001This conferences had to reschedu Yeah. >> All right. It's 7 o'clock. You're ready to move into open session. Okay. 7 o'clock. Thank you all for being here this evening. We're going to move into open session. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda as amended this evening? Second. >> Any questions on the agenda tonight? Okay. Hearing none. All those in favor of approval opposed to go slowly and still this evening. All right. Motion uh carries for the approval of tonight's agenda. Before we continue, please join us in the pledge of >> the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. [clears throat] >> First item of business tonight is the consent agenda. Do
002I have a motion to approve all items on the consent agenda as presented? >> Second. All right. Any questions on tonight's consent agenda? Items of concern pulled or any questions? [clears throat] >> Okay. All right. Any questions from those on remote? >> No. >> Okay. >> All right. Hearing none. All those in favor of approval of cons consent agenda. None opposed. Motion carries. Thank you. All right. We'll go directly into tonight's superintendent report. Dr. >> All right. [clears throat] Well, it's not written in my superintendent report. Um, and within the consent agenda that was just approved, we have our normal Compassou, but I [snorts] want to give uh a thank you to Miss Woodham who's worked with Compass uh and we just approved anou for dental services uh with Compass or Compass Dental. And we're
003still going to maintain our Jefferson Health Department dental uh but Miss Woodham wanted to try to get more kids in it. So, Compass has been through the fall uh as the Jefferson County Health Department goes around to the different schools in the county uh and then we'll be on campus in the spring. So, that's pretty exciting and as we get more students the dental care. Um as far as our [snorts] report, just some uh legislative update as we begin working on our legislative platform for the 2026 session. Uh I put some information in there on some of the things as they are coming out um regarding open enrollment, school choice policy and backs. Uh property tax reform is still a hot topic with 7.3 and others. Uh um one of the things of note at
004the September 9th meeting, the state board approved uh Desi's FY27 budget recommendations totaling over $543 million in new funding requests. So, uh that doesn't mean that uh it's going to go into the budget, but it has been requested. Uh a couple weeks ago I had spoken at the partnership and industry and education meeting uh which was a group of uh industry and business owners and leaders uh within Jefferson County as well as uh representatives from different school districts about 30 or 40 of them. Jefferson College uh worked to put that together along with uh Jefferson R7. It was a great event. Uh, one of the things that I put in my report, a key takeaway was the lack, complete [clears throat] lack of awareness, uh, regarding some of the major economic legislation going back up
005to, um, the legislative stuff. And in the room, only three or four people knew about St. or anything about it. Um, and so I was able to speak on that and discuss uh, some of the impacts not just on school, but on the county. uh businesses and homeowners right now. Um I know that uh we put out via email uh our communications director put out a newsletter today to parents and we've sent it out to staff and students is our 2025 culture and climate survey. So parents who are paying uh attention to this, we encourage you if you have a student uh that attends Hillsboro to please participate in that. And if you have students in multiple buildings, uh we do ask that you take the time uh to respond to each building because each
006building has its own culture. um and you know just filling out one you just fill out the primary one but you're thinking about the high school like uh it can upset the results there. So just ask that and really appreciate the time that uh we get that input that's a part of our strategic plan and it's the same one that we've given over multiple years so we can really track our improvement uh as we go uh through those items. uh that is also on our district um web page. There's a specific link to uh that survey that will now remain there all the time and we put together common explanation. Parents can look at the actual survey questions um to be transparent with that. And then the 2024 results that we got from the state,
007every result unredacted uh results that any citizen will be able to look at. Miss Hilderbrand will give her kind of a summary report when we get those, but then we'll also then put the 2025 results back when we get those. Um, one of the things, uh, wanted to talk about is, uh, we had some additional retirements tonight, uh, of teachers, but and we had, uh, retirement of an assistant principal. So, Mr. Groner, our high school principal, has uh, I won't say it was that has retired, but these are retirements. Um, and Miss Amber Gillick, Mrs. Amber Gillick has retired uh this year. So, we're going to have the high school principal, assistant principal opening. Uh the timeline for that is kind of a goal of hiring the high school principal in December uh with an
