
007Learning Center space education facility and the Little Creek nature area a 97 acre Nature Preserve that offers experiential learning opportunities for students in Science Biology ecology and related areas of study through our partnership with Varsity Tutors all students and teachers will have access to live tutors on demand the district has also transformed alternative education with the restoration and Wellness Center recognizing that well-being is vital for academic success the district prioritizes the health and social emotional well-being of its students and staff the district has a partnership with hazel Health that offers Comprehensive Health Care and teletherapy services ensuring that students have access to Medical Care and mental health support during the school day additionally Ferg Floor Care Health Clinic provides free health care services to District employees demonstrating the district's commitment to the well-being of its
008faculty and staff the board of education has made Equity a priority in the Ferguson Floris School District in 2018 the board adopted an resolution and between 2020 and 2022 the district examined inequities and racism in policies and practices culminating in the board's adoption of the Ferguson Floris School District's anti-racist standards for social justice in anti-racist schools from early childhood education to Advanced scientific exploration from personalized learning opportunities to Comprehensive Health Care Services the Ferguson Flores and School District continues to lead the way in providing an exceptional educational experience that truly is providing equity and access for all [Music] oh [Music] the Ferguson floron School District located in Suburban St Louis serves more than 10,000 students from preschool through 12th grade with an excellent comprehensive educational program fully accredited by the state of Missouri the Ferguson
009Floris School District operates seven pre kindergarten through second grade schools six intermediate schools two sixth grade centers three middle schools including a Cutting Edge steam Middle School which was ranked the number two School in Missouri this year two A+ in NCA CA SI accredited high schools The Innovation High School of big picture learning school and a steam High School focused on preparing students in fields including science Technology and Engineering in August US News and World Report named steam Academy at McClure South Berkeley High School as one of the best high schools in America placing the school in the top 12% of high schools in Missouri and in the top 35% of high schools in nationally as a district leading the charge in high school transformation there are a lot of Pathways to success all of
010our high schools are Project Lead the Way schools we offer many programs and opportunities such as dual enrollment dual credit International baloran Avid and Elevate St Louis our red tail Cadet program has also secured private Pilots licenses for students before they even graduate the number of ffsd students enrolled in advanced placement courses has also dramatically increased the district has intentionally focused on College and Career Readiness and has increased the four-year graduation rate to 93% besides the secondary school coursework the district ensured opportunities for each population of students in an effort to support the goal of college readiness in addition the district includes a nationally recognized Early Education Program tonight uh it is is March 12th 2025 I'm going to call the Ferguson Floris Board of Education regular meeting to order the time is now 6:15
011p.m. we remind our board members of the meeting norms and at this time please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Dr PW Walker uned states to the stands Nation thank you so much thank you for joining us again appreciate uh your energy and time tonight under provisions of the public meeting law for the state of Missouri the board must adopt by roll call vote an agenda that includes the time date Place attend of agenda for the meeting a copy of the notice and agenda for the meeting was posted on Tuesday March 11th 2025 at the administration Center 8855 dun Road hawood Missouri online and sent to local papers is our motion to approve the agenda it's been moved by Tyson second by Paul Paul paet Thurman any any items to be pulled change
012seeing none all those in favor say I I extensions Nays eyes have it next up is item number four msba update this time allocated to a short video from the Missouri School Board Association provide a report on current activities and events that may be interest of the board and Community our tradition of the Missouri school boards Association board report we begin this month with a focus on school Finance with very real concerns of a government shutdown in March and uncertainty in general with Federal funding there are a few specific actions districts should be taking to claim federal dollars msba senior director of school Finance Linda quinnley explains hello welcome to this month's board report and this time we're going to talk a little bit about Finance with you very specifically focusing on what's happening at
013the federal level and state level related to some of our primary grants and funding so just a key piece of information for you to know is that the recent halts or slowdowns or possibilities of those on the our Federal grant dollars was not about our entitlement grants like Title One and special education those were really more about discretionary grants and so while we were not concerned about losing those main dollar sources for us we were concerned about loss of discretionary the good news is that those have been lifted right now and all money is Flowing but we want to talk just for a second about how to help your leaders make sure that you're getting all those revenues and what you do need to be watching our greater concern at this point in time is
014a possible slowdown or shutdown of the federal government which would then slow down or delay significantly your federal program dollars help make sure that you are timely and consistently claiming those federal dollars so that if there is a Slowdown or a shutdown you don't incur any kind of a cash flow delay the end goal is to have those federal dollars in your pocket as quickly as you can after you spend them so that if something happens at the federal level and there is a Slowdown or a shutdown you've got your cash instead of the feds having your cash keep in mind that as you go into next budget cycle their allocations will continue to come the leadership in your district will be watching for those allocations and planning to fully use those allocations our recommendation
015is going to be to continue next year like we're asking you to end this year and just be really intentional about getting those federal dollars spent spent early and claimed quickly the best practice is to claim your federal program dollars at least quarterly if not monthly keeping the funds coming in soon after they are spent by the district make sure the district spends federal dollars first saving state and local dollars to use as needed contact Linda quinnley for finance questions and watch the weekly and the msba website for updates and information about upcoming Financial webinars msba spring virtual meeting was held recently and it featured Dr Phil Gore a former Seattle area school board member Dr Gore is also a nationally recognized researcher author and speaker on school governance the title of Dr Gore's presentation
016was building a culture of trust Dr Gore said that building Trust and the work of school boards is critical school boards do matter when it comes to public education in fact we may matter now as much or more than ever we are one of those last bastions of local control local governance and we are the entity that ensures we're creating a more democratizing student population and young adults to take our place in years to come trust is just as important or more important than it's ever been before when it comes to this work in school board development we often tell board members that they are stewards of the Public's two most precious resources their children and their money and last but certainly not least it's March which means it's School Board recognition month all of
017us at msba sincerely want to thank each and every one of you for all that you do your hard work and dedication to your schools and communities are appreciated and your commitment to all students does not go unnoticed visit the msba website for materials to help celebrate so with that thanks for allowing us to have some time at your board meeting and we'll see you in April for the next msba board report thank you next up is item number five 2025 board School Board recognition month missourians benefit every day from the dedicated energies and countless hours devoted by a group of more than 3600 men and women from communities across the state these public servants are elected by local constituents and do not receive any compensation for their tireless efforts they are local school board
018members of Missouri during the month of March communities across the state will honor the dedicated service of their local Boards of Education during Schoolboard recognition month the goal is to build awareness and understanding of the important function an elected Board of Education plays in communities and schools all Missouri citizens are asked to recognize the important contributions of these men and women and focus on the focus attention on the vital role that they play as public officials in the education of Missouri's children just want to thank all the schools and uh everyone who left us cards and made a signs for Schoolboard appreciation month we certainly appreciate it and uh do it on behalf of our children and our community and thank everyone for recognition and certainly um appreciate the thoughts moving on is public comments
019the board allocates this portion of the meeting to allow stakeholders an opportunity to comment on both agenda and non-agenda items at the start of each meeting the board president will reow any comments that have previously been submitted while all comments will be included in the board material this evening may be found under public comments the board May limit the number of comments read aloud based on length and repetition prior to the public comment period in-person participants are asked to fill out a comment card with their name address phone number email address and topic to be addressed this they'll be allowed up to 3 minutes to speak members of the audience who wish to speak to the board or request to speak from the podium identify themselves and keep in District policy 4054 4059 and personal
020law should refrain from making any negative comments that are personally identifiable while the board will not directly respond to speakers during the public comment period the board president may make clarify remarks at the end of the comment session to correct any misstatement of facts responses will be found on the district website under the meeting agenda section within 14 days of today's meeting we have several comments tonight several been submitted and several been some some of them I'll be summarizing uh as the repetition is the same for them but certainly uh we'll start with Victoria Ferris her comments are my concerns for Staffing teaching and learning Charles Peterson will be after her Victoria good good evening is it on okay um well I didn't expect to be called first um because I had assumed that people
021before me would probably say a lot of the things that I might have said but now that I'm first I feel like I have to say everything and you don't really want to hear it all right now um anyway I'm Victoria Ferris I grew up in Ferguson I attended Griffith Ferguson middle and McLure where I taught for 15 years and now I teach at McClure North very proudly I still live in the district I believe in our community and I believe in our kids and I believe in my colleagues um in all of our schools some of my son's teachers or former teachers are here and he's graduating with an engineering degree this may because of their contributions to him um Staffing is a huge concern all of us teachers are uh doing the equivalent
022of biting our nails uh worrying about how the already shortage of teachers is going to be compounded by potential changes that our district is facing we would like to be part of a solution or a solving team instead of being left out as it always seems we have been in my 20 plus years with the district uh to that end I'd like to request that all of the comments and the survey results and for that matter all of the comments from the past five years of surveys and thought exchanges and Town Hall meetings where all of the notes were taken I don't know if we still called them Town Hall but that's what we called them at the moment because there was so much information and heart given by so many Educators at all of
023those uh occasions and parents although more than anything the Educators who are the real people who know what's going on in our buildings and as far as any of us can tell at least those who've been around a while nothing or very very little has been done with what the teachers and administrators and counselors have to say and it's a real shame because we're the ones in daily contact with the kids we're the ones that you hold accountable for being engaging we're the ones that you hold accountable for attendance rates in this district and for discipline concerns yet our experience our knowledge our skills our information and our daily contact with the most important people in this District the kids is disregarded and you keep asking for more ideas on top of it not just
024you the district itself and I'm tired and done and frustrated and so are so many teachers but we all still want to help fix things but we don't have a whole lot of gas left in the tank y'all thank you so much Miss Ferris Dr hay would be following up with you miss Mr Peterson next up will be I believe this says uh Bobby Smalls is that correct Bobby small you'll be up next after Mr Peterson um hi everyone my name is Charlie Peterson I'm a fifth year teacher I uh started teaching in East Coast Schools in the charter world I worked with dougl mov in Brooklyn I worked with Eva moscowitz I taught in Brooklyn I taught in Harlem I'm a St Louis native and now I'm back in St Louis so that means
025I'm in Ferguson so I uh came here to speak about a couple of things um first I wanted to lead with gratitude we are so stuck in the trenches that we do not get to see the big picture so as much frustration as there is in the room I'm grateful that there are people whose job it is to see from the top down and make some pretty tough decisions that said we we are in a time of budgetary Crisis from what I've heard it's my new I'm new to the district but I've heard a lot of things as as I show up um and I I wanted to offer that uh in addition to the teaching experience and I apologize for my exhausted uh wandering through these public comments uh I do have a degree
026in ethics for some reason and um a budget is a moral document um budget cuts are expressions of moral values and in the format that we are currently working what I am noticing in this District as someone new is that the moral priorities of the teachers and community members are being ignored in favor of systematic decision-making and I wanted to specifically address one thing which is um without negatively without violating policies using um systematic decision- Mak to make firing decisions is uh not a good idea for several reasons the Masters in ethics I studied uh applied ethics specifically artificial intelligence ethics I could talk about it forever I worked with professors from Princeton and Cornell in studying different systems um systems feel unbiased because they are objective and they are not human but this is
027a misunderstanding of how systems work um the specific thing that I wanted to address is making decisions about which administrators are fired based on seniority that feels reasonable but it is an abdication of your judgment as a person it sounds like you are making an objective choice and it's seems reasonable based on the things but it ignores the lived experience of the people who know those human beings so with the time that I have left I would urge you to reconsider um because a budget is a moral document and again like I've got a million thoughts that I wish I could share um but uh it's an attempt at Equity to use systematic moral reasoning in a time of Crisis but attempted Equity is a bounced check Brown versus Board of Education was an attempt
028at equity and it failed we're still in segregated education system Brooklyn's still in a segre segregated education system I would urge you not to rely on just using what was done in the past what is a system because that frequently fails um I have more thoughts uh I wrote much more than this but I thank you for your time and I'm feel free to follow up with me and email I'd love to speak with any of you thank you thank you so much Charles after Bobby we'll be Joe posie did I get it right today thank you appreciate the fonetic spelling okay before I start I also sent something in so you guys read that later it's one or the other so would you like us to read I need that cuz it all goes
029together it was emailed okay mine are concern so I'm just going to read them all off and then I have a seat good evening okay my first one is is the district still paying Dr Davis since he's no longer here on leave secondly what's going on with our lawsuits what staff is being cut will coordinators also be cut how is cutting so many APS in our building going to help the huge negative impact of our children or you planning on cut cutting Title One also and if so does that include the isls and reading instr uh specialist will you be cutting our counselors that's in the elementary school because we now have two what cuts will be taking place the cuts that are being taken place dealing with agency nurses or are we going to
030take on regular nurses and pay them a decent salary where we don't have to use agency what's going to happen with the mckenny vento program because we have so many students those students that do find homes in other school districts maybe we can cut that and that help with the transportation issue and lastly I have a concern in regards to our steam Academy because when you look at all our schools all our students should be getting the same thing and if you go into the steam ele middle and high school and you look at our other high and middle and elementary schools the financial the finance and Elite status does not balance with all our children thank you so [Applause] much Mr Mitchell is going to follow up with you Doug Jackson you're up after
031ready good evening I am Joe hosy I'm a teacher uh and librarian at McClure high school I'm a homeowner in Florent uh and my entire family has gone through the district in the last 40 or 50 years um I wanted to talk about three brief subjects spending I spoke at the last board meeting about concern for end ofe activities cancelling the Amazon and pecard usage and freezing most budgets and making it almost impossible to push through purchase orders has restricted everything from selling popcorn and using student raised money to pay for DJs and other materials for dances the Administration has to come up with a better and easier plan for monitoring purchases through the end of the year secondly building changes in redistricting I wanted to remind the board that we have had 32 buildings
032or properties over the years we went through a major redistribution of teachers and students a few years ago and we need to check to see if the buildings are being used efficiently we do do we need prek through two or can we have prek through five do we need four high schools when one is projected to only have an enrollment of 141 students next year can it be Blended in with one of the other three I also want to remind student the board uh the district that the board voted no on building or purchasing a new Administration Center and yet it purchased a steam Middle School that happens to now house the new Administration Center that we tore down the old one we have moved people librar supplies and students across the district without playgrounds
033or the right equipment for those age limits and we have been negligent and we can't do that anymore and I know you recognize that finally we need to talk about smart consolidation is key there is only one McLure is what we say at McClure High School most of the buildings across the district are in need of major Renovations I would even consider tearing down McLure like we did a few years ago like I said 82 83 85 991 98 I would be right there when they knock down the building if it meant building something better for our schools and for our students um you know and using the large buildings to consolidate other programs and bring people together we mustn't simply look at Cuts but consolidation and a slightly longer term plan of 3 to
0345 years we must be tough tenacious and get things done we must be a bulldog in the face of adversity we must truly stand as one District like a comet we can shoot for the moon and we will land among the stars in conclusion we must act fast and with targeted Precision we can't afford to wait and see and himh around pending investigations and things any longer we must not act rashly but we must consider all options and be openminded and not closed to other options and other ideas so thank you for your time and consideration I really appreciate the hard work you're doing so thank you thank you next up is uh Mr Jackson so first I want to say budgets are not moral Frameworks they are an expression of expenditures and revenue we
