001of the district event. My name is Wendy Wood. I'm the director for the director of communications for Elcart Community School. The purpose of tonight's event is to hear from the superintendent, Dr. Larry Huff, as he shares key updates about our facilities, enrollment, finances, and staffing across Elkcart Community Schools. Before we begin, just a couple of quick notes. Dr. Huff will present the state of the district, and you can submit questions using the forms provided or online. Those questions will be answered on our website in upcoming board meetings. Our goal tonight is to provide clear, factual information and to make sure everyone leaves with a better understanding of where we are as a district and where we're headed next. With that, please join me in welcoming Dr. Huff. [Applause] Good evening everyone. Uh, as mentioned before,
002my name is Dr. I'm Larry Huff and I'm the proud superintendent of Elcart Community Schools. Before we begin tonight, I would like to thank our board of trustees and my administrative team for the opportunity to share just some of the outstanding things that are happening in our district, but also some of the the real challenges that face our um school district as well. This is also a opportunity to thank our teachers, our support staff, and our administrators for you're the heartbeat of the district. your every achievement that we will talk about tonight is because someone touched and changed the life of a kid. And so without that, we can't do this work without you. So I just wanted to thank you ahead of time. And last but certainly not least, our families, our employers, our
003our district partners. You have walked alongside Elcart Community Schools for years. Your support opportunities for students to learn, your engagement with us as a school district. It shows up not only in data, but also in the experiences that our children have. So again, I also want to thank you as well. You will not hear me say a lot of slogans tonight during our state of the district. You will just hear me give you factual information, but you also will see a superintendent who's very proud of our school district of not just where we've come from, but the places that we can go if we make some different, some maybe even difficult choices. But there is already a lot to be proud of in Elcart Community Schools. If you can take a moment to look at
004the things that we should be very proud of. This is a school district that is doing great things while having to also deal with some hard realities. We were number one in the state of Indiana for largesiz school districts that had above 10,000 students and I read growth and proficiency. That is a huge achievement. I don't want anyone to say that it was a small measure due to the intentionality of our teachers, our administrators, and through the grid of students. We got there. We still have a ways to go. But to go from 64.7% to 80.9% in one year is a testament to a district that can do hard things and that can do great things if you put your mind to it. Put the resources behind it and make sure that you are keeping
005your eyes on the prize, so to speak. That is something I'm very proud of. Something I know many of us in our district are very proud of as well. We also had an opportunity last year to make history in Elcart Community Schools. We successfully transitioned our sixth graders out of elementary schools. They were kind of too big to fit in there anyway to middle school. And this year they're making history as we finally have a grade level configuration of students in the middle school of 6 to 8. We have K through five at the elementary level and we have 9 through 12 at the high school level. Another point of pride here in Elcart is the graduation rate. Last year we reported 94.5% of all Elcart seniors graduated with a high school diploma and I
006will also share with you later on the presentation that number continues to grow up go up. That is a not only a sound number for our school district that is one of the highest in the urban in the urban school district in the state of Indiana. Hats off to Mr. Anderson as he's trans transitioned over to our director of secondary schools. But you and your team at the high school have done a tremendous job of making sure that Elcart students graduate and get across that finish line. So hats off to you and your team and hats off to the teachers as well. Also, many of you probably have connected with our career center. I believe biasedly that we have the number one career center not only in the state of Indiana, but I believe we
007have the best career center in the Midwest. The we're growing programs there. We are in demand at the career center and we have the career center has a connection with a lot of our business partners and leads the state in industry certifications. Mr. Eekens and his team have done a wonderful job of not only representing Elcart but also representing you. I'm very proud of the work that our kids are doing at our career center. So hats off to them as well. Our front porch to our district athletic and and arts in Elcart. 70% of students are connected to our school district in some type of form of afterchool activity. Seven out of every 10 kids. That's a huge deal. We had success last year in our athletics department. We had lots of success in our
008music department. We are considered one of the best musical communities in the state of Indiana. Six years in a row, we were granted one of the best musical communities. We do wonderful things here in our school districts. We've been doing those things for a long time. I just want to remind us that we also do these things at a massive scale. I'm very proud of the work that we do here. And last, but certainly not least, strong alumni base and people who care about the school district. As a superintendent, I get to hear a lot of opinions about our school district. some that have historical knowledge for I talking to somebody today who's been connected with Elcart for 75 years from a student to now kind of a mentor but also we are making not
009waves all around the United States. We have Elcart alumni from coast to coast who are invested not only the decisions that we make today but decisions that we will continue to make in the future. So I'm very proud of our school district. I hope that you are also very proud of the investment that you are doing for children and the work that we're doing with our staff for others. So, just want to remind us of the great work that we're already doing. A brief overview. There's a lot of print on that screen. So, I'm not going to go through it word for word, but I am going to remind everyone we are a large organization. We have 30 different buildings in Elcart which cover over three million square feet in inventory. To maintain that on
010a yearly basis, it is $20 million annually in deferred maintenance for Elcart Community Schools. We are not even keeping close to the deferred maintenance currently in Elcart. And our buses travel 80 square miles. To put that in context, on a yearly basis, we travel to Earth 12 times around the globe 12 time with our bus routes. We are transporting a lot of kids. We you're trusting us to make sure that they get home and to back to school safely. And I think we do a pretty good job of those things. Also on the screen, you can see all the different type of buildings that we have from preK all the way to adult education. We span a lot of different um learning opportunities for our district and our district composition, but I get most excited
011about talking about our students. So, we have outstanding kids here in Elcart Community Schools. Last year, we serviced over 10,500 students and you're going to learn this year we're down to 10,100 students as we talk about our enrollment trends over time. But those 10,100 students who are with us again are doing wonderful things. Last year, those students, if you have had an opportunity to look at our impact report, hopefully you have an opportunity to look at that. Over $16 million worth of scholarships earned for our students, over $6 million in scholarships awarded to our students last year. I mentioned earlier about the number of students who are in our clubs and after school activities and the D1 athletes that we've produced, but also the day-to-day opportunities, whether it is serving on government, student government, our
