April 16 School Board Work Session

001Good evening. [laughter] Um, welcome to this evening. Tonight is a work session. There is no court action, just discussion. Um, today is Thursday, April 16th, 2026. >> Thanks, Val. Appreciate that. And we have a special guest with us this evening. Jerry McGiven is with us as we have the new updated demographic study that uh I believe it's an update from 2021. So, a lot has changed since then. So, it's great to have Jerry here in the flesh. I think in 2021 with CO being >> Yeah. >> so close. I think you were remote with us in the cafeteria at the high school the last time we heard from was the case. So, it's >> good to have you here. >> Thank you, sir. >> So, I'll turn it over to you, sir. >> Thank you.

002[clears throat] >> Meeting starts at 6. I go on at 601. I like [laughter] >> and you have hard copies of both the full report and the PowerPoint. >> I'm going to work off of this PowerPoint screen right there. So, um again, those you haven't heard me speak before, two things. Um don't let Dany Alabama fool you, but I'm raised seven miles south of here schools. used to work here in Auburn when I was a kid. So the rest of my family. Uh second thing, these are forecasts. They are not Projections where you take great survivorship [clears throat] for the last five years, take it forward. Quick, simple, easy uh but always inaccurate. And it wasn't inaccurate before [clears throat] co being worse. Forecast is where we do a two-step procedure. do full population forecast

003for all four of your elementary attendance areas based on their unique demographic characteristics and dynamics. The results of that population forecast then drives your enrollment forecast which your current and future demographic trends and dynamics your past. Okay, next slide. Anytime you're going to do a forecast, you must have assumptions listed in your report here on the screen. I [laughter] don't want to go through all of them, but I want to go through the things that these are the four that have the highest probability of error. If something's going to go wrong, it's going to be in one of these four variables. And next slide, please. Um, the first one of course is B or excuse me, [clears throat] two. No, that's not anyway. Uh, that's executive summary. Uh, that's the report. >> [laughter] >> Oh,

004you might want There we are. >> I was about to start doing calls here. Okay. 30-year fixed interest rate stays between 5 and 7%. 6.4 this morning. Uh why you're so important housing. Okay. If you can't get a mortgage, you can't pay the interest rates, you know, not get a house. Um, Jerome P will be leaving the Fed here one way or the other this summer. Mr. Walsh will take over and probably cut rates by one at least one half of a point immediately, if not a full point. So, they'll drive these rates down. Okay? We'll get close to the 5% mark. Don't look for a increase in home mortgage because it's two factors here. There's a 30-year fixed rate and there's home prices. It is far far easier to drop interest rates than is

005convince people their house is worth less than they think it is. That's why we're not seeing home prices drop at all. The river little markets, but that's the main roadblock right now. Not 30-year fix. [snorts] these this [clears throat] trend here, this great assumption freaked out. Now, there's a generational thing here, too. Those of us who are old enough to remember, you know, 70s, 80s, 90s and 30 years fix was 8 9 12 14%. 6.4 sounds pretty good, right? Kids today, well, that that's anybody under the age like you guys under the age of 40. Um, who seen nothing but two, two and a half. Oh, come on people for [laughter] two two and a half three three and a half% four six fours on the highway recovery you know because they they see nothing

006like it and has also shut down the move up market traditionally at this stage we see people who are starter homes that bought their homes five six seven years ago that want to go to that nice move up place particularly in the you know exurban area like Auburn but they're they have a 3 and half% mortgage rate. You don't want to go to a six and a half and move up and stall that market and the high end market too. So not the factor once was assumption I this is the state of Indiana. Indiana is the only state in the country that has open enrollment vouchers for everybody charters virtual home school at at maximum levels. Other states have some of these partially or whatever. Indiana has it all. You cannot talk about Indiana and

007enrollment without looking at uh the assumptions of what's going to go happen in transfers. Now, the only good thing that's coming out of that is Indiana has the best student tracking system in the country. Bar none. Um every twice a year they come out with the transcript report where it's going to, where they're coming from. We've got them all the way back 2017. our computers. We assume the district will continue to have a net 550 child transfer. Most [clears throat] school districts [cough] in Indiana have negative numbers in transfers because it includes charters, vouchers, uh homeschool, virtual, things like [clears throat] that. Now, you have been averaging in the 300s and then like all the school districts about two years ago, you jumped about 100. And because when they expanded vouchers to everybody, you know,

008they were already going to private school, but now they're getting state money and now they're showing up in the state data, you know, so it wasn't an increase of number of students or student districts losing kids. It was just they're now being counted. So we're going to hold you at 550. Uh and basically a lot of it's short going to Eastern some Northwest, some going up to Ben. It's just all over the place. >> Now, I had a question on that. Is is that a transfer out of available students in the district or actual [clears throat] current students in the district from year to year? This number is there's 500 there's a net 550 students more transferring out to other educational options and transferring in. So, your actual [clears throat] Your in transfers are public

009[clears throat] to public last year 265. Your outs were 529. So your public to public net is 264. Your nonpublic is 288 out. All nonpublic are out. >> And that's likely that's 550. >> Yeah. I was just [clears throat] wondering what when they calculate that number, is it based off the total available students in that live in the district or the two the total students that are currently in the district? >> Well, the uh >> to me that's that's a that's a different >> it's the total. >> Yeah, I mean it would include everyone >> and the 288 numbers are kids who live in the school district and go somewhere else. Wow, >> I think that was one. >> Yeah. Now, I didn't use that number. That's um >> 800. Okay, but you got 250

010coming back in. So, it drops the net number to negative 550. >> Okay. So, um, did you think that's bad? You know, Bolton, Hamilton Southeast, supposed to be the best school there in the state. Their net transfer number is negative 2,200. Yeah, which is why they're just want to open a moment. Um, next slide, please. Okay. [clears throat] Q and R. These are the two big ones. All right. The district will average 5 13 existing home sales per year for the next 10 years and average 60 new single family that includes apartments uh homes built annually over the year. Now note the disparency about in this case about 90% of your housing market is existing home sales just like just like any place else in the country. There's there's no school district [clears throat] that

011I even I've ever seen in my whole career where more than half of the housing markets do construction. 80 to 90% is the average. So I have no doubt that you're going to build 60. Um over the last decade you actually went up um averaging about 50 a year and kicked up a little bit since then. The big problem is the 530. I don't know if you're going to make that or not because existing home sales right now are through the floor. They're just not the elderly are just not moving. That's a very very key factor. Um so you add those two together, you're about 600. You need 600 housing sales. It really doesn't matter if it's new or existing. All that comes into the distribution. But to to this forecast [clears throat] need 600

012to come. If no one moves in, no one sells their home, your enrollment is going to drop to the floor. I'll show why in a second. Now, that's not going to happen, but the key number to look at is at 5:30. Now, we're in April. We're just in the beginning of the summer home buying season. Most people with kids move between April and August. >> [clears throat] >> So, what you need to do is get on Zillow, Realy Track, Realy.com, or your favorite platform is. We use all three and start tracking it. You need to have about 200 homes in the market constantly if you're going to make it through this summer season because guarantee you August 15th, you're going to start seeing listings drop off because that's that's when the summer famine market ends.

013Next slide. [clears throat] Okay, the number one uh variable for predicting population enrollment, it's not birth, it's not death, migration, it's age structure. How is your population distributed across the body? Okay, probably almost half of the explained areas. This is the district for 2020. Easy to [clears throat] 0 to four is preschool at elementary, middle, high school. [clears throat] 20 to 34 what we call family formation ages. 80% of all births occur to women between the ages of 20 and 34 years old. Okay? You can have a total fertility rate of nine. If you don't have women between 20 and 34 years old, you're not going to have any births. Okay? 35 to 59 or 54 I should say. Those are the ages where most people have kids in school. Okay. So we have currently

014board meetings. Most of them are going to be in these age brackets right here. Now there are exceptions. I was alone. I was first time father of four. I was [clears throat] 58 when my son graduated high school. And everybody told me what a nice well behaved grandson I have. [laughter] [clears throat] Now this is where it gets tricky. 59 or 55, excuse me, to 69 referred [clears throat] to as the empty nest households. We've had the Smith family lived down the same house for the last 20 years. But 10 years ago, there was mom, dad, and two kids there. But in that last decade, the two kids have grown up, moved away, gone to college, and hadn't [clears throat] come back. same house, same homeowner, but instead of four persons per household, only two.

