001good evening I've always wanted to do that I'd like to call this meeting to order do I have my dinner there you go I'd like to call the meeting to order regular board meeting September 21st 2023 uh first order of business is our Pledge of Allegiance Mr Kelly good evening my name is Liam Vermillion will you please stand and join me saying the pleasant the Pledge of Allegiance a pledge of 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 foreign okay um next up is the adoption of the agenda do I have a motion Mr Madam president I move that we approved the consent agenda as presented okay do I have a second actually I
002believe it's the agenda the whole genome a second okay thank you Mr Russell and Mr Daniels um all in favor all right um next up do I need to say that again yeah passes four to zero yes yeah okay thank you learning uh next up is The Shining Star Wars uh thank you Mrs Council this evening we would like to ask a Valerie Miller to come up to the podium she's going to share with you um a really exciting story uh about one of our employees and and some of the great things that have happened so Valerie if you would yeah on August 24th the student was choking on a piece of a corn dog during lunch in that moment Wendy Patton recognized that the next necessary step was performing the Heimlich maneuver after acting
003swiftly Wendy was successful in removing the corn dog this act of Bravery is why we believe she deserves to be a Center Grove Corporation shining star we are truly lucky to have her on our food service team thank you so much Wendy [Applause] okay have you know that your name will now be on the clock out there well done thanks giving Spotlight okay uh next would be the CG Spotlight and we have Pleasant Grove Elementary Mr Mr Kelly [Music] first of all I'd like to say thank you for giving us this opportunity uh Wendy amazing job just amazing um we're fortunate enough with that we have the opportunity to share with you three shining stars from Pleasant Grove uh first up I'd like to invite Liam Vermillion who let us in the Pledge of Allegiance
004Lima if you could come up here and just stand and stare at everybody in the audience and feel uncomfortable just like that awesome uh here here's what makes Liam exceptional I'm recognizing Liam for his kind heart positive student leadership at Pleasant Grove and is a willingness to go above and beyond for others Liam is an excellent student with tremendous work ethic a Next Level athlete who will turn your head when he gets to high school but most importantly he's a kind young man who makes sure others feel included especially our students with disabilities and the short story is is that he makes he goes out of his way to include everyone at recess even out in the community he's just an amazing individual at the beginning of this school year Liam was around and I
005asked him to help me bring in the kindergarten students on the first day he didn't hesitate that meant a lot to me because a kid's first day of school is so important they were nervous on the about their first day to find their classroom and he provided a positive first impression Liam Vermillion [Applause] and next I would like to bring up Stacy raftery Stacy is a second grade teacher at Pleasant Grove she's taught for 17 years in the Center Grove School Corporation both at Pleasant Grove and Maple Grove and what what makes Stacy exceptional and here's what I wrote Stacy is an exceptional teacher who works extremely hard at her trade she exemplifies the term lifelong learner she as she's always evolving her skills and continually seeks opportunity to learn new methods and instructional strategies
006when I think of the word zeal I think of Stacy's commitment to the teaching profession because she is Relentless in her pursuit of advancing her skills each and every year Stacy raftery [Applause] and next I'd like to bring up Kathy friedenstein I should have put on here Kathy does not like the extra attention but I love it she is so deserving Kathy is a special education assistant she's done it for a while she's been at Pleasant Grove for quite at some time we I have 25 years and she is the heartbeat of the school she's the Pleasant Grove version of The Swiss army knife she is a special education assistant but means so much more to our school Kathy is accountable Dependable responsible and simply put great at her job she has been a constant
007through the years of change and can always be counted on Pleasant Grove is blessed to have her on her team and an example was today we had our Fun Run and we had a little girl who we found out quickly she does not like mascots and uh you know you I could see Kathy over there just you know taking her in giving her Comfort holding her hand and then and then they were able to enjoy the fun run so thank you Kathy for all you do you are a blessing to our school [Applause] hmm all right so next is public comments and there are no public comments tonight so we will go into kins the consent items um is there any discussion on the consent items Madam president I move that we approved the consent
008agenda great you've been dying to do that okay thank you Mr Russell Mr Robinson um all in favor aye aye any opposed that passes 4-0 we might want to mention too this evening Mr Alexander couldn't join us today so he has a personal matter that he had to take care of great so next we're on to 7.1 approved school and approved School Improvement plans Dr arkanoff thank you Mrs count this evening I'm recommending that the board approved the school Improvement plans and Dr Hoover will provide you with some additional information for me oh yeah thank you um before we dive into the to the actual plans I just want to share a few slides here because there's a lot that goes into the process in each building and even though these three plans or our
009plans are really three-year um processes they have to review them and update data and make adjustments each year to those those three-year goals and so we're in one of those three year Cycles but I think it's really important to know all that goes in behind the scenes that the the building levels are doing and at the end of the day it is about goals but we also know when we're striving very hard to think goals work when we have systems because systems are what continue Improvement and make them not a fluke or a flash in the pan but continue so we can keep progressing so we're working really hard at the system so that when we get to the place we want to be and we arrive we can sustain it so um just as
010a reminder um in our district we are a professional learning community and we we're all involved in working collaboratively with the people who do two life jobs with us and that's the foundation of that first we call them our gears these are the three areas we're constantly working on and that's how we do the work as a PLC but it's also to create safe supportive and collaborative environments not only for students to learn in but for everyone to work in and so that that culture that we all live and work in is really important the second is effective teaching and we need that in every classroom and that's how we do how we teach um so that we're using best practices and always growing and improving and then the last one is to have a