012chess club, our academic teams. We're blessed to be able to offer all these opportunities for our kids. They deserve it. You have great kids who we need to not only keep in the community, but they go out and represent our community very well. Very proud of all of them. But then we also have a heartbeat of our district which is the staff. Last year there were roughly 2,000 staff members in Elcart Community Schools. And out of those 2,000 staff members, they represent us well. Also, I'm just going to give you a couple highlights. We have last year we have the Indiana Counselor of the Year. We also have the Rise Award winner of the year from the IDOE that is our classified employer of the year. And then recently we were just notified that we
013won the Indiana youth worker of the year, Mr. Brian Hmonry. He will be honored by the IDOE. The reason why I bring these up, we have outstanding staff here. We have teachers who have been with us for a long time. We have pair of professionals who have been with us a long time. We have bus drivers who have been with us for five decades. We have teachers who have been with us for some five decades. People's commitment to Elcart Community Schools is outstanding. We can't do the work that we want to do for children without them. And so I just want to give you a small snippet of where we are with the staffing from last year and just a district overview. But you just can't look at Elkcart alone. You have to sometimes to
014see where you are, you have to see how your peers are also constructed as well. So one of the things that I wanted to show you tonight was how Elkart compared to Penn, which is our neighbor to the west. and three other like districts. We had to travel actually down to the we didn't travel down there, but for this presentation, I brought you data from three school districts from Marian County. All this information you can find on the Indiana GPS website if you want to for verification. I said we're approximately 80 square miles of the school district. You can see the other school districts, their size as well. Penn is a little bit larger than we are wise. They go almost all the way down to Breamman. There's a a little bitty school district and
015a lot of farmland when you go down in the Penn school district, but I want you to focus on the student enrollment. I included our current year's information and for the this purposes only, I shared with their information the latest that was available last year. D ADM, which is um our daily membership count, which we get on October 1st, hadn't been certified by the time we made this presentation. So you those are the last year's numbers for those school districts. As you can see, Elkcart has way more buildings than our districts, our neighbors, and other likesiz districts than we do. We have 23 total schools in which we operate. And you can see for yourself the number of schools that are operated in other school districts. We have 13 elementary schools and that will be
016a a big part of our conversation tonight. And you can compare and you can look at see the number of elementary schools that are operated by those districts and middle schools and high schools. One thing that makes Elcart unique is that we do a school of studies model at the high school where we break down um our high school into individual schools and we have five other additional and then we also have a school without walls. We also have an education um sorry Elcart Academy and we also have the freshman division right down the street. our construct of how we're comprised, our structural um differences are unique. But remember those all those entities require a spreading of resources in your school district. And so as we have this conversation tonight, I want you to keep
017those things in mind as we h as we talk about some of the opportunities I think that lie ahead for our school system. And then lastly, I want you to see the configuration in grades. Very similar to other school districts. I think it's important to do a further deep dive as well as we do the district comparison. Um this year you'll see the staff has went down to 1519. One of the changes, one of the big changes for our school district this year is that we outsourced our um our kitchen staff, our kitchen staff, our food services to a um private company, Chartwells, and you'll see a dramatic decrease in that. But you can also look and see the numbers of our neighboring districts as well. They serve more students with less staff. So I
018think an organization you have to ask what are some of the things that they're doing a little bit differently. A lot of time I'm going to spend tonight looking at the the bottom part of our average enrollment. Our average elementary school right now sits at 360 students. That's considered a very small elementary school. If you look at our neighbors Penn there's a little star there's a little asterk by it. The reason why they sit at 469, they have one elementary school that only has 132 students and that is I think maybe Madison Elementary that's further down in the south of their school district. If not, that number will be a little larger. And then you can look at some of the other school districts as well and you can see that they operate at much
019at a much larger scale on the elementary level. What does that mean for our school built district? Personalized service is good for kids. You're not going to hear me say that uh that that's a negative thing, but that is more roofs that you have to take care of. That is more staff that you have to use to provide those services and that is a lot more utilities and other costs that come with that. My job here today is not to say that those things aren't working for our kids because you're going to see some outcomes that show you that those things work for our student, but you also have to deal with your current reality that schools just aren't funded the way that they used to to make these things sustainable for a long period
020of time. One of the things I think is also important is that you're going to see over time people talk about teacher student ratio. I think what sometimes people see that number they think that oh there's only 14 kids in the classroom for every one teacher. That is incorrect. That is how much the average support is needed in order to support a child. So for example we try to have um actual classroom size standard sizes across the elementary school. We also use elementary only K through three. We try to keep those numbers up to 25 and then up to 28 for grades four, five and six. But in that classroom, you may have a teacher, you may have a special education teacher, you may have an OT, you may have a PT, you might have
021an ENL teacher servicing the needs of our students. That's what lowers that ratio. Kids come to our district all having differing needs and school districts have to make sure that they are meeting kids where they're at. And I think Elart does a wonderful job of doing those things. Looking at our other districts next to us, they have different teacher institution ratios. Some of their needs, I don't know. I'm not in their districts on a day-to-day basis, but I do think that you can start to see a trend when you're comparing one district compared to the next. And you start to ask why they serve like for example, I'll just focus on Wayne Township. Wayne Township is a school district that has 6,000 more kids and their studenttoteer ratio is 15 to1. We're 14 to1 and
022we serve approximately 6,000 kids less. But I also think sometimes we just can't focus on teaching in the classroom because teaching is man it's really important. Building administrators are also important as well. We have the 1 to 177 ratio and as you can see in the district we have 58 building level administrators. That's your principles and your assistant principles. Um, our neighbors to the west, they have 39 at that level, you can look at Pike Township, you can look at Warren Township, and you can look at Wayne Township. Their ratios are a little bit higher than ours when they're servicing students. And the reason why, again, I wanted you to see what likes school districts, how they operate. And then you can see what we have at district administrators. Those are your cabinet level administrators.