035can't we shouldn't be riding more into that than it actually is budget cuts are not moral decisions they are fiscal realities second I don't know why the district sent out a survey um you guys were elected you guys get paid to know those things and to make those hard decisions I don't know the numbers I'm not going to spend hours looking at the budget but that's what you guys do so all that survey does is get you a list of stuff that we don't want cut but in know the fiscal reality that we're in most things are going to feel pain students are probably going to feel a little bit of pain in this because it's the reality of the situation that we are in so to carve out certain things isn't isn't fair to
036those who are feeling the most pain so the more you can spread that pain around maybe it means there's a few less electives maybe it means there's one or two more kids per class things like that it it it's a reality we have to do those things um we can't have carve outs in a situation that we're lastly we need to make a decision on where our future lies whether it's the survey results from last week or a couple weeks ago or whether it's the financial s situation that we're in it's time to chart A New Path and we need to do that now we can't wait we can't talk amongst ourselves for months more we need to make a decision and move forward and I I think we all know what that decision is
037as much as it bothers me I don't like the decision but it's a reality of the situ of the of what of the situation that we're in thank you thank you Mr Jackson I forgot to say uh Dr Singleton will follow up with you as well as Joe so they will follow up uh I for the record I forgot to say Dr Graves is excused from tonight's meeting I did forget to say that originally so just for the record and so I'm going to start reading the public comments have been submitted first up is Erica uh from Wedgewood Grade Center good evening I'm resending this message tonight because I previously see Sate to the follow Senate following the last board meeting but did not receive any confirmation of receipt first I want to appreciate my
038express my appreciation for the detailed information shared at the meeting many teachers including myself have ongoing concerns and I truly appreciate members emphasizing the importance of continued public engagement inquiry I would appreciate further clarification on a specific matter it appears that while some positions are being considered for reduction in force others are simply undergoing title changes uper admin at district office given the roles carry significant salaries and do not directly serve students an issue the board had previously emphasized I like to better understand how these changes align with the district stated priorities I have provided screenshots below to illustrate the concern I would also like to share that many of us are disheartened to see that much of the recent survey focus on Cuts directly impacting students despite ongoing statements that they are a top
039priority proposals such as reducing after school activities limiting Transportation routes decreasing summer school opportunities delaying technology updates and increasing class sizes do not seem to align with the best interest of our students again could you please provide me a better understanding as to how these Cuts will be best for the students and teachers would it not be best to reduce a top tier that does not directly interact or impact the students or teachers and day-to-day I'm confident the survey will provide valuable feedback from stakeholders and I certainly appreci I certainly hope that our in our input is taken seriously not just collect as a formality lastly I'd appreciate the board's recognition of the importance of cost living wages raises for teachers this acknowledgement means a great deal to us dedicated serving our students every day
040thank you for your time and dedication look forward to your response I follow up with Erica next up is Mr Todd overlin uh from MCL North dear board as we aim to write the ship and tighten up budgets I'd like to know how much we spend on uity classes for students needing Credit Recovery it seems reasonable that these online credit recovery courses be accessible to students in their final semester so they can graduate however it also seems like a back stop has ballooned and now being used by sophomores and juniors who can easily make up a failed class in person with a contracted teacher can we be a can we can there be an audit of how the edin course workor is being used how effective it is and if we push underclassman to in-person
041class courses to make up for failed courses thank you for listening who'll be following up Dr P Walker Dr Crawford Dr Crawford will follow up next up is Michelle I believe she is a Community member thank you for taking the time to listen to my questions and concerns my name is Michelle and my daughters attend McLure North High School as a parent and taxpayer I'm absolutely frustrated with things going on not only in this District but this particular School my main frustration however is with the school board you make rules and vote in policies two examples being Yonder bags and school uniforms and claim there's no tolerance policies and then do not stand behind your policies most of your kids in McLure North are not using the pound Yonder bags and never have and never
042intended to and most of the kids are not wearing anything that res a school uniform I was estimating that probably about 30% of the student body weren't wearing a uniform to school upon discussing the topic in a public form the teacher that works at the school stated that is actually more like 50 to 60% of students not wearing the uniform I was also informed that from this teacher that when they are strictly enforcing the policy teachers and admin that they could they were told they could not keep writing so many discipline referrals the administration at the school is now having keep a spreadsheet of each infraction why if there's a no tolerance policy why can't it enforced these students are never going to follow any sort of rule if the rules and policies are not
043followed never followed and if there's never consequence for not following the rules and policies even with the majority of the students not following the policies there are students that follow them on a daily basis it's unfair to the students who continually do what they're supposed to do if you can't get and aren't getting a required 100% compliance on these policies then you need to ditch the policies not to mention the uniforms are not cheaper for and many families my daughter has way less options since she you adopted the uniform policy because you can't just afford to buy a bunch of pieces I urge the parents and other taxpayers to speak up if they're seeing the same issues I'd appreciate someone contact me further to discuss these issues Miss Rose Watson will follow up with you
044on that and actually Ed new would be Mr Murray will actually follow up on that one Dawn is a Community member I believe uh why doesn't the district do fundraisers in the community put a car wash out there uh this summer with students from more than one school and parent volunteers you have parents who have businesses to do a big vendor event once a month at one of the schools or any building the district really needs to use parents more who will be following up about parent volunteers Miss Rose Watson Miss Rose Watson thank you next up uh is I believe a parent Harris W Harris Brown good afternoon can we move forward without a superintendent can we concentrate on our principls teachers and students and actually listen to what they are saying versus a
045selective group of people who think they know what they need also moving into the new school year four days a week will help cut costs and give teachers students and principles a piece of mind if we want to certified if we want certified teachers to come and stay and teach our children we should listen to what they have to say and consider carefully what they are requesting come up with ways that they can earn a bonus teachers are the best best when they are happy and can do what they love without being in a hostile work environment which makes students feel safe and want to come to school to learn I witnessed this superintendent come in Ferguson Floris and turn our school district into a prison system I believe Ferguson floron School District I still
046believe in Ferguson floron School District do you Dr Heywood will follow up just want to make one clarifying mark the board does uh write policies we don't enforce the policies we write the policies so I just want to write that clarifying remark about that and we are revisiting all of our policies this year and so uniforms is one of those things that we are revisiting uh in that in that piece as well oh there's more I apologize uh Christopher uh these are two of the similar comments so for board I'm not going to read them directly I'm going to summarize them but uh I'll read most of them so I'm proud to serve as a teacher of computer business applications the head football coach at MCL North stepping into these roles during my first year
047has been exciting and challenging but the unwavy support of Miss Seuss made my transition seamless her guidance and encouragement were a steady anchor during even the most difficult times and her dedication to fostering growth and success for both students and staff is unparalleled it's been a privilege to work under such an incredible leader whose impact resonates throughout our entire school she's an exceptional administrator of high school who embodies the very essence of leadership compassion and dedication as a principal she has earned the admiration and respect of both students and staff throughout her tireless efforts her ability to truly listen and unwavering commitment to fostering a positive supportive School environment she goes above and beyond every single day not only to ensure success of her students but also to uplift and encourage her colleagues her unique
048ability to connect with students on a personal level understanding the needs and challenges and aspirations makes her Irreplaceable figure in our school Community facing potential budget cuts that could jeopardize her role it is clear that her absence would leave an insurmountable void losing her would not only just affect our school it would be a profound loss to the entire district and Community which deeply depends on our exor leadership and Humanity our students need her our district needs her missus is not just a principal she's the heart of our school she is our backbone thank you for your time go stars and Dr P Walker will follow up we have two more to go I'm going to read all of them uh I I saw I saw thank you uh next up is from Christopher Shannon
049Mr Harold is an epitome of what administrator should be a leader a mentor and above all a compassionate advocate for students before I even had the privilege of meeting him his reputation for caring deeply about kids in our community spoke volumes especially through his impactful work as the head My Brother's Keeper program at Halls per Elementary his ability to connect with and Inspire young minds including my own son was evident long before we became colleagues since working alongside him at MCL North my respect and admiration for Mr Harold has grown as our freshman principal he was instrumental in easing the transition for students moving from middle to high school a pivotal and often challenging period in their education Mr Harold's tler dedication to their success is unmatched as head football coach I often left campus
050around 700 p.m. during the fall and time and time again I would see him still working always one of the last to leave his presence elevates not just the students but the entire School Community our kids gravitate towards him because they see so much that he believes in them pushing them to be their best losing someone of Mr Harold's caliber would be devastating below to our school our district Stant Community decisions about leadership should prioritize Effectiveness passion and commitment over tenure we need individuals like Mr Herold leaders who care about our kids in our future not just their paycheck thank you for taking the time to consider this invaluable contribution to mcore North and the Greater Community Gars Dr Haywood will follow up last comment Kristen Pullman uh she works at Holman primary at last
051month's board meeting was a mentioned that the board spends around $50,000 in National memberships and that the board is cut down on travel this year to save money these statements have brought several questions to mind how much is the board's budget who determines the board's budget is it public information that's posted somewhere why is the board not spending uh not reported every month with all the other expenditures what bucket or category does the board come out of who is in charge of the board's budget who approves the spending of the budget thank you for taking the time to answer I will follow up with her on that as well uh next up is our student rep and that is Isaac Gates good evening everyone evening as we navigate the changes in our district my top
052priority Remains the Same ensuring that every student has the best possible learning experience and greater opportunities for Success change is never easy but with thoughtful planning and a shared Vision we can ensure that every student not only receives a quality education but also gains the tools and opportunities needed to thrive I appreciate your support as we work together to build a stronger future for our students and our community thank you thank you Mr Gates next up is FFN is it Dana tonight good evening Dana good evening and greetings to our Board of Education co-s superintendent Ferguson Floris and Nea members and Community stakeholders the directive given to Administration for on the board was to negotiate no more than four or five times anything longer than this may indicate that we are probably not making movement
053and sometimes sitting at an impass but last night both sides came to a mutual agreement the more time is necessary we hope to continue negotiations after spring break the association is extremely concerned about the district's Financial State during the February board meeting Dr Kevin Martin said and I quote we have to give raises end of quote according to him Ferguson Floris has one of the lowest starting teaching salaries in St Louis County Dr Martin con continued excuse me the way he calculates the starting pay for teachers is it needs to be 12% in order to get to where other people are for starting teacher pay alone Chief Financial Officer Dr leavon Singleton developed a financial budget that incorporated a 0% raise increase the FFA professional negotiation team however asked for additional budgets to be developed
054to reflect the suggested 12% raise as well as additional budgets that reflect salary increases that are commiserate with the cost of living we know that teachers and support staff don't choose this profession for wealth or fame they enter the field of Education because they are passionate about shaping young minds building strong communities and making a difference in the lives of students their work is not just a job it's a calling but while passion fuels their dedication passion alone cannot pay the bills the reality is that teachers and support staff like everyone else must be able to afford the necessities of life yet far too often we are asked to do more with less stretching our resources taking taking on extra duties and even spending our own money when educators are underpaid and overworked schools struggle
055to retain talented professionals and ultimately our students suffer if we truly value education we must value the people who make it possible the FFA will continue to negotiate in good faith for working conditions and salaries we will continue to seek answers aners to questions that affect the current situation of our district and seek Positive Solutions that will move our district forward in a positive direction who will be getting back with me about these things well it'll be a combination myself uh as well as Dr uh Mr Moore or Dr P Walker someone from Administration will all right thank you thank you did you want to clarifying Mark I did say 12% is the amount that starting teachers would need not overall raise just to be clear of the the comment from last time is there's
056a gap of starting pay from St Louis county is a 12% Gap so just wanted to clarify that thank but we'll be in touch next up is uh Mr Gates is going to be recognizing a fellow peer within the district Mr Gates Mr Noah strong we are excited to inform you that you have been selected as one of the two Regional student ambassadors for the 400 years of African-American history commission we believe that you all the qualities we were looking for in an applicant and we are thrilled to have you join this important initiative we look forward to collaborating with you during your time with the commission and anticipate great things ahead please keep an eye out for further communication as we warmly welcome you to this meaningful role congratulations once again thank you if
057you can come up to get a picture uh with the whole board and then we'll take one with your family in the board and Dr JS is here as they commissioner as well if she can come up good evening and thank you okay I'm excited for Noah and just really happy to be a commissioner for the 400 years of African-American history under Public Law 11512 we have done tremendous things throughout the United States and it was just such an honor to get his credentials and information in the work that he's been doing here in Ferguson Floris and it was easy it was easy to say he's a very good candidate for the region to be an ambassador for the United States for years of African-American history we are a organization put into law to make
058sure that the past is not forgotten we work very hard uh to various uh organizations and states and our last trip no was to Alaska sorry you missed it so um very excited um for you and looking forward to great things to come see you in Washington we're gonna have Mr Harold come up S you [Applause] thank you [Applause] congratulations again and next up we have McLure I believe has a video for the uh School Board appreciation for recognition for that if that's ready to go thank you to the Ferguson floron school board thank you to the Ferguson floron school board thank you to the Ferguson floron school board thank you to the Ferguson Flor School Bo thank you to the Ferguson Flor school board thank you to the Ferguson Flor school board thank you
059for Theus thank you for the fergusona school board thank you SCH thank you for all you do to support the students at McClure High School thank you so much certainly appreciate that next up is consent is there a motion to approve consent as presented so move move by Thurman second second by dun all those in favor say I I exensions Nays eyes have it next up is dispersements Dr Singleton you are up for February's dispersements good evening to our Ferguson Flor Cent School Board um colleagues and Community uh tonight I will present the dispersements report uh for the uh previous month of February we we have them on the screen thank you all right we're having a little bit of technical difficulty so all right thank you again the dispersement report uh for March 12th
0602025 uh as always the mission and vision of the school district the mission of the Ferguson floron school district is to provide highquality instruction to every student in every neighborhood while prioritizing equity and compassion relationships the vision of the Ferguson floron school district is for all Learners to graduate believing that anything is possible and prepared to realize those realities I'm sorry those possibilities uh the the monthly dispersements for February 2025 the payroll teacher and non- teer uh totals 9,971 36233 the operational dispersements are AP accounts payable bills total $ 6,175 251 our total monthly expense for february5 m973 11148 4 we've discussed in several meetings the fund descriptions that you'll see uh when I make reference to fund 11 that's a general fund fund 20 is the special revenue or the Teachers Fund fund 30
061is our debt service and fund 40 is our capital projects so if we look at the revenue totals by fund again those Revenue uh those funds that we just mentioned um and those three columns uh that proceed uh or current revenues so these are monies that the district has received in each of these funds as of February 28th so about $ 44.4 million uh so far in the general fund uh We've amended our budget that was approved at the last meeting uh to include about 71.4 million so roughly 62% of revenues have been collected in this fund the next fund the $52.6 million in special Revenue uh the amended budget anticipates about 72.8 million million for roughly 72% collected in the uh in this particular fund Debt Service 4.8 million amended budget shows 4.1 um
062we've collected a little bit more in this fund than anticipated 117% on Capital funds uh we projected or we currently have collected about 5.3 million and we have about 7.7 budgeted for a total of 69% if we look at the totals so far $7.2 million uh minute budget shows $16.2 million so we're roughly 69% of revenues collected let me pause because Dr paulet W Dr Paulette Thurman at the last meeting asked a question about those percentages and I wanted to make sure that we had a better explanation when it comes to weighted averages okay um if you look at those numbers at the bottom the current revenue of 107 million and then the amended budget shows 156 million all right for a total of overall 69% if we go back to those if you look