011guaranteed viable curriculum enough to what we teach so that that learning experience and what kid their learning targets are are the same no matter what classroom and what building a student is sitting in and especially with the district with this multiple schools that is very important to have those learning targets the same across the district and with that system what we're really striving for is to have an exceptional educational experience for every student and what you'll see there in the box that we're aiming at that is how our principles and teaching learning Department have um kind of Quantified or talk about what does it mean to have an exceptional experience it's not winning just trophies or Awards it's really about um the environment we want kids to be in we want them to be safe
012respected and cared for every day at school I'm challenged and engaged growing and thriving and celebrating and prepared our big verbs we're looking for so that E3 is something every kid gets just by coming to Center growth and then the last one and I say this a lot because it's so important that we have to truly believe we do better work together than we can ever do by ourselves and it takes longer because getting out people to agree or getting everyone on board takes takes time and effort and we have to let some things go but at the end of the day it's it's better for kids and it's better for us as um staff members because our ideas and our plans are better so those are the big ideas that go behind all of
013the schools creating their their school Improvement plans even though they're working back in their buildings we're still all focused on the same work as the district um so with that she's going to pull up a summary page while I explain a few things about the action item I'm app we're asking you to approve per Indiana code all public schools must annually submit a school Improvement plan also per the State Board of Education rule plans will be submitted after being approved by the governing body the applicable standard requires the e-school submit their full revised three-year School Improvement plan on a yearly basis and all of our schools must submit that plan no later than October 6th the Indiana school Improvement plan is part of a process for continual School Improvement to be effective the plan should
014be reviewed be viewed as a living document evolving as circumstances change during a three-year period covered by each plant which is why I also ask you to look at the give you the action plan so you can see how we're altering and improving East Center Grove School is reviewed and considered its assessment data and revised their plan to reflect the building needs the student achievement goal for each building is the basis for their strategies and professional development throughout the year which is delineated in the this their school Improvement plan our elementary schools are focused on reading as our previously previous school had been on math and we really made a lot of gains in our math as I shared at the August board meeting when we talked about student performance data our elementary schools are
015in a multi-year plan to improve reading Acquisitions and comprehension the addition of an explicit system or systemic phonics instruction called you fly the University of Florida literacy initiative is a district-wide strategy this year we're excited to see the impact of this instruction along with the continual Improvement in implementing our comprehensive reading framework so the you fly is the one of the science of reading components that go into that larger reading acquisition our secondary schools have goals that include Improvement in language and math portions of their state assessments um as a reminder we are in the renewal of the process the plans for approval tonight include benchmarks performance data strategies outcomes research and professional development plans the school Improvement plans and revisions are aimed at continuing improving our student learning and our student growth on the
016summary of all the school schools and benchmarks are provided and as are the action plans that you can see um I do want to put a plug-in I couldn't before the action item was in I couldn't share this because it came out Friday all of our schools um met Federal standards on our report card so we're doing good stuff just trying to get better every year I asked if the board to prove all nine schools updated School Improvement plans for 23 24. well I I'm just sitting here you know we've been through this several times and every year these are great is there somewhere that we should be including how parents would be involved in school Improvement in other words dare I say their responsibility for their child with the education it is this the
017place that we should talk about that or because I never see that as part of this it's the schools are doing this the schools are doing this the schools are doing this but where are we letting the parents know you have some responsibility here in an inclusion way yeah I wanted to do there's a lot of um partnership particularly in our elementaries our parents are more involved there and those are those formative years where they have included not only information but um our ptos all the principles will share those at their meetings and ask for some input and their they go through the data so that they can see how our kids are doing and what we're striving for so I would see on an individual building basis they use different mechanisms they have to
018involve parents that way ignore I have a question on the I'm sorry on the document the summary document I just want to make sure these might just be clerical misses here under Center Grove Elementary it says 922 is that supposed to be nine two point two I'm assuming and then you see that okay and then on North Grove it looks like we're missing the percentage this is the sign yeah it's just the percentage under the I read it says three minus percentage I assume we did better than three so this document is just for the board correct this isn't what we produce or approve your the board's approving the board's approving the the action item the action plans yeah the summaries to Hope communicate okay I just need to clean down what our yeah multi-page
019about 10 to 15 per each so for that for people for us to show to the public so I can fix those before before they go public but you're approving the plans not the summary sorry about that okay thank you and this is actually I mean like it's an ongoing thing throughout the year isn't it I mean yeah if some of them get together should put it together but the thoughts about this is ongoing throughout the year in each building and as I said earlier [Music] talking about data talking about places to make improvements so it's it's not only a building um it's not only building work it's really District work and we're supporting and back and going back and forth and we decide we call them our big rocks because you only have so