023We have 20, Pennas 21, Pike 22, 24, and then Wayne 14. So they run a really lean ship down there in Wayne Township. And again, these this information you can find, and I have the information on the slides if you want to look this up. We'll be sending this information out at the end of the evening like we've done the previous two times. So those those figures play out in how you service and support kids, but also in how does it impact your operation funds and how does it impact your education fund and all those things and we'll get into those conversation here shortly. But again, I want to remind people that Elkcart has been doing great things for a long time. that impact report hopefully, like I shared before that Miss Wendy, Mrs. Wendy
024Wood helped to create, it lists tons of things that the district is doing for kids. Elcart is an outstanding investment in this community. It is it we are making waves everywhere. I think we're moving in the right direction. This is just a small sample of some of the outstanding things that we're doing here for our kids. One of the areas I'm really proud of as our district demographics are changing over time is how we're meeting the needs of our students. Last year we were one of the leaders in the state of Indiana in meeting the needs of our ENL learners in in in Elcart. We had approximately a 70% increase. I know she's here. I hope that she's here somewhere. But Mrs. uh Lopez Bonner and her team have done an outstanding job of of
025coordinating services to make sure that our students who require those services are getting their not just their needs met, but they are thriving in those classroom. But not just those students, we're one of the few districts that can look people in the face and say we met the needs of every single demographic group in Elkcart showed improvement in all areas. Not just I read, not just I learn, not just PSAT, not but also in our graduation rate. Very proud. But sometimes as you look forward, you need to also take a quick step to look back. And I went back to 2021 to where we are now. This is just our graduation rate. In 2021, we were at 88% to where we anticipate this year. These aren't official, but they should be getting a release soon.
026I think these numbers are locked. We'll be at almost 96% in graduation rate. Outstanding work done again by Mr. Anderson and his team at the high school. No longer your your your responsibility, Mr. Anderson. Your job is to just make sure these numbers continue to grow. And our I read scores over time have also shown improvement. We were at 2122 was at 66%. As you can say, they stayed pretty stagnant. Last year, our teachers did a phenomenal job of raising that to 16 six by 16.7%. Triple the state average. I had the extreme privilege of going down there and speaking on Elkcart's behalf on just talking about the magic we're doing in the classroom. It's no magic. It's intention. It's hard work. And it's developing in the right instructional practices that we know that move
027kids. So again, very proud of the work that we're doing. We still have a long way to go. But that's a sign of the things that we are doing and is working here in our school district. That 80.9% I guarantee you when I shared with administrators at the beginning of the year, some were probably a little bit nervous that we weren't going to make it there. By the towards the end of that conversation, they were wondering why didn't we go why didn't that number why wasn't it higher? very proud of the the administrative drive, very proud of the teachers on the ground, but the kids who I know are watching this presentation, very proud of the work that they've done, too. And thank you parents for encouraging them. They can do again hard things. And
028as a district, this is just another small example of the great work that we're doing for kids. So tonight, um we're also going to talk about how schools are funded in most school communities. Ours is funded 53% by the state funding. That's our state run. Rest local taxes that we generate off our assessed value. And then federal funding. I don't know if anybody's been paying attention to the federal government. It is um not the most consistent funding source right now. There's a lot of things happen at the federal level. There's a lot of things happen at the state level. As a district, you have to be mobile in how you deal with those things. the federal funding. We know next year we're going to lose three different funding streams for our community, for our school
029community. Title two, title three, title four. Those provide lots of our funding for professional development for how to support our English language learners, how to make sure that our teachers are getting certain types of curriculum. That's a huge loss to our school district. almost a million dollars right there in federal funding that it's not coming back until something else changes so somebody else makes some changes but that's goes into effect next year and now I just want to tell you about just some of our funding supports and what they actually fund our education fund you'll hear a lot of me talking about salaries and benefit for teachers and those who are directly working with students and our operation funds in a very very I would say easy to understand way. That's how you keep the
030lights on. That's how you get kids to and from school. That's your buses, your drivers, your administrators, your maintenance, and all those other things. Um you're going to see on the screen referendum funds. We don't have those and we're not this point of this meeting is not to plan for one. what that shares that schools can go out and seek additional funding by operating and coming to the community and seeking a referendum funds. We're not we don't have a plan to do that at this moment. And then lastly, debt services fund. That's how you build buildings and take on good debt, right? Such as we're very lucky. We're going to have a uh strength and um wellness center open up, fitness center open up. We're also going to we were able to expand the career
