001pledge. Flag is on this side. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Firstly, I need to seek approval of the consent agenda. This contained the updated job descriptions for fiscal year '27 to take place in July, the awarded >> [snorts and clears throat] >> Chipwood audit engagement letter, which is our district finance reviewers, the general warranty deed to Eastwood to finalize the transition over to the city on that property, and of course the property out to the intermediate campus that would be coming back or that area around to be coming back to us as a district. The new treasurer signature pages as we elected and reorganized last meeting. I need
002to update um our information on file at the bank. E-rate contract for FY '27, which is how we purchase a lot of our technology at a discounted rate. The Butterfield roof contract, which was gone over by Deputy Rinky before and approved as well. And then MSBA policies and receipt your checklist, which we approved um in the past [clears throat] and just need to make sure it appears in our minutes correctly. Move to accept the agenda. It's been moved by Mr. Carroll and seconded by Mrs. Staley. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Need to abstain or recuse? Motion passes. Next, we need to approve the financials. One of the smaller financials we've had in a while, $669,548.55 in the financial report so contained within. So moved. Move to be approved. It's been
003moved by Mr. Smith and seconded by Mr. Lenz. Are there any other questions or discussions that were prior not able to be asked? Hearing none, and Harry didn't give me the call the question yet, I will go for the question. All those in favor, please say I. >> [clears throat] >> Any opposed? Any need to abstain or excuse? Motion passes. Next, we need to approve the minutes from the April 14th, 2026 meeting. So moved. It's been moved by Mr. Carroll and seconded by Mrs. Staley. All those in favor, please say I. Next, we need to adopt the agenda. I guess I didn't give anyone a chance to oppose that. Is anyone opposed to the minutes? It sounded like everyone's in favor. Good. And next, we need to adopt the agenda for the remainder of the
004meeting. I'm assuming without any additions. As printed. Move to strike. [clears throat] The to adopt the agenda for the remainder of the meeting as printed and presented. Do we Do we need to move 9A to the end to come back to it after closed? We can when we get to 9A, there can be a motion that we revisit it at that time. And Matt, just for information's sake, let's talk about 9A, which is tuition reimbursement, which is going to be some personally identifiable individuals who have applied for tuition reimbursement for this discussion closed. We will return to open session and vote to approve those receiving tuition reimbursement later on. Is what he was saying. All those in favor of adopting the Excuse me, do we have a motion yet? I move to retain. It's been
005moved by Mr. Carroll. I don't believe there's a second. Seconded by Mr. Smith. All those in favor of the adoption of the agenda for the remainder of the meeting, please say aye. >> Aye. Any opposed? Uh public comment. The people I see in the room generally will not comment, so unless someone comes a running in here, we will just keep on going down. >> [laughter] >> And I know Mr. Woodring has some other things he's going to talk about, so I'll let uh Deputy Superintendent Rinky and Mr. Woodring come over to talk to us about some safety and security updates to start our reports off. Thank you, gentlemen. Uh thank you very much and good evening everyone. Um before we get started with the safety and security updates, uh I would just like to do
006a quick uh thank you to our directors, uh Mike Varner, Chris Bethel, um all of our custodians, our maintenance. This is as schools winding down, this is starts to be our busy time of year, and so they have been working very hard to get prepared for going into next week and um getting ready for summer school and a lot of summer projects we we have have in store for this summer. So, um they a lot of people been working hard behind the scenes, and I just wanted to give a quick thank you uh for all those people. And I'm sure I missed somebody, but uh but uh thank you very much. So, before we get into the safety and update recommendations, we do this yearly, uh go over some of our safety, uh what's been
007going on the district, things we've been working on. Um before I turn it over to Mr. Woodring, I would really like to thank Mr. Woodring. Uh he's the our director of the safety and security. I'd like to thank our SROs. They've been doing a phenomenal job. Um I talk to them just about every day. Um just the things they do with our students, with our staff, attendance, um just walking around making sure doors aren't propped open, and uh they they are working very hard to keep our staff and students safe. Uh our directors and admin team, uh they're constantly working on the safety of the district. Our social work team has done a lot of work with some of these different initiatives Mr. Woodring's going to talk about. Um so I appreciate that. We have