015And that's been a dominant trending trend track not only here in Decal County, but all over the nation for the last 15 years. [snorts] It's a drop in household size, the number of empty nesters, 70 and over, that's called the turnover ages. Now elderly migration is broke into two categories. You have people in their 60s generally and then over 70. In the 60s those are the ones you always hear about in the news. You know husband, wife, retire, sell their house, move to Alabama, Florida, Texas, Myrtle Beach, wherever they want to know [clears throat] and you know live the retirement life. Very well known. The problem is it's only about 15% of elderly migration. Um it's also called voluntary elderly migration. They're voluntarily moving because they wanted to. Over 70 is what we call involuntary

016migration. It's not so much triggered by retirement [clears throat] but either the death of one of the spouses or they both lose the ability to drive. Okay? They have to downsize. They can't maintain that house. Okay? And you're going to see particularly here with the population distribution, you're going to see an increasing number of elderly homeowners in their 70s and 80s. The peak, the baby is 70 years. The front end is 80. Go forward 10 years. That means the peak will be 80. The front end will be 90. The primary will be out of homes by that. So as this large bubbles, [clears throat] you know, five years pass, they're now in their 60s, they're late 60s, this is now early7s, you can see what's coming. Okay, that's why if you look at the forecast

017and enrollment, you start seeing a break in the trend to start coming back up after 2030. They're going to have to move or you're going to wind up a whole bunch of empty housing units around the district one way or the other. And that's going to allow a new young household to move in. And again, that would be existing home sales versus new home construction. You're and you're already starting to see a bit of a glut in homes on the market because they always stopped moving during [clears throat] CO never picked back up. But now they're they're starting to get into their 70s and greater and greater numbers. They have to be [snorts] what's holding them back. And we just never build any older housing in this country. It's just horrible what we what we've

018done with this. It's just none. You know, we did it all for retirees and you know, Myrtle Beach and Florida and all that, but we didn't know. Most of these people will move no more than 50 miles. They want to stay in their community and we [clears throat] just never build it. So, that's what's coming. The other thing here is in Auburn, Dal County is actually pretty >> [clears throat] >> As external counties go, you've actually got more women than crime and childare need. Your preschool deficit is relatively small. But if you if you didn't have anybody move in, you left your own demographic devices. You're about 40 students short every year for kindergarten. You need about 60 households to move in with kids to make up for that deficit. Uh other school districts far

019far greater than that. And there's a there's a slide or a pyramid for each one of the uh schools, but and they're in your report. They're basically the same work. We go to the next slide. The first one um you know, country meadows and we made the scale all the same. You can see the relative size, you know, and same situation. You have a whole population now in the 60s and there's a deficit here. Next slide I believe is >> Watson. Okay. Almost no pillar shape, but you can see there they've already got large numbers of of people getting into their 70s. You're going to see increasing number of these houses start to downsize. And you all know city knows as well as I do. You know where they're at. So next slide. Kenny, same

020situation. um they're a little younger. Their their bubbles about five, seven years younger and not quite just about break even for the zero to four. Um and then the last slide of course water um again their their bubble is in now early 50s and they have uh again almost break. So without enough young people there a little bit of in migration turnover of households that have groups of kids in your school system for 20 years having young families in there you know it's going to rise up your number a little bit. Next slide. Okay. [clears throat] Some of your top characteristics here. Okay. um household under 18 population 29.7%. That's about average. There is another school district in the United States for households of school age kids to New York. Last one was in Utah

02120 years ago. [snorts and clears throat] 30 is about the average. That's why so hard to get referendums passed right now. He brought number two to one from the start. Okay. >> But [clears throat] the number here that people ignore is persons per household 2.4. 47. In 2010, that was 2.54. So, it's a 0.07 drop. Now, that doesn't sound a lot, [snorts] you know, almost minus. But when you multiply by 10,000 households that you have in the district, that's 700 people. So, let me phrase it this way. If your average household size had stayed the same in 2020 as it was in 2010, you would have had 700 more people counted in the census. Traditional two family household, two parent household, most of that 700 are under the age of 18. So basically, it's probably

022a six about 600 fewer school age kids. And what's that in show? That's your empty nest egg because that population that was now in their 50s and 60s uh in 2020 were back in the 30s and 40s 10 years before we had kids at school. So you had all this messing going on. Uh next slide. Okay. householders 35 to 54 again only about a third. Okay. And that dropped that [clears throat] was 40% of 2010. So again you're seeing evidence more [clears throat] the emptying going on householders 65 plus 30% probably third right now four five years later. This again showing you're going to have uh more and more households, the household owners in this turnover ages. You're about 80% owner occupied. Owners and renters have two completely different dynamics. Renters tend to be younger.

023You don't come out of college to buy a house or rent an apartment. Okay. Um still forming their families. um preschoolers at home and move an average every two years. Homeowners as a rule have finished their family formation have a few preschoolers at home um and move an average every 14 years as most stable population. So we can see here we link this up with the variables home ownership rates and age structure. We can see where the older living. Okay, these are the areas we're going to start turning over in the next uh next 10 [laughter] 15 years. The joy of GIS and the last slide single person households [clears throat] 27% 12% of them are over the age of 65 you guys. So you've already got pretty good size pocket households out there now

024single person over 65 that probably start downsizing. Next slide. Okay, this is my favorite data from the 2020 census individual year of age. So in 2020, these 5 year olds here, that's your kindergarteners, first grade, second, third, fourth, fifth. But by 2025, these under one are now five year old. This is your kindergarten first, second, third, fourth, fifth. So we can look at the individual cohort size area [clears throat] and look for radical changes. Okay, McKenzie here is a great one. 112 116 134 100 112. So people say, "Oh my god, we're up 20 kids this year. Booming growth must be moving in from all over the place. Allen County, it's wonderful." No, it's not. You get a big cohort going through. It better go up 20 students that year, but you got 24. Consequently,

025it goes back down next year. Oh my god, we lost 20 or kindergarten. Panic in the streets. No, [clears throat] it's a small cohort. You need to identify these factors so you're not overeneneralizing a demographic trend. Okay. What it also does is tells us 338 is your base here going down to 255. That tells us how much of a preschool deficit See, people always assume that the number of preschoolers in a district is always the same as the number of school age kids. Rarely are they in next urban areas almost never. So [clears throat] this tells us how much drop to that tells us how much in migration you need to break even because oh new household movement, a new family and they want to add what they already have. No, you may be making

026up that deficit and hopefully they're bringing preschool with them. And we [clears throat] measured at the district level in the next slide what we call the market shift. Okay. [clears throat and cough] What we do is we take all children living in the district 2020 census and we match it up with their actual enrollment. All the red ones are first grade. Okay. So 265 first graders is 78% of this number. All right. No school gets 100% of kids living there. nothing. Okay. So, but what you can do is if this percentage goes up, which it does, that's either in migration or in transfer. [clears throat] If it goes down, he's out of migration or on transfer. And we can track that over time. We'd also do it by school, too. As you can see, your

027preschool 84, 25, 86, 81, 92. You a lot of variation in there. Oh, by the way, next well not later. Um, there's not time for it. So, but as you can see for most of these age cohorts, the percentages go up and that's how we measure the specific migration by age for each area for the cal schools. We don't use national, regional, state trends. We do it for your own trends. So that's why we how we build facility models and also the [clears throat] migration because I learned a long time ago that when a third grader moves in they tend to bring the whole family with them usually [clears throat] they move out they take them over. So you can make that broad generalization. Next slide. This is the actual population forecast. Okay. This is

