001Good evening and welcome to the state of the district event. My name is Wendy Wood. I'm the director of communication for Elkcart Community Schools. The purpose of tonight's event is to hear from our superintendent, Dr. Larry Huff, as he shares key updates about our facilities, enrollment, finances, and staffing across Elcart Community Schools. Before we begin, just a couple of quick notes. Dr. Dr. H will present the state of the district and you can submit questions using the forms provided or online. Those questions will be answered at the upcoming meetings on Monday, October 20th and later shared on our website and 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,
002please join me in welcoming Dr. Huff. [Applause] Alrighty. Good evening everyone. First and foremost, I want to thank each and I'm a little taller so I can't move this up. I want to thank each and every one of you for coming out this evening and giving a little bit of your time. And I also want to thank the Trinity Church for allowing us to utilize this beautiful facility to have this very important conversation. It takes our community partners um to actually to work with us and we really appreciate that um this evening. So I just want to tell you thank you. If you hear me talking quickly, give me a cue, raise your thumb up. That tells me to slow down. I said that yesterday and you know what? That's when I hit my groove
003when we slow down. So, always at the beginning when we're talking to important people, we want to make sure that I get a little bit of nervous when I talk to you about these things because it's so important. But I know I'm in a room full of important people. So, I want to let you know that it's going to be okay and we're going to talk about good things this evening. I also want to thank give a shout out to our teachers, our support staff and administrators. They're the heartbeat of our district. So, I want to thank you for coming out and supporting us this evening and and to our families and our community partners. Before we begin in tonight's conversation, I want to talk about the things that we should be proud of. There
004is a lot to be proud of in Elcart Community Schools. This is a great place to educate kids. It's a great place to educate families and very proud of what we've done. We've done a lot of great things in the last year. I just think we also need to be reminded of those things. First and foremost, one of the things I'm really proud of is our district's growth in our I read scores. We were had the privilege and the pleasure of being I'm going to speak down at the IDOE last year. Well, not last year, in August, it feels like a lifetime ago to share the great growth in our school district. We're the number one in the state of Indiana in growth for a district that is our size. And I think that's hats
005off to our amazing administrators, our teachers, and you know what? Our students too because we know they're watching the state of a district event. Correct. No, they are not. But we should be very proud of their hard work. Also, other just to prove we also can do hard things. We successfully transition our sixth graders into middle school. I know that that's been a conversation around the district for over a few years, but at least I heard at least five, 10, maybe even 20 years. And we did that last year. So we have sixth graders making history now as our middle school configuration has changed. Um also something that should be very proud of last year we had a 94.5% graduation rate. Reason why is that and it is important because it gives kids opportunities post
006high school whatever he or she chooses to do. We want we always talk about kids going collegebound. We know the world is changing. kids have the whole world open to them. And I just want to say that's a huge gradu that's a nice graduation rate, but it gets even better. The anticipated graduation rate this year is 95.5% this year. So, it's going to even increase up from last year. So, I just want to say hats off to the high school team for all the hard work that you do and the teachers there at the high school. We really appreciate you. And I don't Mr. Eekens, is he is he here? if he's not here. We have the number one career center in the state of Indiana. I think all of us, if you know anything
007about the career center, you would say it's a fantastic place for kids. It creates great learning opportunities and great credentials for students who can access that program. If you don't know anything about the career center, we partner with 16 other um organizations, 16 other schools, and we actually provide services for them because we are the best place to do that. So, I just want to say thank you to the career center team and remind you that right here in Elkcart County, we are creating opportunities at the school level for kids and then athletics and arts. Very proud of those are that's our front door. We have over 2,300 students either involved in athletics or arts in Elkcart. That is a huge number. We should be very proud that we're able to offer those opportunities to
008our families um and to our students. Athletics and arts connects kids to the schools as well. And then last but certainly not least, you we have a strong community and people who support our schools. We have a great alumni base. We have people who come from we have Elkhart graduates all over the c uh country who come back because this is a giving community and this is also a very gracious community and I feel very um supported by them as we do this critical work. But if you're new to Elcart or you need to be reminded about what we have here in Elcart, we are a large organization. We sc we cover over 80 square miles. Um last night I used the analogy our bus routes if in one year our bus routes travel around
009the earth the equivalent 12 times. That's how many routes that we have. Well, we have 96 routes, but that's how much road we would cover when we're doing this work and serving kids and bringing them to and from school and to other places. We also have $1.1 billion in assets. That doesn't mean that we have that that we own. We manage those facilities that are worth that much. To keep that going each year is at a minimum it is $20 million. That's what you call your upkeep, right? If you own a home yet, you put in upkeep 20 it takes 20 million minimally to to address those needs. And then lastly, we cover a lot of space over 3 million square foot of property and buildings that we cover here in Elkcart. But I also
010think we need to talk about our most vital thing that we have, our students. We're producing outstanding young folk here in Elkcart. We've had students who go on to some of the top universities. Two years ago, we had our national marriage scholar winner here in Elcart. We have kids last year who went to 50 of the top universities in the country. But we also have kids who stay right here at home and are involved heavily in trades. We have kids who are involved go work in our hospitals. We have kids who are in manufacturing. What I really want us to know about Elcart, whatever kids want to be, we have opportunities here for them to to do those things. So I believe again hopefully you are seeing that our schools are a great investment and
011a good return on investment for you and your child. We also have some of the best communities when it comes towards music. And so one of the things I'm very proud of two weeks ago I got to watch our marching band participate in the Con Selmer event um at Rice Field. It's a huge honor to be able to host those type of events because kids again feel connected sometimes not always through sports. That's an opportunity for them to connect with their friends, but also to showcase and for our school district and also it's a point of pride. We for the sixth year in a row, we were best we were voted one of the best music communities in Indiana. And you know what? Because I don't have my readers, I'm going to have to just