063at the general fund itself and the special Revenue let's look at those two funds and look at the amended budget there if you look at the 71 million in the general fund and the $72 million in the special Revenue fund that's about $143 $144 million okay and you see those percentages that have been collected 62% 72% well the weight the biggest weight of what is anticipated of that 156 lies in those two funds and so when we talk about that 69% it's a weighted average okay and it shows that there's more weight in the general fund more weight in the special Revenue fund and that's the reason that the overall those those four boxes will average out uh and weight out to that 69 % so I just wanted to bring that up I tried
064to articulate that may not have done the greatest job last time but again as we continue uh to move forward we try to address those board questions uh that do come up these are the graphs that go with it again the red shows the year to dat revenues the gray shows the amended budgets uh we won't spend a lot of time there we just gave the percentages in the previous column uh the expenditures by total we just talked about revenues now let's talk about expenses uh those same four funds so roughly through February 28th of 2025 47.3 million the amended budget shows 72 million we've got 24.7 available so 66% special Revenue 46.8 million amended budget shows 77.1 so roughly available 30.3 million about 61% okay look at those two funds that's where the biggest
065weight is going to come in at as well uh because if you add those two available uh those two amended budgets together again you're over $150 million as compared to the 162 at the bottom in debt service we've got 652 652 th000 expended year to date uh and the amended budget shows about $4.1 million uh we've got 3.5 available so only 16% of expenses shown in that fund capital projects was $6.3 Million expended we've got 8. six amended in the budget for an available budget of about 2.3 million so 73% overall we're looking at about 62% expenditures uh total by fund uh again this is the graphic representation the red shows the current expenses the gray shows the amended budget and the blue shows the available budget um we gave the description the object descriptions
066as well 6100 or salaries 6200 or benefits 6,300 are purchase Serv services 6,400 are supplies 6,500 are capital outlay and 6600 are long and shortterm debt uh in our salary 6100 all right so in the general fund and special Revenue fund those are generally the two funds we budget salary um so in general fund 19.8 uh year to date 32.8 budgeted uh in the amended budget 13.0 available so roughly 60% and same thing in the Teachers Fund 35 .6 million year to date 59.0 uh 23.3 available so roughly 60% in salaries that we have expended year-to date benefits are pretty similar okay $9.1 million in the general fund uh year-to date 13.3 on the amended budget 4.1 available 69% on fund 20 10.8 expended 17.3 amended 6.5 available total 62% overall 65% in benefits purchase
067Services uh general fund special revenue and Debt Service 12.7 and general fund 18.3 amended budget 5.5 about 70% of the funds expended there uh in fund 20 the Teachers Fund 283,000 uh year to date amended budget shows 700,000 and the available budget shows about 46 about 41% nothing in Debt Service uh the total gives us about 69% in purchase services on the on supplies uh the general fund shows 5.4 we budget all supplies in general fund the amended budget shows 7.5 and what's available is 2.1 for a total of 72% uh in the 6500s are capital outlay 6.1 expended 8.0 amended available 1 .9 for a total of 77% that is expended in long and short-term debt again those three funds there uh 168 uh uh in the general fund year to date Debt Service
068shows 652 th000 amended budget 4.1 million available 3.5 a total of 16% and the capital funds 133 ,000 expended year to date 542 547 amended and 413 in the available budget for a total of 24% uh and these three funds average a total debt uh of about 20% um and most of the debt is usually taken care of in the spring months so um as before we get to the end of the school year you'll see those numbers uh rise in those debt columns uh projected fund balance here um so if you look at the uh under the total here uh revenues um on the this is the first column is the total and then the other four columns are each fund as they add back to the total okay um and so we see
069a total of $24 million that we started the year with fund balance our year-to-date revenues um are uh 107 uh million so far uh the revenues added to the fund balance is 132 million a year-to-date expenses of 101 million which gives us a year-to-date fund balance of 30.8 million budgeted expenditures 162 million uh less year-to-date expenditures of 101 million remaining balances of about 60 million um so our operating fund balance uh and and we've we've talked a lot about this uh the operating fund balance is generally lower than the overall fund balance so operating fund balance is used for operations okay it does not include Debt Service um and so the operating fund balance is just special in general funds uh which total 2 2.89% at this point over overall fund balance which includes all
070funds restricted and unrestricted um the fund balance is right now sitting at 3.53% that concludes the dispersements report for the month ending February uh if there's any questions i' be happy to answer at this time thank you Dr Singleton before we begin secretary can you please read the dispersements and the motion please yes I can um for payroll teacher and non-teacher we have 9,971 36233 for operational dispersement 6, $1,752 51 for a total of 5,973 11484 with the recommendation to approve all expenditures for the month is there a motion to approve before we have discussion Mo so move by Thurman second second by dun okay there's I know there's several questions uh certainly as we go through this um so we'll start uh are you ready to go Mr Bailey first yeah I am I'm
071just curious to know um and that's kind of what the chatter was about this 30% can you pull the slides back again sure this 30% how how do you get to that number right yes um so the the 30% um in the fund balance so that's the overall fund balance okay and this time of the year it's going to be high because we are at our highest peak in terms of our um our tax revenues okay um and so the reason that number is so high right now is because we are constantly getting our our monthly uh monies coming in and then we also get uh those tax revenues so that 30% um is the it's the ending fund balance and the the formula is there it's the ending fund balance divided by the total
072expenditures the reason why I say I think that number is important is because we threw a lot of numbers out to the community sure and we have to make sure that we kind of back those numbers up sure so 30% as the fund balance as of right now because of the the the money coming into the district currently but what so then you go to what's the actual fund balance of we heard like it's 11% what what's the current fund balance in this state right now as well yeah so this is a year to date and it's it's kind of uh you know it's kind of scary to look at these on a month-by-month basis because there's a lot of fluctuation that's what I'm trying to get to because it's so many different numbers being
073thrown out there that's why I want to make sure that we have an accurate year to date so this 30% right now year to date this month is the most accurate number that we have on the pH our 30% is year to date the 11% or you know those numbers is going to be discussed when we talk about the uh preliminary budget for next month so I think that's important because again you throw out 30% and then you say 11% those are very much drastic different numbers that's why I think it's important that we do more of explaining thank you yes Mr Tyson you're good Miss Don hi um my only question that I have is what I didn't see in this uh month's presentation we've seen in previous months in the last couple of
074months is where we're at with our tax revenues oh oh I my apologies um so we have not received any additional tax revenues from the last report okay um we will definitely make sure uh that that that tax revenue slide is there so we're still at about 64 roughly 65 million that has been collected year to date but there's been no change since the last meeting and so then I think my only request for that when that is updated is can we um be sure that that table that we see it like all the dates match because if I remember right last month or last month they didn't quite match up so we were kind of having to like figure out how they match up because that we didn't have money there for a minute
075there was nothing coming in so if you can just help to see like this is at at the same time of year this is where we're at even if the money is not changing so it makes it a little bit easier to read that table sure sure thank you thank you Mr Gates thank you Dr Thurman okay can you go back a couple of slides when you go back to like the fund and how much was used how much is left uh this one revenues are expenses expenditures sure okay so for this slide you're sh telling us that 62% of the funds that have come in we've already used is that what this slide is say telling us no so this this slide is saying of what you've budgeted of 162 million that you've budgeted
076101 has come in and that's roughly 62% okay that's 62% that has come come in yes okay so how much has been spent is that the that's the spit number the expense so year to date we have spent one 101 yes okay year to date we spent 101 million you budget it 162 million and so if you take those two numbers take 101 1611 123 divided by 162 063 350 you'll get 62% okay and the available budget now is 60 right and that's the difference in those two numbers so the available budget is the 162 minus the 101 okay if we are if we continue to spend and pay our bills how long will this H how far will this get us through the school year so we should be on track so we did
077an amended budget um which should get us on track to June 30th now this is barring any emergencies Dr Paul at Thurman all right this is barring any unforeseen happenings this is stopping expenditures these are all of these controls that we are putting in place but we feel pretty good that the amended budget contain the expenses that will get us to you know roughly within this this amended budget towards the end of the uh end of the school year okay so I'm asking these questions because I want M to make sure that Community um understands the numbers and me too too um so when we are hearing that we are in a bad shape and that we don't have the monies and we are 11 million over or five or seven or whatever the number
078is it doesn't reflect in these numbers to me sure so I'm confused okay so maybe maybe it's me because I again I will tell you all this is not my area of expertise but I as a board member I am bound and determined to make sure I understand what these numbers mean ma because we have to make decisions based on your numbers yes ma'am and I appreciate that so let me let me let me paint the picture thank you okay um and that's why I say it it's very challenging to look at your fund balance numbers by the month because some months are better than others when we start out in July okay um July would probably have a reasonable fund balance but as we get into the fall months okay August September October those
079are new salary increases that go into effect so they expend more monies um you know more monies are going out the door frequently and all you're surviving off of in those fall months are your basic formula monies your prop c those monies that come from the state okay um tax bills are not due so again the biggest source of Revenue in this district is is is property taxes and so we don't see those property taxes or those revenues until the November and December time frames so that's why coming off of a November or December and January time frame these numbers look good okay but these numbers only paint a snapshot of where we are at this particular moment if you look at the entire 12 months of where we have to be all right these
080numbers are going to get worse all right these numbers are going to get worse as we go along and so it's important that we continue to give you that year-to-date information that year-to dat number so that you are in tune to yes February is a good month January was a good month December was probably a good month but November wasn't a good month neither was October in some of those months so I want to know going forward yes ma'am going forward I think that we're probably have seen some of the highest numbers that we'll see and I think we're going to start seeing those numbers go down as we continue out the school year we don't have any huge influx of monies coming in now we budgeted about 65 million in local taxes that money
081is probably we probably have a few you know a few more dispersements coming in but nothing to the extreme of what we've had coming in going forward and so uh I I think as we go along now through the end of the school year you will start to see that number go down okay so how do you see this affecting our fund balance as of June 30th yes I I see this I see it continuously going down and I see us I mean going down means yeah I think down to I think we projected probably ending this year uh the amended number was probably around was it about 11 or 12% 18 million which is right $18 million yeah I think that was about 11% so yeah by by roughly $18 million which is still
082low for us yes remember we we started or we ended last year with 24 million so if we if we had to borrow with 24 million then we're certainly going to have to borrow with18 million okay no I'm not good but okay okay Dr P Walker good evening uh Dr Singleton thank you um one of the things that I think came up last week or has come up in the last couple of meetings is that our seniors have the opportunity to apply for tax frees on their on their taxes right so what I guess I'm wondering about is have you yet kind of learned you know in this community how many people have applied for the freeze and the potential impact on the budget because of that yeah so that's a good question thank you
083uh Dr Paul Walker the so there has been very little guidance um as it relates to the senior tax freeze um we do know that um I think last count there were some some thousands and thousands of people who had applied um we've gone to seminars and various conferences and there just there's no way to be able to tell how this thing is going to impact um school districts at this particular point in time I think we had a we discussed this in in in one of our meetings uh just last week um unfortunately there's not a lot of guidance right now um the only thing we have to continuously do is Monitor uh and observe um but at this particular point in time there's been very little guidance about the senior tax now we
084we've got to keep in mind that it's a freeze okay that it's going to maintain your taxes at the at at its current levels I think there's a misnomer I've heard people say that oh what I don't have to pay any taxes no it's not a you know it's not a reduction of your taxes this this application will allow you to freeze your taxes at their current levels and so it Shields you from any future increases um but unfortunately I I wish I had more information and I will reach out as well to try to get some of the latest but we just don't have much more guidance on that at this point okay thank you for that and then the the other thing I think is more of a general question as we are
085um looking at places where we might be able to make Cuts I wanted to ask about two areas um I know that with technology and I definitely know we need to do everything we can to make sure our kids have access to the technology that they need but I'm also curious to know sometimes there are lots of subscriptions uh that a district will have and then when you look at those subscriptions sometimes uh they talk about return on investment right you can check and see that students aren't actually using these particular subscriptions but we keep renewing them so I'm just curious to know about kind of you know what does the technology budget look like in terms of subscriptions and are there things there that maybe you know we moved away from but we're just
086continuing to renew and then the second thing um is just program evaluation in general um thinking about the different things that we purchase that we renew from year to year and again the same thing you know are these things having an impact on student learning are people actually utilizing these things or are we just continuing to renew so I guess what I'm asking is are we going to be looking at those things as we continue to think about where we might be able to make cuts CU that could possibly be a place where we might save some money too yes ma'am thank you so much and that that's a very thoughtful um um question and and even response there I will tell you that all things are on the table okay um because of where
087we are we have had to consider everything we've been in meetings all week long um and we have put everything on the table we met with the principles we went through the principal's budgets and they saw where they could make some additional cuts that Administration has made some really deep Cuts uh for instance we took professional development out of all the the administrative budgets and we're just going to have one line item okay for a PD it's not going to be in the individual budgets it's going to be elsewhere um and so we have had conversations about technology and I made sure that computer-wise we have enough computers on hand uh in order to to move forward uh you know in the next year or so um but there are subscriptions uh there's a conversation
088about different products uity and who's using them and those kinds of things I think the curriculum team would probably be best to answer those subscriptions that we're not using in the usage so I'll let my colleagues kind of weigh in on that but to answer your question all of those things have been brought to the surface and everything is on the table supplies materials Capital outlay um subscriptions contract s everything has been brought to the table okay thank you and one final thing um my guess is the answer is going to be yes but as we are thinking about um even cuts and Staffing right we've heard people talk tonight about people that are in certain positions key positions and they don't want to have those people no longer in those roles are you as
089as decisions are being made are we also looking at attrition uh are we also looking at people who are retiring this this year I'm just you know curious about that too yes ma'am and again I don't want to get too far ahead of myself I know we'll talk about some of this in the preliminary budget I think Dr P Walker will talk about a little bit of this in her presentation tonight as well but I will say I feel confident in saying all things are on the table um not filling certain positions um you know when retire when when people retire you know uh re repurposing those positions or maybe not filling those as well so I have been part of those conversations again um I think you know that it probably needs to come
090from from those that are more intimate in those conversations and myself but I will tell you that attrition has been discussed um retirements all of those things are on the table thank you thank you thank you Dr sing I have a couple questions if we can go to slide it's long and short service debt yep slide 15 I can't see the numbers can you yeah I'll let you know when you get there that one go back one okay so certainly we amended the budget I'm just curious how do we have $ Zer in a line but we have expenses and we just amended the budget um general fund year-to dat expenses um I don't know we'll take a look at that all right thank you certainly some things you might not know uh tonight as
091we go go through this okay so I want to go to slide back up the slide so try to have me understand with the board and try and get to a place of understanding so just so we all are clear if I'm reading this correctly let's go to slide five first to start with it's the revenue by totals this one okay so we are projecting $156 million coming in through June 30th of this year correct yes okay so now go down two slides go down to yes to slide seven or what expenditures okay so if we're bringing in 156 million You're Expecting we're going to spend 162 million which means we have to use almost $6 million out of our fund balance just to cover our expenses this year is that correct yes so just
092so everyone on the board knows we're eating 6 million already out of our fund balance this year alone before and that's already making some of these cuts that you've talked about about now go back to slides go back to the revenue yes y I will say as a board we continue to find you know dive in to figure out what happened with our budget issues and all of that and one thing we certainly need is uh confidence in the numbers right and so as we get to these two numbers right here that you did in the amended budget um one concern I have is you kind of spoke about most of our local tax mone's already come in MH I see a very large gap between current revenue and amended budget considering most of it