020many things you can do right in a year so the biggest things those are our big rocks and and reading is a big rock that is a multi-year plan and so um you know we've done a lot of that work with math and now we're on the reading component which you know it's harder to do an auditions see them in both so Dr Hoover I appreciate the school Improvement action plans and our goals and it looks like it's increasing either two or three percent and I read depending on school and depending on grades how did we do last year I mean we had the same goals that we establish annually did we meet those goals this year if we did what schools if we didn't how are we going to meet them next year so
021it's a lot I actually charted it all out somehow I knew you had and um across math and language arts by grade level in our elementaries in more grade levels than not we exceeded what we expected last year um and in some we did not and the same in language arts um so I won't say we went up everywhere last year because we didn't um we did stay um about the same distance or more though from that state average because that's one thing to look at because when we look at your seventh grade month and we went down to percentage points but then when you look at the state you can tell it was a dip for everyone there was you know something with testing or that year so we always try to compare two
022not only did How We Do compared to last year with completely different children right right grade level but how do we compare to the state average because we want to keep getting farther and farther yeah which is also a good measure we also look like I showed in the um student performance to see if there's those same Trends or are we falling behind somewhere and that's not the trend with other schools and I appreciate you have a new set of second graders every year but those second graders become third graders so we're tracking and and for those that fell behind I'm assuming this action plan then is is taking into account to try to catch them up for next year yes and and one of our besides our in the elementary are reading we also
023have a big rock of working on our RTI structures so that you know students need interventions um they're getting what they need and very targeted support for those gaps thank you Madam president I move that we approve the school Improvement plans as presented [Music] aye any opposed all right thank you Nora appreciate that and uh you know a lot of good stuff going on there super excited for Sugar Grove that was a big deal a very very big deal for Sugar Grove to be named a Blue Ribbon School we're going to be celebrating them next month so we're looking forward to that yeah great principle set the sugar that was very deserving they made some big gains in their support some student learning thanks okay next is 7.2 accept bids for multi-purpose facility doctor thank
024you this evening I'm recommending that the board approve or accept the bids for the multi-purpose facility and Dr long will provide you with some additional information thank you tonight with us from a come hunt is Chad Peters the senior project manager for us hey come hunt and and Center Grove received bids for the Center Grove Softball and golf facility is designed by Fanning Howie and Associates on January 13 2023 and again on August 17 2023 and let me explain that we had a bid packet that we felt was came in a little bit unreasonable so we kind of repackaged it and re-bid that that's why the Gap in between and why it's taken us a little bit of time to get it to you but by repackaging and re-betting number two we saved almost two
025hundred thousand dollars on the project so it was it was a good idea and I appreciate hunt and Chad leading that um that that idea and and following through so on July 15th and again on August 18th uh CSO and AECOM held de-scope meetings with the low bidders and based on their review of the D scope meetings and budget they recommend we accept the bids from the following companies and bid pack oh I wanted to also tell you sorry we had a total of 23 bids for these so we we're very pleased with the number of bids that we had felt like we had a really nice package and a nice project to get quite a few bids on it so we're very pleased with the turnout so in bid pack one we recommend approving
026the SCS Construction Services they'll do the general trades and site work the total amount was one million 855 thousand dollars on bid Pack 3 for electrical and lighting to Maverick electrical solutions for a total of 428 902.75 for bid packet number four access control and security to Hoosier security for a total of sixty seven thousand nine hundred dollars a bid packet number five to uh Plumbing to Gordon Plumbing Incorporated uh for a total amount of one hundred and four thousand one hundred and twelve dollars uh bid packet number six to McCann uh mechanical to Irish Mechanical Services a total amount of 129 000 bit packet seven the duck worked by Irish Mechanical Services for 142 000 and bid pack at eight uh fire protection also to Irish Mechanical Services for sixty thousand dollars so that's
027our recommendation and be willing to answer any questions just just one bill and I think you know I'm understanding the the bid summary sheet that that you sent to us but just so unclear the bid summary is just listing the kind of the recommended not all those that bid but then I see a bunch that say not taken um we didn't take any of the alternate bids okay that's what that was for I think I thought on the bottom maybe there's a the the tabs for all of the oh it's in a spreadsheet sorry we can pull it up I don't know that it's important I just but those are the alternate bids some things that you know we were hoping to get in and decided not to take any of them okay that's what
028I would my question was more than not taken okay than anything else and is this just something that we feel maybe will add over time we think we can um we had priced them out and and Chad had done a lot of work and we had priced them out to to see what it would cost if we were to purchase them and we wanted to compare uh that price to what the the if the contractor would bid on and we felt like we could still do it cheaper than including it in their part of the the package so we'll still do them it just won't be part of the um the bid for example it's like the The netting for a hitting facility you know for the golf some for that seems pretty important right
029yeah well we probably need that um but we had priced that out and and but we also put it in a bed packet and we know what our price was and all the bids that we got were higher than what we could get them for so it was really kind of a loose equipment we were hoping we could get it all through the contractors but Loose equipment will figure out you know how to do that by the time they put their markup on their ffne then we're in a situation where we can just sort of get a direct right okay so the money for for that is still part of this package right we still have that we still have the money yes to go buy those things yes I'm for saving money Chad I
030haven't mentioned class 89 in a while so you can see the the class of 89 from Center Grove Is Standing Tall still right so Madam president I moved that week's vice president what you I move that we accept the bids for the multi-purpose facility as presented thank you do I have a second a second thank you Mr Russell Mr Robinson all in favor aye any opposed and it passes 4-0 thank you thank you all right and I'm struggling here there we go yes so next is 7.3 budget hearing thank you this evening is the hearing on the 2024 budget and I will turn it over to you Mrs counts to run the hearing okay this evening's board meeting has been appropriately advertised as a hearing on the 2024 budget the bus replacement plan and the