008assistant principal most likely in January. And so, kind of backing that backwards is we'll be putting out a press release regarding Mr. Groer. um the media and and such as well as uh Mrs. Gillick and then we'll be posting that in the next couple weeks because with the Thanksgiving break things get kind of compressed but uh wanted to speak of that publicly and thank them both for their years of service. Uh lastly, um put some information in there regarding a water bill that we've got recently. Uh have submitted or will be submitting a letter to the city of Hillsboro. Uh visit with the city administrator uh Mr. Daniel today regarding appealing that. It was uh you get a bill that a million gallons uh went through our system at the over by the football field
009yet we didn't have large volumes of water laying around and such. So, we're just working through that and we're going to put he's going to replace the the meter and we're going to send the one that was there off to be uh checked out. So, we'll get that back. So, but their process is that we need to fill out a letter of request just like any other citizen or community member on that. So, I included that information in the superintendent report and that's all I have on that this one. All right. Thank you very much. Any questions on the superintendent report tonight? >> John, just to clarify, those retirements are at the end of the school year, right? >> All of them are. >> Just to clarify, the retirements are at the end of the
010school year. >> Yes. >> Okay. Yeah. Yes. >> Clarification. Any other questions? >> All right. Turn it right back over to you for the financial report. >> All right. Uh a quick update on our um finances. One of the items uh that's not in here but I did want to mention to the board um that I was excited about early this week is if you recall we have approximately 750 to $800,000 uh with our legacy funds. Um, us and Fesus have those as a part of our health insurance and uh that's been always been allocated uh as employee funds because we've ran well there and that we get to kind of control uh how we utilize those funds. And so in June, um those have been in a CD. Typically we had done six month
011to a year, but I've been kind of tracking the uh interest rates and such. And so asked a question and um we ended up locking it for two years and at a 3.69 and on Monday we got the rates of work because interest rates have dropped is we're locked in at 3.69 69 and if we open the CD for one year coming out next September, they're down at 3.49. So we're already beating that interest rate. So um that's great for our staff and uh do expect a couple more interest rate drops. So that's good for if you're looking to buy a house, but it's also for us trying to maximize our uh savings and growth. That was pretty exciting that that's it did what we hoped it would do by >> um so in the
012financial report we're three months in um here. So about 25 uh% getting close to that of this this fiscal year. it goes quick showing that our expenditures kind of on that pace a little bit above that uh with our capital expenditures uh revenue um we've only received 15% of the revenue that we expect but that's pretty typical um when we look at historical year-over-year as you'll see as I go through um the three-year run because uh December and January is when they start getting on the property taxes. So it shows that we're running uh at a net position more than we had been. [cough] That's because of uh the difference in budget realized uh versus what we've spent. If you go down a little bit further within this packet, I would encourage um any of
013the community members who aren't necessarily here, you can stop there. These um are put on our district website month over month in this format as well as our um investment. So the it's always open for the public to see that. I want to make mention of that. So on a three-year financial summary at through September 30th of each year, you can see the budget of revenue uh each year. It's actually down a little bit over uh from last year on our budget side, our revenue that we've actually received to date is the lowest in uh of the three years. Um without getting too much into it on the I would anticipate some of that is our enrollment uh has decreased some of the property uh tax items and such as that, but it's negligible and
014that much. So, uh below that is our revenue source. So, you can kind of see what how each of the uh local funds, county, state where that is in important for the uh to look at from year-over-year is our local funds or the local taxpayers. That'll be property uh tax and local uh funds as well as uh county is that railroad and utilities. I want to speak accurately to that. County funds would be what type of funds miss >> it's the personal property all the property taxes utilities >> uh state would be the um state [clears throat] funds we get due to enrollment ADA uh federal uh be the lot of IDA special education and such >> so you can see the the difference yearover-year uh and kind of track along from that and that's
015why you put a three-year run on there. Things are uh the summary is we're kind of tracking like we thought we would. There is some variations as far as what we spent on capital um is running a little higher at this point because like the band trailer those different type of receipts come after July one. If you go up a little bit >> go up >> more. Okay. Go up or down? >> When I say like down through the form. >> [clears throat and cough] >> All right. So, expenditure by fund uh that shows what we've uh spent as far as uh percentage there uh at each level. And then to put that in perspective, a little bit a little bit smaller. And those who are watching on YouTube, you may have to pause there.