031center this year through our debt services funds. tax, local tax terms. I've probably spent more time this year studying some tax terms through some of our recent legislation uh that was enacted and you will hear me talk a little bit about Senate Enroll Act One. You probably remember uh remember it as Senate Bill One. It is now law and so schools have to operate very differently based off the new legislation that has come out. So net assessed value, we finally did receive our net assessed value in Elcart County. We just received that information this week. You'll hear probably on the news that our assessed value grew a little bit. That's a good thing for school districts. That's how you generate your taxes and so forth. Well, that's how we generate and create our taxes based
032off how much things are worth in our school district. You have some um pre-tax deductions for um our taxpayers often in set value. You get credits. If you're a homeowner, you see those. you look for those credits this year. The big thing that was pushed out to people is that we're going to get how many dollars? $300. That was going to be a tax credit for you at the uh at your home. You're going to find out that that came with a lot of stipulations. Schools have to increase their taxes on you because of way that the raw laws was written. I would just say homeowners were a big focus of this last legislative session. Homeowners are winning. Schools did not win during this last legislative session. But we can't blame all our things on
033how the last session went. We have to look at how our own stewardship of things are. Um and then next we look at the tax rate. That's when our CFO looks at our assessed value and see how much is going to um it takes to set our tax rate. And then lastly, the money we receive is called a tax levy um that we receive to to pay for from our local government unit. So before I got here, I got a crash course from my CFO on this um on our projection sheet. Wanted to make sure that I make that it was very accurate up here. Miss Ross is a wonderful person to get to work with. But as you can see, the green line there is our gross assess value. That's what you should expect
034to see in a school district that it trends up over time. Those are billions of dollars that should be heading towards your not your district but your your county Elkart County should be growing. As you can see this year uh it is roughly $8 billion was the assessed value and they would continue to grow. The blue line is what traditionally what schools would receive and that line would typically grow up go up as well. this year was four um it'll be based off what $4 billion right there after deductions are linked but Senate enrolled act changed that the orange line as you can see here there is no growth moving forward matter of fact you will see less money in our operation fund and that's not because of chance that is because of design as
035value grows the obligation has shifted from homeowners intentionally towards schools now are going to be asked to raise rates um to keep the same level of service inside of schools. And so, as you can see, this is devastating for Elkcart Community Schools. We're very fortunate. We've been partnering with policy analytics, the leading um economic forecaster in the state of Indiana for schools and they've done a wonderful job helping us to prepare to so how we can pivot um because we didn't get a very long window to prepare for this. This is July. We had to be ready when they became law on July 1st. And there's something I want to make sure I look at. And there's something very different about this. By 2028, we have to start sharing our revenues with charter schools 25%
036starting in 2028. If there is a receiving school that receives more than 100% 100% 100 students from us, they can actually utilize some of our operating funds. That is a huge change in the law. Currently, Elcart is impacted by four schools um who would we would have to share part of our operating fund with. that will have tremendous impact on our busing on our how we pay for utilities and so forth and and it's a huge huge hit to our services and I don't know about you project four years from now will things cost the same in four years no it's sen rolled act one it was a major major um hit for schools And again, I want people to I think most people know, but if this is your first day in Elcart Community
037Schools, it it's a very simple math formula how we're funded for schools. The number of kids in your district times the number of dollars allocated by the state. That is your tuition re your tuition uh reimbursement by the state. We have another bucket where it's just operation fund that's also based off state control. And then again I shared before our our debt service as well. And so it I want people to remember how schools are funded the number of students that you have in your seat times the the state run the state dollars that they allocate. So that is going to be an important calculation not just for this presentation but in all things that we do. I think I that was probably the politest version. I can talk about Senator enroll Act one, but
038it is does mean reduce services for kids. Kids lost a lot with Senator Enroll Act one. And as a school district, it means to get the same level of service today, we have to increase the taxes that we ask of our community or have to go out and ask for an operating referendum from the community. Something that we have no plans on doing today. We have to make sure that we handle our business internally first before we even think about asking that ask of the community and we are nowhere near that level yet. But increased debt by financing buses. One of the things this year we we will present a capital bus plan. Um as a Mr. Smith, our new transportation director, reminded us of a few weeks ago at a board meeting um four
039years ago, 5 years ago, let's say a bus costs 250,000. It is more than double that now. We had planned this year to purchase 12. I think the funding that we have could be at a worst best case scenario maybe three. And I'm not making any plans to purchase any buses this year. things just are way more expensive than they used to be. And so when we talk about Senate role one, you you're going to hear not just Elcart, this is a statewide issue that I actually look forward to seeing them going back and hopefully rightsizing this in a short session. When I say rightsiz and wrong, going back and correcting these in the short session. This was devastating for schools. And I think people are still starting to understand and grasp just how large