031capital projects funds plan I now open this public hearing and I would like to call on Dr Taylor to provide an update on the budget uh but we've got quite a few slides to cover here tonight um I want to share some information first off the board's not taking any action this evening this is a requirement that we've published these documents we'll go ahead and go to the next slide we've published these documents we published those on September 8th into the online Gateway system they are also available on our on our website website and the address is listed on the screen this evening the board will hear information on the budget hearing and some requirements for the bus replacement plan and the capital projects plan we do all three hearings at once and then I'll
032return in October and ask the board for adoption of of the budget the bus replacement plan and the capital projects plan please so we're going to cover eight uh well really seven important areas then one summary slide that kind of tell the story of our budget and our and what we're asking for this school year so the first thing to look at is um our enrollment and how it's changed over the years and you'll see we've seen steady growth some years we've seen big pockets of growth this year was a year where we grew 71 students or 61 students that's as of Tuesday the official count day for this will be October 2nd this year that is slightly later than in Prior years that's a new requirement from the journal assembly the budget I'm going
033to present tonight was built on the number 94 94 so 60 new students so we're only off by one right now and for each student roughly we get about 6 800 in Revenue into our education fund we'll talk about the other funds as we move through here but these are this is the really big funding formula that pays our teachers and our instructional staff next slide please right the capital assets plan once again is a legal requirement and we like we publish any Capital asset or project that's going to exceed ten thousand dollars and we also like to note that since 2010 we've supplemented Revenue in our operations fund with General obligation bonds we have to do this we receive roughly 50 percent in revenue for the budget that we need to spend in our
034operations fund and again that's things like custodians bus drivers utilities and Fuel and so while we need one amount we get about 50 percent of that from property taxes and so to offset that difference we've sold these Geo bonds this year for 2020 four sorry there's a slight typo there it's not for the 2023 budget but for the 2024 budget the bonds will be 6.1 million dollars it helps to tend to shrink in that gap between what we receive in revenue and what we need to spend in the budget and those bond funds support our maintenance department and our technology department this is a view of how those funds are distributed across those different projects again items exceeding ten thousand dollars so you'll see the the the line number the item if it's funded from
035the operations fund how much and if it's funded from the bonds how much and on this first page we show our maintenance budget on the next slide we show our technology budget and then the total cost for that and this is again something we've done every year this is also part of the requirement that we share this information with public and what we're going to do in our Capital asset plan the next uh requirement we're going to cover is our bus replacement plan um we look to replace our budgets our budget our bus replacement planned we look to replace our buses every 10 years sometimes the usable life's longer or shorter that shorter than that depending on on the life of the bus this year we're recommending a replacement of eight buses the corporation currently
036owns 99 and why might that be a little bit off it's not exactly eight is that we've held on to some buses a year or two that have that we've maybe been able to keep in service that 99 number also includes all of our many short or shorter buses our moderate size buses um our special special buses that run different routes maybe run in between buildings for athletics um and so they're they're included in that count but we don't always replace those they typically have a little bit longer life Dr Taylor that still looks like a plug number and I think I've asked that every year but we actually have 99 buses correct we don't I don't believe we operate 99 routes we do keep some some buses ready to go and trade them out
037and we obviously have buses out for service every day right we have a great mechanical staff that service our buses and does a great job of that one other limitation here is simply the cost and the growing cost of these buses they were hit some of the hardest hit equipment we have since since covid and so you'll see that increasing cost and the reality is that some years we can get that ninth bus some years we can't and so we always advertise we trade them in and we put that proceed towards the purchase of its replacement all right thank you next slide so a couple new slides we wanted to add this year because this has been a unique year in Indiana Finance and and school budgeting we've had a lot of swings and they're
038large swings and so what you see on in front of you is a list of new Revenue that we received and I just listed Revenue that was over a hundred thousand dollars so if you had all the numbers up at the top you're not going to get exactly the number at the bottom because it includes some things that are lower miscellaneous Revenue that just would not fit on the chart but you know we did get some new funding from the state you'll see what our new found the foundation and complexity funding is you'll see then that we also received about that 6 800 for 60 new students we really were estimating and hoping to have more like 200 new students this year still growing still great to be a growing School Corporation just didn't hit
039that 200 number and so our prior estimate in this area was really 1.3 and we wanted to list that and just let folks know receive some some additional funding for uh additional students classified as special with special special education and with vocational education and so both of those have gone up that sold their populations some of that money will go directly into Staffing to support students or we'll go to a C9 Vocational School to help um to provide educational opportunities that we maybe don't have here on our local campus the honors Grant went up and this is an interesting one prior we've only received honors Grant revenue for students who receive an academic honors diploma and this year we have an opportunity to also receive compensation or receive additional revenue for students who pursue and