028the district level with one school. Now there's two ways to read this. You can follow each cohort over time at your pacer elementary going to 1660 1540 1650 or follow the age cohort 04 becomes 5 9 10 14 15 and 19. your median age where half people are older, half are younger, 80 baby boom, you're at 40 going up. The births stay relatively flat [clears throat] because the birth rate stays pretty flat, too. The deaths go up, not because of a disease or COVID or anything. We just had more people refer to as prime dying age. [laughter] So, >> I'm just getting happier by the minute. >> [clears throat] >> I don't get my better term than that. [laughter] >> I used to prime dying age the age of 65, but now that I'm 70,

029it's the age of 85. [laughter] [clears throat] >> Netation 270, 310, 350. Yes, there are. Okay, that's the net. How many moving in? How many moving out? Your two in migration flows, people 25 to 44 years old bring 0 to nine year olds with them. Your biggest out migration flows 18 to 22 year olds and people over age 70. But the net effect is positive. By the way, most school districts in the state of Indiana do not have migration. They have net operation. Okay. [clears throat] I want to point out here is all we know most of this one's natural increase. This is the excess of birth over deaths. That's the backbone of US population growth for the last 300 years. Okay? Not for immigration, natural increase. Notice how that number goes to 80. And

030this this is the demographic trend of the next 15 20 [clears throat] years. for loss of natural increase even after CO we already in this country have six states and 1200 counties 16 in Indiana with more deaths than births and it's economic and with the aging baby boom they start dying off with the birth rates low you can only lose natural increase okay so u all the counties in Indiana that were called CPG zero population growth they tend to be in the west and along the Illinois line down towards Kentucky. Uh but that's moving uh moving to the [cough] states rapidly. But um Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, West Virginia, Connecticut, South Dakota are all CPG have more deaths than birth. West Virginia's been here for about 15 years now. So, but this is what drives

031the enrollment [clears throat] forecast. modest population growth. Um, again, it's all going to have to be in migration because you don't have a natural increase. Uh, it's coming. Bad news for baby boomers is they're not going to live forever. Ain't pregnant to them is true. The next slide is the actual district level population. And the analogy I have to use here is a bucket of water. Okay. If I have a bucket of water, I'm got a hole in the bottom. I'm pouring water in the top. As long as I'm pouring in faster than it's going out the bottom, the level will rise. But for some reason, the hole in the bottle gets bigger and it's now going out faster than I'm pouring in. If I keep pouring in at the same rate, level will drop.

032Enrollment works the same way. What's the size your 12th grade cohort going out? What's the size of K enrollment coming in? Okay. Now we've had dropping births [snorts] in this country and state for the last 15 years and it peaked in '08 and this is something that all schools are dealing with. So those 2008 birth cohorts were at large or [clears throat] relatively large are graduating high school and small birth cohorts 2020 2021 are coming in. That's why most school districts in Indiana, the Midwest, the South, across the country are have declining employment called cohort balance. Okay? And there's another factor in there too. Um, you know, they have a drop in kindergarten [clears throat] next year 218. That's the COVID baby bust happened in 2021. Okay. I blame social distancing. um [laughter] birth [clears

033throat] rolled off the table in 21. Then after being you know locked away for a year the inevitable happens in 22 births go back up and it's like a heart monitoring goes down up and flat. Same thing with birth dropped in 21 up in 22 23 went back to where it was in fourth and continued this slight decline. So most school districts are going to see small cohorts hitting kindergarten this year and probably bouncing right back the year after that. So the system um you got a 242 grade going out next year. That's why you see this drop and then they start dropping another 249 going out. 240. Um 230 is about your break even point for your [clears throat] 12th grade graduating class. You'll notice that the kindergarten first grade enrollments consistently go up

034and particularly the K5 starts in 2029 you start seeing consistent increases going back up to 1500. This is when we start seeing the impact of warren steel terminal households. They'll be mid70s by then going to have too. Now a lot of people who move in with kids particularly the young families in the starter homes which these turnover homes will attract have preschoolers. We sometimes don't see the full impact of a family moving in from a household for five, six, seven years. you know, so it's a delayed reaction, but there'll be enough of them, you'll start seeing an increase in the elementary population. Even though the district kind of flattens out, you're going to have growing in the elementary and as that wave you've got now those large cohorts are going out, high school flattening and

035some slight decline. But the districts as a whole starts growing uh consistently after 2032. That's if the housing market holds up, we don't go into a recession. Error ratio plus or minus 2% the life of the forecast. So just put it confidence interval for life. Just put 2% around this number here and that's where we should be [clears throat] normally about a half%. Uh some years ago I did a forecast with Pen Harris Madison and I went back did an evaluation three years later for their board and I had 12,248 students and that year they had 12,248 students and it was the worst thing that ever happened to me because ever since then the board has expected that same vote backwards in all substances. [laughter] Next year I was off by nine. You just gave

036me all kinds of grief. [clears throat] [sighs] >> Questions? >> Can we go back to um we were talking about the existing home sales and struggling to 530. One of the things I've watched in our area >> our our NAB, you know, over the last three years prior to CA taking effect, property taxes >> has been on fire. We've we've increased property values according to the SS value over 35% in that span from 2022 to 2025. I worry greatly that we're outpricing our area for families to be able to move in. It's tied directly to obviously interest rate which I'm hopeful in the next year is going to drop. I don't know if it's going to be enough to entice people. I mean obviously people are not selling >> at the rate we're used to

037because of interest rates. No, >> they they block themselves into those two 3%s and they're not going to they're not going to get out till we see rates come down. But even then, our our incomes in our area have not even remotely come close to to keeping pace with home values. [clears throat] So, the real estate industry has got people convinced their homes are worth far far far more than they really are. As my dad used to always say, it's only worth something if someone's going to pay you for it. And right now they either can't or won't. And um now and this is problematic for the new home construction too. I hate to say anything nice about developers, but I'm going to have to um developers kind of corner right now because you know

038labor cost. Anybody go out price plywood lately or copper wire those we're talking about is do the roof. Okay. They actually work on a pretty thin profit margin. When a developer was told me that building 50 homes, he makes nothing on house zero or one through 10. He makes his profit on house 40 through50. Okay? But they can't drop their prices. You know, if they're putting building up, we're going to list them at [clears throat] 350 or something. They don't have a luxury to drop it. You got the Smith family down the road been the same house for 20 25 years sitting on a ton of equity. [snorts] You know, realtor said, "Oh, your house is worth 350." You put on the market, you're starting to see this a little bit now. They're not moving.