008many community entities uh that we've been working with and we really appreciate um those entities in in our in our town and our community, our county uh that that take so much interest in keeping the school and the kids safe. So I I really appreciate that. Uh so we've been really working hard at updating, planning, and evaluating for continuous safety improvement for our students and staff. Uh a lot of things go on behind the scenes that nobody ever really sees. And you know, planning, making sure plans are in place. Hopefully most of those things, hopefully 98% of those things we talk about, plan about, we never have to use. But um we are getting that set up just in case that we ever ever have to. So at this time I will turn it over
009to Mr. Woodring and he'll go over what what um everybody's been working on. Okay, good evening everyone. Um I do believe we have completed a lot of tasks this year. Uh we kind of put forth that agenda last year to kind of talk about what we could do to really get going. Uh safety and security has been in the forefront of the Missouri school board for the last two to three years now. I think that's going to continue to grow as we move on. Uh some of the things that we have continued We have a district safety and security meetings. I meet with SROs, uh with David, and with local entities at times uh on things that might be going on in our district so that we can keep ourselves in the forefront of that.
010Uh emergency operation plans for each building. We continually update those every year. Um updates on certifications. Our SROs, our nurses, uh myself, all the other safety personnel, we try to keep those up to date. Uh we'll be moving forward with some more updates as the years go on to try to kind of get get us ahead of some of the others. Uh sub training day, I'm you know, lucky to come in and talk with our subs before they come into the district to kind of give them an overview of what goes on in case of emergency in our district. So, that's been very beneficial to us. Uh technology updates, the camera security entries, key card management. Uh if you were around at the beginning of the year, it was kind of a hectic scene with
011our key cards, but we've gotten that figured out and we're moving forward. Uh local safety meetings, we were meeting with uh Chief Donnell for several months this year. We got some things planned for this summer that will help out our teachers and our building-wide administrators. Reunification you reunification training with our social work team, myself, uh Eden DeGonia, Lindsey Partner, and uh Winnie O'Brien went to a Columbia Public Schools reunification training day. This was a two-day safety training. Uh we >> [snorts] >> worked through what it [clears throat] would look like if we had to reunify the district with our from our kids to our parents and what that would look like as far as Marshall Public Schools. We did it with Columbia Public Schools. We had a lot of uh entities there as as well.
012They invited us in, so we were lucky to be able to go and do this with them. Uh and then the hazard mitigation meetings, we've been having them all year long with our Saline County group. Uh that should be winding down here in May. I think we should be good for the next 5 years once we sign off on that. Um 2007 or 2027, we have the hiring of our SRO, Joey Valiquette. I wanted to talk a little bit about that. Um Joey has come into Beeker Middle School and has done an absolute wonderful job. Um him working with Bill at our high school and Chris at our elementary buildings has been fabulous. Uh I could not have asked for this transition to go much easier, especially with Joey coming in here towards the end
013of the year and trying to get to know you know, 600 kids there at Beeker, plus all the administration and staff. Um he has done an awesome job. Uh Chris and Bill have done a wonderful job trying to help him out and they work together as a team phenomenally. I mean, it's been it's been incredible to watch them. So, big shout-out to all three of them. Uh CPI training updates, we're going to do some new CPI training dates coming at the beginning of the year in August. Uh they will go out in the middle of July, so our teachers and admin can kind of get um up to speed on some of those. SRO training schedule for summers, obviously, in summertime usually our teachers take off, but our SROs are going to be going to
014some trainings. I think one of them is down at the lake uh or both of them might be down at the lake to kind of get them acclimated with more of what happens within the school districts. Um our Marshall Police Department will do their field training. So, we got those dates set for middle of July, so that they can come in, utilize our buildings uh for some of the trainings that they do on a regular basis. Uh the cardiac emergency response plan, this is something that the state has mandated through every school district. We have one in working order right now. All we have to do is implement it into our buildings um and that will be pretty simple. I'll probably work on that this summer about getting that into our buildings with our administrators