012go ahead and default and turn the page. Dr. Rouse, don't look at me like that. And so one of the things also too I'm very proud of is in Elcart we had lots of opportunities. We had sent multiple D1 athletes off to um to college and then we also were the Nick champions in soccer this year and we also were the state champions in our unified track team for the second year in a row. So again we are doing great things in all our arts and athletic programs. But the heartbeat of our community is our staff. In 2425, we had 2 thou over 2,000 staff members who were here in Elcart. And so that looking at that list, you see 64 building level staff last year. That's not including our cabinet level, people who work
013at the district office. And then we had almost 835 staff members, certified staff members, and then 98 classified staff. You'll see these numbers kind of change and vary throughout this presentation because we did make some instructional changes in through our school year. But we also have some individuals who were acknowledged in our school district as being some of the best in the field. And so, for example, we had the Indiana counselor of the year here in in Elcart. We have the rise award winner here in Elcart. And soon I'll be able to announce another special award for someone we'll also be honored for their work at the state level. So, I'm very proud of the quality of educators that your child receives here. We have some of the best teachers in the world here. This
014is a great place for your children to learn and very proud to call them colleagues. But while doing this work, I think it's very important to talk to you to you about some of the other realities that we face. managing a large complex organization, it takes a lot of not just effort and energy, but it also takes a lot of capital. So, tonight I just want to share with you some nuggets of what it actually takes to run our school system and what that looks like in like-sized districts like ours. And so, when we talk about a district comparison, I said our district is roughly 80 square miles. You can see that we had 10,100 students on our ADM on our count day. Our count day was October 1st. We have 10,100 students and we
015have 23 school buildings. When I say school buildings, that is our 13 elementary schools, our middle schools, our high schools, our career centers, and then we have an adult ed program and we have a preschool program. But also inside of there, we have a school of study model that we offer as well. Looking at our neighbors to the west, Penn, they're a very large school district as well, kind of like us, but they are at 127 square miles. And the reason why they're 127 square miles is, I don't know if anybody knows, they have a school that is very far to the south. And that school that's to the south is Madison. I think that's what that school is. And it's very tiny. But they operate they only have 16, 11 elementary schools, three middle
016schools, one high school, and they have one miscellaneous building. And you can see their K um their configuration is very similar to ours here in Elcart. And then I had to find other like sites districts. I went to Marian County and you can see Pike Township, you can see Warren Township, and you can see Wayne Township. They're similar in size and you can also see the building configurations of 13 elementary schools 16 and 16 but you can also see the middle school configurations and you can also see their high schools as well. So for us to do some comparisons you can see that our buildings we have a lot of buildings for only 10,000 students compared to other districts that are like ours. And what does that really mean? That means we cover more roofs.
017That means we cover more routes and that means we cover more utilities while we're also serving fewer students. And I wanted to continue with this district comparison. This district comparison I just didn't look at the number of buildings. You know those buildings also comprise people and people are the heart engine of to make schools work. And so again Elcar I share with you those numbers change a little bit. As of right now, we have 1519 employees. And the reason why that number changed dramatically is that we outsource our food service. And that was roughly 200 employees as well. And you can see on the screen if you can, you see Pennaris Madison, they have 1,200 employees, township, 1300 employees roughly, Warren, and then you see Wayne Townships. I think it's very important, excuse me, to
018look at, we see the buildings, we see the number of employees. Well, what does that look like on a day-to-day basis? Well, the average school size here in Elkcart Community Schools across our 13 schools, we have the average size of 360. In our middle schools, we've actually increased our size of our middle schools because we moved our sixth graders up to 760. And then our high school has a total, and that's what the career center involved. We have 3,118 on that. In this presentation, you'll see a 14 to1 ratio. That does not mean our class sizes are 14. That means that for the supports that were required to run a classroom, we also have special education teachers, we have spe we have speech pathologists, we have ENL teachers, we have OT's, PTS. Those numbers are
019factored in and that comes that's where your ratio comes from. So when people look at that, I think that's a very important distinction. It doesn't mean necessarily every classroom has that number of students because roughly we have between anywhere between 22 and 28 students in the classroom here in Elcart. But that's where that student teacher ratio number comes in. And then if you look at our like-siz districts, I'm sorry, I I'm I'm skipping over one. I want to make sure. And then looking at building administrators, for every one stu for every 177 students, we have one administrator, we have 58 total building level administrators. And then at the district office, there are 20 people who are at the district office. Then the reason why I think it's important for this group to know that you
020can see what we are currently doing structurally to service the 10,100 students. But then you look over to our other our neighbors. They are operating at next door at Penn, you can see that 469 is their average class size and it's I'm sorry school size at the elementary level and is skewed a little bit because that one school Madison that I referred to a little bit earlier. Um they only have 132 students who attend that school. If not, that number would change a little bit drastically. And then their middle schools are a little bit larger than ours. And then their high school is larger than ours as well. um their student teacher ratio is 19 to1 and then also the building administrator is one to for every 296 and they have 39 administrators in their
021district and just so you can know where this information comes from. I got this all from the Indiana dashboard so you can go and check this out on your own if you want to verify this information but this is where I pulled their latest information from. But then as we go down to Marian County schools because I had to go a little bit further to fi find largesiz districts. I won't bore you and go through each of them. But you can see that there's a trend that their their buildings are a little bit larger than ours here. And when they are a little bit larger, it allows you to do things a little bit more efficiently in your district. Um and so again, Wayne, I do think it's important to look at that school district.