039You're not seeing homes sold in, you know, 48 minutes anymore. [clears throat] Well, people drop the price 20,000. They can do that. They still got a ton of equity or 30,000 or 40,000. The developer can't do that. So, in the short term, new homes win because everyone wants the whistles and bells, you know, granite countertops, you know, or plumbing, all that nice stuff. You know, they'll want that. But if [laughter] the community comes to shovel and they want a home in a nice area, suburban or exurban area, they'll look at an existing home that's dropped price 30, 40, $50,000, and the elderly homeowner will still get a nice payout, you know. people get a nice home and things like that. But until that the prices start to drop substantially, uh we're not going to see

040that movement and and [clears throat] it's obviously double-edged for us in my role because as soon as they do start to drop y >> now we're taking in less revenue, but I mean look across the street, >> you know, where they're building new homes and the cheapest home over there is $350,000. >> You can't People can't afford that in our area. I mean, they're looking at the Garretts and the Butlers outside of our school district. Is Is that Did you do you take that in consideration here? >> Oh, yeah. I mean, you're factoring in all the interest rates. That's why I would buy and build up here in this [clears throat] county, >> you know, I mean, uh, and your taxes, too. >> Um, now the problem is the the migration decision-m process is a

041complex one. Has many variables. Everybody focuses on schools and that is a important nurse. Yeah. There's also other ones. Can I afford can I get a mortgage? What's my commute to work? What's my spouse's commute to work? [clears throat] What's my kids um commute to work? I'm giving the local example on this paper. This about 20 years ago. um you know route three line the road northwest Allen all the growth going out there and some some developer thought wow it's going to ride right up route three I'll buy up all this land around put up 80 houses well the growth hit county line stop and start spreading east and west and what happened is oh my god he lost his shirt on this by the way too and we did research it was very simple

042You know, the commute of the student has to follow the commute of the parent. So, if you're in Northwest Allen and you're up here at the county line, where are the parents working? More than likely in Fort Wayne. Where's Carol High School? Where's Huntertown Elementary? Where's middle school? It's south. You cross that line. Where's your high school? Kendallville. So, if you're coming home to your kids softball game or something, you got to drive all the way home and then 15 miles more north. It's like a brick wall. You saw that going out 14 in southwest when they hit Whitley County. It didn't go into Whitley County high schools up in Columbia City, you know, so it started going north and south and we see this time and time again areas around the country, you know,

043this the oh the growth is going to keep going. No, there's there's other political uh logistical issues you [clears throat] need to be looking at, you know. So here you come across I still call it 427 that's what it was when I was a kid. You know you cross the line. Well Auburn is only 5 miles north. In fact for those of us that grew up in northern northwest Allen along you know road it was easier to get to Auburn than it was under town. So we all came up here. You know we used to go up to here the pool but they ran us away. [laughter] I go down that road though. But um so you know really it's it's not that relief. So the problem is infrastructure. You know you can't have large

044scale development on well subject. You have to have water, sewer, roads, things like that. And that that may be whole big things holding back right now and um who's going to pay for all that? And the developers are tapped out right now by the way. They they're in for a rough road here. because they too have seen the numbers and they realize that in the next five, seven, 10 years, you're just going to see a flood of existing homes on the market and they're [clears throat] going to want to sell them because they don't want that equity to go get there. Which is the other problem with elder housing right now. We just downsized from Rock Hill after 20 years, went down to Alabama. [clears throat] My wife retired. We own a smaller house uh

045much smaller house in semi rural Alabama and it was [clears throat] a h 100,000 more than our house was rock hill >> you know so the days of well I'm going to cash in this expensive northern house and move down south and blow up the equity those days are gone folks there's no way you're going to find a house in Florida or Myrtle Beach or Texas that's less than what you got up here that's deep comparable So that that whole the only place they can still do that is New England because their housing prices up there is obscene. You can still do a little bit maybe New Jersey but Midwest forget it. Those days are gone. You have a lot of assumptions about retail business going out as a factor. Does [clears throat] that include

046um industrial? >> Yeah. does >> cuz unfortunately in this county I I pretty certain we're going to get hit hard here in the next 5 years >> probably. I agree with you on that one. >> The Cooper plant that used to be 1,200 employees within the next two years is going to be 25. >> Yep. >> And the Ricky plant's probably going to be gone. It's been sold six or eight different times now. The Dana plant's already gone. [clears throat] Yeah. And the only thing that's really going to be left is going to be steel dynamics. And they really don't employ that many people. >> So, um, that's going to be another factor of preventing people want to move into the district. There's no jobs here. We've done just about every school district east of

047Mississippi River that had a major auto plant building in the last 30 years. Not a one of them saw the population growth they thought they would. In fact, it was a Honda plant they built down in Greensburg or something. >> Greenberg, Alabama. >> Yeah. Um, they're looking to close schools and consolidate because they [clears throat] built on interstate. They got people coming from Indianapolis. They're always Cincinnati. No one moved into the district. The workers came to them. The plant north of Evansville, absolutely no impact on their schools than all the Gibson County ones lately. You know, they're just there's this idea that we'll have economic development. we're going to uh have this boom, people move in. Now, people go to the job because most households are too income now. It's not just what your community

048is, it's what your spouse's commute and you want somebody relatively close to where your kid goes to school in case something comes up. So again, these are part of those factors that go into migration decision- making process people don't think about. You know, it is more complex than people think it is. [clears throat] >> In your experience, is there anything that has surprised you that has changed your forecast at all? >> Surprised me in what? >> Like something that you had a forecast and this something changed that >> Oh, yeah. Uh we just went up in Middletown, Indiana years years ago and somebody just somebody in the county government or local government decided to put a 600 unit mobile home park in there not telling anybody and I was there in like nine months and

049all of a sudden boom they had a couple hundred kids there and but those are rare anymore now because [clears throat] watches everything now. Um the one that surprises me right now I would say is how much of an impact the cut for immigration has uh half the population growth in the US since 1990s for immigration or offspring and despite what you hear in the press and all that they really haven't deported that many people in the whole scheme of things you know maybe 100,000 out of 15 million it's it looks worse it really does. But what it has done is absolutely [clears throat] shut off the inflow. Okay? And that's why can't anybody build your house, clean your hotels, your agricultural work, things like that because there's just no workers out there. And uh

050you got I've been in school districts where there Hispanic kids are just hiding. They didn't [clears throat] come to school. So they're seeing a drop in enrollment. I'm going there's no living here but you know they're just not coming. Um but as that generation ages there's not one coming in behind it to take care of it. And that's an important point because you're going to see more diversity in your your student body going forward anyway. Um and for immigration the median age of Hispanic in the US is 28. The mean age of a black is 30. The mean age of Asian is 33. The median age of a white is 45. Who's going to have more kids? It's not immigration that's causing us more diversity. It's age structure. Again, your number one predicted variable. 45

051year old people are not going to have a whole bunch of kids. assuming so when you look at the assumptions like two of them are something that we have control over the transfer policy that we currently have in place >> and the creation of a virtual school that can reach some populations that we weren't able to reach in the past. In your experience of working with schools that you've gone back to, is there an assumption that a district has control over that has made a positive impact on the enrollment beyond those things? Well, the wild card going out there right now is that the state actually does shut down Union School next September. That's going to dump 5,000 virt. an opportunity for all school districts to kind of get their kids back. You know, the

052elders virtually actually work for some kids. You know, that's why the parents do it anyway. >> It took us some time, but we got there. >> U but you got to have some standards behind it, too. So I I see [laughter] and that's one thing that we we've looked at postco very important during co private school rates home school rates virtual rates charter rates all went through the roof okay everything went up after co they all came down but they never went back down as low as they were before co you know homeschool used to be 3% now it's four you know charters used to be 6% now in seven. Okay. The problem here on this was was virtual. I like to say before co virtual was virtually nothing. It's never going to go back

053down to zero again. It's about four or 5%. It's going to stay there. If anything, it's going to go up. Okay. So, yeah, Steve, that is something you need to be in the forefront of because it's here to stay and it is a now a legitimate component of any K12 educational system. Um very few districts don't have any virtual now. Okay. And it's given Indiana with you we're all transfer happy and things like that. You think it's easy to transfer from one district to the next? Try to do it virtual. You do that. Click the switch. >> We have 31 students residing in our district that attends. >> Yep. Now they don't get funded the same level of the in in uh class student but still >> 85% still >> yeah that was even the

054school court we'll be reading about that in the press for years and years and years to come. I'm sure that investigated a field day of that place see where that money went millions and millions of dollars. But yeah, that is one you can actually have some [clears throat] that can encourage those nasty empty nesters to move out of [laughter] careful property tax charge on 55 households. That'll do it. >> People think I'm joking. I'm not. They keep or we get tax abatements for people and all that going out move. >> I can't ask. [laughter] All right. So adopt >> house was a foster house. [laughter] I give my dad's house down in >> northwest example. At one time we sent four kids local school hasn't been a school age kid come over there since and