015knowledge of that. Okay, next is our future goals for MPS. We do want to do a district-wide active reunification training from a small scale to a large scale. This is going to be a process that takes over a year. We are going to plan to train our teachers and administration on what it would look like for a reunification. So every PD day we plan on setting up trainings so that we can talk about that with our teachers so that as we move forward they're more comfortable with what we're going to be doing and everybody will have that first-hand knowledge to be able to come in if something is an event is ever to happen, they can come in and respond correctly. Uh updating our district technology for administration, facility security walk with through the with
016our law enforcement. They're going to come in. We're going to take videos what it looks like for our law enforcement to come into our buildings so that we can show our administration, show our teachers kind of what that looks like to get them a little bit more familiar of how that would work. Uh behavior threat management training for admin admin. The updates of the emergency management, fire alarms and security, which is a never-ending process. Developing plans to integrate more fence in the district areas. I know we had David and I have talked about what those will look like moving forward and some of the completion of the secure vestibule at the high school which you currently see work on as of right now. So those are some of the future goals that we have for
017Marshall Public Schools. That's all I have for tonight. If you have any questions about anything moving forward. I don't have any questions, but just want to say it again. The last thing that you said was a secure vestibule at the high school. I've had a few calls people asking what's going on with the fencing, what's going on at the school over there. So, if you missed it at our last couple of meetings we've talked through that of what we're planning to do it basically is going to be enclosing the area that is underneath the overhang and it will make a secure vestibule which was something that was also promised as our security updates got it through our tax levy situation so a project that we're just now getting to of course about a year or
018so later with some funding that we still have left over. So, but that is what's going on at the high school and also having a little bit more security for our offices as well over there as they're going to move from the island area where the thin walls allow people to hear to a more secure area to have private conversations to meet with families and things with our administrative staff in that area. So, I just wanted to say that again people will probably still call and ask but I wanted to say it again tonight. So, thank you Mr. Woodring for your report and covered all that information. Does anybody else have any questions or anything like that? Thank you Greg. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Greg. Next we'll move to the superintendent report and hear
019from Mr. Preddy. I've been kind of quiet the last couple of months so you're going to have to pay pendants for that this evening I'm afraid. I've got legislative update, some budget preview stuff and I'll make it sound as rosy as possible, but it's less than rosy. I couldn't get up there, dude. >> Forgive me for sitting down. It's easier for me to be heard on this microphone when I do. Um so I'm just going to jump right in. I've handed this out in a printout to the Board of Education. And I'll be recapping this to our staff tomorrow. Going to hit on a lot of things from the state level from to budget to active legislation. And this is the last week in Jefferson City for active and moving legislation. So I will end
020this presentation tonight with a call for support and advocacy for um public education and its funding. With that said, let's just jump right into the state budget. It has gone to the governor's desk. Uh speaking uh to public education. And so these numbers I'm giving you are not specific to Marshall Public Schools, but the state of Missouri and public education as a whole. Um $118 million was reallocated from the capital preservation fund and put into public education. It's what we call one-time money a lot. So they did reallocate some funds. They reduced the general revenue from formula by 45 million, which would increase our reliance on lottery dollars by seven. When I say formula, the simplest way to say it is just everything about how a school gets funded is multiple lines, multiple numbers, multiplied,
021divided, added, etc. and it comes out to your formula calculation. So when we say that they reduced general revenue revenue from the formula by 45 million, then they're replacing or increasing reliance on lottery, which is concerning because lottery is way behind. Uh $17 million came out of our formula and was replaced with gambling money. A lot of people in Jefferson City are calling that fun money, because it's not there, it's not real, and it's not likely to be there. This includes one-time money, as I said they're going into the general formula, and the concern with one-time money is sort of like when we're finishing the vestibule at the high school with construction funds, that's one-time money. If we put that into the salary, it would make us all very happy when we get our paychecks