022That school district has, like I said before, almost 17 16,000 students. Their average elementary school is 714. Their middle schools have 1,155 students. And then their high school, I said almost 5,000, I'm sorry, almost 5,000. And they have 15 to1 ratio. And they're one to 277. And then lastly, they have 14 district um administrators. And so you're probably wondering why are you looking at other school districts? We are focusing here on Elkcart. I think it's important for people when we make really in decisions like decisions that I'm going to propose to the school board that we look at how other organizations that are like ours how they are comprised and and that the structured and what that looks like as well. And so for us at district comparison it was very eye openening to me
023we have more buildings to manage we have more things to manage. We have routes to manage. We have um a little bit more um overhead than our um likeiz school districts. But I also want to talk about even with the structural challenges, Elkcart is thriving. We had doubledigit gains in our reading and our math and our language development. I want to say hats off to the team, particularly our in our ENL department. Um they did an outstanding job of growing not just beyond the state average, they were in the top 10 in the state. So I just want to say thank you to that team. Hats off to you. Um we talked a little bit earlier about um our I read growth. Um again number one in the state. I think that's very important that
024people know that our kids here are not just thriving. We're creating confident and literate learners in this world. That is usually the first indicator that people use that people use to see if your school district is doing well. Can my baby read and does my baby feel safe in schools? And if you can answer those two questions, I think most importantly you're you're doing your not just your job. those are things that you are the community has owed. So I feel like we do those things very well here. But definitely creating a culture of learners um and literacy is something that we take pride in. And so again, thank you to administrators and those teachers for doing those things. We're also one of the leaders in the state in college um um college um credits
025earned while at high school over 10,000. We are pushing kids for dual credit here in Elkcart. And that number 10,000 is a lot of college credits, but we also have saved families over $2 million in earnings last year alone. So again, Elcart is a very vast high school that provides tons of opportunities for kids. We have kids who are involved in so many things at the high school. And this is just another way that Elcart is giving value to families. These results don't just come from skilled teaching and consistent perfor um support. It's proof that we are doing great things for families and we're focused and that we will continue our kids will continue to succeed. And then I want just I just want to quickly just remind you like our graduation rate. We have
026a very very solid graduation rate here. Over the last few years it's grown from 88% all the way up to an anticipated graduation rate of 95.5%. That is one of not just one of the highest numbers in this county, that is one of the best graduation rates in the state. So again, hats off to the the high school team and for all that they do. But that work doesn't just start in high school, it goes all the way back to prek. So our kids are really moving across the finish line. And as I spoke to earlier, our I read that was a major focus for us last year in the district. I'll be very honest with you. Um we were Looking at the numbers, I felt we were stagnant in that area. 66% uh starting
027back in 2021 to where we are now, 80 almost 81%. That is a huge difference in the lives that we're changing in kids. And I know our leaders at those levels, they know the impact of what they're doing with those children. And I hope the families realize that um we are just changing the trajectory of our students. One of the most difficult conversations I think you can have with a young person is, hey, I'm really worried about my ability to understand what's happening in the classroom. I don't feel confident as a reader. We're changing that. We're changing lives here. And so, thank you to those administrators and those teachers um and really those kids for comprising and making that score. We are the beneficiaries of it. They're the ones who are doing the work. So,
028I just want to say thank you to them. But that number is one I'm very proud of for our school district. That's a huge lift and to grow that much in a year shows the intentionality and it also shows that our kids and our teachers, they can do hard things. But tonight, you're going to get a little lesson in school funding and how schools are are funded. Um, one of the things that um I would like to share with you today is that we receive approximately 53% of our money from state funding. So, um, 53% of that we just, um, had a budget that we presented, anticipated a budget, and we probably won't receive all that. We asked for $97 million. We may receive roughly $90 million of that. Um, and if you have paid
029attention to anything at the federal level, the federal level, they're kind of, it's all over the place right now. At the federal level, we get 2% of the funding. And I can just tell you right now, I don't really count for any of the federal funding. We just don't know. It's it's a it's an unstable situation right now um at the federal level. When it comes to our grants, we received Title One grants two, three, and four. Those grants are going away starting next year. And those provide some of our supports to some of our most needies, not neediest children, but our kids who are in most need of those dire supports. So, our ENL students, professional development, all those things that make us great, we can't count on those things next year. Um and
030then lastly, local funding. And that's our taxes that we collect as a school as a school system receive roughly 45% of that. And so the funds come kind of like and we used to say the bucket analogy. I'm pretty sure people have heard may have heard that before. If not, there's a couple different pots where we um choose where our money is comes from. But the ru the state has different type of laws on how you can utilize that money. So for example, we have a education fund. Education funds pay for our teachers and their salary and people who are connected to the classroom. 97% of that fund goes to salary and benefits, which means there's very little left over should there be any type of need for curricular materials or anything like that. If
031there's something unexpected, I just can't pull from a certain fund to cover for that. We have to then go into our rainy day fund and things of that nature. Um but then we have an operation fund that is kind of like the way how do I look at it? How do we keep our lights on? Our buses, our routes, some of our administrators, our custodian, our maintenance, some of the behindthescenes things come from our operation fund. Usually a healthy sound school district immediately transfers 50 15% of their money from the education fund to the operation fund. That is a typical um transfer that occurs on a yearly basis. We have only been able to transfer $1 million over the last year. So, we haven't even transferred um I would say 5% of of what we
