001I'm just trying to make sure I can see. >> Does that blue dot up there turn to red? real quick. It's ready to go. Yes, we're live. Huh? We're live. >> We're live. >> Okay. like going to Lucas Oil on the screen. Right. >> Okay. I've been informed that we are live. So, I'm going to call this evening's meeting to order at 7:08 p.m. I recognize that we have a quorum present with all members here. Um, I believe we have an amendment to the agenda. Now, Madam President, I move that we amend the agenda by removing under uh letter D number one uh the mental health of America racial love presentation that we strike that. >> I'll second. >> Thank you, Mr. Man. Thank you, Mrs. Fedler. I have a motion and a second uh
002to amend the U agenda as stated. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none. All in favor of the motion, please raise your right hand. Motion carried unanimously. Uh, next, could I have a motion to approve the amended agenda? >> I make a motion to approve the amended agenda. >> I'll second. >> Thank you, Mrs. Fiddler. Thank you, Mr. Man. I have a motion and a second to approve the amended agenda. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none. All in favor of the motion, please raise your right hand. Motion carried unanimously. Uh, I believe we do not have any visitors tonight unless Mr. Stephy or Mr. Emerson have something they want to say. Hearing that, we'll move on to routine matters. I have a request to approve the minutes for the executive and regular sessions held on July
00314th, 2025. >> A motion to approve the minutes for the executive and regular session on July 14th, 2025. >> I'll second. >> Thank you, Mrs. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Wrightmare. I have a motion and a second to approve the minutes for the executive and regular sessions held on Bastile Day, July 14th, 2025. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none. All in favor of the motion, please raise your right hand. >> I'm obstained. >> And one abstension. So the motion carried 61. And next, approval of our claims and financial reports. Mr. This evening, I am requesting the board to approve our claims and financial reports in the amount of 1,474,686. That's claim since last meeting plus two payrolls. >> I'll make a motion to approve for approval of the claims and financial reports. >> I'll second. >>
004Thank you, Mr. Wrighter. Thank you, Mrs. Halton. I have a motion and a second to approve the claims and financial reports as presented. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none. All in favor of the motion, please raise your right hand. Motion carried unanimously. Uh we have no we needed communications. We have no old business. We'll move on to new business. Uh Mr. Linton, you have our budget workshop and the request to advertise the budget and capital projects and school bus replacement. >> All right. there. >> Okay. So, this evening uh as part of um the annual budget process, uh you can see on the screen there that tonight is our budget workshop uh which is required by law for uh me to the school administration to present to the board and to the public what we
005propose our advertised budget to look like. Uh we'll come back again on August the 25th for a special session uh to have our public hearing. That'll be an opportunity for the the um public to take a look at our budget which will be posted on Gateway in the morning as well as our bus replacement and our CPF plan. Uh and then on September 9th, which uh is a day later, that's a a Tuesday instead of a Monday, we'll have our uh regular board meeting then to adopt uh the 2026 budget. Just as a reminder, um those are the funds that I've listed on the screen. the education, the operation, debt service, pension bond, uh, and rainy day are the three fund or the five funds that we have at Cloverdale Community Schools that we submit
006to the DLGF uh, for budget approval. Uh, just a little bit of information that goes into uh, building the budget. U, average daily membership uh, is what drives the education portion of the budget. All other funds that were listed are if if if they have revenue going into it, they're tax tax driven. Debt, pension, and operation are the three funds that are uh taxdriven. The education fund is driven primarily on um attendance and uh the foundation formula the state uses uh to send money to us. So you can see here that from last year to uh the year prior we had lost six students. That's not bad for a small rural school district. Most districts uh are losing a higher percentage than that. So we felt like uh that was uh good news for us.