040of an impact that has on Elcart Community Schools and other school districts. I mentioned before just about the impact on our operation funds. Typically, you see a 4% increase over that over time. No, you're not. 0% increase and actually there will be a decrease on that as we continue to move forward. And then our debt service funds as well. Our ability to borrow money to pay for things is also going to be impacted as well. And you're wondering, well, how is that possible? Because we can't capture everything off your net assessed value. You the ability to go after bonds is actually it makes it a little bit more difficult because you have less value in your district. And that is done through mechanics of sending enrolled act one is nothing that the school district has
041done. It's something that is actually a critical part of this major legislation. So the goal was that was to provide property tax relief by providing credits and additional deductions. And I think they did a they did that part. I think schools were collateral damage when it came to that um to send role act one. And this is just not something new. You probably have seen the the burden shift since 2009 for with the with taxes and public education. If you were around during that time, you started to see charter schools come prolific in areas, not necessarily here in Elkcart County, but around the state. Um funding is strained. Charter schools receive you'll hear that they receive less money than public schools, but if you look at the state run, that was not the case this
042year. many of our charter schools and have received addition not just they they're increased their run is much larger than Elcarts but also we do universal vouchers now we live in an area of competition families can choose to go anywhere I'm glad that 10,100 kids choose Elcart Community Schools but we also need to remember we operate in a competitive environment and when I put all the things out that we can offer as a school district because as you remember a point of pride is we can meet the needs of our kids I think better than anyone in this area. I'm very proud of what things that we can offer. But remember, families have choices and over time families have been um choosing to um different entities and and different type of schooling, not just charter
043and um private schools, but there also new different um there's also different schools out there now as well. Micro schools is another um example of that as well. And the homeschool increase has gone up also. So again, as I shared, Senator Ro act will reduce program and services for students at a time when our obligations are high at the school level and the need for new programming and to meet the needs of our students will not only increase, it will continue to um it will continue to increase over time. So if you have an opportunity to write your uh legislator, please do so. tell them that you know what we want to make sure our public schools are funded and we want to make sure that they're funded fairly but I shared before Elcart is
044not the declining enrollment is not just an Elcart issue it's a it's a issue around the state of Indiana but I do have an obligation to talk about our enrollment and what our staffing has looked like those two things should work in unison going back to 2016 you can see we had 13,952 two students and we had that many employees back in 2016. The trend that you've seen over time is that there's been a gradual decline of students since 2016. To today there's 10,100 students. Our staffing has not been as um consistent as the blue line which represents our students. Our staffing has kind of gone up and down over that time. You kind of want those things to mirror each other. And I will show you what unbalanced staffing how that plays out on
045a school district. We are designed to hold 17,000 students. We've never had 17,000 students as far as I as far as information I was able to go back and look. But 13,952, that's 4,000 additional students um that we had at one point. And but we are funding schools. I'm sorry. We're taking care of properties that are designed to house that many students. That is huge financial ramifications for a school district. If we don't do something about that, I'm worried about what the state of the district will look like if we don't make some different choices. One, you'll hear us talk about classroom occupancy. Um, at elementary alone, we have 13 elementary schools. Currently, we're only occupying 214 out of those 371 classes. That's 58% occupancy. In a perfect world, you would have you would have
046a classroom and you would have 25 kids in all those classrooms. Now, please know some of those classrooms are being utilized by our OTS, PTS, um special education, ENL, and so forth, but not full classroom occupancy. that's where they're doing maybe their tier 2 or tier three work with students or specialized um supports. But in a nutshell, that's a lot of empty classrooms around the school district. Enough to fill potentially five to seven schools. That's a lot of classrooms that you have to heat, a lot of places you have to maintain, and you still have the same obligations with your roofing and and and deferred maintenance and all the things that you need to take care of. Um this year we were able to um bring in um performance services to do a full um
047audit of every space in our district and they helped us to design a blue ribbon plan. Over the next 20 years, Elcart Community Schools based off our facilities today were expected we would have to spend over a half a billion dollars to keep things at status quo. My brain has a hard time comprehending a half a billion dollars. But that is just to keep it up to standard. So right now you're hearing me say $20 million as with deferred annually. That that I think that's an ambitious plan, Mr. Giannse, but I think it's they're very honest on the conditions of our school district and some of the things that we have to face um over time. So um we do have aging facilities here in the district. I think our team does an outstanding job.