032should have to our operation fund because we've been propping up our education fund. Our referendum funds, we had a previous referendum and that's going to that's rolling off um from a few years ago. I think that was approved for transportation that has ended. And then lastly, we have a debt service fund. That's how you pay for buildings and uh and you bond out for your buildings and so forth. So this year we're building the health and strength center. And then we also had the um we're having the career center was expanded as well. That is where those funding sources come from. And then there's local tax terms that I think we all need to be a little bit familiar with. Net assessed value. That is the value of everything that we talked about in our
033school district. Pop quiz are we have a value of how much in our school district? We don't know. We said $1.1 billion at the beginning, but that number hasn't come in yet um from the state. It hasn't been factored in yet, but kind of our net assessed value is everything that is in our area. And then there's deductions. If you own a home, there's certain deductions that they put on certain businesses and so forth. And then all of us have heard about the credit uh tax credit that you can that you can apply for. And then we establish a tax rate. That's the differences in our net assess value to what we need. And then lastly, the levy is what we actually receive from the from our um entity to project our schools. You may
034have seen this graph. We talked about this in the summer. Um this is from um part of our work related to SEA1. I won't get too much in the weeds when it comes to this, but I do want you to look at the um the graph to see the amount of money that we should have been receiving or that we should receive over time, but we're not going to receive those funds any due to changing in in the law. And so, look, if you look at the 25 year, we re we stay flat. moving forward because of the changes in how deductions are calculated, the monies that we would have received, we're not going to receive anymore. So, as I was checking in with someone before we got here, look at the blue line. If
035you can see that blue line, that would have been our traditional path. The money that would have gone into our operation fund, it's usually has a steady increase of 4%. That is not the case anymore. you're going to see if you look at the orange line that is our projected um money that we're going to receive. It actually goes down each year and then but there's something that happens in 2028. In 2028, we start to share our operating funds with entities that receive 100 or more of our students. So currently we have four um schools or four schools that receive that have more than 100 students who live in the Elcart boundary that choose to go to that um particular school. They will also start to receive part of our operating fund in 2028. And
036then moving forward it doesn't start to make any turns until if you look at it 2034 is where we get back to today's funding levels. That is devastating for Elcart Community Schools. That is millions and millions of dollars lost over that time period. And if you know anything about the way the world is, things aren't going to get cheaper over time. We are dealing with tariffs now. We are dealing with inflation. We are also dealing with just rising costs, right? And so things that we typically pay in our operation funds to kind of offset that with that increased 4%, we can't count on that anymore. So one of the things that people need to know is schools are funded and how schools are funded. It's pretty simple is there's a little formula. the number of
037students that you have and we have 10,100 students as of October 1st times a certain rate that they establish at the state roughly around 8,000 or so. But then there's something called complexity dollars too. So if a child has different uh different needs that we need to support, so let's say they need um um ENL services or they have services that require different supports because they legally have an IEP. We get dollars to help support those needs as well. We also have operations fund. We get some different fundings for that. And then lastly, our debt service fund. Again, I told you our net assessed value times our tax rate. That's how our schools are funded. Those ve we don't really generate any additional revenue, any of those things. So students and student counts are very
038important. And again, I share with you what was in the SEA1 impact um and how that's going to impact our schools. It is devastating for schools, but is not. So that means that you have to be a better steward of the funds that you have now. And so it's important for us to look really understand what we have now. It's critical to make sure our resources are getting to the classroom. So summary of the bill, like I said, 0% increase where we get a typical 4%. And then lastly, in order for us to get the same level of taxes that we get now, we would actually have to raise our tax rates. So sometimes to get less money. You're probably, well, that doesn't make any sense. You're raising taxes. So if I can give you
039just a very brief analogy for a home that you can typically tax, let's say $100,000 is what you can tax. Because of the new deductions and the new standards, you can now only maybe tax 90% of that home next year. So in order to get the same amount of money, you have to increase your your taxes from a school level. And then the following year, you only tax 80% of the value of that home. You have to increase the tax level. So eventually, you're not going to be able to I think it goes down to 66% of it goes away. So you there's no money really to tax after they do all their deductions and their credits which makes it very difficult for schools to raise the capital needed to run the number of buildings
040that we have but to run schools just in general. So it's very important that people understand oh what my taxes have gone up from the school. Why have my taxes gone up? The schools aren't collecting as much money as they used to. It's you that is a that is a direct impact from Senate rolled act one and then then sorry quick history in oh my goodness I need to go back sorry here school funding changes in back in 2009. So on this one, you can see that to maintain school funding for public education, particularly here in Elcart, property taxes changed starting in 2009. And then funding formulas, charter schools became pretty prevalent back around then. And as you may or may not know, charters actually receive a this year and to this year's run, they
041received a lot more funding than your traditional public schools. And so I think it's important that people know that that piece of information as well. And then lastly, Senator Ro act will reduce programs and services for students at a time when those school obligations are getting higher. So in a nutshell, without the jargon, it's much more costly for a school to run based off the new legislation, but also how you manage your money is critical um as a large organization and someone that's that's complex. School structures matter. So I want to talk about some of the challenges that we face here in Elcart. We've had a declining enrollment for quite a while. It this is not a new phenomenon. I went back and looking at 2016. At that time we had roughly 13,000 um students
