001[Music] nice to see everyone hello hi I told myself this year I wasn't going to be nervous but here I am nervous but it is nice to be back it's nice to see all of your faces again thanks for having us and hosting us um I'm Katie Maher I'm the high school Spanish teacher teacher but I'm also here to talk about the peer mentoring program that I help coordinate at the high school and middle school um I'm Katie Mah uh and I have my colleagues Kate Collier and Sharon Schultz here to help present uh all of the wonderful things that we've been doing with the peer mentors both the high schoolers and the peer mentees at the middle school this year uh okay yes all right um so this year hello this is uh the
002picture we took at our very first Meetup this year we have um 11 high schoolers and 19 middle schoolers this year um we got an earlier start with our meetups and our pairings so I believe Monday will be our 12th Meetup of the school year um and this year we've mixed it up a bit so some of our meetups are uh in Kate's room at the middle school so our high schoolers travel down there and then other meetups the middle schoolers the sixth graders come up to the high school to my my classroom up on the second floor yeah okay so our goals for the program every year uh we always try to build positive peer Role Models um and uh we are trying to respond to community needs I know it's been kind of
003we shouldn't really use the word anniversary but it's been 5 years since covid kind of affected everybody in the world and we're still trying to kind of bounce back from that with our developing of social emotional skills so those are our utmost goals for the program but we also have some benefits uh that we have for um our both our mentors and mentees um second ago so for both of the high schooler and the middle schooler uh pairing up the kids uh there is uh ownership and accountability there's relationship building we are building trust between both levels of secondary um there's a sense of belonging and a commun community um uh Community Connection which all of those things increase our protective factors um and as Educators we want to increase our protective factors so that
004we increase attendance and therefore increase graduation rates so it's all around a winwin win win um so the next slide we'll show you is a new kind of promotional video for the peer mentoring program that our wonderful quu help us uh create thank you it's amazing um so we'll just let him play that the peer mentoring program at kakaki Athens High School is a two-part course the first part is that high school students who are enrolled are taught to develop skills in the areas of self and relationship management communication Stress Management decision-making and finally planning and goal setting this part of the course is in a high school classroom setting with regularly planned lessons that include small group work while homework is rarely assigned outside of class time attendance is of the utmost importance because
005of the emphasis on active participation and group discussion the second part of this course is that each high school student who is enrolled in the mentoring seminar elective will be paired with a sixth grade middle school student this is designed to support student well-being and belonging for both High School middle school students student pairs will meet at least twice per month and these mentoring pairs can choose to participate in a variety of small and large group activities this is not a tutoring program but rather an opportunity to connect and form relationships between older and younger students at CA this implies a FYE commitment therefore after pairs are assigned the ad drop period is limited to the first 10 weeks of the school year okay and now I'd like to invite some of our high school
006peer mentors uh to speak up their about their experience I think cam Slater is up first yeah yeah um so I was just going to talk about the classes and like what we do in our high school class outside of just meeting with them and we talk about like how to socialize with them with our body language Ag and like when we're when we feel like we need a relaxation or whatever we um figure out ways to relax ourselves and like in class what we yeah like toight in class um what do we do oh playo and Rubik's cubes and we could make thank you cards and draw in color oh and Izzy is one of mine and it's fun to social and get to know them um and see kind of how they are
007and how they like develop because they're definitely different than we were as sixth graders so um and yeah so it's fun to socialize with them and get to know them and their middle school experiences yeah hi my mentors are douge and Sophia and I think it it's it's a really good experience because we learned new ways to like um express our how we feel through our body language and stuff and it correlates cuz I also have a little brother so it's just like it makes you more mindful of what you're doing like in class like you learn how to like figure our stress and like teach them how to stress manage better and then when we're doing in groups and stuff things get a little chaotic so you apply that there so I think it's
008good and I think I think it's like gave me like cute little friends because I see them all the time and it's just like I know I enjoy it and I've gotten really close with them and I think it's a really good experience and I recommend it because it was recommended to me and I found it really fun so I think it's a good time I enjoy thanks so I'm so grateful to be here tonight and I really thank you for um being able to include me in this great program uh for Sharon and Katie who really got the ball rolling on this and um I really appreciate because I I feel like it's fostering a lot of growth right I see it in my students um and in their confidence um and uh it's