022right now, but next year when that money doesn't come back, then we couldn't pay the bills. Similarly, we have a formula this year that's not only short in its funding, but it guarantees a bigger shortfall in the year ahead. SAT, that is the state adequacy target, is a huge part of that formula. Uh conservative estimates coming from the state level would say that we should estimate 6865 is what we should calculate for next year. Uh now, it was promised this year, I believe that was 6,900, and it's supposed to have gone to 7,145 next year. It never hit either one of those guaranteed formula numbers. It's short right now by $190 million at the state level. In Marshall, when we created the budget last year, and the one that you have for a first reading
023tonight, we're budgeting less than they've said, because we have been predicting that this would happen. It's taken longer, I've been late, but not yet entirely wrong. So, we're projecting for our formula number 6850, just a little bit under what the state is saying we should be able to conservatively assume we will get, because we assume they will fall short again. It certainly is not 7145 is what they had implemented by next year. It's fallen way short of that. >> [snorts] >> Okay, so a little bit about transportation, and a little final remarks about the overall. >> [clears throat] >> Transportation, good news, it's flush. Next year is flush with what it was budgeted this year. Bad news, that's 17 million additional dollars short from what it should be. And when we say fully funded, we
024don't mean fully funded. Fully funded is not fully funded when it comes to transportation. So, we're struggling there. So, I'm going to break it down here on the left side for you. Um and that's 190.6 million that we're short right now this year in the state of Missouri that we have fallen short of the SAT that we were supposed to hit. Fortunately, in Marshall, we didn't assume that that would ever happen. We budgeted short. We're 17 million short this year from gambling. It's not going to come in June. It's short. It's not going to be there. Gambling's down. We're short 17.1 million from transportation. That's consistent this year. That's what's promised next year is the same amount of being short. And 138 million that we are or will be short on lottery, including next year
025combined with this year. So, in total, >> [clears throat] >> now you'll probably have some politicians local to us that would disagree with this number, but that math is verified at the state level by people a lot smarter than me. We will be short in Missouri in public education 362 million dollars. And when I say short, I mean underfunded from what the Constitution says should be budgeted to public education. Um so, that's just real math. By contrast, uh our state says, again, that we are supposed to fully fund education. What's frustrating to some with multiple perspectives here, but what the Constitution says is the public education gets the tax dollars. They have increased voucher money to private education in this year's budget by 10 million, which is taking private schools to 60 million dollars. Which
026is fine, um but an interesting thing going on in Boone County, and I didn't name the school only because I couldn't confirm it with certainty, and I didn't want to speculate publicly, but in Boone County where these expansions and vouchers have taken place, what has started happening in certain schools is whatever their tuition was when they received the state monies allocated for students to be able to, in theory, as I understood it at least, now I as a parent could get my money to educate my child, and I could take it to my private school. Some of these private schools have increased their tuition by exactly that allocation. So, it is not opening up education to everybody. It's still just as limited as it was before. That frustrates me, and it should frustrate them. I
027don't expect you to read that. I'm not going to read it to you, I promise. But, the the question I pose here with sarcasm because I think it's clear if public education is broken, and I've said this to our politician at legislative roundtables, politicians plural, at legislative roundtables, and the question I've asked is just if public education is broken, if it is not working, why? That is a snapshot that you probably can't possibly read because it's so small, but that is the legislative bills broken down just over the last 2 years, and what has ended up happening, what you the the final bullet point where you see then a whole lot of subpoints, that's when they get to this last week of the legislature, they just take all of those things that is mandating stuff
028on public education, and they push it through on one ominous bill. An ominous bill is just everything thrown in one place, pushed through last minute, often at 2:00 in the morning. Um which has been happening this year, too. Nothing good happens in July or 2:00 in the morning. Uh my grandma used to say that when we went out at night. It You get home, nothing good's going to happen if you're out too late. Um so, again, if public education is broken, and if we were going [clears throat] to speak to any legislatures, who broke it? And if public education is the problem, and private education is better, then apply all of that to private education, and let's see if they can educate everybody as well as public education can. It It does truly find I