093comes from local that we've already received majority you said tonight I'll this a loaded question I'm just going to be honest M are you 99% confident in these numbers that are presented because as a board I just see a very large gap that exists and if we if our expenditures are 2 million already and our Revenue comes in $1 less cuz we can't transfer Debt Service to General funds correct right I so we could be over 10 million in debt service and it makes no impact on our general teure fund right right how confident are you in those two numbers that we're going to be able to achieve that Revenue because if not then that means any dollar we're short is even more of a fund balance we're eating into yeah so let me speak
094to that Dr Martin um this is as of the end of February okay we've got monies that are scheduled for March April May and June okay four more months of monies um that are going to be coming in consistently from uh the basic formula okay to get us through the end of the year all right and that's going to feel those numbers in general fund and teachers Revenue okay that's where again this time of the year that's where that it's coming in small smaller increments but that's where those monies are coming from so we still got about uh you know 25% of the monies that we don't have that will be coming in hitting those funds all right we also have Federal monies uh that have not all come in all right there's some title
095reimbursements uh that are not that have not come in uh at this point um there are still some tax revenues out there okay um and there are uh some County things uh that need to come in at this point in time so uh I am confident in the amended budget numbers um that we are going to come where we have projected these numbers to uh but it it never hurts us to go back and take a look at this uh for a third or fourth time and so um to answer your question though the Gap that exists now um I believe that it will be made up from substantially a large portion of propy Monies basic formula monies um uh classroom trust monies um all of those monies that have not come in yet we're
096still we still have four months to go in each of those categories so uh I I I think we're I think we're going to be okay okay we're trusting these the confidence that the next question is revenue you have for Capital fund is 7.7 million right in the many budget go down two slides of expenditures you have the amended budget of capital is 8.6 so right there alone we're eating almost $900,000 right so H where are we transferring that to if if we already amended the budget how is our Revenue higher than our expenses for Capital fund so the expense okay so under the current Revenue we've got $5.3 million that we received okay and remember the amended budget projects us going out towards the to the end of June so we've got 5.3 in
097we've spent 6.3 there's still more Revenue to come in that category so that's why there's a difference that we feel that's going to be made up towards the end of the year so we're eating money out of our Capital fund balance as well then because our expenses and revenue are under about 900,000 if you want to look at it on a monthly basis yes yeah by the end of the year that's yes that's at the end of the year because we're about end ofy okay so then with that do we have go to the very last slide before questions if you can here yes so we know at the end of the year we're projected at 18 million some change I don't know what the exact number is off the top of my head what
098is the total fund balance you are projecting based on the amended budget and if you don't have that today I understand for general fund and special fund because at the end of the day as a board that is the most important one that we are looking at because we cannot transfer anything from capital projects or Debt Service so all of our salaries and all that stuff is coming out of those two funds so what is those two numbers projected to be June 30th okay and I don't have that number right here I need to just dive into it and we we'll get that to you got if we can get them for all four funds because I think it will just help us understand because we just know we're going to have a we're going
099to go into debt service fund by $900,000 so I guess for me it's important to know how much you project at the end of the year in service fund balance we know between General and special fund we're going to spend $6 million more mhm I guess I want to know yes we know have $18 million in the fund balance but if it's all in capital projects that doesn't make any difference if we only have $6 million in general fund and special fund that means we're going to have a fund balance of 0 which is a very different situation so I'm not saying those are realities I if we don't know where we're going it's just hard for me to know so if you can get us the general fund special fund projected Capital project fund
100and Debt Service fund based on the projected budget for June 30th this week that' be great just so we can dive in and really understand where are we going with all of this okay and Dr P Walker emailed earlier and asked this for for next presentation did you want that prior to or or is it okay to include that when we talk about if we can have it because that's for this year's budget we need it obviously for next year's budget obviously has to have the starting balances which should be the same as the ending balances the ending balances should because obviously we know this year there was a gap right there was a 32 32 million number somewhere and it's really 24 million that created some of these issues as we dove into it
101so we want to make sure our number on June 30th matches July 1st so if we know before July first the preliminary budget what it's going to be then what way we can make sure as a board our June 30th number and our July 1st number sink sure I think uh Mr Tyson had a question first and then Mr Bailey hey Dr s um again we we speak a lot about just making sure that we're very transparent and uh that we're just saying the right numbers um just a quick question because that was one of the points I wanted to make is how revenue is showing 156 our expenses is 162 that bottom line number is five 5.8 million um which is in the red or in the deficit and then you you just stated
102uh you know last year ending balance roughly around 24 million our projected ending balance this year is going to be around $1 18 million which kind of aligns with what you just said that's about a $6 million difference but we sent out a survey to our stakeholders uh about $7.7 million gap um there's there's a difference between these two numbers sure um so I'm just curious to know where that $2 million roughly $1.9 million difference so so so it's coming from and again it's it's important um let me say this we throw out a lot of numbers a lot of numbers um the $7.7 million you'll hear me talk about shortly in the pre uh preliminary budget for next year so the $7.7 million has nothing to I won't say it has nothing to do
103with uh what we're presenting here because it all rolls forward at some point but the $7.7 Million number that has gotten out or that was in the survey okay um we'll show you that math there um but that is essentially the imbalance uh between next year's projected budget okay um and where we need to grow the fund balance by 3% so I'll speak to that but that $7.7 million is another number that's different than this $6.8 million and I appreciate that I kind of figured it would be in the next presentation but for the sake of people who maybe watching and listening like wait there are the differences between these numbers CU When I saw it but thank you so much we can thank you Mr Bailey so my first uh question is or more
104of a statement out a question previous before when we when we started doing this you did a uh a decent job of giving us scenarios uh things that uh my colleague threw out was you know senior um freezes and those different things I think that's important to have those different scenarios on those different thoughts thought processes as we can get a picture of how things look okay the second uh and this is a statement um my my my colleague uh Dr Paul Walker said about you know budget cuts when it come to technology as far as programming and different things like that now we've heard teachers come up here a lot over um a span of time and talk about different curriculums and different things that aren't effective how much do do teachers really have
105a say or a voice in things that are not working because they're really affecting our budget when we're throwing out these curriculums and different things like that and it's disheartening to hear that they they they keep coming up here and it's disheartening to hear for for me personally I mean I think everybody knows like my stake in the district um that's important when we know that we have throughout countless curriculums that aren't effective and we're still paying for them M and we really need to kind of streamline that maybe that's in another slot or something like that but that's important to be said out here how much of their input is in in this budget and how we trying to move the district forward is important sure and and let me say this I don't
106have all the answers to historically those things that have been placed in the budget um I will say that you know the the budgets that um that I like to to to adopt and present obviously does include uh feedback uh from all stakeholders not just our teachers but our community and our students most importantly and so um as time goes along and as and before we adopt the final budget then we certainly want to make sure that we get all stakeholder feedback and so I think that's important I think that's important for all of my colleagues to know and understand here as well um is that numbers you bring me and I'll ask those questions is this what is you know what's best for students is this you know based on feedback and those kinds
107of things and so um you know Mr Bay I think you're 100% On Target with that comment I want to clarify too I am saying that all stakeholders are important but most of all if our teachers is doing a lot of the day-to-day routines and different things like that they know that let's just say Netflix they know that if no kids are using Netflix and most kids probably are and I know we don't have a subscription to that when I'm just throwing out different things they see Trends within their buildings more so than anybody else does and it's important that we have their voice of understanding what's really going on in buildings how we're really affecting things is this curriculum really working how it needs to work and maybe we need to visit that because
108even since I've been on the board we've thrown out a couple different curriculums and our teachers have stated that it's not effective thank you so much uh Mr Gates how would you vote on dispersements for the month to pay your bills well you you get a vote and then we're just going to do a roll call so we can hear your voice I will vote yes thank you with that does anyone need the motion read again all those in favor say I I extensions Nays eyes have it next up is uh the preliminary budget considerations before we start I just want to say uh the board of education's been uh working in collaboration with our coacting superintendant to make sure that this process is as transparent as possible um since the budget issues have come
109up we've dedicated monthly time to get dispersements which used to be on consent agenda start educating ourselves better educating our community better where we stand we certainly do not want to make any Cuts reality is $7.7 million is going to feel every part of the organization and that is why the survey came out the board wants to hear your thoughts on it that's why there was a superintendent advisory panel board with the parents on Monday night principales met on Tuesday you staff had an opportunity this afternoon this evening the board will have their opportunity this after this evening to give our ideas for administration then come back and give General ideas next week uh next week being the 26 I apologize for that and so certainly we appreciate your engagement and concerns this is not
110a easy situation um and we want to make sure we're transparent and keeping you all involved in thec decisions the reason we're asking for stakeholder feedback particularly our our staff is that we don't there might be opportunities to save money in places that we just don't realize and every $63,000 or so saves one teacher position and so when we're talking about $7.7 million you're talking about a lot of teachers and we're not cutting all that from teachers and just because the or chart was already been approved for next year I want to be very clear we've not approved positions to be filled in every one of those areas so some of those positions that may have been approved last last week or the 28th May now because our financial situation we believe is firmed up
111to what our final number is of where our deficit is may have to not be filled for next school year and so I just want to make sure we're clear as as administration's working through things I ask that we give Grace and don't assume that things that have been approved on an or chart mean every single one of those positions will be filled for next school year because now we have a firm number of where we were working at when we were looking in December the number was closer to $2 million and so there's a big difference between two and 7.7 and so we have to be more mindful as we're working towards things of where we're at it is very hard when we are looking at names when we're deciding positions to be cut
112the goal of the board is to look at the overall organization what is best for the organization and try to look at positions and how the District can operate we care about every single one of our students and staff members none of us on this board want to have to Rift one single person reality is people are going to have to be rifted we cannot get out of this by eliminating paper and paper clips as I would say we are deep down and I do believe as we hear some ideas we will have to dive deeper into more long-term planning to how we can get more fiscally stable to offer healthier raises at a later on which we also cannot I do not think it's fair for us to shake up the whole District in
113two months without any Community input to the degree that it needs to do if you're talking about major restructuring again we are not at a place now to gather enough Community feedback in my opinion to be able to get us there but we recognize there might be differing viewpoints on how we handle this we welcome the opportunity to hear everything in the uh uh priority of transparency based on comments tonight I've asked Dr PW Walker all survey respons will be posted on the district website in the coming week or so so everyone can see every response that was submitted because there's nothing we are hiding we want to make sure everyone knows what was submitted if someone submitted no names are attached we want to make sure everyone can go through there and look at
114that if they desire because there's no secrets in addition Dr P Walker and Mr Mitchell will be following up with Miss Bell prior to the final recommendation to work through a collaborative conversation with FF Nea which does not mean they will agree on the final recommendation but they will have a conversation before the board has a final say in the matter so they will be Miss Bell they'll be reaching out to you to set up a time to collaborate on their final recommendations to go through there to think through one last time as a thought partner in this work as we move forward with the 24th is really the deadline uh for us to get everything posted to the board for 26 on the vote so again I just want to reiterate at this stage
115there's no final decisions being made the district is in the process of gathering feedback and suggestions your inputs valuable towards this work tonight work we are not talking about decisions or rationale behind certain things because at this point there's no decisions made so the conversation tonight is for the board to kind of hear some initial things look at the preliminary budget and then offer our suggestions about what we want the administration to look at as well and then next board meeting they will come with a rationale for every item that's being cut the board will be able to go in and have feedback and questions about why this over this we'll have options as well as other things outside the point .7 to address raises or other things or adding to the fund balance what
116the board chooses but tonight's conversation is really to give us a quick glance of what the final number is how Dr Singleton got to that number and then for the board to be able to hear about the process so far Dr P Walker will chime in and let us know about what are they doing with all this feedback and how they're going to come to the recommendations then the board will have a chance to chime in and give our own recommendations for administration to look at they will start this process tomorrow of making their going through their final recommendations to get to at least the 7.7 million so thank you in advance Dr Singleton thank you again um so let me start by simply saying this um as Dr Martin mentioned next meeting on the
11726th um is going to be the final preliminary budget tonight is just very high level okay we're not going to get into bog down into all the details uh but tonight is just very much a highlevel conversation I will say that there have been some uh Cuts uh and some things have been addressed that are included in tonight's preliminary numbers uh but the a a much more detailed and a much more formal um uh preliminary budget will be uh uh presented to the board uh in two weeks um that really encompasses all of every everything that we've been having these discussions um staff um purchase Services supplies benefits Capital outlay all of those things uh will be there so let me just proceed um can we get the uh Budget on the screen all right
118um so this is our preliminary budget which is very high level all right and I just want to talk to it from a revenue and expenditure standpoint if I could Point everybody's attention to the final three columns okay and Main mainly the two columns that are in green one says 2526 preliminary budget and one says talking points those are the two um picture or the two columns that I'd like to just really um call your attention to and really spend some of our time and focus on so on the revenues preliminarily for next year and as we know more between now and June 30th some of this could change and and Dr Paul Walker do your point as we learn more about senior freezes and those impacts it's possible that some of those numbers could
119play a role uh in where we land when we adopt the final budget so on the revenue side if you look at revenues right now preliminarily next year we're looking at about $150 million why is that number different from any of the previous numbers uh that we've seen well the main piece of that or some of that uh some of the decline in local all right um has to deal with and again when we looked at the amended budget we realized that there was interest that we had budgeted for that's not there okay so some of that interest has to come out and and a more realistic interest number will be included in the preliminary budget um when we go down to look at County revenues State revenues for instance okay those numbers all right
120attendance is going to play a factor in those State numbers the biggest driver uh of that basic formula happens to be attendance and so a lot of assumptions have to be made all right we're probably not going to be at 9090 attendance by the end of this year we're probably not going to be there and so we've got to assume that our attendance is going to be consistent all right Federal programs is the biggest piece all right that's the biggest drop and if you've looked at the past several years in the school district um we have had Esser funds that are no longer a part of any of these budgets and so our title funds should be very consistent I think we heard it on the msba presentation we've heard Dr Pew walker uh speak
121that as well that our title allocation should be fairly consistent with where they are on this year all right so overall on the revenue side okay minus the Esser funds minus where we may land with attendance minus uh you interest that we're not going to receive we're projecting about $150 million on the revenue side going into the expenses side where salary and benefits are okay um I reached out to the insurance carriers and asked for a preliminary estimate on where are we going to be with insurance next year all right um they've share with me some of their best scenarios and we're going to see maybe an eight uh 8 to 9% increase in insurance cost okay um and so we have to factor those numbers in some some increases uh I think I've heard
122Dr Martin say 15% at the college okay but ours is probably going to come in at about 8% so we've got to factor an increase in in the benefit cost for next year let me speak to the salaries all right before we could uh you know the the directives and the direction that that we wish in okay was to what was what will salaries look like with no increase this preliminary budget assumes no increase it assumes that everybody's salary next year will remain the same will remain flat okay sure there'll be Cuts okay but at this particular point in time this budget does not include any salary increases for anyone the purchase services that number um right now is less than it has been in the amended budget okay and we're steady chopping away at