016But I uh when Miss White gave me that information, I then wanted to compare that um how much we're spending by fund over that three-year period. And so it compares each year. And so uh as that grows over time each year, you can kind of see where the debt service may have been a little bit larger in one particular year. I believe uh too small for me to see. $10 million I believe was in there last year, right? We made that big debt service payment on our uh GEO bonds. And so uh you can kind of see where our capital uh increased significantly by almost close to a million dollars is uh from 20 23 24 school year. One of the things I did want to point out is that activity fund. It looks like
017our spending has went through the roof. um our spending in activity hasn't went through the roof. It's because of where we're categorizing the health insurance where that would have been in another category that was previously in the um where was that line item at as far as >> 2649 on the expenditure report. Is that what you're >> Yeah. So the the insurance would have it wasn't previously in the activity. Is that factory? >> No, it was not. And so it previously was where before that >> it would be your 6200 like your benefits. >> Okay. So that would have been u the difference what you see in the activity this year FY26 versus the general fund and the special revenue, right? That money if you the balancing there uh would balance out. So that would
018work out on that uh total expenditures um shows where all that out it's just put in a different bucket for this school. So and going forward one of the reasons our general fund expenditures uh are higher the early the early childhood startup uh instructional purchases and our salary and staffing increases as such. So um again that report is very detailed behind that uh is always the actual accounting items and SAS for the general public and the board uh to always review and look at okay that's it on that I do I take that back a couple different items I did want to make mention of uh is in November we will be doing our budget amendment. Uh and some of the highlights that is in the board packet, if you could show that next item
019is um our earnings on investments. Um sorry, we're making adjustments there cuz uh when the budget was developed originally uh was very conservative on that and then in including some of our uh grants including the CTE enhancement grant which is the the fax room that will be revenue now. So, including that end of the budget on the revenue side, uh because we voted to do the HVAC project, we need to make a budget amendment that we're going to spend that $2.5 million. So, um, if you're looking at the board packet, there's a quick brief summary of some amendment highlights, but that official number we will do next month um because we want to have it as laserlike as we can as we head into December and typically the board has um we begin looking at
020the 26 27 school year and putting together a salary and benefits proposal for our teaching staff. because we already turned the year into next year. And then on the next there's an uh another document within there and I want to thank Miss White for putting this uh together which is the budget process and timeline which she shared with us at central office and is sharing with uh the buildings um but just really clearly laying out um for all of us the the timeline of we're going to confirm the dates for the time the budget, putting everything together so it has kind of those mile markers and points um so we know where we should be. It's our accountability uh and transparency and doing that to have the numbers out a budget early for approval by
021the board uh and kind of setting up these repeatable cycles for the year. Thank you to Miss White for putting that together. All right. Any questions on financial report this evening? All right. Thank you for that report. All right. Do we have any items of public comment this evening? >> No public comment which would take us directly into some new um business this evening. First of which is the approval of the bill for payment to Jefferson College. We have a motion to approve the bill to Jefferson College in the amount of $113,717.50. Any questions, concerns on this payment? >> Hearing none. All those in favor of approval? Any opposed? And a single abstension carries. >> There's no sound on our YouTube feed. I got a microphone. Check. I can hear it. Hi. >> Yeah. Are
022you on the YouTube? [snorts] >> This is Diane. I can hear. >> Okay. >> No, >> I I did the Zoom. >> Wow. >> I see I see levels. >> Okay. >> All right. Carrying on. Our next item of new business is the approval of the John Deere tractor release for 2526. Do I motion to to approve the 2526 John Deere tractor release agreement with Siden Stricken Nobi for a total estimated cost of $10,500? >> All right. Any questions or comments on this lease? >> Okay. Hearing none. All those in favor of approval this evening. Anyone opposed? Motion carries. All right. Our next item of business is the approval of the amendment to the pay rate for non-retiree non-certified reading tutors placing those positions on the paraprofessional salary schedule. Reading tutors who are certified teachers
023and PSRs retirees will be compensated at a rate of $135 per day. Do I have a motion to approve the amendment to the non-certified reading tutors pay rate as presented? >> Any questions, comments, concerns with this change? Okay. And no questions virtually. >> Good. >> All right. Hearing none. All those in favor of approval this evening. >> Okay. None opposed. Motion carries. >> All right. Our next item of new business is the approval of the 2526 thankfulness at Thanksgiving culture and climate activity statement for employees. Do I have a motion to approve the thankfulness for Thanksgiving culture and climate activity stiphen as presented >> there or here like have to share a little bit about the details on that for this year? >> Yes. Um we've done this I believe for this will be our
024third or fourth year um is our staff engages in kind of slowing down and uh bit of professional development activity and um recognizing each other and uh we've ordered about 3,000 thank you cards and the board is uh free to get some as well and they will um send and recognize their co-workers and members of the community uh and such. And if you go around the buildings, a lot of times you'll see the thank you cards hanging up in people's office of just uh we get busy. It's part of our culture and climate um focus within our CSIP is each employee we ask that they do five and they will go and turn in a school nurse and um they check the name off. You can do many more but the requirements uh a minimum
025of five and many do over that. And then um Sam, our security officer, it's not necessarily his favorite time of day because it's kind of like Christmas. A lot of deliveries and sorting. Um >> but it really has been a a great uh kind of a morale thing and then as well as from a financial piece, we have included that in the budget um in plan for that. uh made the board aware of that uh in June and so uh we do that for all employee certified and uh classified full-time and some of our part-time on qualifying things. So um it's one of my >> favorite type items and it they will receive uh the funds um prior to Thanksgiving uh and Black Friday and all that. So, it's great [snorts] thing that we really
026appreciate uh the board doing that uh over the last few years. >> Any questions, concerns, or comments of this year's stipen? Okay. >> All right. Well, all those in favor of approval of the siphon as presented this evening. Okay. None opposed. Motion carries. All right. On to the approval of the construction contract with Brock Miller Construction. Have a motion to approve the contract with Brock Miller for the renovation and the remodeling of two of our classrooms at the high school to create the new fax and culinary kitchen learning spaces. >> Second. >> Any questions on the contract? >> The contract itself was in the board packet this evening. Any concerns or or questions on all hearing? None. All those in favor of approval? Okay. And none opposed? Motion carries. Scroll a little bit here. Okay,
027we do have anformational item next on the agenda. We do have some first three policy revisions 225D. No action to be taken tonight. Is there any questions regarding this set of policies before we see the next one for approve? >> No. >> Questions from >> I do want to point something out. I added um if you looked at them over the weekend is I added a board uh policy kind of a review summary. It' be the first item. There is kind of the process just for the public to know as we share uh the policy changes and they're reviewed by uh myself, the silver brand administrators. Uh we have board member representatives as well as teachers and representatives of our teacher organizations. And so they read through and we do kind of a Google form.