04213,592 students at that time. And as you can see, the blue line there indicates our our student decline. And on the screen, I could only go to 2034. Um, two years ago, we had 10,932 students. Today, we have 10,100 students. That's a drop of roughly 796 students. I think our data assessment team over the last two years, we that's how many students we've lost over the last two years. And where are these students going? Well, we have universal vouchers now. We have school choice. You have charters now. You have homeschool options now. And you have micro school options now. We need to operate in a competitive mindset when it comes towards making sure that we are keeping kids here. Families have tons of options. Our job is to make sure that they know that Elcart
043is the best option for kids. I don't believe any of those institutions, any of those organizations can provide what we can provide for families when it comes towards academic excellence, all the arts and the athletics. But that is a real reality that we must face that there are families have plenty of options to choose from. And that rate of families choosing other options is maintaining pretty steady. So as a school leader, typically your staffing matches your enrollment. As I said before, how are schools funded? Schools are funded because of the number of students that you have inside of your schools. So, if you if you're missing roughly this year, 496 students is what we are down this year from last year. That's a difference between on the low end $3.4 million and then on the
044high end could be over $5 million because I said there's complexity dollars as well. So having unbalanced staff to student ratios really have significant impacts on your fund balances. And again, education, our education fund makes 97% goes to salary and benefits. So if you need new textbooks, you just can't pull it out of another fund. You have to either apply for a bond, you have to do something different in order to raise money for those funds. Not raise money for those books, but it makes it really tight. a a well-run sound organization. That number is typically between 80 and 85% for salary and benefits. So, we're overextended in that area. And then lastly, our buildings set up to serve 17,000 students. Now, we've never, from my understanding, had 17,000 students, but that's what we're set
045up for. An empty building, you're still heating. Empty classrooms, you're still heating. 17,000 students. And to have only 10,100 a day, that is a 40% difference in what you're actually serving. And if you looked at your electric bill over the last few months, has anybody noticed a difference? Is it cheaper or is it a little bit more expensive? I'm using less electricity. I get that little thing says I'm a good neighbor. It still has raised my rates by 25%. since the new rates have come out. Another thing we need to look at is classroom occupancy. When we move the middle school kids out, I'm sorry, when we move the sixth graders into middle school, we didn't, some of you probably wish we moved the middle school kids out. We're not going to do that. But
046when we moved the sixth graders into the kids into middle school and we changed our configuration, this allowed us to kind of see what would be left over far as empty spaces. We have 371 in classrooms at the elementary level. Only 214 are being utilized for what I say traditional instruction. That means teacher with a group of 25 kids in front of them. Now, we do use it for instruction in other ways, like you may see a small group in that room, or you might have uh an OT doing some OT services in that room, but I'm just talking about traditional classroom instruction. That leaves you at a 58% occupancy, and that is not equal across all the school buildings. We have some buildings that have as little as 250 students, and then we have
047some as large as 432. So, it varies across the district, but as you can see, that is a lot of empty classrooms across the district. And so, I also wanted to get back to the staff and student count. I I I looked at the buildings, right? Well, what does our buildings look like? Well, what does our staffing trends look at over time? And so on our staffing trends over time, you can kind of see what Elkart has done uh over the last since 2016 till 2023. This website, if you want to ever look at it, it's called this uh 74 million.org. It is has all that you need to know about the schools and you can look at any district that you want to in the um state of Indiana and across the United States.
048I think it's important that we have the most that we have unbiased information and that you can go research again on your own. But you can see looking at the trends, we noticed back in 2016 that the that the enrollment was declining. But if you look at some point, you see that spike in 2025, we increased staffing by 25%. I know the world was different in 2025. I'm not going to go back and try to figure out why we made those decisions, but I think we need to figure out what you need to know that staffing went up tremendously in 2025. And then we tried to do some selfcorrection. But if you look at again in 2023, staffing started to peak up. Now I can tell you my team and and working with working the
049team and making sure that we're looking at all our positions pretty closely. That trend line is definitely going down in that area. But over time, staffing you you pay for it typically a year later because you build your budgets based off the year before. And so that 2023 2024 is going to show up in year 25 year. So Elcart's had a pretty steady decline looking at our neighbors to the west and Penn little bit different. Um I'm sorry I also need to point that out. Back in 2016 our staff to student ratio was 19 to1. Now it's down to 14 to1. If you remember that's not class sizes that's just teachers to the number of pupils that you have in your district. If you look at Penn Harris Madison it's a little bit different. their
050enrollment has increased. Now it just kind of just steady and has leveled off but their staffing gradually increased and their their student to teacher ratio in 2016 was 15 15 to1 and now it's 17 to1. Um and also I want you to take a look at Concord. Concord they also have had a kind of linear uh student enrollment. It's increased slightly over the years since 2016 and their staffing has kind of ebbed and flowed, but it has stayed pretty much in alignment um with their with their enrollment. Elcart did something different with our staffing. And again, I am not going to play Monday morning quarterback and go look at that time, but I also need to realize, hey, those have real life ramifications when we when we are not as tight or lean with our
051staff as we potentially could be. I I mentioned before our buildings versions of enrollment. I said our district is designed to house 17,000 students. Correct? We've never had that. I went back as far as 2010 we had 13,14 and as you can see at our peak the highest level was 13,952 and that was back in 2016. And since 2016, we've gone down to 10,100. So almost roughly 3500 students or so have left the district since 2016. But we still have the same amount of facilities that we've had since that time to house students and to and routing students and so forth. This is not sustainable. One of the things I think it was very important to honor is the good work of the key committee from a few years ago and they led they had
052lots of conversations about trying to stave off this issue and we also brought in a demographer as part of our feasibility study. If you weren't here back during this time I wanted to just share with you that was a very comprehensive study that looked at not just buildings but it looked at our enrollment trends over time. Um, and as you can see looking at this chart here, where we are today, look at that red that what's circled in red. That's where we are today. That is in a that's a high projection for the school year 2028 2029. We were projected two years ago on the very low end to have 10,435 students. That's why that blue um number is circled. That is a difference of 335 students. We are two to three years ahead of