048Thank you to you and your squad for taking care of them. But we have some we definitely have some work to do with our um buildings. I said before that we have to look at ourselves but we also are going to look at some um neighboring district when it comes to staff and enrollment. This is the decisions that you choose to make as a school district. And so I want you to take just a couple of seconds to look at this uh screen. The black line represents enrollment. The green line represents staffing. Elkart over time, as I said, back in 2016, and you can look at this information on I put the website on the slide, so when we email them out, you're more than welcome to look this information up. This is a great
049website. They have looked at over the 9,500 school districts that we have in the United States, and you can drill down into any one of some of the enrollment trends over time. Elcart back in 2016 trending down. They did that with their staffing, but then something happened in 1920 and then as you can see, we're trying to make some adjustments with staffing. Other districts chose to make different decisions. As you could look at our neighbors to the west, their district has increased in enrollment and as their district increased in enrollment, they didn't increase their staffing until 2122 to match those enrollment. And then Concord, which is to the to the south of us, they also have a slightly increase in enrollment. As you can see, somewhere around, according to this, maybe 5% over that same
050time, staffing has not kept up with enrollment over there. They run a little bit leaner than what we do. And then looking at those student toteers ratios, back in 2016, we had a 19:1 student toteer ratio ratio. Now it's down to 14 to1. As a reminder, that's not class sizes. That's how much support is needed to support the kids in the classroom. And if you look at the other school districts, there are 15 to1 and 17 to1. Those ratios, they matter. It plays out not only in the services that you can provide, but also in your operations fund and also in your education fund. But I just wanted you to see this for a a comparison. I shared before that right now we have 30 buildings, excuse me, 30 buildings that we um have in
051the school district that were meant to house 17,000 students at its at our peak. Today we only serve 10,100 students. That's almost 40% less than what we could house in our school district. And I'll just give you a couple moments to look at the um enrollment map. I went all the way back to 2010. So you can see what enrollment looked like during that time. But then you can see where we are currently today. This ends in 2024. And in 2024, based off our February count, we have 10,500 students. We were down to 10,100 students as of our October count this year. very fortunate when I came here two years ago that Elcart had already started these conversations. They already engag started to engage the community about what we're talking about today. Um they utilize
052a key committee and a feasibility study to kind of look at enrollment trends and to try to prepare for this moment where we are today. two year three years ago there was no way they could have predicted the Senate enroll A act one and those things but they could they did try to do a very good job and I thought they did outstanding work I utilize this work to um begin um our middle school consolidation and I'm also utilizing this as a as a a critical part of the work that we're going to do here shortly on the screen you will see that the blue um circle circle there. Um, that represents the low end of where they thought we would be this school year, which would be 10,435 students. In the worst case scenario,
053that was what was predicted just two years ago. We are at the red in the red circle 10,100. That is the best case scenario for 3 years from now. So the best case scenario from now is 3 years ago that 10,100 number. If you look at the worst case scenario, that would be I wish I had our fancy clicker. It would be the middle of 2728. So in best case scenario, we're we're two years ahead of our enrollment decline from what they predicted um back in 2223. In the best case scenario, that's the best case. In the worst case scenario, we're three years ahead of where they um have us predicted for enrollment. So to put that in today's terms, a drop from 10,500 students to 10,100 students is on the low end of $3.4
054$4 million loss from this year just in um maintaining those funds to operate the school year this year to potentially up to $5 million this year because of some of our students like I said before um have differing needs and we get paid um not paid we receive um complexity dollars to service our students who might require ENL support or who might require special services inside of our schools. That is devastating. When you lose that type of revenue that quickly, you have to be able to um maneuver on the dime. Um and that's a dime that you don't have because you lost that $5 million. But is also just not an enrollment issue. We have to also look at our spending practices as well. there's been a practice uh in our district and I only
055went back two years because that's all the um I can actually discern what was some of those decisions that were made during that time and this is not a time for me to go back and say what was right or what was wrong during that time. I just want to give you the plain facts and and that we've not um always matched our expenditures to our revenue. And so that has led to some overspending during that time. And so if you look at the if you look at the the the chart of 22 23 and just so you know how budgets are created, budgets are created a year ahead of time. So that budget that that that deficit that shows up in 23 that is actually created out of the 22 budget. And the same
056thing for 24 and 25. This financial reality chart should scare all of us, but I want to us know we've been doing good things over the last year. Um, working very tirelessly with our administration team and our um our our our CFO and our previous CFO to put in some cost savings and we're starting to realize some of those cost savings. It's just not enough based off our current footprint. We have to make some pretty hard choices that aren't new choices, but I think that it's we're responsible for making those choices and making them today. This is based off if the district didn't do anything. This is a lot to look at and to take in. Sometimes you just need to see it in a simple way. There's a simple way. This is the district
057did nothing. You can see back in 24 20 22 the ending cash balance that's how much money you have on hand. In 23 there's $24 million. In 24 there was only 14 and now there's down to two. Remember budgets are all based a year ahead of time. In budgets, your largest expenditure in your budget is your is your people and the amount of people that you have. We are very blessed to be able to try to take care of people. Um, but our education fund is comprised of 97% of our education fund goes towards salary and benefits. A district that is typically um doing good financial stewardship, you'll see that number anywhere between 80 and 85%. So that tells you that our our teachers and our administrators and anyone who touches the life of of
058a kid and our the district has made a great investment in them. We should be proud of that investment. That investment is not something that you can keep up long term. And so what do you do about it? This again is tra is based off if we did nothing, it'd be irresponsible not to do anything. We've done a lot of things. I'm really proud of the work that we've done. I look forward to sharing with you a lot of those cost savings that we have instituted started back I can only speak back to u March of 24 but I'm very proud of some of the things that we put in place but again this is not s sustainable so what do you do about it I think the first thing that you really should do
059about these things is take a true assessment of where you are leaders in order to cast a vision Your feet need to be steady and my job is to make sure our feet is steady so we can look forward to to the future. We're going to continue to do great things for kids. We're going to continue to do great things for our staff. We're going to continue to be a good sound investment for our community, but it does require financial transparency. I wanted you tonight to come to your own conclusion like, hey, the district has to do some things that are just different. What are some of the the challenges facing the school district? But also this is an information session. What what is a district comprised of? That is for to me an opportunity