123that number we're going south on purchase Services uh we're getting we're we're we're figuring out where we could scale back on some things all right and the survey is bringing a lot of those things out uh the cost of caterings and those kinds of things all of that so that purchase service number right now okay will probably be a little bit different than it is in two weeks if you look at General supplies that number's coming down okay um we're going to use title monies at this point to make some purchases as long as it's in their title Plans by the end of the year uh but we're going to uh those General Supply numbers are going to come down uh as well Capital outlay we're going to do less Capital outlay uh in the
124next year's budget okay um and there's some other things that we call other there all right so right now expenditures are looking at about 155 million so revenues of 150 million expenses of 155 million if you look you'll see -4.7 million that's in one fiscal year all right so we're going to start with 18 million 18.9 and we're going to go down another $4.7 million okay now under talking points I bring the same Revenue over and then I drop expenditures okay to $147 million all right the board has shared and and pretty soon there's going to be a policy on fund balance we've got to remain compliant with the policy policy says we need to have a minimum of 15% fund balance these numbers in no way get us to 15% and what the board
125is considering is allowing us to grow instead of going from 9% overall projected okay that maybe we can get to uh uh um you know 12% or maybe we can increase it by three points percentage points rather than trying to get to the whole uh 15% in one year to get to 15% in one year my friends is going to be painful to get to the 7.7 is going to be painful so that we all know the 7.7 comes from the 4.7 you see in this column under the 155 million plus the 3 million additional that has to be cut okay in order for us to increase our fund balance so if you look at the very bottom under the orange column it says $7.77 4 million that is the $7.7 million different from some
126of the other numbers okay but that's the 7.7 150 million in in uh revenues 155 in expenditures and that's what we have been been been meeting to cut and trim expenses okay we have certainly been meeting with the Union my prayer is that some kind of way we figure out how to give the teachers a raise because they deserve a raise okay uh but those numbers are not included in this particular preliminary budget here I want to be very transparent I want anybody to leave here saying that there's a raise included in this budget it is not okay so 15 million on revenues 155 million on expenditures and again these preliminary projections depend on so many factors I wish I was a magician okay but but there are so many factors and considerations that go
127into these numbers desie has to do what they are supposed to do our people H our our our our constituents and families have to pay their taxes all right businesses have to stay fluent in this community if somebody a major manufacturer leaves this community we're in trouble I'm saying that publicly Dr Martin I know you you're going to hold me to these numbers but I'm telling you Dr Paul at Thurman you know so so again all of these factors have to be there's a lot of assumptions in this budget and I want to be clear we're going to we're working day and night to make sure that we've got good firm numbers but 7.7 is the number tonight it's going to be different in two weeks it's going to be different because we've already begin
128to identify further cuts that need to be made all right so uh roughly uh a 9% fund balance and if you take away debt Services out of the equation okay that number gets less Maybe 88.8% by my calculations but we're going to get better numbers we're going to get firm numbers so the board can have a little bit more confidence what's going on here again the preliminary budget says we are going to have to borrow we're going to borrow next year we're going to borrow deeper than we did this year okay so I want to be sure that all of this information is captured I'm going to ask my colleague Ryan deem to come forward he's going to speak briefly on enrollment because enrollment is very important when you're putting together a budget of this
129magnitude so Mr Dame will you please come forward and speak to us briefly about enrollment projections thank you Dr Singleton hello board so in speaking about our enrollment projections this year for the last 15 or so years we've used a combination of different projection methods depending on the grade level however all data came from our student information system based on the September count day which is the day that desie uses for for our official enrollment but it came from Tyler CIS or whatever we had before Tyler CIS would you like me to go into those specific grade level and how we came up with any of those or do you want me to continue with the summary okay just the summary is fine okay so this year we when we did these projections we noticed
130the projection was much higher than expected the enrollment projection through examination we found a coding error with our program based on the change to Infinite Campus from Tyler CIS this ER counted students more than once as well as students that enrolled after the September count dat we then identified that there were previous years where there were duplicate students counted as they were enrolled in more than one school at the same time for instance a student was at duain and transferred to hypothetically Robinwood well the transfer wasn't put in place so that student was actually had dual enrollments two different enrollments so identifying these issues we transition to a simplified and more consistent approach this year the new method applies the same strategy across all schools and grade levels three years of historical data for each
131school and grade level are used a linear trend is applied to the project to project the upcoming years's enrollment the data source has been standardized to the official enrollment accounts available from the Desi C data collection system enrollment report that show taken on the last Wednesday of September each year the previous method required different calculations depending on the grade level in the school type making it complex and difficult to interpret direct rollovers also didn't account what we did previously direct rollovers also didn't account for a transient population and major shifts between school years where many students would move between district and School boundaries the new method followed a consistent approach across all grade levels and takes into account recent Trends in enrollment this aligns with approaches used by a lot of other districts in the
132area Francis how being one of them we tested using four more years of historical data and found that using three years produce the most accurate projections by using Desi's official count date we ensure consistency and data collection and remov discrepancies discrepancies that may arise from varying data sources just like what our board member said earlier when you're looking at numbers whether it's dollar signs or students or teachers you need to be able to go back and say where these these numbers came from now we can go back to our Desy count date and say these are where our enrollment projection numbers came from this is how we came up with this instead of having each grade level having its own Trend based on if it's a second grade going to third grade and School boundaries
133in addition a three-year linear trend is commonly used for projecting student enrollment because it provides a balance between capturing recent Trends and avoiding short-term fluctuations I have all kinds of reasons and Analysis on why this method is better and why we're switching to this method I'll wait to see if you have questions for that with that you can see our projected enrollment up here for next year is 8,778 students I have some current enrollment here just to give you some some baselines so our Desi core data enrollment report for the 2024 25 school year in October this is that September count date so we when he send our numbers from desie and they get all cleaned up it was 8,762 that number combined with the previous two years of our September count date gave us
134using that three-year trend line gave us our projected enrollment of 8,778 students to give you an idea on what our current enrollment is so in February we have to send core data to Desi again with our enrollment in Fe so in October again that number was 8,762 kids in February it was 8,678 kids today when we look at Infinite Campus in Tableau it's 8,671 kids so this is all roughly pretty much the same give or take less than 100 kids from October to February to today and we do have a transient student population we can see that when you look at our transient percentage numbers I can show you if You' like it another time but we have a lot of students moving into schools and moving out of schools and moving into the district
135and moving out we have some students that have moved in and out of the district three or four different times just this school year so our enrollment can be different from day to day today because of that reason so with that that again that is how we got our projected enrollment of 8,778 and I feel more confident in this projected enrollment than I than I've seen I've been in this position for three years now like I said going back 15 years we've used that other method this is the most confident I've ever I've ever been in a projected enrollment do you have any questions on enrollment while we'll get to questions after Dr Singleton okay thank you thank you okay thank you Mr Dean um our next slide again just talks about some key considerations
136of very quickly here again in the re um revenues again kind of a line we did a pretty good job of going through the amendment budget and really TR out or seeing what's there um again it does not include exclus eser funds uh attendance is going to be a major factor uh when we look at revenues again salary and benefits are consistent with the amended budget for this year meaning there's no increases uh Necessities such as health and District Insurance must be accounted for okay um significant reductions in purchase services and supplies we've already started that work um and so again uh in the next two weeks we will will be able to present some further reductions in those categories uh I mentioned again uh the fund balance again uh the board is is considering
137or or hopefully will consider uh maybe a 2 to 3% increase in the fund balance rather than the full you know whatever the full motion is the full uh percentage could be five or 6% uh depending on where those project ctions land uh and again tonight I I hope I was very clear about the $7.7 million in cuts that are necessary in order to achieve this goal uh and go of course uh under suggestions obviously we have to Prior prioritize achieving a balance budget at some point a balance budget says you're bringing in more revenues than your expenses and that's where you should always be that's how you grow a fund balance is to bring more revenues and expenses and right now that's the the cause if you will of our fund balance uh going
138the opposite direction we've got more expenses than we have revenues at this point okay so I will pause I know there's another presentation Dr P Walker will be giving some additional considerations but is now the time to ask questions or would you like to wait till the yes we'll ask questions uh thank you Dr Singleton Mr Dean certainly appreciate so for bore just let you know this is just for understanding of how we got to the $7.7 million this is not about any of the cuts that will be talked about in the next presentation um you talked about the emment projections and how we get there and just want to reemphasize this is before any raises a correct the $7.7 million and B that assuming the board will approve a 2 or 3% increase instead
139of the full policy increase of 15% we'll start with Dr Paul Walker if there's any questions for Dr Singleton Mr deem if not you can pass we'll go all the way down this way I don't have anything at this time thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you uh we're going to take a 5 minute recess to use the restroom because the next topic is going to be a heavy one and so I want to make sure that we're able to give our undivided attention we'll return back at 8 uh e e e Dr PW Walker Mr Mitchell cannot be here this evening and so Dr PW Walker is one of the co-acting superintendent will be filling Us in about kind of the process the feedback the
140timeline all of those things and the board will have a chance including Mr gates to offer any suggestions we want to add to the list of things to explore for the final recommendation on the 26th of March so again this is the opportunity for the board to be able to share our thoughts and ideas of ways to additionally reduce I know it might seem odd but we do not have a chance outside of a public forum to talk about these things and so this is our only opportunity to talk about them there's no closed door meeting about these conversations these are all open topics so therefore we have to be able to have a place to have these conversations which is why we LED ourselves to doing that tonight Dr PW Walker good evening board
141staff and community members tonight we want to share our extensive efforts we've made to engage our stakeholders in addressing the financial challenges facing our district we have intentionally sought input from multiple sources parents staff students and community members uring that all voices are heard tonight we would like to hear from our board transparency and collaboration have been our priorities throughout this process on Saturday we launched a stakeholder survey inviting feedback on cost-saving ideas and District priorities we collaborated with our FF Nea president to ensure membership participation over 1,100 thoughtful responses have been submitted reflecting the Deep care and investment our community has in the success of our schools stakeholders have offered insights concerns and Creative Solutions helping shape our approach to budgetary adjustments on Monday March 10th we had a superintendent parent advisory council meeting
142in this meeting we provided an overview of our finances and heard directly from families about the impact of potential budget adjustments and they provided iCal feedback on what matters most to them their children during this time we also reinforce the importance of advocacy with parents committing to engage with local legislators on education policies that affect our funding there are currently two property tax bills up for approval that would lessen the amount of school district school district receives to support our programming while costs continue to increase House Bill 87 and 594 the majority of our uh operating budget is derived from local funding as you just heard we also made them aware that though St Louis County residents pay more in state taxes less of those State funds support our schools therefore we need you and
143them to call your representatives and ask that they not approve these bills they would lower the personal property tax amounts for everyone and that would be a less amount that the school district would receive we also ask um for you to ask them why such a small amount of our state taxes support our schools in urban areas but fund more in rural areas I'll say that again in St Louis County we pay more for personal property taxes and across the state we all pay for state taxes but as you've heard the percentage that is brought into our district related to State funding is minuscule and that is not the case in our rural areas so please be an advocate for our school district and reach out to your reg to your representatives during our principal
144meeting on Tuesday they received a financial overview as well a list of possible cost saving measures and were able to present additional items for consideration prior to to this meeting right around the corner staff added to our gallery walk where they received some of the themes that have begun to emerged from the survey chimed in with more information posted questions listed staff who might be specialists in an area and provided more feedback I want to say again that all of the comments have been extremely thoughtful I've received several emails from people going into more detail of about their particular expertise and or things that they believe will save the district money and will help us to move forward there were again many themes that came out of this our staff's expertise is invaluable in identifying
145operational efficiencies and quality instructional strategies tonight we bring this discussion to the board sharing Collective feedback to ensure student and staff success remains at the Forefront of our decisions we are committed to strategic student- centered solutions that preserve the Integrity of learning environments while addressing fiscal realities we recognize that Personnel costs make up the largest portion of our budget to minimize disruptions while maintaining instructional quality we are reviewing potential cost savings ideas many of these possibilities were listed in our survey many of them have been um included included in staff responses and as I snuck down the hallway before this meeting several of them are on the wall so again I thank all of you for your um input so we discussed and or it was posted reducing administrative roles to prioritize direct student support
146um we've talked about attrition and retirements Etc all of those things are being discussed the possibility of hiring freezes of what is listed in the survey as non-essential positions and I'm thankful that someone did ask the definition of that and while we're working through this process what we said was that these things are that these particular positions while we know all positions are valuable they may not directly be tied to the district's core functions of instruction student safety or legally mandated Services we also found uh that limiting overtime and extra duty pay were a possibility a difficult reality is the need to increase student to teacher ratios in secondary schools which may lead to a reduction in positions some classes have limited course selections and therefore smaller class sizes surveys have indicated long-term Solutions like
147eliminating eight block reconfiguring school grade uh structures and moving administrative offices to existing buildings we are committed to minimizing and instructional impact by identifying strategic areas for adjustment professional learning is essential however we must temporarily temporarily reduce professional development travel expenses we will prioritize in District training virtual learning and peer-led professional development using the mandated 1% and title 2A which is what our SE ERS have requested optimizing School structure and resource allocations is key per survey data we are considering merging steam Academy middle and steam at McLure South Berkeley into a single central location shifting Staffing and resources from Innovation High which has approximately 150 students and accommodating them in comprehensive high schools with additional supports reviewing consultant agreements and contracts to determine if they can be cancelled renegotiated verifying utilization and completing program evaluations
148to determine their effectiveness with increasing Transportation costs and limited Desi reimbursements we are considering reducing busing tiers to improve efficiency consolidating routes where possible and exploring alternative transportation solutions for mcken vento we are also examining our curricular and extracurricular offerings to ensure alignment with student needs and financial sustainability which may involve restructuring programs consolidating activities and reviewing rental facility fees for sports and this came up out of the survey where people question why we were um paying rental fees for tennis courts and soccer fields at JJ we propose centralizing Supply ordering to the advantage of bulk pricing that is a process that we have had in this district for several years but when we um identify or we look into it a little further very few places are actually utilizing that and we know that
149that could be a huge cost savings if we're not doing the simple Amazon swipe but we're actually utilizing the supports and resources that are already in our warehouse and we have a good system for making sure that people can place those orders and get those things directly to schools utilizing our district warehouse for inventory control and cost savings reducing redundant purchases across schools we understand that these are difficult conversations they have been extremely difficult conversations our commitment remains to keep students at the center of every decision while being fiscally responsible these decisions require careful planning data driven analysis and a commitment to maintaining high quality education despite Financial constraints as we conclude we welcome the board's guidance and the community's continued engagement the survey remains open until tomorrow morning at 10: a.m. before I transfer
150this over to the board I do want to talk a little bit about the process that we'll be using related to all of the um data that we've received so again to ensure a data driven transparent and Equitable approach to addressing our financial challenges we will implement the following structure process for analyzing stakeholder feedback from the survey parent discussions and staff gallery walk for the survey we we have begun and will continue to export all responses into a spreadsheet for sorting and filtering categorize feedback by key themes for example Staffing Transportation professional development facility usage Etc under parent advisory feedback we have already transcribed and summarized their discussion points we've identified parent concerns and suggestions related to proposed um cost-saving measures and we also provided them the information for their representatives and their Senators so