055it won't be until the house is sold. New house new people move in. >> Guess I better turn before moving. >> I'm not kids. If any other questions come up know how to get a hold of me. >> Thank you. >> Good to see you. [laughter] >> Yeah, you got I think uh copies are also in your shared folder as well if you ever need to revisit them. And the I just looked the 2021 study. It's also in the shared back. >> Yeah, >> it's in some of the archives. I first thought it was that [laughter] >> I don't think this is right. >> This doesn't seem right. So about our uh the next topic >> [clears throat] >> um update on our conversations and our exploring the opportunity to look at our special education

056services and our partnership that we have with the Northeast Indiana Special Education Cooperative. And so I think Andy's got the PowerPoint. I think I may have shared this with you as well. It's in certainly in your share drive. So, it's really going to be balcony level. It's really going to be um looking from the 25,000 ft level. When we [clears throat] originally started exploring this, certainly I had the hope that possibly by April and the April board meeting that we would have information or have the decision to make moving forward whether or not we make a recommendation to the board to uh continue moving forward and leave the co-op or resend our letter and stay in the co-op. So flat out, we're still exploring and we're still taking a look at the information and primarily

057the financial um information um regarding our co-op bill and the funding that it takes and how it's intertwined with state and federal funding and those funding uh windows which can be up to 27 I believe 27 months in length and overlap. Um, we just felt like this is a pretty big decision, very big decision, and it's going to impact the entire district, not to mention just the number of students that are involved and families. So, we gave our I gave ourselves a couple extra months to make sure that we had everything that we needed. So the anticipated um time frame now we're looking at May to be able to bring a recommendation and to bring you more detailed information financially at that time as well. Next slide, Angie. So tonight, of course, I think Valerie,

058you mentioned it. It's no [clears throat] decision tonight. It's it's basically to bring you up to speed on where we're at right now and what we've learned along the way. And we've learned a lot. I mean, we >> we've been able to make a lot of notes and uh regardless of the decision that's made in May, we know some things that we want to explore to do differently whether we stay in the co-op or not. Uh and again, preparing for that that May recommendation. [cough] [clears throat] Next slide. So, just a brief history, the co-op was created in 1970. So, that is something that I certainly don't take lightly and no one on our team takes lightly. Decal was a charter member in the creation formation of uh the co-op and it uh currently has

05912 member districts. Um it is it was basically originally formed to help share services and expenses and especially in situations where you may not have a large number of students or be more than one student that has has a specific need that if you're standing on your own as a district and we're one of the larger districts in the co-op. Actually we are the largest district in the co-op right now with East Noble no longer part of it. [clears throat] um it just became more feasible to be able to find the resources available for those uh very low incident situations pooling our resources and that's what the co-op has done and really has done ever since 1970 when it was formed. Um I've been here a long time. Um, I've had a lot of interaction

060with the co-op over my years both both as a classroom teacher, as an administrator, as a case conference coordinator, overseeing uh students with special needs, as a building principal, and and then here of course as central office administrator. Lori and her role as assistant superintendent is really uh someone that is um intimately involved with the day-to-day operations that happen within the buildings because she's going to be that first call that from a building level principal or staff member um to talk about a student [clears throat] uh a special ed situation regarding a student. So, um, through those conversations then, um, just over time, I'm not going to tell you it's a newly developed thought like, gee, I wonder if we were to be on our own, could we provide services for our students? Could we

061provide them better? Could we do it at the same cost? Could we do it for would it take more funding to do? Would it take less? So that's when it all came to be um to to have that question or to look into it a little bit deeper. Um other shifts within other neighboring districts also really I think moved this decision to take a close look at it, a deep dive into programming and the finances of it because other school districts were submitting their letters or had submitted their letters in the past. East Noble being the one um that's as close, you know, our twin district in many ways uh both submitting their letter and ultimately leaving the district. So that's very intriguing for a decal to think, okay, East Noble, if you're doing it,

062how are you doing it? Let's talk. And we've had a lot of conversations and they've shared a lot of their information with us and so we've been appreciative of that. >> Sorry to interrupt. When did East Noble do that? >> They've been fully out for over a year now. They went through a couple iterations from what I understand [clears throat] when they originally left. It's been several years ago, but then they came back in just for for the administrative side of it so that they could take advantage of um resources for those one or two students that you might have to find accommodations for or resources for. Um but then over a year ago they they've completely left. [clears throat] Since that time uh other districts then have been exploring it. So we saw West

063Noble submit their letter. We saw Smith Green submit their letter and we saw Central Mobile submit their letter. Um so all of those districts submitted their letter the same time we did. So they're all on that same timeline. So it's an 18-month timeline. The first six months are basically your time that you're going to evaluate, explore, and then by the end of June of this year, each of those districts, including Decal, need to submit their recommendation or are you going to resend your letter and stay in the co-op or are you [clears throat] going to go on your own? So, regardless of the decision, next year we're in the co-op whether we decide to stay or go. So next year if we stay, we we look to make our situation as as good as it

064can be for our students and address things that maybe we've uncovered that we want to address with the co-op to find a resolution for or we're on our own in next year's a transition year and we're making sure that we've got all of our eyes dotted, our tees crossed, and we have the structure and the staff and everything that we know are going to be in place for that following year. Do you [cough and clears throat] see them, since the Nobles County schools are in this process, do you foresee them creating their own co-op? That's a great question, Tony, because if you're if there and I don't want to speak for the co-op, >> but I can only imagine with four districts submitting their letters, the remaining members obviously are thinking about what if all

065four go, what if three go? Two. I mean, so I'm sure they're doing the whatifs and doing as much planning as they can, just as we are if we So I I don't know. Um those conversations I'm sure are taking place on what do we do if um and some of those conversations quite frankly have come my direction from different districts on you know different partnerships. Hey if you do go would you be willing to do this or would you be willing to do that? Nothing agreed upon just >> people throwing out hey ideas >> like a decount county per se. Yeah, there could be people that were thinking, you know, [clears throat] Steen County. They're all all speculation. I cannot confirm that, >> right? >> But I'm sure conversations have been going on throughout

066the four county area with four districts submitting their letters. >> So, when we did that, of course, it [clears throat] set up this process that we're dealing with now. So, January through June of this year, um we've been committed to making sure that this was a transparent um purposeful activity and to make sure that we were going to uh do a deep dive on everything we could relating to the co-op so that when we bring a recommendation to you, you have all the information you need um to make the ultimate decision. We hope to bring you the the right decision. Um the uh in February the board then agreed for some additional assistance. We entered into a contract um contract agreement with Angela Balsley who is a kind of a an expert in this area.

067Uh really dealing with everything but the finances. So that's she's been really good to work with and and Lori has been working with her along with Kelly Hudson who is one of our innovation coaches who specifically helps to coach our special education teachers and she come she was a special education teacher when she first came to DAL. Um, and then Nate Williamson, he's a familiar name. He helps us with our title grants and so he's very familiar in this world. Um, and used to work for the DOE and now is independent. And so utilizing his skill set made complete and total sense and certainly appreciate the board giving us the opportunity to work with two experts who could look at things through a clear lens. And I think we've been having Nick just working with

068Mark and Gina run the numbers. Run the numbers because we're talking um this isn't a small amount of money. We're talking about when we talk about the total funding for special education, it's it's in the millions. Um the focus for us have been the staffing portion. What would our staffing look like? um if we would create our own structure because there are programs that do not exist uh at Decal Central that would have to be created. Um programming part of that as well, programs that don't currently exist, so we'd have to create them here. Examples of that would be like an emotional disabil disabled classroom, emotional disabilities classroom at the elementary and middle school level. We'd have to create those programs. We'd have to staff those programs. Uh, another one would be u a bright

069horizons. A bright horizons are for students who cannot tolerate an emotional disabilities classroom and it's even a more um restrictive um placement for a student that cannot uh handle uh that environment. Those are just a couple of examples of programs that we don't currently host that we know that we would have to. And then when you think about programming and staffing, every co-op program that we currently host, we would be taking over. So all of our applied skills programs, our early intervention programs, our school sites, all the testing that happens, any behavioral specialists that uh we would have to bring on board. The [clears throat] big piece there is finance. Um that's why it's bold on the PowerPoint. Next slide, Angie. I'm sorry. Didn't tell you that. [clears throat] And flip to the next one.