053the feasibility studies projection just from two years ago. That is a difference of just this year of like I said 3.4 million up to $5 million. There's no need to bring in another demographer. that trend will continue if we don't do things differently and also if you continue to manage your resources in the same way your funding will go I'm sorry your revenue your cash balances and all those things will just completely um be dilapidated but I wanted you to see that we are building off the work that has already been done but you can also kind of see it's pretty dire when it comes towards like the enrollment trends and so I wanted people to to see this feasibility study and re reminder that we've already done this work already and that we already
054know that we need to start to really look at looking at our facilities and looking at our footprint and I think it's important that you that we utilize this tool that is already available to us and many are are familiar with and so our financial reality in a nutshell there's been some overspending in the district over the last few years looking at 23 23 and 24. Um looking at the 23 um year and I want to just tell you budgets are built the year before. So if you're looking at the 23 23 column that budget was designed in 22 over over expenditures $3 million in 22 sorry 23. If you look at 24 that budget was built in 23 there was an overage of almost $10 million. budget that was designed in 24 shows up
055in 25. It's $12 million. Internal protocols our team had definitely have been putting in place. We're scrutinizing every contract that comes in. We're making sure we're looking at every footprint, all those things. If we do nothing and just looking at this trend, some of you I'm watching your eyes. You're seeing that's just not acceptable. How did we get here? So our financial reality is it's just not the decline in enrollment, it's how you choose to spend your money too. And so we have to do things a little bit differently. One of the things that is just very that we know has happened. If you've looked at the price of anything looking back in 22, right, and compare it to now, is that price of whatever object you have in your head, is it the same?
056Is it cheaper? Or is it more expensive? I think some of your eyeballs told me what that project. Sir, I'm looking at you right in the green shirt. You know exactly the answer what that is. It's much more expensive. Now, now I said before that the the path is just not sustainable. This is if you haven't if we did nothing. And I just want to tell you my team and I and working with our teachers and our administrators, we're not doing nothing. We're not just going to sit here and let this just go by. But I wanted to tell you so you can see in your own with your own eyes, if we did nothing over the next few years, we would be in a negative cash balance by next year. We had in 2023
057a rainy day and a cash bal in our regular cash balance of $33 million, but our regular cash balance was only, let me turn my page because I shouldn't be looking all the way up there, $24 million. And then the next year goes down to 14. And this year we started off with two. And so a district typically has on hand you want to have two months of to cover all your expenses and all that. Our expenses average $3 million per month. We have to make some different decisions on how we manage our our money at the district level, but also looking at our footprint. You're not going to be able to nickel and dime your way out of this situation. You're going to have to make some really tough decisions and you're going to
058actually have to see them through. I think there is no more road for us to go down. The road is here and and I want to make sure that you are definitely a part of that process because I'm telling you if we don't make these decisions someone will make it for us and I don't want anyone to make us for us. We're very proud here in Elkcart. We are proud to make sure that we our kids are owed and are all worthy of an outstanding education. It does take capital to do those things and we want to make sure that we are in a position not just a year or two years from now but 10 to 15 years from now that we're able to provide high quality education for the kids who aren't even
059born yet. But currently if we continue down this trend we won't be able to do any of those things. So what are our next steps when we're talking about these things? We need to be more transparent with the community on what we value and how we're spending our money. I think that is critical. You as taxpayers, you as employees, you as um you as students, and anyone who's connected to the school system, even if you're not connected, you need to know how your money is being spent. The district must do a better job of communicating those things. I definitely think that hopefully if you've seen the work that we've done over the last year or so, we've tried to make sure that you've very transparent of where we are with um our finances and so
060forth, but not just our finances, but how we present information to the community. The next is physical responsibility in order to be we're you're owed strong physical stewardship at the district level and I promise to do those things while working in this position to ensure our students and staff are fully supported and funded. We want to make sure everything reaches down to the classroom. I can't say for certain that that is happening because of the way that we are structured and that we currently we have to look at our structural configuration and that's why I hope that you take advantage of those feedback forms and look at hey here are some things that I would like to see happen on that next side tonight I'm not going to get into programming I'm not going to
061look at some of those things after um what would happen if we consolidated schools I just want you to know tonight do you believe that there's a problem that we have here in Elcart and when it comes to our financial situation because if it doesn't then this situ this this conversation is mute but if you like oh they got some issues then I think that we need to continue and further look at some strategies on how to solve those issues and then also my team will work tirelessly to increase enrollment. We sometimes need to shrink your footprint in order to innovate and do some other things differently. Right now, if you're trying to spread everything out equally across a district that is it's it's large, it's expensive, and also implementation makes it very difficult. I
062think that if you shrink your footprint potentially, you have a better chance to offer some of those innovative things that I think people are looking for for their child's experiences. Right now, we're very fortunate that all our schools pretty much typically the kids have similar experiences across the school. I'm talking as far as PE and art and music and all those things. We offer that at every one of our schools. Very proud to do those things. But we also need to know that we need to do things that are going to make sure our kids are ready for the u a world that we know is rapidly changing out there. And so I want to make sure that we can pivot whenever that opportunity comes to make sure that we are having kids involved in