040pass the Dual credit course who get an Indiana college core 30 when they graduate and a few other things there's like five different factors I won't go into each one of them now but it's a good opportunity we are a high performance School District this is a great thing for us we're happy to do that we're happy to receive this Revenue it will really help continue to fund those exceptional experiences um something the board took action on and has done is as we've talked about with that that the bigger need in our operations fund than what Revenue will support we've had to look at items in our operational fund that we could support out of debt service we talked about the maintenance and transportation we've been doing that since 2010. the board is as approved
041some debt to be issued and we issued that in the spring for school bus replacement and so to help with some of that school robust replacement cost we're going to actually pay those out of that service moving forward it's not the entire amount but it's a good start and that was money that then was available it's not really new Revenue but it's an expense we did not have to make out of the operations fund um it's a good time to have a little bit of a cash balance we do maintain about an eight percent cash balance and when when the interest rates are going up it's a good time to do that so we've increased our interest projections for next year um still feel like and hope this is a little conservative but it's reflective
042of what we've really received in the last three months um here at the school corporation and so um the amount and then we projected it out over a 12-month period finally there's something that exists in our state called a maximum Levy growth quotient and this is a rule from the state that says you may not collect more than this number from your local taxpayers and um this was going to be a year for Center Grove schools where we could actually collect more than that rule applied and the reason was that we were growing faster than the state that rule got changed during the last legislative session and they said nope everybody in the state is going to have a cap even School corporations that are growing at a faster rate and so we really were
043projecting closer to 1.2 million in this area and you'll see it came out at five point five or five mil 500 000. from what I'm seeing here then with the fewer students about 960 000 Less in revenue and from the mlgq growth about another 650 000 less than Revenue yeah so 1.4 I got 1.6 but I'm not going to fight it down well you've got a lot of you've got a lot of things that aren't on here too yeah that's correct that's and you know we found those things out some of this we knew about in July we knew it was coming um but the new student account we found out about three weeks ago and we changed some of our expenditures to match this and you'll see that as we move forward into a
044balanced budget but it reduced the number of teachers we were going to hire this year but really in the operations fund that was a that was a tough hit because that's a fund that has been underperforming in revenue for years and we were really looking forward to getting that advantage of catching it up it's not it's not thanks so and this is the positive slide I was just saying not not good news but no it's good it's still good but if you it's just keep that 6.38 in your mind and let's go to the next slide and this is Major swings and revenue that went down obviously some of those went down because we projected them to be higher but these are actual numbers that went down um property tax caps can can continue to
045be a growing and more significant issue for our Corporation they have now tripled in the last two years and I'm going to show you a chart here in a moment that kind of shows that growth but it is becoming a a hard to manage necessary reality and the reason the Caps come up is that we have a lot of other and taxing entities that also need growth their equipment their staff are all costing more they need to ask our taxpayers for more our costs are going up um our towns and our cities are grabbing assessed value in the form of Tif districts and they are setting that aside so that they can grow and develop the communities but all of that comes at a loss from somewhere and and for us that that amount for
0462024 is really estimated to be closer to 2.4 million is an increase um we're going to set aside 1.8 million and we're going to do some other things that aren't aren't listed on this slide to kind of come up if that estimate comes in we will we will manage it um to be honest to grow our budget and our losses in this area 1.8 million was already a pretty heavy lift and to imagine us going up to 2.4 in this current budget would have meant we would have to significantly look at reducing our budget amounts and so we felt this was a a reasonable number to grow it we can always hope that it won't hit that estimate but last August we thought it would be 800 000 and you can see it tripled since
047last August so that's what we're going to talk about again here on some other slides because that's that's the biggest hit to the revenue the other one is that we're really happy that our general assembly stepped up made a rule Indiana was one of Six States to charge parents for textbook textbooks and curricular materials and and education should be free and fair in our in our country and I believe this is a great step forward I think we all agree with that however the method in which the state allocated funds available for textbooks really underfunded our need so we anticipate we'll roughly receive about 150 dollars per student for textbook rental but unfortunately the average cost at Center Grove schools is closer to 300 dollars per student and so that was a pretty big underfunded
048mandate coming down from from the general assembly we're glad to have some funding we will receive that money um but it really forced us to set aside 850 000 so that we don't have to change the exceptional programs we're offering we don't have to ask our teachers to do without or to cut they can continue to teach with high quality curricular materials that they've worked hard to adopt and use in their in their everyday in their classrooms and so we feel like this is a good number we hope it can reduce over the years as we find new ways to adopt or not adopt or extend contracts Dr Hoover and her team are already looking at this for next year um that hopefully is a number that will reduce as we move forward but we
049had to put something aside to make sure we can continue to provide the the great exceptional educational experience every day anything you want to add there well on it um next bullet point anytime the tax gaps change or the portion of tax revenue changes the excise tax and local income tax also change and so if we get a loss up above in that first tax cap line it's going to impact those other taxes um and so that that was about 200 000 that was lost in our operations fund and then finally not really a big loss in Revenue but um Central nine is experiencing the same issues we are they had to ask for some more money they see their cost going up um this is about an 11 increase in our in our cost