070Sorry. And the next one. There we go. Um compliance is the the one that um we're also focusing on and that's basically the legal aspects. If we are right now we have the co-op kind of by our side. We have complaints filed by parents uh mitigation and mediation [clears throat] or due process. Um we have parents that are not happy or disappointed in how things are going. regardless of the situation. Right now, we have the co-op that helps stand beside us and we're able to, you know, we use a lot of legal support through the co-op for that. Uh, so again, that would be something that we would take on. Um, questions so far. Is there a possibility? Let's let's assume that we break away and we can't house a particular students needs. Um I'm

071assuming that the co-op will still be able to take those kids. You assume wrong. >> Uhhuh. >> So in order for the co-op to be to be successful, they really can't allow an alocart system. >> Okay. or everyone would probably leave and say, "Well, we're just gonna we just want this service or that service." >> And I I totally understand that and I can respect that. Um >> so, no. And so, that's a big part of the decision- making knowing that we will have students that >> um have uh the need for resources that they might just be a one. And so that's when when you have a pool of students that need similar resources, >> then one staff member, one staff member plus a pair, you know, you can handle those types of things

072and the funding that comes along with that make it >> make it doable outside of co-op environment, >> right? So largely why the co-op formed and why co-ops form across the state not our not as big as ours typically but a co-op of four five six school district is because of the situations [clears throat] don't sure question >> um what we've been studying I think I've talked about this a little bit next slide um our ability to make our you know right now I'm I'm one of 12 superintendents on a council that meets every month to make decisions for to being independent. We get to we would make our we would make the decisions. The board would be involved in any decision-m process that would uh relate to staffing, funding, pay, you know, determine someone's

073salary and things of benefits. But really, when you create that independence, you feel like you could create a situation be be more responsive in a in a more timely fashion if we were independent. We've been looking at the staffing needs. We do we do have a structure that's been created. Um so if we decide to leave the co-op, we kind of know the structure. We kind of know what programs we need, where we would potentially house those programs. So we feel like we have a good understanding of what that looks like. The financial sustainability piece is the one that is ongoing and still looking at. And um at some point I'm going to have Mark [clears throat] interject and talk about the numbers that you're going to these are the only numbers you're going to

074see tonight. Um next month you'll see a deeper dive once we have the full anal analysis back from Nathan. Um and then the risk and compliance. So right now, knowing if we take all special education on ourselves, every situation that's an issue becomes our issue. So working with attorneys, working on compliance, working on make sure we're dotting the eyes, crossing the tees, right now, if there's a if there's a problem in a co-op classroom, regardless of the district that that's located in, we share one 12th the cost. So we could have an issue in one of our classrooms and a parent for whatever reasons just isn't happy and it leads to something that's going to require legal assistance down the road. Even though we host the program, we as a co-op share the expense 112.

075So that's comforting. U so that's just something that's a trade-off, right? Independence is great, but it does come with a tradeoff. Um next slide, Angie. Do they have an attorney that you use them to? >> They use Barn Barnes and Thornberg. So, and and Lori's probably been primarily the one that gets involved with working and interacting with their attorney. I think is it Mark Scutter? >> Mark Scutter and Jason Clag. And they pretty much handle all special ed. They're kind of the experts in the field. >> Yeah. So again, big picture decision, local control versus shared responsibility, flexib flexibility versus efficiency. There's no perfect solution. There's simply trade-offs, right? So if we get something, we're probably losing something on the other side of it. So I I just think that's really important to know. You

076have probably been reached out to by different staff members or parents because this is a this is a decision that will impact students and it'll impact students um who are currently our students but they may be coming from Garrett and East Side um and they're worried about maybe the unified program and what that what it will do to the unified program. Unified program is not going anywhere regardless of the decision we make. um that's one of our primary activities that we have that we're really proud of and that's not going to go anywhere. But we we understand how how much anxiety certainly just going through this process has caused not only parents hopefully we've kept it from students. I have not heard complaints in that regard that our kids are anxious about the decision but

077certainly our staff members [clears throat] are and especially staff members who work for the co-op. They're kind of anxious as well just like what's going to happen to our what's going to happen to our jobs. [snorts and clears throat] Um next uh slide Andrew. If we stay in the co-op, we have we have the shared services that I' as I've referenced a couple different examples of how that benefits us. There's a lower operational responsibility. Our administrative cost with the co-op is significant, but it's the same as Hamilton. It's the same as Fremont. Everyone in the co-op, all 12 districts pay the same administrative fee. Where our bill tends to get high is the fact that we're the largest district. Therefore, we have the most kids involved in programming. So, whatever the cost is for that

078program, name the program as a co-op program, multiply that times the number of students that you send to that program, that becomes your bill. But the administrative cost, it's equal across the entire to-. >> Now, if if if a number of districts leave and you go from 12 to 8, then those that share expense goes up >> potentially. Yes. Unless we're making cuts in the co-op on because we we don't need this program here because we lost four districts and we lost, you know, we may not need this many staff members. So, you would like who knows how it all plays out, but you'd like to think there will be a >> a balance to that. Um, I think it's a risk. That's Yep. Um, if we say of course less control over programming, I

079think I've referenced that. Um, and if we stay, it's an opportunity to improve upon what we've discovered through this process. So, the deep dive we've done has been extremely beneficial for us to understand our special education programming, both what we offer here at the Cal Central that we take care of and what we partner with the co-op with. So, that's been extremely helpful because I think what we've been able to do is uncover a lot. Well, we the the way we've progressed through this, you know, we become very intentional when we're handling things now to realize, okay, if we were doing this on our own, this is what it would look like. This would be what we would take on. It also has provide us with a new appreciation of what the people that that

080you know was their responsibility or is still their responsibility as you move through things. So, it's definitely been a great learning exercise [laughter] for us. >> Next slide, Angie. Of course, if we leave, we have greater local trade-off. We have more control. Um, we we can create opportunities where we serve more of our students and not necessarily students who are identified with an IEP, but students that may benefit from certain resources that we have because we have more special education opportunities here. Increased risk, responsibility, and risk. Um, we share the full burden of all of that if we're on our own. But again, tradeoffs. Um, next slide, Angie. What we feel good about is the ability to that we we've been able to build a strong structure of what it will look like if we're

081on our own. Um, and we feel like we know our students best so we can build the best structure and alignment for our kids. So, we feel really, really good about that. And we feel like because of that we have an opportunity to improve outcomes for our students. Um our student our special education population typically has been a a a small group a subgroup in a lot of our tested areas that perform poorly and even poorly when compared to other like students. So it is an opportunity to have better outcomes for those students um by serving them ourselves. Um next slide, Angie. These are the four big ones. I think these are the risks, right? Staffing availability, program capacity or creation of programs, the financial variability of doing it ourselves, and the compliance, the legal

082aspect of it. Those are the four four things that we've got to make sure the recommendation that we bring to the board in May. We've got to make sure that we can check mark all of those and our recommendation corresponds to those risks. Again, one's not better than the other. The tradeoffs is trade-off going to be better one way or the other. Do we have the facilities? I mean, we're looking down the road. Do we [clears throat] have space in each of these buildings where we can house >> our structure that we have kind of tenatively drawn up? We have space for >> Okay. >> Any co-op program that we would need? >> Okay. >> Would the majority of that be in one building or another? uh we would we would look to kind of