029find it frustrating at 20 years of doing this that we're not comparing apples to apples. We're doing what we're regulated to do and then held accountable for what we lack based on the regulations that were imposed upon us. And then $60 million goes to private education. So, here is the active stuff going on now. This is the stuff that I would encourage our staff, our community, our board members to make some phone calls about this week. Some current legislation here it says still moving. Senate Bill 1066 is an ominous bill that has more tax cuts. I love tax cuts when it's time for me to pay my taxes. But when I'm if I'm dealing with the state budget and I'm finding that I'm running short, I wouldn't continue to cut my funding. Um that's exactly
030what we're doing with ominous bill 1066. House Bill 2710, that's the A through F report card. So, as we mandate all this stuff on public education, we're then going to give them a report card on how well they did. You'll find the oxymorons of that here in a minute, the contradictions. If If they're going to prioritize all this stuff for how we spend our time and then penalize us for how we instruct based on the criteria that they also created for us, it makes it impossible to succeed. >> [snorts] >> The least popular bill out there right now is this literacy bill. The literacy bill has been plugged into multiple ominous bills giving it multiple opportunities to go through. If one fails, they've got other ways to get it through. This will mandate retention. So,
031if I'm a parent and my child doesn't do well on a state test that they're going to give us, they'll provide it for us. And then they'll judge us on how we did. Um and then if they don't do well enough, they'll retain them. Parents will have no say in whether those children are retained. And all of the research out there says that retention often is counterintuitive. It does not work. It defeats their self-esteem. And that also doesn't take into account, I say this later, but it's on my mind now, it doesn't take into account, how did they come to us? Did they come to us not speaking English? Not potty trained? Um not being exposed to a social setting whatsoever? Doesn't take any of that into account. You don't do well on the test,
032you don't go on. Senate Bill 1351, another ominous bill. This is just literally everything else. Teaching cursive, etc., etc. Limited screen time. I don't have a problem with any of those ideas, but it takes away our instructional time and says, you're going to do this with your instructional time, and then when you're done with that, you're going to take this test we gave you, and then we're going to give you this report card and say, you didn't do very well. Well, who regulated that again? 2120, a bullying bill. It requires monthly board action and still is not zero tolerance. Um and all of these bills, I should say, as they get pushed through, those $60 that went to private ed, they don't have to do any of it. Just public education has to do it,
033and they have to do it with everybody. No bullying is great, but no law that has been passed yet is actually zero tolerance. I have conversations on a weekly basis with frustrated parents saying, you you all are supposed to be zero tolerance, but the the mandates on public education do not circumvent the laws, which still require due process, and if we have to let you do it three times, that is not zero tolerance. So, changing the mandates and holding us more accountable without changing the law, again, is not actually doing what they want it to do, preventing bullying. Last, House Bill 2748. Again, not a bad thing in theory, this regulates recess and PE. How much time do we have? We talked about this, Jack. How much time do we have at recess? How much
034time in PE? It does sound really good, but it does not, again, take into account the impact on instructional time to comply. So, when we are mandated 30 minutes without interruption outside, 20 minutes without interruption in PE, reporting to our parents, it's taking away from all the instructional things that they're then going to give us a report card on. So, which one do you want? You want to go to recess or you want to teach and learn? We we would love a little bit of autonomy on that. Ideally, I think a board of education is supposed to have local control on such decisions. So, again, $60 million going private. They do they will not have to comply with any of these laws. They will not have to educate everyone. And we will actually be required
035to to do all that for them. If a student in private education needs those services, we will provide those services to the students in private education and there will be no funding to do it. You will do it on the funding you have. So, I'm going to go through those one more quick time and you're going to hear a broken record and the thing you're hearing me say over and over is because it's what we need to say to our legislators. The ominous bill 1066 which cuts property tax. Uh that will again reduce funding more for public education. I think if I was going to say anything to our legislators today, it is you have already reduced us $362 million and you're coming up short on revenue. Why are you continuing to cut your revenue?