009really great to be able to have this connection that you're fostering between Middle School and High School those are the kind of connections that really start to make a difference um and stick with you when you're beyond the your middle school and high school years and those are those ca memories that we really want to be able to connect with um and it's really a a a wonderful example of our students um progress so um we had a great start to the year um the Yes No Maybe um is about decision- making right so it starts as a game in our classroom right where yes is here and no is there and go to this spot for maybe um but then it spreads because you're really making choices and decisions right a lot of what
010they do in our Mentor program is a choice board um and they have to decide um what you're doing and having a um safe environment to make those choices helps when you have to make more important decisions and how to be able to involve the other constituents that you need to consider in your group uh Middle School versus High School uh constituents versus um things and how that those parlay into your real life um Beyond school so um I really feel like there's a lot of magic to be found in these high school mentors and I'm so um grateful to the board for being able to support and invite us to be uh sharing our program with you um and just feel uh that this is really uh about this professional GL growth collaboration that
011I'd really like to be able to build more on um and feel really grateful like I said to be part of so thank you I've got two mentors with me today right this is Sheamus and this is Isadora right and they've been able to be part of our group Isador what was your favorite part about our Mentor program so far this year um probably so far was how much of like an impact it created on how social I was because last year when I first started I would I barely had any friends and after like the mentor thing all started I gained more friends I like more chance like to talk to them and yeah thanks isidora how about for you Sheamus is there something about the mentor program that's been particularly hot uh like
012that you like a lot really like the games we played my mentor and the other ment that's in my group we played SAR and brick byck it's just the fun is a really great thing to be able to build on um and I feel like this initiative from other students they want to know how they can be part of the fund so we'll we'll talk about that more in some slides to come um but thank you so much you guys are really awesome for joining us here on back um so I know think three years ago you know Katie sort of came over and was like I have this idea about mentoring and we started with three student like three Mentor pairs three high school three um middle school and I feel like we tweaked
013it each year and it's we've gotten better each year which is great um this is the first year where we've able able to you know pair up the schedule the scheduling of Katie and Kate um so they have mentoring at the same time time as the sixth grade what I need which is our flexible teaching time so that enabled us to be able to meet more regularly and earlier where last year you know students were missing classes um to to go to mentoring and we wanted to change that so it was great to work last year with Freya and Bill and we're gonna work with Amanda and Mike this time to make sure we can do it again next year um so I yep go ahead y so that's one of the things I was
014wondering presentation so far so what time of day is that right now we meet period 7 which is 1228 to 10 108 so mentoring is in every other day class um with with Miss Mah and then Kate meets daily you know with a group of students in sixth grade and I'm typically using win um not just as Mentor time right my win time right now is usually spent in the beginning of the year I was using spring math time I've been doing Ela skills but I've been able to integrate into that um the things that I know that are important um and that I can't find time to be able to include in other places and that we desperately need um to carve out a place and a time and a space for um practice
015guided practice guided successful practice that our kids are engaged and happy in and I feel really really that this is a gift um to to our community and to our Learners yeah that's a that's a huge accomplishment that you were able to make that work we kept we kept asking and um and I and I'm one that believes like in the importance of play and communication um so I meet with the fifth grade teachers like at the end of the year um and we selected students who maybe maybe could use some motivation or maybe we're quiet and maybe we're having some difficulty you know making friends um or kids that maybe you know their attendance wasn't the best so this was again another way to try to cook them in and connect them to school
016and the high school students do an amazing yeah job I am so impressed whenever I'm in there um I know they they take the kids on tours of the high school you know tell them what high school is like now I have to take the other sixth grades on Tours School at the end of the year um and's getting credit for this the High School Credit course because it meets on B days so it's every other day yep and then at the beginning of the year um me I still remember some of the high school but we do we sat um Katie Kate and I sat down tried to match up we regularly meet to try to tweak and make things better I know we have more ideas which will come up on a later