050for Central nine still think it's a great program money well spent we're already working with them on their budget for 25 to try to get ahead of make sure we don't see something like this again to make sure we're being good team players but we needed to show that in there and so when we had all those big swings up and the positive and the negative we went up 6.3 but we went right back down about 3 million any questions I know I covered a lot of topics there in those slides scene none we'll move to the next one which is a slide we have done in the past and it's just other major changes in the budget we did not hire or change any new administrative positions we did add nine classroom teachers to
051still meet the need a lot of those are specialized teachers and not as many home run teachers again because enrollment didn't grow as much didn't have to add as many homeroom teachers as we did in special areas um three support staff classroom assistants and then two bus drivers again to help the managing growth and and keep our routes at a reasonable time length we are pleased our health plan is really performing very well we are close that even with a minor increase that we're recommending in this budget we will be able to to hit our Revenue goal for for cash balance in that account to make sure it can stay self-funded we are self-funded insurance and this will allow us to continue performing at the highest levels and it's a it's a very minor and
052moderate increase for most employees this is going to be a dollar a pay um and so we're pleased to be able to hold that really as low as possible and the corporation contributes quite a bit to that that account as well the next two though are growing as we all know your utility bills and your gasoline costs are going up at home and they are going up for the corporation and you'll see we did a 13 increase in our utility accounts um this the for this year and our gasoline actually it needed to go about 200 000 which is about a third of what where it was in Prior years and we think those are the reasonable we watch projections in those markets obviously if they go down that's great it's just more cash available
053but we had to be realistic and these are these are actuals that we spent in 22 projected out to 24. and then finally just a reminder that we had to set aside any of that new Revenue had to be set aside for that what's what is in in essence lost Revenue to the tax cap loss so let's take a look at a chart on tax cap losses and just want to show you how this has grown since it's it really came about in 2009-10 and you'll see for for Center Grove it really kind of just was pretty steady subtle growth we could manage it you know we're talking about a budget that's about 20 million and so when it was 100 000 it wasn't that bad but now it's getting up and it's projected to
054be 4.5 million and remember well it's a budget of 20 million we really only receive 13 million and so that 4.5 is a really big hit on the actual Revenue we collect in property taxes and um you'll see that the scariest last three bullet points are the scariest it is tripled now it's growing so fast that it's just at a straight angle and I have to keep adding more rows at the top and more more lines out to the right and so something we need to get a hold of and we need to strategize on how we're going to manage that continual growth as we move forward so what does all that look like when it comes down to an actual budget well we've taken all that new revenue and we've placed it in the
055education fund our operations fund accordingly and we're represent we're presenting two balanced budgets this this evening in the education operations fund our debt fund we're going to spend some time talking about our debt service fund we're going to understand just by twenty five thousand dollars it too is starting to get some impact to that tax cap loss and so we need to account for that we need to assume that we may not collect as much in the debt as we as the growing cap loss is so it's not a lot it's still under a hundred thousand that's the good news but it has grown each year and we need to start setting aside so that's that's why you don't see a balanced budget there it's simply we know we're not going to get Revenue in
056that account and we're setting that aside to offset it's a 117 million or 170 million dollar budget in total that we're presenting this evening we'll move to the next slide so how do we generate that money well we talked about the education fund earlier when I showed you the student population and the money we get from the state there's no local tax rate for our education fund however we do have a tax rate for our operations fund and our debt service and what I presented on the chart is the 2023 rate you'll see it was a dollar two three nine um and what we're recommending for 2024 is an increase to a dollar six four four that's a little over four Cent increase um and you'll see of that four Cent increase very little is
057going in the operations fund again we're constrained by that maximum but 3.6 percent of that is going to go into our debt service fund and we're going to talk about the plans for for that Revenue um I always like to point out because if you go out and look on the public website you're going to see an atrocious very high advertised rate we do that just in case something's wrong there's an error an Omission this year's a great example we didn't get our assessed value until I had already published and closed this budget and so it's a good thing I advertised High because we're able to have some flexibility and make changes as needed and we can land on exactly that tax rate that we want to land on when December rolls around slide please
058all right just want to show some historic some history of our our total tax rate so back in 2009 our tax rate was at a dollar four and since then it's really hovered around a dollar two we've done a great job managing that um to the extent that we could unfortunately these losses that we've incurred now going into 24 cause us to approach this total tax rate differently and we have to start thinking about how are we going to continue to operate in an environment where the tax cap losses are growing so fast on us we have to come up with ways to spend less in our operations fund and our education funds maxed out spending money on teachers instructional staff so we have to look to our debt service fund and that's why we're
059making this recommendation this evening is to go to the Dollar six tax rate which will allow us to perform some new debt projects to offset some cost in the operations funding show you what that looks like what our tax rate currently looks like in our County I only have 20 23 numbers this is something we get every January and so I'll updated each year but you'll see Center Grove ranks fourth in our County three Schools Franklin Clark Pleasant and Edinburgh all have passed General past operating referendums so they have additional funds that come into their corporation above and beyond whatever they're going to tax locally for operations or Debt Service Center Grove is right there above Angeli Jackson Indian Creek and Greenwood at a dollar two thirty nine and so even going to that dollar