036House bill 2710, the report card. Public Ed will lose $362 million between this year and that next. Why are you still trying to pass education legislation and burden a system that is being disfunded defunded? The responsibility and the accountability is all one way. Uh we aren't responsible for the decisions, but we're accountable to the results. The literacy bill. Now, one of numerous ominous bills, again, meaning that if they can't get it through on one, they've got it plugged in multiple places to try and get it through. Will force the school and the parents to retain by third grade based on a state assessment, and here's an interesting question. Will that state assessment be online? Because we're also going to limit screen time as one of the things on these ominous bills. I completely agree with
037limiting screen time, but all of our testing is on screens, all of our curriculum is on screens, and when they take it away in 1 to 2 years, there's no money to buy all the books to replace all the screens. How do we comply with that? We'll stop having to update our stuff to comply. And if our percentage of time we're allowed to be on the computer is for the testing that we're required to give, which is weeks and weeks of testing already taking away from instructional time, then what do we have left for the instructional time? I mean, again, doesn't make any sense. It does Does it take into account where these children started? I said this before, I'll say it again, too. The child who didn't speak any any English, who, by the
038way, we have less funding for through ELL services, less funding for paras, why would we want them to tell us we have to retain them in third grade? We understand where they came to us from, and we make strides to improve where they are. This simply penalizes them and their families. And if they want to go to private education, well, they probably can't afford it cuz the tuition will just go up. Senate Bill 1351 and the other ominous bill originally pertain to the independent school districts board term lengths. This is now morphed into all the other things. There they are, screen limitation, financial transparency. Funny fact about financial transparency, they plugged that into about four different ominous bills. They think it's hard to read our financial statements. Who regulated our financial statements in the first
039place? Um cursive writing, I think we should bring it back, too. Where does that fit into the state standardized test that we're also required to give? More literacy requirements, which they've tripled down on in the last 4 years. Again, I'm going to say, public education is going to lose $362 million between this year and next, and they are still trying to pass education legislation and burden the system that is being defunded. Um, no money to comply with any of this legislation I'm telling you about and again, $362 million less and a report card to finish to punish us when we fail. It should be an extremely frustrating time to all taxpayers because your taxpayers are not going where the Constitution says it belongs. HP 2230, there's some things you're seeing over and over. That's because
040it's multiple ominous bills. This is about student screen time discontinuing as soon as 2027. If we had to replace all of our curriculum by 2027 with textbooks, I have absolutely no idea how we would pay for that. And I know that it has no funding attached to the bill. They call that an unfunded mandate if you ever hear anybody screaming that. How will we give the map and other tests that are online? How will we replace all our curriculum and who will pay for replacing it? Have I said this before? Public education will lose $362 million between this year and next. The bullying bill that we've already talked about at great length. They attached financial transparency to it as well. Happy to comply of course as always. It simply it just goes too far. If
041I was going to talk to someone about the bullying bill, I would love to see some improved legislation with bullying because it is not definitively zero tolerance. The law is not definitively zero tolerance. But at this point, I think we've already gone a step too far. We have lost $362 million in public education. And House Bill 2748, again, this is just what's moving. So I hope you realize for the last two months that I've been quiet. I thought, let's just wait until we get to the end because that's when they really sock it to us. Ominous Bill 2748 requires each district to participate in that national fitness program. Results must be reported to parents. K through five students must have 20 minutes of unstructured moderate physical activity outdoors when possible. Must adopt policy to have
04230 consecutive minutes of moderate physical activity. And again, there's the school financial transparency attached to it, too. Again, I don't disagree with all of that or any of that fundamentally, but all of that is unfunded and it contradicts the A-F report card. >> [snorts] >> So, I'll close out this positives part of my presentation to say it's time to call Curtis Gregory and Mark Nolte and anybody else that you think you might have a connection to in Jefferson City. And it's time to not only ask them to just leave public education alone. We've already lost $362 million between this year and next, but it's time for them to focus somewhere else besides public education, which was not broken by public educators. I believe public education's doing a better job today than it's ever done before