017slide on how to make an even better program next year and at the beginning of the year we met less frequently obviously ly because Katie had a lot of teaching to do with her High School group and I had a lot of um experience that my wi group needed as well um but as we've been able to build momentum our meetings are more frequent now we're about one a week right so we get which is nice um and it's been the momentum is growing you know the question is when is the next meet up when is the next meet up oh you don't have a meet up today right what's going on I'll see you on it first that was a really good one and I and I have seen a benefit in the students
018just that increased self-confidence piece is huge um and I don't think it it amazed me each year that how much of a difference a few meetups with high schoolers really did make to the sixth grade students are you projecting any expansion of the program next year it's hard because we Kae only has so much time because she teaches fan um so yeah that's actually a really great question for our looking ahead slide so why don't we talk about that uh first um you know I at first needed to talk to so my schedule is pretty full with Spanish but I had this one section that was flexible um so uh at first those F like last year I had to cap the number of kids at 15 in the high school because at the beginning
019it was just me the high schoolers and all the middle schoolers so I was afraid with 15 high schoolers and 15 middle schoolers like a little chaotic I didn't know the sixth graders right so right now that I have two other adults in the room with me that know the kids like yes I'd love to expand I have 11 this year I would love to put it up to 20 I mean would it take just more advisors what would it take to do that it would take kids signing up for it I was going say and we're advertising we're doing some of those things just little bit more that's how great and you're yes so it sometimes for the high schoolers it come because it's an elective sometimes it comes down to flexibility in their
020schedules like their sequencing of science classes their sequencing of math this class is only offered in the fall and this one is only in the spring so it's actually very tricky for high schoolers to find seventh period on a bday all year so that's kind of where the magic needs to happen um but in order to promote it we've got this bring a buddy day that we're planning so um bring a buddy day for the high school it's a taste of um you know for future enrollment they could get an opportunity to go in with a current ment Mentor um and just see what our programs like and maybe they'd be interested and just spread the word like that with actual hands on um and in the middle school that looks like um please please
021please can I come right so I only have one class that I'm presenting with this opportunity as well well um and um boy everybody wants to be able to be um in this group so well it's it's a really great for something not everybody right so um we're going to do the same thing we're going to ask our middle schoolers have youve been wanting to come to meet some of these high schoolers and um we've already gotten an overwhelmingly positive response yes please um so we're looking forward to the bring of Buddy day just not just for the high school course offering piece but also for our Middle School whichs who are so excited boy are they ready for high school great like if you've never had such excitement is there is there any other
022opportunities for incentives for the high school students like you know service credits or anything like that yeah and there are there are high schoolers through National Junior Honor Society and I know Miss Essex has like an after school sort of tutoring program so there are other opportunities like if they can't get 7B um like mentoring class into the schedule there are certainly other opportunities we love to have the high schoolers come help us especially during office hours because it's so great to have a student you know be able to sit down with like maybe two others and really help them focus and get their one completed so there there are other opportunities other than the mentoring class we talked about doing a mentoring club right and we've tried to be able to get some more
023Initiative for that but it's it would take some more time and planning um to be able to make that happening but that would be a club situation um and it wouldn't be just for students who were former mentors but it would give them an opportunity if you were a former mentor to continue with the program there's been some uh students that we really miss um already some follow mentors who are very valuable I mean we are lucky enough this year to have uh have the opportunity to go on a field trip the whole the whole P um and so we are going to five WIS which is at the mall but it's cool it's not just like at the mall right it's like this is it's not necessarily an escape room I've never been but