060six will still be solid in that fourth position moving forward want to expand that out a little bit and on the next slide we're going to look at where do we fall in the state this isn't every school in the state but it's a good sampling this is provided by a company we work with called policy analytics they work with a lot of government agencies and you'll see I put a big red arrow on where Cinder Groves dollar to tax rate lands right now um you'll see some schools around us like Southern Hancock Alexandria South Madison Shelby Eastern but what you'll see there as you move across to the first bulb number at a dollar six really one five nine nine that's the Statewide average and that's really what we're recommending is to come in
061right around where the state right average is at a dollar six if you move over a little further you'll see here in Central Indiana though the average is really a dollar eighteen and so we'll still be well below what the central average is very reasonable very very great a great use and a great um in my opinion a great deal for your dollar and the types of programs and education we provide at that rate honestly as you're just reading across some of these schools you might think ones that we kind of look like or perform like who do we compare to academically a lot of those schools are well out to the left on us a lot of the schools in the suburbs surrounding Indianapolis and Fort Wayne are listed in there still come in
062at a very reasonable rate even with this forcing increase and and I think it would fall right in line then with that state average again these are all last year's numbers they will all change and fluctuate as we move into the upcoming year let's bring that back locally on the next slide and we'll talk about what does that look like for a homeowner here in Center Grove so I've taken a a home that's three hundred thousand dollars and kind of played out what would their tax bill look like and you can see what it looked like in 2023 that homeowner after all their deductions um ended up paying about fifteen hundred dollars in school taxes 1503 at the bottom if we did nothing and just got the flat tax rate because of some changes there
063in that supplemental deduction from the state that homeowner's tax bill would would fall to 1481. what we're recommending tonight the four Cent increase for the board to consider and take action on next month would raise that tax bill to 15 10. so it's a seven dollar net increase totally going to show there that if we did nothing it would go down we think this is an appropriate time to make that type of a change it would be a seven dollar increase on a three hundred thousand dollar home so what would we use that money for we'll go to that next slide and so the goal of the tax rate again I spoke earlier about our operations fund is really where the paint is it's where we pay for our utilities out of and what could
064we do with utilities that would be different we started this at Walnut Grove we put in a solar array Walnut Grove to offset its utility cost and we brought that building online and we're operating it very efficiently Dr long has been approached and we have advertised an RFP for an energy savings project it's a guaranteed Energy savings project other schools have gone down this path before other schools are getting great returns from this typically in an energy savings project you would take the savings that you receive from lower energy bills and you would pay off that debt for the solar array or whatever it is the efficient item that you put in what we're proposing in this budget is that we pay that off from our debt service account and so if this budget is
065successfully passed in October um we would bring back to the board early in 2024 a project that would include geothermal HVAC system and some solar energy it would be at multiple sites throughout the corporation we anticipate it being just below about 20 million dollars um but the key is the annual estimated savings and that operations fund would be about one million dollars beginning in 2025. and those are guaranteed Energy savings from the company that's how this project works and it's a state ran an organized project the state if they if they fall short of providing those Energy savings they have to come up and write us a check and so we will get that back we're going to provide some more details of this again as I said Dr Long advertises this RFP he's going
066to bring that back for consideration for the board in October a lot more details at that time on what this project could look like but we wanted to share because it's a big component as we created the 2024 budget anything left out there Dr long that wanted to add thank you all right two more slides always like to share operating budget and cash um and this is our operating cash balance at the end of the year and you'll see it went up slightly last year our budget also grew a lot last year last year and so um well it went up you'll see it's coming right back down in our projection for this year and part of that is that while I've been talking about property tax cap losses in 24. we lost that number
067I showed earlier in 23 and it was higher than expected and so our cash in the operations fund's taking a pretty good hit and so you'll see we're coming right back down what's really great is that we're still projecting almost eight percent I'm really happy that we're able to maintain that level without projects like the one we're talking about and a budget and the structure that we're talking about I don't know how much longer we'll be able to maintain that eight percent level I think this is a great positive step in a budget that could be built in a way that we can continue to operate at that level which I know has been a board goal it's also a goal that we have to have in place and and a good amount of cash
068balance when we go get our bond ratings and so while the values have changed please know also the budget totals change and so that's why the percentages the values don't always match up exactly so just a summary slide of what we covered because it was a lot and I appreciate your your patience and the attentiveness um we are going to present an education and operations funds that are balanced our current enrollment's up this I'm sorry I forgot to edit this one but it's up 61 as of Tuesday hoping to get a couple more kids by the second um we do our we are anticipating estimating tax rate of 6.44 1.644 cents and that's up a little over four from 2023. um and the annual impact I'm sorry this was the this was the seven dollar
069number I mentioned earlier it'd be 29 if we stayed Flatline and so just wanted to include that in summary be transparent and open and honest about what we're doing um speaking of transparency on the very last slide we like to put all these details out there so if you want to know more about the education fund the operations fund a lot of things that I talked way too much and way too fast about this evening you can dig in here you're welcome to reach out to me Ms Conrad does a great job managing this website and making it look great for the community it's easy to digest we're happy to answer questions this evening that's part of the hearing but also in the upcoming weeks as our community has questions thank you good job Dr