063like at the middle school they're in computer science classes in sixth grade. That is a great thing to get kids exposed to computer science that early. the team that designed that should be commended um for that early exposure. We also know that AI kids learning that that's just part of their world. We are as a school we have a duty to make sure that our kids learn in a very professional but in a in a way that is safe that you can walk alongside your child and know that school's a part of that as well. I think that we have an opportunity to leverage that as well. We can't provide all those things again the way we're currently structured because we have to spread it out across so many different entities. So on Tuesday of
064this week, I asked the board for a to approve a resolution for me to start um looking at some consolidation work and and again it says feasibility, but this is different than the feasibility study is to talk about the the need to look at again I'm going to keep using the word shrinking your footprint. It's a fast timeline. In a perfect world, I would have liked for this to be over a couple years, but we don't have two years to to have this conversation. This conversation needs to happen this year. And so, one of the things I'm proposed that I propose to our community is one, you always get transparent, get information, have input, but I wanted you to see all the things that are going to take place during this timeline. It started with
065the authorization from the board to begin this work on um this past Tuesday, but we've been kind of knowing that this has been an issue for a while and so this has started of the this process coming out letting the community know first, hey, this is a current state of the district. I think being informed with accurate information is critical. I think a lot of us go to our preferred places for information. I wanted you to hear directly from me where we are and throughout this process you will hear that where we are with these decisions and your feedback. Um also we will have conversations. I've been working with district and school leaders is important to also share this information with school staff after this meeting. We'll send this video straight out and then the
066parent community your input and your voice matters. And in our community leaders, I meet with a group of community leaders uh on a weekly basis, not weekly, monthly basis to talk about these things and to get some feedback and some input and do these things thoughtfully. But community leaders can be anyone that's in this room or if you're watching at home. And then next, as you can probably see, that's phase one to plan and engage. We're engaging with the community and we're going to set a plan. The next one is policies and decisions. At the next board meeting after all of you give your feedback on tonight's presentation. Hey, do you understand the problem? What do you think we should be looking for as we develop the protocols for shutting not shutting that's the wrong
067word for consolidation for looking at our footprint? I think it's important to have feedback. What do you value? Some of you may say it's academics. Some of you may say, "Well, do you have the space to to to put those kids in?" Some of you may say, "Well, is there what's the building condition?" Well, all those things matter. And so, my job is to listen to the community, also use my input as well, and then present to the board, hey, here are the criteria of this is how we are going to go through this process. And so, my goal is to have that process to the board by the first board meeting in November. And then so I'm then going to I think I talked about the first three and then at the second board
068meeting in November share with the district, hey here are the schools that potentially could be up for pairing. Pairing is just a nice way of saying that these schools are the ones that we're considering for potential school consolidation. I want to share and I want to say this from this weird altar. I guess every kid in this district is worthy of an outstanding education. Every single one from our schools up to Bristol which is in the furthest people say it's in Ohio. No, it's just on the furthest part of it's furthest part of Elcart to our school that's southern in the south Roosevelt. They all deserve a quality education. All of them. this criteria. I want to be able to explain our thinking with the community after we set the criteria so you can see,
069oh, this is how they came up with that decision. I'm no I I know that school consolidation is not only an emotional thing for everyone, myself included. It is where you walk the halls. It is where your if you're a grandparent, your grandchildren walk the halls. It is something that is in your neighborhood. Your school is typically an anchor in your neighborhood. I do not take this responsibility lightly. It is something that keeps me up at night and it's something I think about soon as the the day starts. This is a big moment for Elcart, but it's also an important one that we're going to make sure that we're shoring up the future for our kids who again who aren't walking our halls, but definitely for the kids who are here today. And then lastly
070in phase three is the implement and support phase. I think I kind of skipped ahead a little bit to that when I talked about this is this impacts people. You've heard me say the I've counted I've said the word building 14 times tonight. We need to say people 1,400 times throughout this process. This is about people. making sure that the people kids, teachers, students, principles, administrators, custodians, everyone who is involved in touches life kid is informed but also understands this process throughout the way. And I think it's important that we remember that we are doing hard work here as well. These are not easy conversations to have. They're not fun ones to have. But I think anyone who shooks their responsibilities and doesn't have them is not doing their duty. And I and I'm one
071who believes that there this is your duty. This is our moment in Elcart to make sure that we are setting up ourselves for a very long time and doing the right things by our children. And so my goal is to bring a final recommendation to the board at the very first board meeting in April. And at that time they will then um choose to either take my recommend vote on my recommendation or they will not vote on that recommendation at that time. Um my hope is that you will have had enough information in order to um support that decision, but you will know along the way. Um and then lastly, engaging our families and making sure when the choices are made, how do we support them through change? That's very important as well. And so
072you keep seeing support, support, support at the bottom. That'll be very critical to make sure that this works. Again, this is a very tight time frame, but I think it's one that can be done done well if we it with constant communication to our community and also making sure that these decisions are based off data and is also based off what is best for the children of our school district. So, to learn more, um, pay attention uh if you can look at our board meetings. there's been a huge emphasis on making sure that we are talking to the community about not just our finances but this is how much money is remaining in this fund for the rest of the year and so forth. I really have been pleased with the changes that um Miss