024it's kind of like this collaborative problem solving experience um where you says not I've never been there like claustrophobic it's a very open space it's fun and that is the goal of this outing is to be connect and fun yes and celebrate our experience this year um and and you know in the future as to your previous question will there be opportunities for volunteerism community outreach yes potentially yes I mean the sky is the limit with this um but it's kind of like baby steps like let's build something solid and then let's see where we can take it so um you know the magic like Kate said earlier it it's there we see it every time these kids meet up um and the ideas that we had when the three of us get together it's
025like's do this what about this do you think we'll have time for this next year I mean it's easy to work with colleagues who are 100% fought in like these two wonderful women that I'm standing here with and the kids are 100% in as her so it wouldn't be happening without the kids that are to my left and right so I'm really really grateful that they took the time I mean you guys are a tough audience sometimes but I really appreciate um them being so brave to come on out here tonight so thank you so much so are you are you what high school is are you Juniors or seniors or Juni Junior so would you do it again next year do you think or can we just get in credit that's another point up
026we've talked about it but it's where in my schedule where in the scheduling would it be and then what would the curriculum continue as so I would love it yes but it's getting there uh just some time and planning yeah but I you guys love it Playdoh seniors seniors typically have lighter schedules nowadays because they're getting so many credits in so as long as they were willing to be in school it's it's the commitment yeah right and but it really once you um Dr the Koolaid as it were like it's really hard kids want to be there and even if you haven't been there in the morning you know this is seventh period well you're going to come in right you're going to make it you're going to be there for a class you're going
027to be there for a even if you have to leave right afterwards right like I have those kids they're like got to drop me off in the office I'm getting picked up right after class it's like no problem do you get do you get a sense that there are other Juniors or seniors that might interested or it's just a scheduling issue like when it was brought up to me last year from one of my old friends like it's just it it really just if your schedule fits because like I have all my core classes like right before that but some people their core classes are later in the day and it can't be moved so it's not like I know a lot of my friends they want to but it's literally just purely the fact
028that their schedule doesn't it can't fit so it's just if it was there if there was more than one class like say she didn't teach Spanish as well I a lot so you you're you're answering a need that we have talked about for for years so as a board very appreciative of what you're all do on on each level and I think as Mr wall pointed out if there's if there's as you see barriers or impediments and identify them and if there's anything that would help move things along I think this as you've said addresses so many other things besides just getting Friends new friends is great though that alone is great to be able to make new friends but we know how important it is to be able to have somebody in school you
029can talk to and Trust to at least we remember how it was we were in school to have somebody trust we were we were talking in the com we had some pizza before yeah and I know and I was talking I always talk about mindfulness and relaxation and Sheamus is like well I'm gonna listen to them more than I'm gonna listen to you they're absolutely he he did not say it rudely at all no but but it's they listen to the kids so much more than they would ever listen to any of the adults um and that that connection is just so incredible um so I up for planning for next year I know Mr Ellie we invited he's come to one of our mentoring meetups and we've invited um Amanda to join us next
030Monday so they can really see sort of firsthand what we're doing so that's sort of where we are just trying to make sure again that we can schedule it all together um again and again just continue to build the program and just look for new ways um and one I know was a shadow high school day this is these are ideas right we'd love for the middle schoolers to come to the high school and Shadow that and Shadow the high schoolers for a class or two I mean we say day on this slide but that might be a little too long schoolers uh maybe a morning or an afternoon um just to really kind of connect see their world and uh but maybe next year we can try and Implement that yeah and you guys
031hope to be mentors one day maybe if it fits your schedule Spanish some people have Spanish period three and then I see them in Period seven too so I can see both things and I've been very lucky to have my wi group uh for my reading group for the majority of the Year U there have been some scheduled changes but they've been very positive and um I'm so glad that and that's help me make that connection even deeper um the more I can do to be able to support our mental uh the better it is for all so well thank you for your apprciate thanking me too thank you s all right uh first topic uh is just off State Ed updates and I the heading off here but uh State Department just passed legislation