070Taylor okay this is the appropriate time for members of the public to comment on the 2024 budget or the information presented this evening are there members of the public present who would like to comment can you just come on up to the podium please yes sir come on up Mr Norman yes sir yeah Mr Norman we give everybody three minutes so I'll be the time keeper I'll try to give you a warning about 30 seconds out I'm Randy Norman I live down Stones Crossing Road I have a couple observations in a question my first observation is that with a solar panel thing it costs 20 million and you save a million what kind of a good deal with a 20-year return uh okay don't take my don't take my three minutes yeah the next thing
071was on the uh I don't know what other schools look like but the debt and the bond service we have 30 million seems like a lot of money I mean that's a third of our budget uh and is there any plan to really pay that down or are the interest rates such that those bonds are so low it'll be silly to pay them down which may be the case uh and the other thing and don't everybody boo out here but uh I think we ought to go after a bigger tax increase um for heaven's sakes look where we were in those in all those other schools and how we compare I think we need to be looking at investing more in the school that's not my comments I I do want to point out I
072was very conservative in those savings they also don't include that we will receive some some money back from the federal government for installing these it is something that is available so we get about a third of that cost back and we can roll that into other projects so we'll share more of that in October I hope you can come back and see those details and I hope they're even better than what I'm projecting but um we agree it's not a it's not it's a great option for a 20-year repay like that but when you're so constrained in One Fund you've got to look at both so that's really where we're at great question I would also like to add about going for the bigger increase you want to share a little bit about that so
073you know we understand this as a community where we've we've approached the community with two referendums in the past really 15 years and so we felt this was a a reasonable increase anytime we increase our budget we're going to hurt the other taxing entities in in the area too and Mr Hoffman's here for the fire department we didn't want to make it so large that we ended up taking money from other entities we are trying to play play a fair game daughters they're buy one get one free today by the way I appreciate that that's the real reason there 'll just trade-off so when we were but when we raise it when we raise it we also impact that cap and so we have to factor the more and more we go up the bigger
074and bigger the cat gets we think this is a nice nice place to start but appreciate your advocacy Mr Porter yeah yeah hi I'm Keith in case poorer I'm just a taxpayer and a supporter of Center Grove uh two questions you said that our enrollment will only go up 61. that's what you're projecting for that's actual it's pretty close it's going to be almost exactly that that's we're going to get 61 new students between now and January 1st uh that's from last September to this this year to where we said today we've grown 60. I thought I saw on your slide 306 that was the last that was the year before so we do it we always go count data count and so we have those 61 kids in our school today from last year
075from last year okay all right okay yeah and uh the other the other thing was uh I just said it slipped my mind uh but I agree with Mr Norman that Debt Service fund is getting more and more every year and we now are using The Debt Service fund the paid uh by buses you know and stuff we don't have enough money you know coming in from that so oh the other question uh let's see I just thought of it and I lost it again I'm sorry uh oh how much in the 24 budget are we taking from the education fund to the to the operations fund that number for 20 million and it is the maximum of 15 that is the maximum this year yeah because last year 13 last year yeah so a
076couple do you have any time I will take your time do you have any other questions no that's it okay so the reason the reason for the growth in the debt fund is that the Ops fund is legally capped and we can't grow it we would have if we gotten that mlgq money I showed on the one slide we wouldn't be doing as much in debt this year that have been another I think it was 1.6 million right 1.1 we would have done it there so thank you yeah thank you very much I will okay are there any other comments okay I now close this public hearing are there any board members who have any comments or questions nope um Please be aware that there's no board action to be taken this evening the board
077will approve the budget at its next regular board meeting on October 26 2023. thank you all right so um next announcements um our next exec session and board meeting is October 26 2023 does anybody have anything that they'd like to say just just note it starts at two o'clock it does start at two yeah I have nothing tonight okay so some of you may have seen alumni for instance starting a project where we're going to be digitizing all the yearbooks that we have um Mrs Rico and I went through we have duplicates of just about any of them all of them so we're comfortable in sending off these yearbooks it's 50 per yearbook that covers mailing digitizing and mailing them back and the purpose of this correct me if I'm wrong is to get it
078on the uh Corp site and then also under the alumni friends and where people can go in hit the link and find their yearbook and so forth but we'll still keep we have a set here and we have a set over in the library on that one so pretty excited about it I think it'll be a cool project we are getting a lot more questions of how to go about doing class reunions and so forth and so forth and yearbook is always one of the things they want to want to see so good thanks Amy I just want to take a minute and thank Dr Nelson Dr Hoover Dr Taylor and Dr long for uh all the extra work they did Jason your presentation that was outstanding it really was a complicated subject that you
079did a very good job Dr Long thank you for moving forward on the hitting facility in Dr Hoover thank you for uh being very specific for our goals and our benchmarks and everything and I appreciate it I'm looking forward to that and then the last thing if it ever was all right no if there ever was a night I was at the football game Friday night and uh first of all the best student sex in fact seen ever and the second thing I didn't have a place to sit in the second half and if there's ever an example that Center Grove is not a town but is based around the school corporation was Friday night I've never seen crowds like that before and everything and it's the only place that the whole you know we
080there's no Town Center growth so everything we do here is important I appreciate what you guys do because it's uh it's not easy it was especially with a couple of changes have been made in Indianapolis [Laughter] I agree and this uh softball mama's heart is really excited for that hitting facility there you go so anyway I did forget one announcement at the fall break no school October 9th through the 13th I did see that right here so if we have no other comments um we are the meeting is adjourned and we will start the good for the group here sure