060to be transparent with the school district. I mean our school community. But also fiscal responsibility. We all have a responsibility to manage our finances at home. No different than managing our finances here at school. Um it is is important that we make good decisions and they're rooted in data and they're rooted in things that we can control and also you do need to plan for the unexpected. I think very very I'm very proud of the investment that we make in people. I'm proud that we're able to offer all these different programming. I also want to make sure that we are able to continue to do these things as we move forward. And so how do you do those things? By making sure that you are being conservative in your approach to your estimates, but also
061don't count on Superman coming to save you. You have it has to start with you and has to start with the choices that we make. And then two, I think we that we have also have an opportunity to try to figure out how to increase enrollment. There is not one superintendent in the state of Indiana who is not thinking about their enrollment and what things they need to do to attract people to their school district. We need to do those same things. We, for example, in our school district, if you look at that impact report, you should be able to speak to someone and say, "Hey, look at all the great things that Elcart Community Schools offers in our community." That's my job to also go out and champion those things as well. We also
062need to meet the needs of our students here as well and also look at the programs that are not offered in our school district that will make things attractive. Through this process, we'll hear directly from you, the the the people who hold the most value, the parental voice, our our employer voice, our staff voice, our administrator's voice, all those things. What type of district do you want to be when this is done? when we when we come out on the other side stronger and better. If I came to you and say we're going to offer this, this, this, and this, it may not be the things that you want your child to experience. So, you'll have an opportunity tonight at the end of this session to slap your phone to look at that QR code
063and really talk about what type of experiences do you think would be attractive for not only children who have not walked across our um stages yet, but also the babies who we don't have in our school yet, but also you have an opportunity to say, "Hey, these are things I'm proud of. These are things I want to make sure continue here in Elcart Community Schools. These slides here are critical for us to have an understanding of what I'm going to propose to the school board and they started last Tuesday was an opportunity to begin a consolidation study and feas feasibility timeline. In a perfect world, I would have liked to have conduct this over multiple years. They don't have a perfect world and not existing in a perfect world. I this has to be done
064this year and it's tough. I like my name to be attached to things that are excellent and this will be done in an excellent people first banner. But I will make recommendations to the school board after hearing feedback from the community and after um doing a lot of studying of our school district about what our district will will look like for 2027. I want everyone to remember these aren't things that I've just come up with this year. This is based off the work that the board and the community and the key committee and educators and prior administration have already started this these conversations. I will be the one responsible for making sure that they it's done and it's done well. So the first thing and you notice only one month is October and we're after
065got that board of resolution tonight to engage the community so you can kind of see where we are in a financial sense the things that we're proud of but also start to talk to you about how our district may should the board choose to continue with any potential um recommendations what it would look like. So over the next month, you will I will send out surveys to our district leaders, our school staff, our parent communities, anyone can give their feedback about what do we want our district and you're going to keep hearing me say on the other side of consolidation. In a perfect world, like I said, this would be a multi-year process, but I just need to be candid with you. If we do not do these things this year, someone will come behind
066us and do them for us. And so I take my responsibility as a superintendent very seriously. I believe that it's important that we do those things. I won't leave that up to anyone else. These aren't this isn't new information. This is information that we face today and if all the data faces today that you cannot operate in this manner any further. And then so that's phase one. Identify with the community. Do you think that there is an issue? Do you think that there is a problem? If there is not, if we can't come to that conclusion, phase two and phase three won't resonate with you, but if you can see, hey, the district is being pretty transparent and they're really starting to work to do that, you'll start to see what phase two will look
067like. Phase two is when I will come back and to to give the board some recommendations. On the November 11th board meeting, I will propose to our board uh the criteria what it will look like as far as pairing schools. Pairing schools is if you're making some choices to move school A into school B or school B into school A, what that will look like? What is the criteria and it won't be solely just based off academics. As a superintendent, I believe every kid is worthy of an outstanding education. Not the kid from Bristol, they're they're worthy. The kids down here on the south side, they're worthy. The kids are on the west side, they're worthy at Cleveland. Kids are on the east side. I think it's I'm still learning Elcart. I The kids at
068Riverview are worthy as well. Is Riverview on the east side? Yes, I passed the test. But anyway, I just want to make sure that, you know, every kid is worthy. It can't be just based off academics alone. There's going to be some criteria that I want to hear back from you and I want to hear what do you think when we go through this process. Uh a process that I'm proud of and I'm working with Wendy Wood and our new um chief um technology officer, Mr. Rhodess, is that you will see on a dashboard all of this information publicly. We are building a um transparency dashboard where you can see the number of bus spaces, routes, what the school can actually hold, is there debt on the building, all those things. I think when you
069make these for our district historic decisions, you should have all the information. I want us to be the source of information, not hysteria, not rumors. I want you to be able to hear directly from me. So, in phase two, I will make those policy recommendations to our board and I'll communicate those things out to our community, not just through board meetings. My goal is to write our staff and our community on a weekly basis just giving updates. Um there's been a whirlwind the last week of doing these type of presentations and then when I have an opportunity to sit down tomorrow I will write a quick debrief and and share with our community. On the next board meeting on the last board meeting in November we will reveal to the we will share with the
070community the actual parents that's where you'll hear based off the criteria and the feedback from the community and the data uh which schools are will be up for u potential consolidation. Um at that point um I will make the recommendation to the board to accept my recommendations and then it will be communicated at that time. And then the final piece will be back in March or April depending on again community feedback depending on work with my team and work with um key stakeholders. What are the schools that will be consolidating? But we're talking a lot about buildings. We need to also focus on people. People are the ones who get people from A to B. Buildings hold memories. And when I want to say I know this is a sensitive topic. I know how this