032that allows students who have had a major life event be exempt from uh taking Rance exams uh this year starting this June and moving forward for that matter for there and I just kind of gave a little bit of a summary here I'm not going to read through the whole thing of what a major life event is um and so the superintendent of of school can uh sign off on that all right uh as we as we move move forward so um so that's just something that the state is is is offering at this point because of just you know in that regard that's just something to be aware of whether that happens or not depends on our kids and such like that so that's just another uh piece uh the state is doing oops
033I'm sorry I do these backwards okay anyway did it twice that's why it's there all right than go to one I left it down there twice uh New York graduation measures update uh State AD should be sending us uh their finalized portrait of a graduate this summer uh I they stated in the meeting in a couple weeks ago that they will probably be in the format of like I can statements uh regarding uh the different elements of a portrait of a graduate I've shared in the past there so and districts start using that and aligning curriculum and such uh start having those conversations about how we're going to allow not allow but how we're going to help kids develop those attributes you know K that's a prek-12 conversation along the way so that's kind of
034the first step uh we are starting to are going to go to a one diploma if you now we have regions with Advanced designation regions with this region with that there's going to be one diploma there'll still be uh chances to get uh endorsements on your diploma bilingual uh civics or citizenship uh is another one uh and some others as well but they're going to kind of get to one diploma that's where they're head it instead of having uh different types of diplomas which they have now also another is just uh moving towards or or excuse me uh helping schools get towards more of a Project based learning approach with assessments and they just going to be encouraging that and also making kind of mirroring that with the region exams we're all familiar with the
035zero to 100 points right we all know what we got on our algebra regions right we took it back in the day uh they're going to go to that scale which most parents are already familiar with right cu the 38 tests are on that 1 to four 1 to five scale so that's what they're going to kind of move the region exams to as well um now they just kind of they do it that way then they have to convert it to a percentage it's kind of all you know so they're going to kind of get rid of the one step those are a couple of things that are happening at State Ed right now as we go forward the big one again is the portra a graduate uh will be a lot clearer come
036this summer when they release a lot of information uh to districts in the local areas just some uh updates here again this perk to school you know we we've kind of put together a framework you it'll be part of the budget discussions as we move for whether we start implementing that now that or not in the fall for that again it just be about 2,000 in the budget just for a stip it for someone to to work on that at this point to kind of get it started Adult Ed Community we are already seeking uh inviting folks to come out and be instructors uh for that there's no cost to the district uh in that regard uh something we used to have Adult Ed here over 10 years ago we had it for a while
037um so we're just trying to see if we can get that up and running again and B off session maybe we could see if Cole green wants to tie into that at all so I'm going to talk to this President tomorrow about that so we'll see again what interest there is and then uh one of the questions that we're going to ask is when would you want to teach the class are you added starting already the spring maybe summer or certainly the fall uh would be kind of our our Target spot for that so it just be like a fall session then we do a spring session you know for next year uh Regional PD day uh was this past Friday our uh staff a lot of them were all over the three County region
038a lot of them stayed here as well and did uh virtual sessions as well and proved feedback a lot of positive feedback on the today a lot of learning took place uh with colleagues not only here but colleagues uh from the other 22 schools uh in the region so good good worth of time uh our high school hosted the Readiness day uh last week as well Thursday had a list there participating organization was the largest one we've had so far uh so the high school gym was full all the high school students in e8th grade participated and they came down and you know met with the different um groups everything from the Carpenters Union to the banks were here uh and you a whole bunch of different organizations uh participating and you know part of
039it just to get kids used to talking to adults right uh and such some were actively recruiting you know for jobs as well um but it's also to help kids understand there's a lot of opportunities out there in a lot of different fields uh to go in so it was a a very successful day the businesses had nothing but growing uh comments back about our kids um and such and I will say this is a sidebar when I was in there U you know talking and stuff going around I kind of thought I don't see any cell phones out so I just put that out there as well so uh this is a sidebar on that whole topic so our kids have so uh parent Community Council uh Bart mentioned that we had a meeting