007We typically budget uh the loss of 12 to 15 kids. So that was good for the budget since we didn't lose u too many of our brick and mortar kids. What was even better for our budget though uh was uh when you look at where we started with uh Cloverdale Distance Learning Academy in January 2020, we started with 179 kids. We ended last year with 2,150 kids and you can see the the u increase there. These students uh that are enrolled across the entire state of Indiana with Cloverdale Community Schools. uh for those students, we receive 85% funding of the foundation amount of what we receive for our u brick and mortar kids. Please, if anyone has any questions as we go through this, don't hesitate to to stop me. So, this is just a
008historical look that I like to provide the board and the community with uh concerning uh our cash balance for the education fund. I always highlight the education fund. That's the the largest fund that we have and it's really what drives uh a lot of our financial decisions to be quite honest. And you know when you go back to 2017 there was a lot going on with our economy and just school in general. Uh and you can see that uh things were relatively tight at Cloverdale, but since um you know that time, you can see that we've been steadily since 2020 building our cash balance in this fund. Uh last year was obviously a good year. We increased the cash balance in two um almost $1.8 million. uh some of the assumptions that are used for
009the the bud in building the budget. Um we look at uh efforts will be maint uh be made to maintain a responsible staffing level uh for posi positions that are supported by the education fund. Um we have uh all of our teachers and some of our instructional assistants uh part of the principal salaries and things like that part of Mrs. as of sorry will come out any anyone that works or has contact with what's going on in the classroom all or a portion of their salary can come out of that fund. So uh even though our budget is doing very well very solidly overall we see tremendous growth in the district when you add our online students into the formula. Um, we still work uh really hard to maintain responsible staffing uh numbers uh so
010that we can keep our budget in solid position. And uh Mr. Stephy's here this evening representing the CEA. Uh I think we've got a good working relationship and are kind of on the same page is making sure that um we do the best we can for our employees while at the same time um keeping a solid budget in place. uh budgeted in a 10% increase uh for utility. You can see a 15% increase for property casualty insurance. Um as I'd mentioned earlier, this year it looks like I've budgeted in a minus 12, a decline in 12 students uh for this school year for our brickandmortar students. Enrollment currently doesn't look like that's going to happen, but just you always underestimate your revenue and overestimate your expenditures in this situation. Um uh the budgets based on
011Cloverdale Distance Learning Academy not growing. Uh we ended the year with 2150. U talking with Mrs. Ames, I think we'll probably exceed that uh considerably, but again to keep conservative budget, uh that's what this budget's been based on. And then our circuit breaker impact went up substantially, but it's still not very high compared to a lot of neighboring schools are 7 and $800,000 in their tax caps and we're at $177,000. So, uh, that went up from like 72,000 I think from last year, but still a very manageable number. Uh, tax deal that'll impact the operation fund, and I'll talk about that here in just a minute. So you can see our tax and uh levy history. Um you go back to let's see about 2019. It has dropped every year since then. Um um came
012in 2014. But a lot of has happened and one of the primary indicators for that rate going down is the uh Owen County and Putham County assessed value has gone up substantially over the last couple of years and you can see this past year we dropped below a dollar. We were 95 cents. Uh when you look at the education fund uh you can these are the numbers. uh this is the information that you'll be approving at the end of the meeting uh for the other funds except the education fund. So uh for the education fund we're expect and this is based on 18 months the last half of 2025 and all of 26. Uh you can see that we're projecting revenue of of a little over $40 million in that six-month period. In 2014 that
013was $14 million. So things have changed a lot uh in the last few years at Cloverdale. Uh obviously we've netted those expenditures out uh that you know we're going to probably gain cash balance, but that's the way that I've worked the budget for 2026. Uh debt service. Uh we're projected with our current cash balance and local property taxes that we know that we've got coming in the remainder of this year, all of next year's $860,000. You can see our expenditures is 2.4 million. That number is substantially higher than what it will actually be. We have the new project going in uh and the new facility that we're going to to uh start building and sell bonds later this year. Uh projected that first payment of being 1.25 million. It'll probably be far under that. But
014we work with Stifl, our financial advisor, and they look at rates and what they think that projected payment may be. but it's hundreds of thousands of dollars higher than probably what it will be. But that's budgeted in that 2.4 million. So again, wanting to make sure we cover our expenses on uh debt payments uh to our lenders. So uh this evening at the end of the meeting, I'll be requesting the board to approve a levy of $1,859,917 with a tax rate of um uh 58 cents, a little over 58 cents, which is lower. Last year was over 60 cents. So that that rate has actually dropped a little bit and will actually be lower than that when the budget comes in because they always give you a lower rate than what you're asking for. Uh