073Ross has done to be a to make things a little easier to understand for our community. You can hide a lot of things in your cash balance but you can't hide your physical health if you break it down from um a from fund to fund. I think it's important that you see those things. And then we are also in the currently in the process our communication team, Mrs. Wood, is she's designing a um financial page that should be up here pretty soon. So you can see in real time, you can go back and look at the district's finances. We need to make things easier for our community to understand when we're talking about these very important matters. And then we also will have a transparency dashboard that will talk about um school consolidation the process
074FAQs and we will answer every single one of those questions. And at the following board meeting after these community meetings and these aren't the only ones. I will have them every month and I will speak to every single person that has a question about this consolidation process. But I think making sure that you understand these decisions aren't going to be made just by one person. They're not going to be made by a group of people. It's not going to be made by the the book. is going to be made on the community input from everyone. So, take this time to share your thoughts and to share your vision, your hope for Elcart as we do this work. What do you want to see on the other side? I just want to also thank everyone. You
075already are supporting our schools. You do it. You do it. You do a a tremendous job. This is the the most generous and giving community that I've ever been a part of. You invest in our children and it is weird grandchildren, I hope to have one someday, will thrive in Elcart Community Schools and your support ensures that they have strength for their generation as well. I think stronger schools also make stronger communities. The way that we currently are structured, we we have really really good schools that are very small. Know every kid by by name. Sorry, I keep moving back. What would that look like if we combined schools? Would that make things more efficient? Possibly. Would it free up money to do other things so you can have innovative programming so you can offer
076some different opportunities for kids? Most likely. If you don't, what is what is the outcome on the other side? We don't have the option of not doing this work here. It has to be done. And then lastly, I I just want opportunities to engage. You being here and those watching online, you're you're you're engaging by first by getting informed and you're hearing this information and getting the most current update information about not just the financial state but the structure and how the community is made up and our our schools and the great things our kids are doing and and and what does this process look like? But it's not just a one-time thing. I'll be asking you to engage often about as you learn new information. Oh, this has changed my thinking. This is what
077I think the school district can do. You your voice does matter and your voice will be heard during this process. And so I I look forward to sending you the next rounds of when we're going to have these conversations. But I think these questions here are are critical for us to answer as well. What do you think the major concern is? I think sometimes leaders come up to communities and say, "Well, this is the major concern." That's not really an inclusive voice. I want you to tell me what you think the major concern is. I have my own um conjectures and I have access to all the data, but I need to know from our community what do you think the concern is? And then also what criteria should we use when we go through
078this process? Um should the administrators consider when we present this policy to the to to the board particularly as far as when we look at um the criteria for closing schools? What does the district need to consider as we undergo this process? I think it's important that we transparency is number one for me. I I think that when we don't engage and proactively engage our community that you lose trust and you will see from me, you will see engagement pretty often about this topic. I look look forward to not just communicating to the website, you will get personal communication from me each week about this process. And then lastly, what questions need to be answered? Intentionally in this meeting, I did not talk about the other side of if you shorten your footprint, if you
079close your footprint because I want to know what your vision is for school. I will take your feedback and then in our next coming up sessions, I will talk about, oh, these are things that our community say that they want and they value. The job of the administration with along with our board is okay, how can we take their feedback to start to craft the visions for Elcart Community Schools. The vision here is simple for me. In order to cast a vision, your feet have to be grounded. It's really hard to cast a vision when your feet are feel unstable. And for right now with our financial trends, it it it's definitely unsettling. And my job is to get that fixed and get it fixed quickly. But your job and well I want to say
080your job your opportunity um in this process is to really give your voice and to share and look at that Matt not look at that piece of literature that you have in front of you. The impact report those are all the great things that Elcart did last year. We want to continue to provide those opportunities to kids. I would hope everyone in this room believes the kids who are not yet in Elcart Community Schools deserve the same opportunity as those kids who are in this um impact report. I would hope that you believe that if we don't do this, we won't have that out those opportunities. And so it's critical that because we want to go back to we're a proud district, right? We're a district that has high graduation rates. We have high student
081achievement in iLearn. We have athletic and art opportunities for kids. We have uh outstanding career center. We have amazing educators. We have amazing leadership. How we make sure that we keep those things going? That is where I believe that it's our duty to make sure that we make these right decisions so we can continue to offer the Elcart promise and knowing all the kids by name. And so without that, I just want to tell you thank you for each one of you for coming out this evening. Thank you for giving your time and most importantly, thank you for giving your feedback and if you have something written down, Mrs. Wood will gladly take that information from you. If you want to reach out to me directly, you can certainly email me as well, but fill
082out that fill out that u QR code. Please do. I've looked at some from last night and there were outstanding questions and observations and continue to do so. If you're watching online, thank you for taking some time at home to watch this as well. As always, we will send this out um later on this evening to to families who could not attend here this attend here tonight. But I just want to tell you thank you for allowing me to share a little bit about Elkart's story and where we need to go in order to like I said and improve our footing. So thank you very much. [Applause] Thank you again for joining us is this this evening for our state of the district event. We appreciate you taking the time to stay informed and engaged
083in the work happening across Elcart Community Schools. And like Dr. Huff mentioned, we'll take your questions if you have them. You can answer those online. And we also have a website started that we'll start answering those on. Thank you and have a good evening.