040last week or on the 11th right so we talked about the capital project also got some field trip ideas to see if we want we know if we have field trips to freshen those up as well so good attendance to that any questions on any of those really on the uh Readiness day does do we the military and military service come in little I'll have I'll ask and find out if they're directly invited for that I know they they come in like they set up uh tables in the cafeteria throughout the year so I don't know if they come to this one or not directly I'll ask uh this update on the energy performance project uh so we've been having meetings uh with e systems and CSR uh on this again uh it's kind of
041a two-part project there'll be solar so approximately 3 acres the 3 Acre array on our 15 acre parcel uh about 1.3 megawatts of energy we produce from that and then you have the heat pumps going in into the classrooms again it's just classrooms no gyms cafeterias or corridors uh they will uh get the heat pumps which will provide AC also provide we have to remember provide heat during the shoulder months uh and since um you know our electric didn't paid for by the sun if you will uh it could save also on our gas and or up there and oil down here uh bills as well so could be an additional savings and it gave us reminder the whole entire project will be no costed to the local taxpayers and our electric bills will be
042paid for during the duration of the payout 15 18 years so how many years is 15 is it 15 or 18 I forgot I think it's a 15 payback but there's an 18e guarantee yes that's that's okay that's my brain is thinking two ways there yep uh just some shout outs uh we hosted the regional Odyssey the mine this past Saturday we 200 and some kids here from uh 20 some schools uh so again all our student volunteers we had a lot of students here volunteering we had some staff here volunteering our custodians who basically had to come in and clean the high school and part part of the Middle School up again after it was all set done our uh Tina was here as our nurse during the day so again just a shout
043out to all them for for making it a a great experience for everybody involved uh Bard mentioned this Friday we're hosting the Green County music educators Association concerts at 7:30 uh in our Auditorium question is that cost M I believe there is admission yes I don't want to come yep so I I it's on I already I wrote it down we'll put something out tomorrow just if you do plan on tending what the admission is yep off for that uh uh food bank or the uh food thing there in kakaki and Athens the interact Club I think most of you aware but our students do volunteer about once a month on Friday mornings they go and help unload the trucks from the food bank uh to get the food in there uh as well so
044I just wanted to give a shout out to them even through the cold winter once they showed up I mentioned career R today I just want specifically shout out to Stacy Hopkins who's the organizer of that and and does all the leg work and and and tracking down and and all the businesses and organization that do come here and finally under spring Sports just our our coaches and our grounds crew uh for getting the fields ready for spring Sports which just opened up here uh recently and um so far so good our Fields been in decent shape for that so to give them a shout out I'm going to skip ahead to the upcoming dates in the property tax report card and then I'll come back and finish up with a budget update you guys
045so um I just want to outline some upcoming dates for you A lot of these will not be something that you need to go and look for or something that you have to do just give you an idea of where we stand and why deadlines are important to us um anually speaking we do need to publish the public notice of our of our budget vote we have to do that four times within a a period of time so those are the dates that we will have those published in the board approved newspapers um we have our next board meeting on April the 10th uh that is also the date that I would like to bring you a balanced budget and and push forward with a dollar amount uh because after that I have to go
046and submit a what's called a property tax report card uh to the state I can't do that until we have a a uh an amount approved by by you all that's the board get a deadline for that Brian the 28th for the pro yeah I have to submit that by the 28th 8 um I will say most schools try to have their uh their budgets done before the Questar one which is on the 22nd um also on the 22nd that'll be the deadline for anybody that wants to run for the Board of Education and submit their petitions by 5:00 p.m. okay on the 22nd 22nd yes Tuesday Tuesday tues missed the day okay um property tax report card it's something that I come to you guys annually with um I will bring so just order
047of operations here I have to bring you the property tax report card for you to approve it prior to me being able to upload it to the state so that will be something that you'll need to vote on um probably not on the 10th but on the meeting after the 10th but before the 28th so probably likely at the 22nd meeting lot lot to digest there so and then um I do want to give you a budget update is there a clicker up here qu who or no this thing I'm oh you're my clicker all right so um really a five-part agenda that I want to get through today it's right there I'm not going to read it to you just talk about where we're at in the budget process where we are in the