083place pro well obviously with one middle school high school those programs would you know applied skills ED program I mean they're they're going to exist in those buildings but our four elementaryaries that does give us an opportunity as we have in place already country meadow houses our early intervention our our preschool special needs students um water houses our applied skills students so with four elementary schools. I think that gives us an opportunity to kind of spread out those programs so that we can give those students the the [laughter] best education possible and still work schedules to be able to get those students out to gen classrooms. >> This Yeah, I was going to say that it provides more opportunity to integrate our students. >> Correct. [clears throat] >> What does the transportation currently look like

084for students going to impact >> or impact or >> I'm sorry, co-op. Thank you. >> So, um, something that was a very good thing that we did as a co-op a few years ago, there's no longer, um, transportation provided by the co-op. So, that saved the district about $38,000, I think, at the time that we were paying, but we were transporting, I think, nearly all of our own co-op students. So, right now, Danielle's not here, but Danielle sometimes has to work, you know, miracles because we've got kids that are going all across. They're going to Bright Horizons, which is in We have five or six students that attend Bright Horizons, which is in Lraange County. We have students that are uh in ed elementary ed classrooms in Butler and East Side Junior High, kindergarten through

085middle school. Um, so we've got buses that are heading out into other districts because of programming there. We have students that go to the choice house. These are students who are applied skills students who are beyond 12th grade. And so their programming is in the cho at the choice house, not our choice alternative school. It's also called choice uh where those students get receive their um services in Kinderville. So all of that requires additional transportation. So if we housed everything locally that certain we would certainly see a benefit to our transportation program and uh less resources used for the transporting those students those distances. All right, next slide. Um the confidence we have one more [clears throat] uh certainly the confidence that we have right now is the potential structure. We feel like we can

086we'll hit a home run on the structure for our kids. Um we can focus on our students needs. The financial piece ultimately is probably going to be the piece that will be the biggest trade-off or not. if it's gonna if it's going to cost more to make it happen, how much more and is it something that we as a district can sustain? So, and again, that's why we're taking our time making sure that we're really doing everything that we can. And this might be the best time, Mark, if you want to talk about the financial numbers there and what they're looking at. the hand the hand out you got just um you had put together these numbers dating back to fiscal year 22 and on um I'll just start off by saying remember when we

087talk special education that's more than just the co-op we employ several employees that are outside of the co-op range these numbers reflect the entire umbrella of special education for the Gal Central not just the co-op I'll try to get some breakdown for you which is what I'm working on Um cop co-op is tricky. It's it fluctuates greatly yeartoear. Um it's one of the hardest things to try to >> and that's forecast >> because of the number of kids >> the number of kids number of services needed. >> It only takes one kid that needs multiple expensive services to throw your financial predictions right out the window. >> But this is this number of students 701 >> in our district. just the central >> they're not that's not every that's those are not all co-op program

088students that's co-op studental central that are that have IEPs >> they're special ed students >> so we included them >> out of 3500 >> y [clears throat] you can see um on the revenue side special education is part of the basic grant funding okay So we take in year year to year you can see what we take in from the state and all this falls right into the education fund. This is all education fund money. And then the idea um federal grants, you know, the individual disabilities education act idea. You can see what we take in. If you if you look closely at year by year, you've noticed the idea grant money is all accounted for. I use all of that to pay co-op. So there's your first piece of the puzzle of what we

089pay to the co-op themselves. All of the idea grant money goes directly to the co-op and what we have to pay the co-op year in year out. Um, >> do you have this PowerPoint so they can see this too? >> I do not. >> Okay. >> Sorry. And hold it up for them. I think they have this copy. Um, >> so as you look at these numbers, one of the things that sticks out or stuck out to me as I started this process was you can see that we're we're doing pretty well when it comes to funding special education. right now. Um, we've always, I don't call it a surplus because it's not a huge surplus, but you can see as you compare revenue to expense. We've stayed above, you know, water level where I

090haven't had to dip into additional education fund dollars to fund special education. I can I can tell the board confidently that won't be the case leaving co-op. So, um, we will incur additional expense. There's just no question about it. Now that said, I also am extremely supportive thus far of it. I mean, we're still doing a lot of analysis everywhere on it. I see a lot of positives coming out of the co-op that, and Steve will attest, I'm not big on saying this when I know it's going to affect our bottom line. Um, I feel this could have enough positive potential that I need to find ways to make it happen financially. Um, if this falls outside of of these dollars, the only place I can take from is the education fund or donations. So,

091that's something the board needs to keep in mind. This will impact our education fund dollars. Right now, I don't want to give you guys I I will I talked to Steve a little bit. I want to give you a ballpark. Um, the ballpark in working with Kelly and GM, Kelly Hudson, who that's been my other big struggle. I learned a lot about special education. Um, I've considered myself fairly fluent in most things. Education, special education is a is a massive beast that is there just so much to it I have to rely on and I would be lost without Kelly Hudson guiding me in this area. That said, um the number that she came back with as we plug all the numbers in and we looked at all the different programmers is roughly right around

092$1500 to $200,000 on the plus side that we're probably going to incur. Not it's not a guarantee. I just wanted to at least tonight give you some kind of a number to see. Um as Nathan gets me numbers, I'm going to be able to drill into that more. I think as Steve's gone through his slides, I think one of the biggest expenses that will be added on will be the fact that we're going to have to have a director of special education. I don't I don't see any way around it. I don't think he can put that on the assistant superintendent's plate. Um plate is already full enough for Lori to add that on to. Um that said, districts that aren't part of co-ops, as I've looked, it's not going to be a cheap position

093to fill. They know their worth. they know they're in massive demand. Somebody that knows this area. Um, but in my again, I'm I'm going outside of my purview. I'm the money guy for you guys. I just know that to do this correctly, you're going to have to have somebody in that position that knows their stuff and we're going to we're going to have to pay that person. Um, it's just too big. You don't you don't want to leave a co-op and then fall on your face running it yourself. you have to have somebody guiding us that knows what they're doing. Um, so that said, that I just know that's going to be a big expense for us. I think moneywise, is it doable? I wouldn't, you wouldn't be sitting here right now if I didn't

094think it was doable. I told him, I think I can make it happen. Um, I do worry from the unknown from from this kind of stuff happening financially in special ed. I guess I'm hanging a lot of confidence on the fact that I do believe we will bring in more students. I just do. I think we will be we're the biggest school district in the in the county. I think co-op I don't want this to happen, but I believe if all the schools leave the co-op that have put their letters in, co-op's going away. They're not they're not going to be able to sustain it. They're just not. um they're they're going to have to find ways of what you talked about county by county if that happens if we decided to stay in the

095co-op one of my biggest concerns would be if all the other schools left the point you brought administrative fees what are they going to do with them because I I would be in Steve's ear big time saying look they just dropped four schools their administrative fees better be well the reality is when you run a co-op anybody familiar with those kind of situations just because you lost four schools whoever they're hiring in their administrative roles is not going to care about that. Their their workflow in their minds is going to be right where it was in their expertise. So, I don't know what will happen. What I don't want to see happen is us be the school that doesn't leave co-op and everybody else leaves because anybody that leaves co-op and we're not getting into

096that. Perhaps I'm going too far into the weeds. We have to hire teachers for all the spots. Yeah. >> So if other schools leave, they're [clears throat] going to snatch up the cream of the crop of staff members. >> And and I think what we have to do is just take the honest look at the program, the structure, the the compliance side of it. The financial piece is, I believe, the biggest piece that has to be ironed out and we have to feel comfortable with moving forward. So, um, that's where next month is going to be the the deeper dive into the financials because I think we've got to put our best effort into showing the board what that's going to look like. You got to feel comfortable with it or not. >> So, what