151that they could absolutely be an advocate for our district that information went out in their minutes um last evening under the gallery walk walk input I saw several teachers running around taking pictures and we will do the same to collect staff responses from interactive feedback stations we will organize that feedback by strengths concerns and alternative ideas there will be then be cross functional review of the information and um basically we will identify the top trends in state preferences measure the percentage of stakeholders who support or oppose key processes and again as I said identify the themes of reoccurring concerns one of the things that we did find as we have been looking through some of the data is that there are some misconceptions about things and I'm not going to go into all of them
152right now but I feel like it's very very important that we um address them in some way and so maybe that's on the site or I'm not really sure how we're going to do that right now but they're absolutely were questions and or comments that were made um where people thought that things were paid for with District funds that were plainly squarely federal funds and so technology being one of them we spent a lot of money with eser funds and Title One to ensure that we had the pieces for one to one and again I could go down a rabbit hole but as it relates to Esser if you're interested in knowing how we spent our Esser funds transparency is key in federal programs so we will threw that that theme into our district as
153well but there is a website if you go to our federal programs component of the district's page and there's two links that you could go to the first one identifies Sesser one two and three and what those purposes were for those funds and then right below that is another link that talks about how we spent all of the funds that we received during the time of covid there were several different types of Grants um that were received during that time frame and so it identifies how much we received what the allocation was how much we expended whether or not our non-public students Andor schools received any of those funds that we would have to manage and specifically what was purchased with those dollars so I I I would hope that you would take some time
154to look at those things so that that may spell a few of the myths about um how those funds were spent and um again some of the comments that were there where we were wondering how we purchase things and so um we I added something as I was sitting there um so we we would then create a summary of the stakeholder input we're going to tomorrow after 10: we will add the first items that were in the survey there were items that you could just check off we will place that information of that we'll make that information available for everyone to see tomorrow okay and so um as it relates to the comments because we absolutely want to remove names if there are some we will um create an executive summary of those particular components
155after that we will identify short-term versus long-term cost-saving strategies because I think I already said this but I'm going to say it again people were extremely thoughtful in what they posted I mean I did not feel like people were trying to you know there was a lot of Grace about the process and understanding that this is a very difficult piece for all of us for all of us so I thank you for that so um after we do that component then we will we've also got a little right in here that we will meet with the FFA president to discuss the proposals and to for her to offer some feedback related to that piece and then the next component we'll be bringing it back to our cabinet and our Board of Education to present findings
156and recommendations to the board of education at the March 26 board meeting after which time we'll complete a timeline for implementing the budget adjustments we'll Comm communicate the changes to staff families and students and then establish a feedback loop for outgoing input again transparency is key in this we want to ensure that everyone is aware of where we are which is why you'll hear him continue to talk about our finances so that we don't have people not understanding the depth of where we are and what we must do in order to rightsize this and so I'm going to stop right there um to give the board an opportunity to share their ideas and input related to how we move forward and some possible suggestions thank you Dr P Walker and certainly um as I said
157earlier as people were coming back to the room this is not an easy conversation for the board to have as well um and certainly as we offer suggestions please don't take our weight any more than any other stakeholders weight um I don't want you to think just cuz the board said it tonight that we are telling you as one person that that's what our idea is so certainly as you and your team are navigating this please don't take our seven opinions tonight as higher weight as anyone else's and I just think it's important to make sure that that is said uh just publicly and and with that and I do uh appreciate before we get into questions I think after we get through this budget and we get to the proposals it would be a
158good idea for maybe the administration to come out with an a uh myth and faction sheet so as you dive through some of those comments to publicly then address some of those myths with the actual fact that way we're are transparent with everything that we do I don't expect that anytime soon because we need to get through this we need to finish up negotiations there's other things we need to finish up but I I think it'd be nice for the community and in the board to know here are some myths out there and here's the actual facts so that way we are addressing that because again otherwise we'll continue to be a myth and we'll never misspell it I will start with uh we're going to start in the middle this time with Mr Gates
159um and then we're going to go to the left to the left then the right then the right so we're going to the left and loop all the way around this way if that's good with the board so Mr Gates feel free this is your chance to share all right so um I have a couple of questions about some of the um ideas that you presented um on the previous slide so could you go back to that for me please it's fine I'll just pull it up all right so um it says that you are going to reduce some of the extracurricular activities so I just wanted to know what are the some of the activities that you were thinking about reducing like would it be more sports or some of the clubs that are
160in our schools so for this evening I'm not prepared to share exactly which extracurricular activities because I don't have all of that information I will tell you that this is an item that has surfaced in our survey and um as we relate to that I'm GNA actually stop right there because that is that is the truth of the matter yes um so also I just wanted to know it says that you're going to reduce the transportation services I just wanted to gain some more clarity on what busing tiers are is my friend in the building still let's see here I don't know that he is still here so Kevin Pang may be in the building but as it relates to the tear because we have I'm sorry he's upstairs okay someone's gon to grab him
161because he can explain this a lot better than I can but because of the um great level spans that we have pk2 schools 35 schools sixth grade centers da da we've got all of these breakouts that's why you see our buses crisscrossing in the streets right there's like a 30-minute uh space in between um those start times and so um schools are together are going together at certain times and so for each of the time frames that school starts it's considered a tier and so right now we're on four tiers um part of the conversation that comes up in our surveys is where when people start talking about going back to K5 or you know changing up some of the setups as it relates to grade spans of schools that could possibly lessen the number
162of tiers in our district um also I want to say one of the primary factors that really influences attendance is like the students motivation to be there at school and you know when you when you decrease the extracurricular activities and you increase the student the teacher ratio it might be more you know they might be less enthusiastic about attending school and I know some students only attend school to attend these extracurricular activities they have to be present in class to go to practice they have to be present in class to go to these clubs and as we all know attendance is a significant source of revenue for the district so I think that we should really try to find a solution that not only maintains High student motivation but can also fit into some of
163these budget constraints that we're facing that's all I have we are in agreement with you I think um part of where that comes from is um related to Transportation there are two different ways that we are funded with Transportation there is a reimbursable trip when we take the bus out and then there's a non-reimbursable trip our reimbursable trips are from picking up kids from going from home to school and from school back to home any other trip that we have so that's field trips that's summer school that's sporting events that's Athletics that literally every other trip that we take is not reimbursable right right I can promise you many of these things I was not aware of until I took on this role but that's a lot of money and so we really have to
164I mean as we get through this process I'm I'm processing personally how do we allow our students to have the things that they need and that motivate them to be in school but also keep our budget in check and so you know a part of that could possibly be I think I'm going where I'm not supposed to go but could possibly be where we have a a cap on how many each school could have I think right now it's sort of we are ready to go someplace and we go we have to remember that every trip costs us money every trip and we do not get reimbursed for what is not hom school back every other trip costs the district money and since you brought it up related to the reimbursables the governor decides every
165year when he creates that budget how much they're going to place in transportation for the year right you hear that on the news Governor has created this budget it typically doesn't include all that it needs in order to fund all of these trips so they put a a dollar amount in there and we may get 30% reimbursed right from the school home school situation maybe we might get 60% this year so again every every item costs us money right and we have got to be very intentional about how we identify what we're going to put aside in a budget for each school and for each event sorry for going there thank you Mr Gates I'll just remind the board we're giving suggestions as well I appreciate our student rep can have as much conversation as
166he wants cuz he gets that but certainly I know if there's some clarifying question but just want to focus on the part about suggestions thank you Miss D okay um so just I'm just G to go right into I I do want to say this this one piece I I just want to say this it's not any questions about it but what I do want to say is that although we know hindsight is 2020 and it would have been fabulous to start the process of engaging our stakeholders sooner rather than now um I do appreciate the time the thought and the energy that has really gotten to this um I am very impressed with the plan that you all have already um have for how you plan to take all of this feedback and how
167you plan to report it to the community um and there's just a lot of thought that's really gone into this in a very short period of time um with um what has been I know for me just one of the hardest times of my own life so I can only imagine for everyone in the district for those who are coming up with these ideas um and so I just I really just want to say thank you to you and your team for for this it's very impressive just what you have turned around with right now with what we're doing with our community with that being said um I don't have a whole lot of I don't have a lot of extra ideas to offer that haven't already been said maybe earlier in this evening or
168aren't on this list um I do want to say just you have on here and we heard earlier that I I'm hopeful that we really are able to look into programs I know we're going to look at um what what is the title of it our next presentation that we have the academic achievement presentation and so as we're doing as fast to turnaround of program evaluations as we can possible we have the data that shows where we're at we need to really be looking at what we can cut there um as far as some of that programming I understand that we have contracts and I don't know all the ins and outs of contracts but I just being in financial crisis I'm hopeful that there are ways that we can make some adjustments there um
169one idea or one thought that I do have and I did submit this on my survey this weekend when it came in um is very similar to um Mr Gates's point we know how important attendance is when it comes to our funds and I think that something we can consider whether it's I don't know if this is long term is before and after school care I realize that that is something that we have to have people to staff but it is something that people can pay for and it's going to get our kids to school and it's going to have a a safe place before school a safe place after school and so when we're thinking about attendance whether it's for our primary grades our principal that my daughter goes to she does a great
170job each week in the weekly email she sends out our attendance report and we can see when we dip when we go up you know a half a percentage when we go down two percentages each week we can see that and when we're sitting at 70% for a peak to school you know I just I wonder how impactful before and after care can be I also wonder when we're thinking about attendance before and after care how much does this affect our secondary Scholars we know that there are some kids who are coming to school late every day because they are having to be home to get their younger ones onto the bus that is affecting our attendance and again I know that it costs something and I know that I've said before in aftercare multiple
171times since I've been on this board I just think that there is something there that can potentially help us so that was one piece I mentioned the programs I mentioned the hindsight of I I think that the way that we're going about it like I already sorry I'm just trying to make sure that I'm catching everything that I have in my notes the way that we're going about it to bring the community in um is really working to make as Mr Peterson earlier said Mr Peterson said earlier our budget um our moral document we're really looking at what are priorities of our communities and I do think that you can do that and be fiscally responsible at the same time I don't think that they're mutually exclusive so I wanted to add that and then
172that's it thank you thank you for your comments as it relates to before and after care we do have um free before and after care and for of our sites um through unleashing potential and there are three five schools that have those but typically in the I put out a survey to our to our families asking them whether or not they would utilize the resources in services and we have not had good feedback related to wanting to expand before and after care we used to have the YMCA in our district we used to have um boys and girls club we used to have unleashing potential unleashing potential has stayed on because they have a 21st century Grant so that's how I got involved in it it's their Grant I help them to write it and
173I help them them to expand it if there is a need I just had a meeting with them the week before last it was in my board report um and uh they they asked that I do that survey again so the survey comes again out in the fall asking for input from parents on whether or not they would utilize them many of them say they utilize the support of their um family members and so that is why we have not expanded their service and why other um vendors thirdparty vendors YMCA and boys and girls club why they left because they did not have enough students for them to be able to pay their staff and honestly this is continuing to go on even with unleashing potential so as they are beginning to write their grant
174for next year to prepare to write the grant for next year their um ask of me was to get parent feedback within that survey about whether or not they would be willing for their students to go to um Emmanuel Church Emanuel Lutheran Church is that right it's the church right across the street from vot okay so yes so they have a space there already and so what they're saying is because we're struggling to keep staff and they're very similar they're struggling to keep staff and also because our numbers are declining related to the number of people that are participating after care they would rather have the service at that one location and then they would be willing to Rite into their Grant the transportation for the children to be brought there I appreciate that that's
175the first time that I've really heard um what it's looked like I know that we've had surveys in the past and we knew that it wasn't as much of a need especially um postco um so I just appreciate you sharing that perspective thank you thank you I'm going to try to dispel all the myths that I can thank you Miss Mr Tyson yes um really I just have one because I just repeat everything that she said great work um just curious though first question um if we were to implement everything on this list will we get to the 7.7 not yet okay then the second question um on here you have merging the steams okay great idea uh but steam middle is in this building so moving students out of this building does not necessarily
176cut cost in this building because the lights will still be on for administration um just a suggestion have we looked at the possibility of merging steam high with Innovation um because steam high is built I believe for 800 kids um so there's a whole Wing that Innovation could operate as a separate School within that school just a thought just a suggestion of what that cost would look like thank you thank you uh Mr Bailey yeah I don't uh really have a lot of thoughts I want to get some more understanding and get some more you know when the when the rest of the uh uh surveys and things come in but one thing I am going to say is more of a comment as we all know I think you know we all all the
177board members kind of have certain things that they're very passionate about and one of the passions that I'm very passionate about are community and Community Resources one of the things that as far as the feedback is we're asking the community to kind of help us deter what kind of cost they saving but I don't think we're asking the community what kind of help they can give us and what I mean by that is is that if we put a ass to the community when it comes comes to resources and programs and different things that we can help with the reduction of uh extracurricular activities those things are important it's a lot of people that literally will step up for this community if the ass was made and I think that's important to keep on reiterating
178as we look through gaps because they can come in and they people have grant money to help with School attendance because it affects their bottom line people have grant money to take kids on activities uh because it affects their bottom line uh people have kid people have money in their budget to help with food shortages and different things like that to even help uh with uh laundry and and those different factors so I think it's important to not only ask the community for help but also ask the community what they what what help they can provide whether it's churches whether it's whatever and that's important to kind of help with the gaps um and that's what I would like to see kind of moving forward is we have all these different things but what what
179gaps are we missing how can we you know build relationships saying you know look for different grants and things like you did as far as because a lot of people do they they use our our numbers to help fa I mean they they use our numbers to help you know facilitate grants but the important thing is that our kids get the help that they need um free book bag help you know free health care those different things matter I think it's important to keep on having those conversations of what's of what that really looks like because that's the only way that's going to help move this District forward is because you're always going to have a need and you're always going to have a gap in resources but what does that look like as we