048timeline you know what we've got coming up so on and so forth all right so this is what we've done to date and this is what we need to do moving forward Okay so we've obviously talked about this now three times as a finance committee twice as a board today is our our uh third board meeting talking about the budget um the finance committee has asked us to come back to them with a closer look at expenditures revenues and specifically budget requests from staff okay and then from there we go to our Target day of the 10th so that means between now and April the 10th we will try to get a finance committee together uh finance committee meeting together I'm sorry to settle on a budget that that committee can bring to you all
049um at the meeting of the 10th okay and then finally we have our uh questioner B meeting that we have to meet on the 22nd any questions on the timeline PG all right so retirees and just what they cost what they what exists in our budget as far as retirees go these are folks that have told us hey you know what uh I know when the end is um in the case of the top six sorry the top five that end date will be June 30th in the case of the the midyear that will be a midyear retirement this is what's in the budget as their replacement okay so person a is leaving they're out person B is in next year's Bud budget presently okay so this is this is what we have in the
050way of retirements I point this out to you all why because last year you know attrition was how some of us wanted to you know dwindle that budget gap down which yes we do have a hefty budget Gap again this year okay I'm not saying it's going to be those positions I'm just simply pointing out to you all these are the folks that are retiring those are the replacement there okay next um I want to go through some giant expenditures you heard me say they're big they're big they're big but I want to put some amounts to them okay so tomorrow we will hopefully be getting our final health insurance rates um this is the latest cdphp we'll see an 11.2% increase High Mark 14% increase and CVS car Mark 26.2 for a total increase
051of just health insurance with RX of $770,000 okay it's important to remember that our increases come on the district side of where of what we are responsible for as the district okay so I'll use the the teachers bargaining unit as an example okay in their bargaining unit they pay x% we are responsible as a district for 100us x% okay so when this change is 11.2% we're responsible for a big chunk of that and that's why we continue to see gaps year in and year out for all of our units um just because we are responsible for a large component of that all right so when health insurance changes yes it hits the employee at home it also hits the employer on a much larger scale uh because that is the the position that we have
052assumed in our collective bargaining agreement transportation is another big to-do okay um we've talked about this we've discussed it again I just want to put some numbers to you uh kakaki transport they've got five contracts traditionally speaking kakaki transport has been willing to roll over all of their contracts on CPI Consumer Price Index which is around 3.9% is the estimate they have five contracts that they can no longer do that with us they're upside down much like I've talked about for student being upside down and so with those five contracts they need to increase those rates by 35% this is not anything that happened in the past two weeks this is something that we've known about first student contract that you all approved a while back that I came to you and tears over 58%
053uh increase right a standard run through first student used to be $78,000 now it's $115,000 and so we need to relook at our transportation expenses we need to relook at our transportation runs and we need to make some very tough decisions in the way of what we want to do with transportation in the way of how many runs do we have how how long should a kid be on the bus how long how far away can we afford to be sending kids so on and so for and that's our budget increase that's not our budget total that's our increase our increase is 1.86 million do in transportation alone which between this number and the number that you saw on the last screen essentially makes up our Gap okay so one that did just come through
054this week got an email from a bunch of colleagues their liability insurance right ours is through UDA National we use sto stoes agency as our local broker and they released the the increases a lot of districts are seeing in the 20s I hate to say we were fortunate to see an 18% increase but it's it's large increase nevertheless we are looking at going in as a as a group submission uh we did learn that Liberty Mutual is looking to get back into the the school liability insurance game uh in this area um a bunch of business officials and myself have have really tried to pull together to see if we can do a group application similar to what we do for workers comp health insurance uh um and prescription drug there uh because as a
055group you tend to save more all right expenditures by year uh more to do here right so this is what else we're responsible for so those fringe benefits it's not just health insurance it's also TRS or ERS depending on the employee um and then that that good old flight for Medicare for the uh for the Social Security and the Medicare that we're always hearing about the news there so this is just a a history of what these rates have looked like all right they've gone up and down um TRS is pretty much stabilized right around that 10% range so basically we are responsible as an employer for 10% of an employee salary okay for ERS big jump up to 16 a half uh those are your non-teaching staff um non- teing certified staff I should