043and we're the only ones doing it for every single child that comes to us. And it's time to call. I think I'll leave it there and jump to budget. Maybe that'll get more bright. Any questions about all of that? I Yeah, I'll ask you later on what that that bullying reporting to the board thing. I'd like what next question. Absolutely. Okay, this [clears throat] is truly something brighter. Three years ago, we instituted the tuition reimbursement for Marshall Public School. We budgeted $45 million this year or 45 million. I'm I'm back on state budget, sorry. $45,000. Now we're at the local level. $45,000 this year and that was an increase the board requested because you all had liked the results you had seen. We We had 11 people total request the reimbursement this year. And this
044was created uh with the few things in mind. We wanted to help not only hire but retain hard to hire certified positions, science, math, facts, various other subjects have been a struggle for us and everybody in public education in recent years. So, when we grant this money through the board's vote, we grant it to people and then in turn we ask for a 3-year commitment from them. We don't force them to stay for 3 years. We just say, "If you take this, you'll pay back incrementally should you leave sooner." And we always make sure all the candidates have had strong evaluations. And most importantly uh we have believed that this investment would help close those gaps. I'm excited to tell you that this year for the first time since before COVID, all of our math
045positions will be filled with certified people district-wide. And science, all but one position at this moment, and it's the race isn't totally run just yet, but all but one science position will be fully certified. And we have more people taking coursework, doing things. And this has been working. Um now, I will make a recommendation. If the board wanted to discuss it, Mr. Jakes will probably be asking you to table that discussion as it does get into private stuff. But, I've made a recommendation that we should be able to probably do about five of these requests. And that could morph through conversations if it does go to close. And and I've had built a budget proposal for you that does include 20,000, which is a significant reduction that I hope we don't lose. Um but all
046budget lines in that budget have been cut. They've been cut already and they've been cut a lot more. But that is a pretty exciting thing and it the proof's in the pudding. It is working and we've we've got a lot of hard-to-fill spots filled. Any questions about that that would not be specific or private in the information? I'll make [clears throat] a comment on that. I hate to see that reduced cuz it's doing so much good. As you and I talked, the interest that we earn on all our CDs, which is quite substantial as you know, I'd like to take some of that interest money instead of putting it in the general fund, put it in that scholarship scholarship funds. That's That's a tremendous program. And I hate to see it reduced. I I really
047do. Yeah, I don't disagree, Jed. Something we can talk about more, too. >> [clears throat] >> All right, I'm going to close it up here now. I've talked longer than I have in several months, but uh let's talk about the budget just a little bit. Pros and cons. And this is not with certainty. This is not 100%, but it is time, I think, for us to be realistic and honest and transparent. Starting with what the budget that I have proposed to the Board of Education for next year entails. And it entails tighter budget lines across the board. And I really would say that this is sort of by priority, least first and most last. So, we're going to we're going to focus on the first things. We have already proposed to the Board of Education
048a budget that will reduce supplies. That will reduce pretty much all budget line items. It will have some athletic impacts. State meeting budgets, where people go to these state level meetings. Sometimes that's funded through general funds, not professional development. Board of Education line items, which unfortunately is things like our public relations, our human resources. Some of those things have been tightened up. Paper, stipends, advertisements. Curriculum renewals. We try to renew everything on a certain interval. Pausing [clears throat] that, because if we're going to have to throw it all out and order textbooks possibly, we're going to need every penny we can muster and reallocate, and we won't have enough. And support staff. For the last 4 years, we've been using attrition. Which is to say, when people leave, retire, resign, as much as possible, we've
049been not filling those positions and absorbing. We've reduced well over a million dollars annually the last 4 years already. Um there's going to be more of that, and it's going to be necessary. Because what I'm trying to do, the last thing you see, next to last thing on the left, steps. I'm talking about salary schedules, increases, salary schedules, rising health insurance. That's the last thing we want to mess with. The classroom sizes is the last thing we want to mess with and the amount of certified staff. So, we're doing everything in this budget that I'm proposing to not impact teaching and learning as much as possible. However, I honestly don't know how academics will not suffer with these new realities when we've lost $362 million at the state level last this year and next year.