180merge with different people like little bit foundation and those different resources are bringing those uh different things that they can bring to help build our community let's revisit what the Boys and Girls Club look like because at least the kids can have access to different environments and they can be taken out of this this this County and being able to go and expand their own Horizon so I'm very big and very passionate on looking like what that could look like to help really help push our district in the right way thank you for your comments again at our Monday night's parent advisory meeting there were um people there that were doing exactly what you just said they said what are your asks so the first ask was advocacy so I'm going to say that again
181and I feel like maybe somewhere on our website I'm going to put that information about those bills that need people to turn around and tell the folks no okay and if you want to write a letter or an email do that as well um but also Pastor Adams at New Jerusalem Church in Ferguson voed the importance of reaching out to local businesses and churches and asking for support I'm reading directly from the minutes from our meeting and I believe she's in the back of the room but I have to put my glasses on in order to see but we shouted her out last time Teresa Davis got on the horn and the same day I believe reached out right and he is excited about getting us backpacks and whatever else it is that we need
182he asked for a wish list of the things that we need in the district and he uh indicated that there are several people in our community just as you've stated that want to support us and I appreciate that and one thing that you know I know to be true is that we always say advocacy but we have to educate correct our families and our community on what advocacy looks like and as a district we have to be a great Steward of doing that and that's something that I feel like is a very big area of improvement within our district because you can't ask people to advocate for what they don't really know what to advocate for because policies are written in legal Lees that is not that is difficult for anybody to understand unless you
183have a background in it so that's something I think that is very very important as we move forward because advocacy is going to be a crucial part in our in our uh development as as our district grows and improves but we also have to understand that if we ask and we want people to Advocate what are we advocating for and bringing people in to kind of educate us on what that really means for our community thank you Mr Bailey Miss Dr P Walker thank you um so I was going to ask the same thing about steam you've already addressed that I I want wondered about I think this is a uh something that's already being talked about the going kind of going back to having more grades in the same building like prek even through
184six um I um wanted to ask a question about restoration and wellness I know one of the things on here was the possibility of reducing the staff at restoration and wellness and what I was going to ask about was that's on here right it is okay I was going to ask um if we have looked at how restoration and wellness is doing with their current staff only because they have um some of our more vulnerable students there so I was curious um before putting this on here was there already some kind of a look at them to say yeah we really believe based on how they've been functioning they can do without some of their staff or uh is just again like you said earlier just putting things on a list and kind of thinking
185about it so we are absolutely thinking about all of these things we are absolutely um doing the research and the behind the scenes work in order to gain more information as you know just a few months ago my whole job was Federal programs and so I am learning a lot more about a lot of other things that have taken place in our district and um and just finding the research about uh I'm going to leave it at that getting the research around Staffing the cost of Staffing as we all know a big portion of any of our space is our staff um the the resources that we utilize within them where a place is related to the rest of our buildings within our district so back to that transportation thing how much back and forth
186do buses have to do is it a standalone space or is it a space so we've been looking at many of those things thank you you're welcome thank you Dr Thurman okay um I've looked at this from maybe about four or five different lens is facilities uh Personnel children programs and I think that's it but as we talk about looking at facilities and looking at consolidating talking about possibly uh um consolidating um steam high with with stame mow and um looking at Innovation and looking at restoration I mean one of the biggest concerns that I have is is the facility for restoration Mark Twain needs to be um it it it has a lot of needs in that building and so I'm just wondering if there's a way that we can consolidate and maybe not
187use that that facility the other two is the gr spans too I I'm concerned about that and have been from the beginning because we have separated our families so much with that uh we've got buses going everywhere we've got parents who have kids sometimes in five different schools and so when you talk about um attendance parents are picking kids up early because they have to get to one school before in order to get another school kid out in time for a doctor's appointment or uh a kid has to pick his brother or sister up early or because they're spread so far and in so many different buildings and so we don't have the traditional uh home schools that that we used to have and I'm sure that that somehow would affect our attendance because every
188minute that a parent picks a child up early it makes a difference in our attendance absolutely and so when we look at attendance that way I I think that's that is affected and it also may affect our high school kids who have to maybe get home be in order to get their their younger siblings um also when we talk about transitions I want to talk about it student achievement uh research says that when we have all these different transitions um sometimes students don't do as well if you've got K through three and then you leave that school that community and then you go to a new community you have to learn that Community again uh you go from third grade to fifth grade you have to learn that Community then you go to fifth grade
189and then you leave that one and you go to sixth grade you that's just so many Transitions and with a district that is so transient it it's a lot it's a lot I think that we we can look at that and possibly makes some differences in in our in our our bottom line in terms of cost Personnel I um I'm just asking for everyone to have a little bit of Grace for us on the board because if you were listen to some of the comments that were made tonight some people were saying why are you asking us and others were saying why didn't you ask us or some people were saying it's better to do cut the newest first in uh who came in whoever was hired last go first and and then others are
190saying look at person personally look at each one of these people is we're not going to be able to make everybody happy and I know you all know that that's not what we have to do we have to make some some really tough decisions and please don't take it personally we're trying to do what's best for everyone and we have to make a decision we can't keep talking about it we we've got to make a decision so and for me uh I think we have been top heavy for very long in terms of Administrators um I am open to I don't have a problem with cutting from the top I want to cut as far from the bottom as possible in terms of stud students and who who is closest to our students which would
191be our our teachers so that would be my my uh my ask of the board also and I've said this over and over again I know you have heard me say this over and over again we have too many programs um we have programs on shelves that we're still paying for and I have asked over and over again are we using these um we're not getting the the board doesn't always get the answers that we need to get okay so now we're digging and we are going to be searching for these answers and we do need your feedback so um I think if we also look at those programs that we can cut back on our programs that's going to cut that's going going to cut costs um and also looking at again and some
192of these things have already been said but cutting contracts uh in vendors that we don't you know we don't we're paying sometimes things that we don't even know we're paying and it's a shame to say that but you know we have forgotten that you know like even that remember the lighting contract that we forgot about okay so we have to look into to all of those things and I think that um I think that that's it but just please have a little bit of Grace and and patience and just know that we're going to try to do what's best for for our district we love this I love this I'll speak for myself and and I will speak for my other colleagues as well we love this district and we do care about what's happening
193we wouldn't do this this is not we the pay for this is really a lot it's not but it is for me it is for me I don't need the the the money I just want to make sure that we we are living in a community where we value education and we value our schools and we're doing what's best for children and that is my entire reason for doing this for the last almost 10 years so um thank you again for your input I'm so impressed by how much feedback we've gotten on this and please do understand we are listening sometimes you all don't know what's going on in term you don't hear everything but we do listen we are listening we may not answer the way you want it to be answered but we
194do listen we're not just collecting information and and not doing anything about it it may seem that way for some of you um but that's not what we do that's a waste of my time it's a waste of your time and it's a waste of it's just a waste of time so just know that we're trying to do the best that we can do and we're trying to do what's best for kids okay thank you Dr Thurman uh first off thank you again for shifting quickly um as we had our so the board meets the president vice president secretary meet to prepare for meetings and we go over agendas and I will say I appreciate administration's willingness to shift quickly uh because this was not the original plan and as we had conversation and dialogue
195and pushing back and forth to get to a place we got to this place and so we even were meeting on Saturday to prepare for and prepare which is why you got an email late Saturday night because we changed course to say we really need stakeholder feedback and so everyone agreed on that and so I appreciate your willingness to be flexible to be transparent um I do want to clarify the board gets paid zero dollars so I know Dr Paul Walker said we get Dr Thurman said we get paid money but it's zero dollars just so for the record is I didn't say we get paid money you said a lot so I just want to make sure uh that it's clear to everyone that it is no money so I appreciate the transparency in
196this I will say um for me I'm sure you're shocked by this I have some clear cuts and I want to be clear when I start saying some ideas for me it's not personal against the individual I'm looking at we have a $7.7 million deficit in my eye central office has to be skeleton what is the core that we need to be able to operate a district and then grow back as funds come back do I believe at some point to Mr Bailey's point about asking Community what we need are we going to have to ask the community for a bond issue to raise tax levies yes do I think the community right now would pass it no we don't have the trust we've not established how we spend our money fairly we have to
197rebuild that trust to show we can have a balanced budget treat employees fairly and address the deficit before we can ask for any more money because all it says this Community member give me more money so we can not spend it the right way and so I think we need to spend it wisely get a balance budget show that we mean we can get a balanced budget and then ask the community for support at some point down the line with that I again when you start to get danger zone when we start talking about positions and I'm just going to be clear about that these are not personal not uh positional one thing I would like to see as explore as you get there again the boards weights not more than others just to be
198clear again uh I haven't heard yet is daily sub pay I know this came up last year in our budget we can't continue to pay $250 a day at the daily rate and be able to survive with that should our pay be more than others yes is 250 the right number no we just can't afford to pay it we saw the budget amendment we are almost 2 million or 1.7 million I think it was or whatever the number was that we were over for the budget so clearly that needs to be addressed um the other things is I appreciate Mr Mitchell provided to the board curriculum programs and all the programs of the district we've heard over and over curriculum programs need to cut I is one7 if there's not curriculum programs on there to
199cut you're going to be going back to the chopping block to figure out curriculum programs to cut I'm just being clear as one to7 because we've heard over and over we have programs that are sitting on shelves that are not being used but yet we keep getting asked to approved the thing it could be the world's greatest curriculum but if teachers aren't implementing it has zero impact on kids and so at the end of the day I we need to have our lawyers review contracts to see if there's ways to get out of it we are in a financial crisis and so there's opportunities to get out of things and I think Mr Murray and his team really need to be examining what is the usage what is our Core Curriculum and get rid of
200supplemental get rid of all those other things even if it's 30 50 $60,000 until we can grow that back we have a talented pool of teachers who could offer curriculum and resources and so I'm hoping that Mr Murray and his team are really looking critically at every curriculum identifying what is the core resource and only the core resource we have a legal team that we spend lots of money on every year I'm sure they'll be happy to look at contracts to see if there's ways to get out of contracts that maybe we think we can't get out of that maybe they could advise us of how to get out of some of those contracts we cannot continue to have the same programs unpopular opinion but certainly one that we've heard indirectly is I do believe
201we're at a place that we have to examine every coordinator position and lower and middle level management there's some positions that we need a flat the organization until we get financially stable for example we have several curriculum coordinators in areas all of our curriculum that I've seen so far based on the program thing we got on Saturday is all prepackaged curriculum so people are not writing curriculum therefore we we have isls and other Su can support teachers so I'm just suggesting to look at all areas of where we could shrink flatten the organization in order to get to a place I think we need to end the contract with the nurse uh pay increase pay for nurses to be able to adjust and fill all those we're paying from I heard one number from Mr
202Mitchell before almost $90,000 a year for some of our contracts for nurses but yet our nurses make nowhere near that so if there's an opportunity to adjust nurses pay while getting rid the contract certainly I think I would be in favor of that lastly I believe what I wrote uh is we've heard several times about yanner bag and uniforms um now I know I'm a little I'm not going on my Soap Box CU we're running late I wasn't a fan of uniforms to begin with I'm not a fan of uniforms now we continue to hear they're not being enforced and it's taking energy away as we are looking potentially at reducing administrative positions in the schools you cannot keep enforcing the same things when there's other behaviors to address within those schools so I'm just
203saying looking at Yonder bags and uniforms as we change policies and I do have one more that I remember which is restoration I think as we think about program evaluation I look at at some point we have to get to the fiscal piece of it we want to make sure every kid's getting education deserves a high quality education based on the numbers that Mr Mitchell provided to the board and their Sunday report 43 students currently attend restoration there's been 113 who finished this year through Credit Recovery we are spending more per pupil almost two or three times the amount than our other schools for kids at restoration I repeat every kid deserves a quality education the credit recovery we've heard some comments before I'm familiar with it it is not the highest quality of Education
204doing these virtual online click-through classes of quizzes and tests to get your credits we heard the question today why are we allowing freshmen and sophomores to do it and juniors to do it I get we want to have graduation rates we want to have kids graduating but we also want to have kids graduating who are reading and writing and doing math on grade level and we're doing a diss surface and an injustice if we're graduating kids and just teaching them how to click through a computer and they still cannot read write and do basic math and so with that one thing just to think about is all both of our high schools from my understanding have credit recovery teachers in those class in those schools the 113 kids there's no reason they cannot be in
205their home school getting the credit recovery in those SCH schools those 43 kids were at restoration we need to think through differently utilizing other buildings reducing staff how do we again maybe have 43 kids I don't know how many teachers are there but I know their class size ratio is nowhere near any other class in this entire district and if we have Mark Twain restoration at five six kids in the classroom I'm sure every teacher in this room and the classrooms would love to have five or six kids and be able to see what gains they could make in the classrooms and so we need we just every kid deserves a quality education but we need to think differently about how we provide services and things strategically because at the end of the day we
206cannot afford to spend 20 $30,000 on 43 kids while other kids are getting $8 to $9,000 of our our money and how can we still provide them services and education in a meaningful way and so with that we thank you for your time we appreciate your energy we know you have spring break and administration of spring break we hope you get a break in there at some point to be able to rejuvenate because this is tough work that's hard on the heart and the mind and we do acknowledge that so thank you so much uh Dr P Walker and we appreciate all that you're doing next up is Mr Murray [Music] thanks good evening board even all right so good evening Comm and board um looking forward to updating you all on um our benchmark
207assessments this year looking at our academic achievement and growth reflecting on some of the board's goals um for administration this year um in terms of Benchmark growth and then happy to take any uh questions about scores as well as curriculum afterwards um so we'll be talking about our assessment system we'll be looking at uh each of our different assessments um as you all may know this year the district fully transitioned to using Renaissance star for our our assessments for reading and for math um that was a shift um two years ago we started with star reading but this is the first year that we're giving star reading and star math K12 um in our district we're giving this assessment four times so tonight we'll be discussing growth from August to February Benchmark one to Benchmark
2083 um but there'll be one last Administration closer to the end of the school year for this assessment one of the board's goals uh was a 3% reduction of students scoring below basic from Benchmark one to Benchmark 3 uh we'll start off with star early literacy so this assessment is primarily given to kindergarteners first graders um sometimes second graders who are um still struggling with foundational skills um this is the only chart that I'm going to show you that goes beyond the school year this shows you the last year and a half um and the reason uh for showing this is that I think it's um it's encouraging to see how our district is trending um over the last year and a half since we've made some of the curricular shifts that we have um
209including you for phonics in the K2 range so you'll see that a year and a half ago less than 30% um of our K2 students came in testing kind of at a good level for reading at a level where we felt like they were going to go on to be successful readers um you can see at the end of last school year that almost touched 45% um and now we're trending closer to 50% so while I'm encouraged by the trend of this data and the hard work that our teachers and administrators are doing every day um and that we are making gains year over year and semester over semester um obviously we still have a work a lot of work to do because essentially what that means is about one out of every two of
210our K to1 students um are at serious risk of um essentially like falling behind in Reading uh the next chart is star reading so this is um primarily starting in grade two um all the way up to grade 12 um the three Windows against you see August you see November and then you see February um and here again we can see about a fivepoint gain in start reading this is projecting onto to the map State Benchmark so essentially star has done correlations and basically they anticipate that if we were to take the map test today we'd be looking at scoring around um 24% on uh the map ELA test this next graph shows basically each of the four map categories for Star reading so you can see um basically students getting into the proficient in