056say uh and so that's at 16 and a half right so we're responsible for 16.5% of their salary we set to the state here you go and then F of Medicare has not changed in years uh it Still Remains at 7.65% any questions on any of this okay so uh revenues uh the last time we met I think I had expressed to you guys that I I wasn't sold on our uh our excess cost Aid which is our special education Aid and I wasn't sold on our Bose's Aid the numbers didn't math for me they didn't math well enough for me um had multiple conversations with the stack office over at Questar um and found out that they had missed one of our kids okay the way access cost a works is the state determines
057the threshold if we're over that threshold we get Aid if the cost for that student's under the threshold we get no Aid okay so if you guys think back to this time last year we were talking about large Bose's expenditures going um going up right in in the area of special education because we were sending a lot of kids to schools like Paul poio or or any of the quest our programs well why aren't we seeing seeing a ton of Aid on the back end is because those costs are still below that that excess cost Aid threshold so that's why we're not seeing the aid despite the tremendous jump in in expenditure um but we we did find the the one student right who was above the threshold and it boosted our Aid up a
058little bit more Bose's Aid I met with Questar three or four times and we got I think another $130,000 in Aid in that than what we were originally rejected again something wasn't driving the math wasn't mathing um hate to say I was right but I love saying I was right and we got the aid that that we were entitled to uh building Aid is going to REM remain the same Transportation Aid why is that going down if our expenses are going up although the ex the uh Transportation which is delay a year right we're getting aid from this year during next year okay well why is our transportation Aid going down that would imply that we spent less money this year than we did last year in transportation which is true the reason it's true
059is because we cut a run and when you cut a run you take a big chunk off of that and therefore you got less Aid textbooks computer software computer hardware Library materials and high tax Aid those are usually all student enrollment driven we're seeing dips there because we're seeing dips in our enrollment any questions on our state aid hey other revenues are tuition interest so on and so forth you can read down the list there uh tuition we've done very very very well in the field of tuition so why don't we just jump tuition up to match the exact dollar amount that we got we can't rely on it it's like interest right you could have a great month a great year of interest but it's not something that I can say yeah we're going
060to do that every year because we can't it could change tomorrow schools could say to us you know what we're going to start our own programs you guys are too expensive they pull that out we're not generating the revenue and now my two budgets aren't seeing what they need to do we're not earning the Reven we need be our Pilots are dipping right there was two more pilots that didn't fall off but instead they were reassessed and now they're I think Frozen as of last year's tax rates for the next 10 years um just turn there really nothing else major amount there any questions on or other revenues all right and then finally what we kick in uh and by we I mean the appropriated fund balance the district and what everybody else hates talking
061about and that is the taxes okay so um a couple meetings ago I presented to you that the property tax cap which in this case was 2.83% that 2.83% was the difference of about $575,000 um that is the tax cap that I'm building this budget with it's below the that that free number that the board has has uh said multiple times over they'd like stay under and we've done a good job with um but at the same time staying under that tax cap I need to remind everybody I say this every year if you go under the tax cap so our Max is 2.83 if we decide as a board or you decide as a board I'm sorry that you want to go under that that's lost money forever because tax uh tax caps Compound
062on itself okay so we go to the next one this is our total budget and that's what we're looking at on the revenue side okay so what we can afford on the revenue side right now is $37.59 million all right that up that being up from our $36 million $999,000 budget last year and so now comes for the ugly part is our Gap the Gap that we need to fill the Gap that's unfortunate that I hate to talk about but is a necessary evil right now we've got a $1.8 million budget Gap the reality is is our expenditures in transportation in health insurance in liability insurance so on and so forth they're growing as our our requirements for other expenditures they're growing faster than our revenue is the state is kicking out an additional or
063um 2% on what we got last year from Foundation Aid it's not enough it's not enough for us to sustain our current practices are just not enough to sustain so this is the gap that we're looking at eliminating that we have to eliminate uh between now and that that April 10th deadline that I'm believe pushing for okay any questions for me the retire number is where is that this all the figure that you gave that's it's already in there it's in the button so if we were to subtract number out that would be subtracted off of this Gap and that would bring us right around 1.2 okay any questions for me other oh okay [Music]