028Um and we had a couple of responses and questions on some of the policies. um one of the policies was dress code clarification as well as our behavioral threat assessment just like how those would go there. So I just kind of break down the questions and then my response to those. Uh another one that was on the reduction and professional staff workforce. Both of our organizations had reached out like all right walk us through that which I did there and included that uh within the kind of announcement. So okay go back and review that prior next meeting if you would. >> Appreciate that. Any questions before we see these next month? >> Okay. All right. We will move on to the approval of some minutes. We have the September 25th, 2025 minutes. Do I have
029a motion to approve these minutes as presented this >> even? Second. >> Okay. Any questions, comments, clarifications on this? >> All right. Uh now [laughter] no concerns with these. All those in favor of approval this evening. Uh any opposed and any abstensions? Have one abstension? The motion carries. All right. We have a second set of minutes related to the tax rate hearing on the 25th. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes from the tax rate hearing on September 25th as presented? >> All right. Any questions on these minutes? Hearing none. All those in favor of approval. Any opposed? And any extensions? Only extension. All right. Motion carries. All right. Next item of business is the approval of theou for the delivery of equipment for the heating and air conditioning project at the high
030school. Do I have a motion to approve the resolution authorizing the execution and delivery of equipment schedule number two? is as it's presented in the board packet this evening under the ex under the existing master equipment lease purchase agreement with Bank of America for the acquisition of financing and the leasing of those improvements at the high school. >> Okay. Any questions, clarific clarifications or uh details needed on this? No. >> Appreciate that. Okay. Hearing none. All those in favor of approval of theou. All right. And none opposed. That motion also carries. Under the approval of the track timing contract with championship timing, do I have a motion to approve these contracts with championship timing as presented? >> Second. >> Any questions on the timing contracts this evening? >> No. All right. Hearing none. All those
031in favor of approval? None opposed. All right. Motion carries. All right. That is the end of our new business. We do have a couple of items remaining for some information and discussion, important dates coming up on the board calendar. The MSBA conference is ongoing, which is where Mrs. Zoshi is this evening. Uh we have our fall board workshop coming up the evening of November the 6th at 7 o'clock. And then we'll have it's kind of in our our amended November calendar because of the Thanksgiving holiday. So, we'll have our board meeting on November the 20th for our regularly scheduled November meeting. Any questions on the uh board calendar? Anything coming up regard to important dates? All right, last item tonight is uh just some discussion about an opportunity that we have as a board to
032engage in the Missouri School Boards Association's board self evaluation program. Uh this is a kind of a continuation of a pilot that we engaged with in back in 2023. Uh and so because we were engaged pretty early on in that process and they are still piloting this program. They've kind of refined the pilot. They've reached out to us as kind of an early adop early adopter of that process to see if we are interested in as a board in going through that. This is sort of a an evaluation effort guided by the school board association to help us through board governance uh helping to to learn about um you know things related to finance or other things that we find as a challenge uh as a board. um and uh uh they were willing to
033uh engage with us at no cost. Uh want to open the floor for any comments, discussion. There are a number of us that were with the board in 23 that went through that process and several that are new. So want to pause there and uh uh give anyone an opportunity to comment. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure how they have revised in total the program, but they are they are offering to [clears throat] meet us both either virtually or in person for a very nominal fee to come on to uh campus and meet with us one evening u so we can we can uh decide on what option we would prefer uh as a group uh remote team any concerns thoughts um on engaging on this uh this pilot? program. >> No, I think it's a
034good idea. >> I don't hear anything to the contrary. So, >> I'll engage with Mrs. Barks from the uh MSBA and we'll work towards getting something scheduled. We have a time on the calendar that works for everyone. Okay, that brings us to the end of business this evening. Do I have a motion to adjourn at 7:32? >> Second. All those in favor of journ. >> All right, we are journ. Thanks for being here tonight. >> Thank you. >> Safe travels both of you. >> Enjoy. [clears throat] >> So I need to stop that. Have