097has happened with I'm sorry. [clears throat] Go ahead. >> What has happened with federal funding? You know, they talked about getting rid of the federal board of education and >> it was a talk. >> If that ever happened, it would just go to the state level. They would still transfer the funds. I'm I'm very confident that federal grant plan B things like that, they're not going >> overall. Typically, sped funding continues to increase. Not not as much as you'd like to see or want to see. those same kids I hate to put it this way but they're still an equal ADM number right >> we we get a base amount for every student and then depending on different complexities so special education and depending on what their disability area is >> actually more >> it's

098more but it's dependent upon what their their distinction they need >> and then we use those funds to of course get the resources they need >> through the complexity index to any anybody that falls under that special education umbrella is going to bring in more per pupil ADM than a traditional student just but I I don't I don't foresee any issues with the federal funding because that's political suicide for anybody that wants to go down that road or your you know >> we need to be able to have the resources to be able to provide correct >> for every student's IEP and yes 700 keep in mind too that these These are students who have not really some who may not have started school with us. They might be receiving speech services, you know, at

0993 years old, four years old. So, it's more than just the 3500 that we have enrolled. >> And [clears throat] that 700 is in 222 if you go to >> Yeah. know almost 800. >> Yeah. >> What does what does compliance look like and auditing and how does what how does that look? Is it I mean is it >> the state will audit some of it >> but it's a federal grant so it will [clears throat] come under pretty tight scrutiny. It's a it's a icky >> are you talking financial >> compliance? >> Well all over all the legal >> they they keep track of the percentage of students we have that are um have an IEP. They keep track of the testing. They keep track of students who are um being assessed through the

100alternative assessment. They put parameters and guard rails on all of those numbers. And if you go over certain amounts, then individual schools and some of the principles back here can attest to we get compliance reports are saying you're not in compliance and so you need to develop a school improvement plan to address that subgroup of students. And it's a huge process and they make sure offering [clears throat] least restrictive environment. >> That's what I was looking for. Like what data are they taking? >> Yeah, those audits are are far worse than our financial the financial piece of it is actually pretty easy when it comes to auditing. >> I mean, it's and it's only easy because of the great people we have doing all the paperwork, you know. I mean, Josh Yankee is big in

101that and getting everybody quoted correctly. Um, so when they're coming from the financial piece, that's that's pretty straightforward. The audits that Lori deals with are probably no fun. They're time consuming. Yeah, >> time consuming. Next slide. Just lastly, um next slide. Um from this point, ongoing discussions with staff. We we have met with um co-op staff, all of our special ed staff, and I will tell you that Kelly Hudson, she's our boots on the ground. She's she's interacting, talking with our special education staff often, probably daily. and so she's able to relay a lot of information back to us. Um, so we we have had a lot of communication from current staff, both co-op and CAP central staff. We're going to continue to field any questions that come from parents, of course, in that way

102as well. We are committed to be transparent. Um, we're sharing a lot of information with you this evening. Um uh we're live streamed. We're recorded. So any information we're sharing with you tonight is is out there and it's just uh to share with you guys and to share with our community so that they know we're doing our due diligence to make sure that the [clears throat] decision that we bring as a recommendation has been thought about and has been scrutinized over and over and over. Uh certainly open lines of communication and uh I do want to commend the leadership at the co-op. Uh Katie Odor, the director uh at the co-op, has been great to work with and I've met with her and have spoken to her multiple times and probably will continue to do

103so uh until we make an ultimate decision. Um, [clears throat] but I can't I can't commend her enough for being open and helping with uh information requests that we have about just, you know, you think about co-op, you know, furniture in the classroom that [cough] they're co-op classrooms, it's not the district's furniture, it's the co-op's furniture. Okay? So, we got we have to account that we're going to have to replace furniture or buy the furniture from the co-op if so. I can't say enough about Katie OD and her staff and they've just been very good to work with. an opportunity for recruiting. >> That's what I was gonna say. What has the feedback from the staff been thus far? >> Um, I would I would say overall the Cal Central uh special education staff, it's

104been wellreceived about the possibility of leaving. Um, not as much from co-op staff. Um, a lot of anxiety because if we leave the co-op, all of those all of those um positions gets vacated. we create the posting for it and people have to apply for a position. So definitely an opport opportunity for >> I was thinking more of the director [laughter] >> coming [laughter] director. I won't speak for I won't speak for Katie or any of >> I'm just >> I didn't say she got um >> the people I've talked to I think it's just the unknown I think right now and I mean this is all I know and this is how it's worked for so long and you know I think they just have a lot of questions and um you know I've

105invited people to listen or shared this link um or I told them they could come but they're welcome to come too. So, but um any questions or um if we didn't address anything, I hope that they reach out. [clears throat] >> And same for the board. If there's any piece of information that you need to see for when we ultimately get to the recommendation, we want to make sure we provide you everything that you need. And so, if people reach out to you, certainly send them our way. Um we'll continue the process and uh get to the point where we're giving you more detailed information for the recommendation that we're we'll make. I think the initial announcement was a big buzz. >> Yeah. >> It was like like everyone said, it's just uncertain what's going

106on. The unified program, I said, it's not going away. That's it's has nothing to do with it. Just just relax. So, there's a lot of people doing a lot of research. So, when we know you'll not just be patient >> and it impacts everybody differently. >> It does. It does. I'll say I I probably have a little different take because I have family members that utilize not necessarily in our district, but Sure. And I'm confident enough with [clears throat] the reputation that we have with education that either decision you guys make, whether it's bringing in house, I feel that our staff will take care [clears throat] of that in the right way. And if we decided to just stay in the car because maybe it's too much of a financial risk, I get that too.

107So again, I appreciate that. >> Yeah, I think I think our staff will do a really good job. [clears throat] >> I think nobody can argue with the amount of research that has gone into this and the time that you guys have put into it and we really appreciate that. So, thank you. I think um coming from the classroom and having been involved in um many IEPs and many meetings and then having left and you know been at the preschool and all of that, I think special ed is confusing and looking at it from that perspective, I think about the families who are affected and the students and I just uh think about advocating for them and I guess that's where I come from is I want to make sure we're doing what's right for

108our students and our families. And I know that we will make that decision with that at the forefront of our minds. And yes, all of those risks are certainly important. And I know that the financial decision is huge and transportation and all of those things, but we want to do what's best for our kids and our families. And most of many of those families don't understand the process. and it's it's hard. It's confusing and it's unknown and they go into those meetings and they have no idea what we're talking about. And so I just want to advocate for them because it's >> it's hard. >> Yeah. >> It's a lot. >> Yeah. But if we feel that we can provide a better [clears throat] outcome and experience for our students, I mean, that's what that's

109what we're here for. So >> primarily, right? >> Yeah. And I like the fact that we're going to keep our keep our kids here >> in house in district source because to me that's big. We want to keep our kids here all of them. >> That's one of the big demographic that we talked about too, right? >> Having to travel >> like an air, >> right? then you may have more transfer in or at least retain >> instead of having to drive to another district. >> Yep. >> It's a true opportunity for us to just create a better experience alto together. You know, we we've gained so much research and insight from from everything you guys have done. I mean, we can we can improve upon what's been happening as we move forward with it.

110Well, this story shall continue. >> Thank you. And I think that's all we got together. Yeah, I guess >> our next Yeah, if our administrators want to say anything. >> Well, any feedback >> anything? >> Your perspective is important. I would [laughter] like >> we'd be remiss if we didn't. I don't I very proud of Mr. Wagner, Mr. Harrison, ISP, principal of the year. Congratulations on this. [laughter] >> There's more than two. >> 10 counties. >> Wow. >> 200 elementary. >> [clears throat and cough] >> in our home. >> So, we're probably close to 200. >> Mhm. >> And we have two >> two of the four. >> Yeah. >> But right now, >> actually, they all deserve to. >> Well done. >> All right. >> Our next uh regular board meeting is uh next

111Tuesday, April 21st, right here at central office at 6:00 p.m. [clears throat] >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Greg. I don't know if everybody [laughter] was depressed when they heard the 550