211advanced range but also um us shrinking the amount of students that are in the below basic range according to the board goals so you'll see there um that our below basic for Star reading is down about 8% from Benchmark 1 to Benchmark 3 this chart shows uh some CBM data so as a district I'm going back to Leadership Institute and our building Improvement plans um we've made a concerted effort with building principles and with teachers to get more timely data so we've talked about not wanting to wait until the map assessment in May to figure out how we do we want to figure out out on a month-to-month and week to week basis are students growing um so this assessment is basically one minute probes from grades K to six and reading that our students
212are taking typically from grades one to six it looks like grade level passages and essentially students are being benchmarked for how accurately and fluently they're reading grade level text and so again we can see a similar TR trend of 7% reduction in below basic um and a 6% increase in students meeting grade level expectations on those curricular based measurements moving on to math um we see a similar Trend here as well also note you'll see on several of the the graphs a slight um backslide from the November to February test not entirely um surprising given the amount of time that our students were out of school from winter break to snow days to water main breaks um that test really didn't come at an ideal time but due to teacher evaluation other things we kind
213of needed to get that Benchmark taken at the date when we anticipated taking it but that being stated we can still see about a 5% increase um in students projected to test proficiently or Advanced um on the map test at the end of the year based on our star math test here are the four categories again so here we can see about a 9 10% reduction um in below basic so it's encouraging to see that while we're getting students um onto grade level which is ultimately the goal we're also catching up our students who are furthest behind um a little oh there was one more here that I don't think I included um that's okay all right and basically this is looking at how um we compare this year um with our map expected proficiency
214to where we scored last year so roughly across all grade levels last year on the state map test about 19% of our students scored proficient in advance um based on our projections right now we're up 5% um in terms of students that are projected to score a proficient in advance on the ELA assessment uh which is very encouraging and then in math um we're projected to be up one point higher than last year and I also did a little bit of um digging in terms of our below basic numbers and we're basically tracking like two to three to four points um lower in terms of the number of students projected to score and Below basic which uh we're happy about as well and with that I'll pause there and happy to take any questions on
215the data um as well as any of the curricular things you all would like to discuss well thank you Mr Murray certainly appreciate the update I know we are treading the right way and we have a long way still to go to make make sure that our kids are out of below basic you may not have the question answer tonight but it just popped to my mind so if you can get it to us when you do if you have it great I'm just curious how many kids are on reading success plans I know this talks about kind of reading overall but just curious how many of our kids are on reading success plans yeah I don't have that number tonight certainly several hundred um I know that we have seen some decline in it
216since we first had to Institute them but it's certainly a substantial number um and actually basically students scoring below that St early literacy threshold that's basically what the cut off is so in that K1 range it would it probably is somewhere right right under half of our K1 students thank you we'll start with uh Miss Dunn this time and then we'll go that we'll go that way around Miss done um the only question that I have right now um is on what's slide 8 it's the graph that has the different like three different this slide right here so so and I may have missed it in your presentation um but I'm not seeing on the graph either where is this data coming from this is a star CBM assessment so as opposed to a longer
217star test where kids are answering kind of a variety of questions reading comprehension questions vocabulary questions um these are just these brief one minute assessments that we're doing with students like monthly sometimes if they're on reading ST PLS even more frequently but this is star CBM data okay so these are what and you just said it again the those one minute just quick things that they're doing so that we're getting multiple data points is what this is yes and so I and I'm just curious for my own uh I'm just wondering um it has students in three different categories here and I noticed that the red category says intervention at risk so with this program that we have where we're having these one minute assessments is there something that is goes along with it to
218do the to help with the the intervention for teachers or what is what does that look like for in the classroom or is this just like a daily type of check good question so yeah this is more like the weekly monthly type check which is just letting you one kind of figure out okay where are students falling in the buckets but then to kind of tracking their progress over time so because teachers have been giving these assessments on a monthly basis um we're able to look student by student and see really good progress sometimes that might be like you started way deep in the red but now like your trend line is looking good and it looks like by the end of the year you might exit it or we're able to see that oh
219a student moved categories as a result of their progress um so it's not the it doesn't come along with the instructional piece this is just letting us know how our instruction is working and so it's reflective of one our tier one core instruction but um also part of the reason why we've um had this emphasis on Partner reading and Pals and students reading orally to each other daily really across the district and getting feedback because that aligns very well with this assessment and so is this assessment part of a the suite it is a part of The Suite itself okay and then my I did say I only had one but I do have another question because I noticed in the presentation there were five points one of which the fifth was spring math and
220I know that that's something new that we've purchased this year um we had Imagine Learning we had that it was when we were at the steam High School um when we approved that so I was wondering what is the update on spring math unless I missed it yeah I I think I I have a older version uploaded so when I flipped my thing here I was like oh it's it's not on there so I'll read off orally that one um because we're pretty excited about some of those results there so um basically students just took um this past week they took their spring math screener they took it for the first time at the beginning of the school year this is largely focusing on like fact fluency and really just getting those foundations down like
221when we talk about our students doing arithmetic spring math is AR arithmetic and our students are hitting it each and every day across grade levels and so uh what we saw in kindergarten um our students were basically about 5% of them were Med benchmarks when school started um and they're a little over 40% now so we saw a 36 point jump in our kindergarteners meet meeting winter expectations um in first grade we saw a 28 point jump again they started around 5% and a little over 32% are currently meeting benchmarks second grade there was a 22 Point jump um to a little over 23% of them meeting expectations and then it leveled off pretty significantly so in third and fourth and fifth we're still hovering around 5% of our students meeting expectations not a ton
222of growth but then in 6th 7th and 8th we started to see uh a bit of a uptrend again and respectively a two-point jump a seven-point jump in seventh grade and a Sixpoint jump in eighth grade basically R ripping the Band-Aid off around fact fluency and getting our students um strong in arithmetic it's it's absolutely going to be a multi-year effort um which is why we're starting early but then we're also continuing it across the grade span so um I'll send that that slide along afterwards because I think it's really indicative of a lot of great work that teachers and students have been doing so then my follow-up question so thank you so much for that my follow-up question to that is do you think um that the results that we're seeing as a district
223are a result of the spring math program or they a result of consistently implementing fact fluency in the classroom and I asked I asked this because those are great results I also asked this as a parent whose daughter loves coming home and showing her her front and back fact fluency spring math that she gets to add up and show exactly how many that she had correct and what she's trying to get to the next time um and there might be more to the spring math program than the front back worksheets but I just wonder are we seeing those results because we're being consistent with it um or is it the program itself that's a great question um and that has been one of the biggest really Joys this year has been like student joy and
224even like teacher excitement about the program because we know that our teachers that the thing they love most is seeing their students learning and growing what that program does really well is basically just makes it very easy to implement and sustain the success so because of um the tracking system that it has teachers are able to plot their students growth like basically they put in the number correct for each of the students it spits out this graph teachers and students like looking at it so in some of our classrooms where they've made the most growth the teacher is showing the class their growth on adding sums to 20 and they're watching it and so they're like they know that they're not at their goal yet and they also see that they're growing and it's building
225this really powerful mindset where students are learning to to do things that they previously couldn't do and then they're getting to harder skills so like you know our fourth and fifth graders are doing multiplication and they're not fluent enough yet and it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks and they pass it they feel great then they go on to division they struggle but they know that they're going to do better later because they they've had that success before so spring maath builds in a lot of those pieces um that's basically sustaining our success and allowing it it also takes the decision making um and basically does it for us so with each of those different skills the teacher doesn't have to sit there and say okay are they ready to go on subtraction or
226is addition do we need to stay here have they really mastered multiplication what it's basically doing is telling them exactly when they've mastered and when they need to stay and so because of that there's this idea of an instructional hierarchy and education works best when we're giving kids what they're basically like what's in their zone of proximal development right like what they're ready to do can't do yet and so it puts them at the right place at the right time if we pulled that structure off we'll get into places where and where it doesn't work well is like if students get into a skill that's too hard then the frustration level Skyhigh the growth stops happening and then likewise if it's too easy right it's not as fun anymore when I'm like completing the whole
227sheet and it's like why are we doing this again and so because of those pieces they've really just kind of built it really well um from an implementation science standpoint and it's been a big part of why we've been able to get the results we are okay thank you thank you thank you down here to Dr PA Walker um I wanted to well first I just wanted to say that um I'm just really troubled by the fact that our kids just continue to be below basic right like it's just every year it's just like always the same data so that's very troubling for me we have good teachers we have Smart students and we keep spending all this money on all this stuff and we still don't see kids improving at the rate that we
228would like um and while it is not um the thing that fixes everything one thing I am curious about is how frequently um problem solving or care team meetings are happening in buildings that are specifically tied to academics you know when you refer a kids to care team you can refer them for academics you can refer them for Behavior it might be attendance there might be other reasons so I'm just trying to figure out you know when kids are not doing well what is the response to that what do we what do we do like are we monitoring how we respond in a way across the district so we know that it's happening in every building is it is it happening differently here is it happening differently there so for me I know that there
229are care team meetings happening but I would really like to see by building how many have happened and the reasons that those kids were referred right like how many of those are kidss being referred specifically for academics um and you know are we I don't know because the opportunity to come together as you probably know around the table to talk about what's happening with kids you get a chance to talk about other things that are getting in the way School attendance and behavior um learning differences things like that you get a chance to put evidence-based practices in place and figure out what data we're going to collect and how we're going to come back together and talk about how the student is doing so uh is that something that you might be able to pull
230together those care team numbers specifically the ones to where kids have been referred for academics yes I can absolutely get those numbers I I think in addition to that it really is um I think a next step for our district in terms of when we talk about care teams and mtss we often times are talking about seal and behavior and less so about like how are students Reading Writing doing math because we know those things are directly correlated to how they feel about themselves and how they treat others um and so I think that it is a Next Step that we we need to take to put that academic Focus um in the care team and mtss process so I'll get you those those current numbers and I mean it really kind of ties into
231why like when we look at these charts and even like when we look at um you know start early literacy and it's like okay we feel great about how half of our students are are getting off to a good start and K and one and we don't feel as confident about the other half because our below basic numbers are so high um essentially what I've tried to do is figure out how can we bring those numbers down significantly because right now we have too many students to like small group our way out of like provide individual interventions for the numbers are just huge but when we get gains like we just got in Spring math and essentially at the beginning of K like 95% of our students basically D indicated need an intervention now it's
232still 58% but 36% less like one out of every three kids no longer need something extra and so between Pals and partner reading the CBM data that we're collecting and reading and the spring math data that basically is the idea we have to get it down to a more reasonable number to really be able to get the individual attention and Care team um attention that students deserve so I hope I'm not hearing you say you're going to wait to try to put some interventions in place until numbers get smaller that's not what I'm saying so in terms of when we talk about resources and funding right what that typically looks like is you're hiring interventionists you're hiring a lot of reading Specialists you're doing a lot of things that are difficult for us to do
233right I'm not talking about hiring staff I'm I'm I'm talking about making the most of what we have so I'm envisioning a scenario where a classroom teacher has a student uh they've been doing everything they can to help this student be successful let's say in ela then the teacher may say I'm going to connect with a peer and the peer may have ideas is and then maybe them in the peer come up with something it doesn't work out students not doing well um I'm looking for a place for teachers to go right an opportunity to come together with others to talk about how to support a student so so that's what I'm getting at I'm not suggesting we spend any more money but when a teacher comes to the end of what they know how
234to do for a child where do they go to to to connect with others to get ideas about what to do next yeah that that's a great question I think IDE those conversations would kick off in in PLC meetings um because we do have in every grade level I mean there's teachers that are getting a ton of movement in Spring math and then other teachers that aren't and then there's teachers whose reading data looks really great and others that are struggling so I think those peer-to-peer conversations um and leveraging those absolutely should be kind of the first go-to move um and I think there's there's probably more we can do in terms of strengthening what our plc's look like and and how they're focused around those teacher moves thank you thank you thank you Dr
235Thurman can you go back to the first slide uh no go back I'm I'm sorry the 3% yes 3% reduction of student scoring below basic that was your goal that was an administrative goal that wasn't my goal okay so that's an administrative goal so did did you you reach it yes um what's the what's the what's the the two the two charts to look at for that would be the star reading one so essentially in Reading um below basic shrunk by about eight points so the goal was three and We Shrunk about eight points and then in math um about 10 points reduction and Below basic okay and it would be great to have that like on one slide so we can say this is what our goal was and here's what we what we
236have accomplished and and that's great and I'm I'm glad that we have I'm still as my colleague has said I'm just so just looking at these numbers and how many students we have in below basic is just so disheartening um but um I'm I'm sure we're going to just keep pushing forward and hope hoping to lower those numbers yeah we we are going to keep pushing forward and I think that um part of sharing out some of this data is as difficult as it can be to look at is really to celebrate progress for students and teachers and principles to feel encouraged that what we're doing is working that they're getting you know results while we're not where we want to be yet what sustained success is people kind of seeing that progress and being
237able to continue on but I certainly share that frustration thank you Mr Murray appreciate next up we have uh is there motion to approve section B C and F for operation I mean for effective date of July 1 1 2025 these have gone through the teams process already and Community feedback it's been moved by Thurman second by dun any discussion seeing none all those in favor approving B C and F for July 1st say I I I extensions Nays eyes have it Mr Moore you got the charge with that to move moving on the next stage with that uh is there a motion to return back to Clos Dr Martin can I make one quick announcement um I just wanted to share with the community that um I was recently at special school districts governing
238council meeting and one of the things that came up is uh there is a the there's they have board members of course on you know for Special School District the no one applied for the board seat that represents Ferguson floresent and I think there's two other districts that go with that riview Riverview and Pattonville so no one applied uh for that position so we have a seat that is open so if there are any community members that might be interested into in that I think you would call 314 989 8100 and they could tell you a little bit more about the process to to learn more about their board and the work they do um there was some something else I was going to tell you but I lost it um can't remember but I
239just wanted to share that with you so you have awareness that that's we need representation oh the other thing is our parent advisory Council I don't think we have people on it or we don't have enough people on it so that's another area where we need representation from the community to support our students with special education needs thanks just to clearify that's the special education parent advisory board not the superintendent Advisory board right for this District two separate boards you're talking about I'm I'm talking about special school districts Board of Education like this board but it's for Special School District where they have a seat that represents us no no I was talking about the parent involvement when we that's just the pack the Council where parents come together and advocate so perfect thank you
240so much with that as our motion we return to close move by Thurman second by done roll call vote please uh Mr Bailey yes Mr Tyson yes secretary votes yes Dr P Walker yes Dr Thurman yes um Mr Gates how would you vote Yes and Dr Martin yes motion carries have a good evening we'll be back in our meeting upstairs