050On the pro side of things, all of our construction projects, that was that one-time money. That was money that couldn't go into salaries, it couldn't go into supplies because you wouldn't have it next year. Kind of like the state's budget for education, one-time money. Um we have that one-time money allocated to one-time needs and we will finish everything on our long-range facility plan. Our reserves are only going to decrease slightly and I feel responsibly for now. Our goal is to have a 20% reserve. We bolstered it all the way up to 32% in the last 4 years. Um so, we really we really are in a place that I feel pretty good about and in fact as bleak as all this sounds for Marshall Public Schools compared to a lot of superintendents that Mr. Ranke
051and I have been talking to the last couple weeks, months, I feel pretty great about it because we have saved and cut $6 million on our spending the last 4 years. We've been preparing to this financial cliff. I just didn't expect it to come from our legislatures. So, I do feel like we're in a decent spot and we should be proud of what we've accomplished to make it feel as good as it does. What sort of percentage have we served now currently? You're right around 30% at this moment still. Yeah. And uh we had a deficit budget projected for this year. We way under calculated on our formula to be conservative. I I cannot say it with certainty until June 30th, but I believe we are going to be very close to having managed to
052balance that. But it's not because our coaches and our teachers and our principals have not felt it. They have absolutely felt it and they're going to feel it more. But, that's what's keeping us We're seeing neighbors posting, "These are the jobs we're reducing." They're using a term called rifting, reduction in forces. That's happening all over the place. The Kansas City schools have been out there for months saying, "Here are all the positions we're cutting next year." And some of them are not through attrition. We're not there. We're in a much better place. But, it is happening all around us, and thank goodness for our community and the levy and I wouldn't want it You know, we were projected to be at a 3% reserve FY26, and we're at a 30% reserve. That wouldn't have happened
053without our community's support. And that is my uh presentation. Thank you, guys. Hey, pretty good. Thank you, Mr. Bedell. Uh and just to echo what he says, every time I talk to another district, they're talking about reducing teachers, reducing programs, things they're not going to be able to do in the future. Their district's borrowing money to meet payrolls. There are all kind of things going on, and these are the things happening now. When there's less money next year, you're going to see some districts that will not survive. You're going to see some consolidated districts, especially in some of these smaller rural communities, or a large increase in taxes that they're going to have to raise to be able to just operate. So, uh reach out to your legislators, um and keep supporting your teachers in
054your district here. Uh so, thank you. Do my associates have anything else to add? Otherwise, I'll move to tuition reimbursements. Moving to tuition reimbursements. Um I'd like to see a motion to table this until we're able to go in close to kind of look through those applications and to speak more about um individual uh individuals, and then to return and make a motion. It's been moved by Mr. Carroll. Seconded by Mrs. Daley. All those in favor of tabling tuition reimbursements till we return from closed session, please say I. I. Any opposed? Any abstain or recuse? Um MSBA policy updates and the emotion to approve the policies that we've talked about I believe for the last two meetings um as they were presented to us of course policies come to us already legally vetted and that's
055usually a good way for us to leave them. It's been moved by Mr. Carroll. Second. Seconded by Mr. Smith. All those in favor of the policy updates as presented, please say I. I. I. Any abstain >> [clears throat] >> or opposed? And then first readings we have reviewer changes in the district handbooks were sent to you. The budget for FY 27 with a few lowlights or highlights as you want to see as they were discussed today. And then um also your meeting dates for the 2026-2027 year were also in our packets which look like they still remain on the second Tuesday of the month primarily. So, and we will vote on those later on. I need to seek a motion to move to closed session for the purpose of legal action, lease purchase, hiring, firing,
056individually identified personnel records. It's been moved by Mr. Carroll. Second. And second by Mr. Uh Andrew. Yay. Harry. I. I. Andrea. Matt. Miss Haley. Thank you. We will move to closed session.