015the pension bond uh you can see what the revenue is that we're bringing in. U we make one payment a year um on our pension debt. Uh and you can see that we advertise zero levy uh for that and a zero rate. And the reason we do that is I I the Indiana code will allow you to use your uh LIIT dollars, local dollars to be able to pay for that. So what we do is we use uh revenue we already have coming in so that we don't h tack on an additional rate to the taxpayer. So it's one way that we can lower the tax rate uh compared to other districts that don't have LIT coming in. Uh so on the operations fund you can see our revenue uh our projected revenue over the
016next 18 months will be uh just under $9 million. Uh we're projecting uh 14 almost $15 million in expenses which again that's much higher than uh what we will probably spend. and we're requesting a levy in 2026 for $6,494,710 uh with the rate of just a little over $2. One thing that I want to talk about uh on this just a little bit um because the education fund uh uh is carrying such a good cash balance. uh we are able to transfer some of those dollars up to 15% of the revenue that goes into our education fund to the operation fund each year. Uh a month or so ago we did an additional appropriation uh for the education fund uh in the amount of $2.8 million because of the additional 15% because our education fund's
017doing well uh that it allowed us to transfer into our operation fund. Um, so, uh, the board approved that on my request, that $2.8 million. Well, that $2.8 million that we approved counted or will count as an additional expense in the second half of this year. So, that's one reason the expenditures are at least $2.8 million more than we'll actually spend. we have we don't necessarily have any intentions on spending the additional appropriation but while I was doing one for the education fund we just did one for both taxing funds at the same time while we were uh talking with the DF the LGF on those appropriations so uh again I don't anticipate our operation fund being any higher than it's ever been but because that additional appropriation uh that we have for the second
018half of this year kind of skewed that number just a little bit because that is substantially higher than what we've had in the past. Uh, Rainy Day does not carry a tax rate on it, so that's at zero. Um, you can see what the revenue that I'm projecting coming into that will be. Part of that's a $1.2 million transfer out of the operation fund. Um, the additional appropriation will help satisfy that for the operation as it 1.2 million leaves uh for the rainy day. So if you look at our actual our advertised versus our actual rate since 2017, uh you can see that what we've advertised is always substantially higher, but within reason to what we actually uh get. So 2026 will be no different. We will have the additional debt of uh the new
019facility going on, but that will for the most part even out old debt going off. So, I don't anticipate tax rates going up with the new AV dollars or the new AV uh increase. We will uh now don't quote me on this, but we'll probably uh see at or below where we were at last year. So, good news building a new facility, but we really don't see any major increase to the tax rate. Um so, this evening, I'm requesting permission from the board uh to advertise the rates and the levies that you see on the screen in front of you in the presentation. have in front of you and then also to request permission to advertise the CPF and the five-year bus replacement plan. Anyone in the community that wants to look at the details
020of the budget, which have been provided to you in your the blue book, the uh u will be on the gateway website uh tomorrow by around noon uh along with both of those plans. So, does anyone have any questions or comments that they'd like to make? All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Now that we've heard the uh presentation, uh entertain a motion to approve advertising with proposed 2026 budget, capital projects plan, and the school bus replacement plan. Motion to approve the budget workshop request to advertise the proposed 26 budget, capital project plan, the school bus replacement plan. I'll second. >> Thank you, Mrs. Carol. Thank you, Mrs. Halum. I have a motion and a second to advertise all the aformentioned plans. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none. All in favor of the motion,
021please raise your right hand. Motion carried unanimously. Uh, next, approval of cash transfer ends. >> Uh, if you notice in your board packet, as you reviewed that, um, over the weekend, we have several cash transfers that we're requesting the board to approve. the seat. Made a motion to approve cash transfer ends. >> I'll second. >> Thank you, Mr. Wright. Thank you, Mrs. Lewis. I have a motion and a second to approve the case transfer ends. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none. All in favor of the motion, please raise your right hand. Motion carried unanimously. Uh, next, approval of professional leaves. >> We have three professional leave uh requests that you uh found in your board packet. We request approval for those this evening. >> A motion to approve the professional leaves. >> Thank you, Mrs.