071community has really proud of our school buildings and and how we provide services for kids. But I also think that we need to realize that people can rise up and do great things even if they're may not be in that same building any any longer. So I I'm I want to be intentional to talk about throughout this whole process you're going to hear me focusing on people people because our at the end of the day that's how we treat people and what things that we articulate and what we do through people is really the true testament of how we come out on the other side. And so that last phase is support. And you can see engage the community, support staff, support families, and the coming together of those school communities. In a in a
072perfect world, do I know what that looks like as of today? No. That's why you're here to help giving some feedback um on that. And your input is really valuable. And so I plan for next year at whatever our configuration of our schools to look like, I don't expect our services to diminish. I don't expect our outcomes to lower. I expect that we all continue to rise to the occasion to meet the needs of the kids who are in front of us and the kids that are yet to come in our school district. But I wanted you to see this timeline and and and let you know that a lot of care and consideration is is going to have to occur in a very truncated time period. But I wanted you to see this here
073and as I've shared with the other um at the other meetings. So how do I stay involved? How do I learn more? our school board meetings. If you have seen them over the last um I will say four or five months been very intentional about how we communicate our financials out to the community. Uh Mrs. Ross's responsibility is to make sure that you not only see what's inside our cash balance and what's in all those lines, but also how much money are remaining. Are we on target to meet our projections at the end of the year? are we on target in not just one fund category but where are we in all of them also sharing that information publicly too I think that's important as well um that ECS business and finance website it will
074be available at the first week of November I'm looking forward looking at Mr. roads. He's given me no nod. So, I'm assuming that it will be ready. But that's very crucial, too, that you can go on on any time and and check that information. And then our transparency dashboard, be transparent with the community, not just about this process. You can already go on there today and see a consolidation school consolidation page and you can see all the numbers and all the ways that Elcart Community School is going to communicate through this. All these meetings are being recorded. they are being live streamed. You hear me talking about our financials. We make sure that you know that you're informed every step of the way if you want to be informed and we will make sure that
075we will maintain and we will do that for you and we will do that with you. Last but certainly not least, I just want to tell you thank you for supporting our schools. This is a great investment in this in this you invest in our community and we hopefully you see the investment coming back. One of the things I'm very proud of in this in our school system is that we lead the state in amount of kids in dual credit at the high school. Over 10,000 dual credits um earned by kids last year. That's $2 million that kids don't have to pay going into college. That's real. Those are real dollars. Those are real impact. We also lead one the state in certifications and industry certifications. They can walk out of Elcart into highpaying jobs
076in this community. We have new programs that we can offer. Again, you're going to hear me brag on this school district. It's going to get to the point where it feels nauseous, but I'm excited about all the things that we can offer and we have to continue to offer it because you know what? The kids who didn't get to experience those yet, they deserve the same thing. I shared with you earlier, all kids are worthy. And not just the kids who are here today, the kids who are going to come into your school district, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren. Elkart will be around to make sure that they experience those same things. Also, stronger schools lead to better communities. All I believe that you can check out the the research on that. All right. We
077are an excellent community. You're going to hear us talk about the excellent Elcart because we can track attract families. We have great local partners and that you'll hear a lot in the city. They'll talk about quality of place. I think schools play a key role in that. We want them to be we want to be the first choice of where families send their schools. The way that we are operating schools currently in our structural makeup is not the most efficient way. And then last but certainly not least, opportunities for you to engage. I think the schools need to do a we have a tremendous opportunity before us and that's to engage you on what do you want our schools to look like at any time I would love for you to come in and take
078a tour of what we offer our kids not you heard me talk a lot about the high school tonight but our elementary schools our middle schools our program go there see what we offer attend our performances we're very fortunate Just two weeks ago, we were able to host the 150th anniversary of the Conselmer event over at Rice Field, host 12 different school districts. It was a great event. Elcart is known for rising up to the occasion and having outstanding um events. Our arts uh that we offer here are are topnotch. Lot of great things happening our school district and they will continue because they're led by outstanding people. Notice I didn't say what building they occurred in. They're led by people. And so we will continue to engage the community. We'll send out dates in
079the future through Mrs. Woods, our communication officer, and myself on the feedback that we get from this event and from our previous event. You will see it on our website on a frequently asked question page. Um, so you can see that your questions are all answered, but also that it's done in a timely manner. and that you can see that your voice does matter. Are you going to be able to do everything that everyone offers on the in the FAQs? No. But you can respond to them and you can be very thoughtful and you can share this is why this decision was made. This is why that will work. This is why that may not work in our current setup. But I think civic engagement is a huge responsibility of the schools. So, this is
080that time where you can take out your phone and really look at that QR code. And those are the questions that we want you to ask. Well, not ask. I don't want you to ask those questions. I want you to see if we answered those questions for you. What do you think is a major concern based off the information you heard tonight? If you think there's a concern at all, what criteria or consideration should administration present to our school board? What does the district need to consider as we undergo this process? And then what questions do you still need to be answered? I did intentionally not answer some question. That question was, well, what's the what's what's the vision programming? What's going to happen to all those buildings? And those were not intended for this
081meeting, but you will have those questions answered throughout this process. Tonight was very focused on this is where the current state of the district is. What I'm excited about is about what the possibilities of what the district can be. So, I just want to tell you thank you again for the opportunity just to share a little bit about Elcart Community Schools, the great things that um staff is are doing for schools, but also appreciate your support and giving a lot of your time, your energy, and your talents to our schools to our school district. So, thank you again for coming out and I appreciate you. [Applause] Thank you again for joining us this evening for our state of the district event. Please be sure to turn in your handwritten questions you have on your way
082out and have a wonderful evening. Thanks.