022Halton. Thank you, Mrs. Carol. I have a motion and a second to approve the professional leaves. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none. Following the motion, please raise your right hand. Motion carried unanimously. Uh, next, approval of field trips. >> I have five field trips. Uh, requesting the board uh to approve this evening. Motion to approve field trips. >> I'll second. >> Thank you, Mrs. Fidler. Thank you, Mrs. Lewis. I have a motion and a second to approve the field trips as presented. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none. All in favor of the motion, please raise your right hand. Motion carried unanimously. Uh, next, approval of facility use requests. Uh, >> we have four requests this evening that um meet our board policy and would request the board approve those time. Motion to approve the facility
023use request. >> I'll second. >> Thank you, Mrs. Carol. Thank you, Mrs. Halum. I have a motion and a second to approve the facility used request. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of the motion, please raise your right hand. Motion carried unanimously. Uh, next, approval of personnel. of seeing requesting the board to approve personnel um as outlined in your board packet tonight. >> Make a motion to approve personnel. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Wright. Thank you, Mrs. Lewis. I have a motion and a second to approve personnel as presented. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none. All in favor of the motion, please raise your right hand. Motion carried unanimously. Uh board and superintendent comments. Uh, I would would just like to remind the community that um, as I'd mentioned earlier, our
024next board meeting, our September board meeting is delayed by one day. It'll be Tuesday, September the 9th at 7 o'clock here in this uh, building. And then also just want to take a minute to thank our administrators and teachers and uh, just our entire staff, everyone that works at the school district for a uh, smooth start to the school year. Um, you know, as as I've been through the buildings, many will say it's probably one of the smoothest starts we've had. And I think that goes to good leadership, quality, just good employees all the way around. It takes everybody uh working together to be able to do that. And I, you know, part of it I would attribute to the fact that over the last few years we have not had a lot of turnover.
025Uh, so we know we have folks working for us that are used to the system and know how we do things here in Clover Cloverdale and um it's it's uh made for a pretty smooth start. Appreciate that. I would I would concur with that. And um in case you hadn't noticed it, I think Eddie did a super job of mowing the football field for the first time that it looks kind of like I had envisioned and the fact that we actually have now a robotically uh machine that >> Well, we have to purchase that. Yeah. >> It's a keeper. >> Don't tell him you like it or No, >> it's something I've been looking at for a long time. We had straight lines and hash marks and >> as I understand it, uh, >> green
026and white scrimmage night went off very, very well. And I thank all of our administrators for getting us off to a great start. Um, I did some babysitting on back to school bash night, but everything I heard that was in the pictures I saw. That had to be a lot of fun for a lot of people and I appreciate y'all doing that. You may want to give the administrator just a minute to comment because I think the freshman class showed up in full force, you know, and I know the other two buildings that >> we serve pizza. >> There you go. >> They should. >> You're right. You're right. >> But it's a reflection because I think it comes down and we're building a little bit middle school and >> here's the thing. >> Yeah.
027You know, we >> had the new PA system working in the C. >> Yes. >> Possible. >> We probably had I would say close to 1500 maybe for 1,800 people in our building. And the energy, the excitement, and just the energy of the students, it was definitely a great night. I think that everyone who left us with a smile on their face and we're ready for a great year. So, thank you for allowing the teachers to have the back to school night and most importantly, thank you to our community for school. >> Very good. >> Yeah. Our back to school night, I think since it was so well attended, it made the first day of school very smooth, >> our fifth graders knew where to go and what to do. And uh we were able
028to pass out a lot of materials for the car rider line signs and other things so that our arrival is really significant. >> That's a major process right there. Anybody else? All for the good of the