Board Meeting 3/9/2026

001Good evening. I would like to officially call the school district of Oak County Board of Trustees meeting to order. Today is Monday, March 9th, and I just want to take a moment to welcome our community members, those here in person and those joining us via live stream today. Your presence is a vital part of the work that we do. Each month, the board gathers to make decisions that help shape the future of our students and our schools. While we do have many items to discuss tonight, our guiding scar star always remains the same, and that is providing an exceptional environment where students can thrive. We are grateful for your presence here tonight and for your support of the important work that takes place in our schools and across our district. So at this time I

002would like to ask Dr. Sandra Sloan to lead us in the invocation. >> If you join us in prayer. Dear Lord, the creator of heaven and earth. We approach you this evening to say thank you for this beautiful day in which you have blessed us. We thank you for allowing for safe passage for everyone who has come out to tonight's meeting. We pray for your divine guidance tonight as we are here to conduct the business of the school district of OKone County. Bless our minds. Give us wisdom and clarity of thought to conduct business that is in the best interest of the precious children of this district. We pray that you would continue to give insight to the leadership of this district to every employee. We pray that you would bless the parents, bless all

003of our stakeholders, bless each who are in attendance here tonight. bless our community as a whole is our prayer for it is in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. >> Amen. >> And at this time we have a few uh students from Kiwi Elementary who are going to help lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Mr. Corbin Hensley and Miss Riley Vaughn. You'll step on up. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you so much. At this time, I would like to ask for approval of our agenda. >> Uh, Madame Chair, I move to amend the agenda to include a discussion item titled compensate compensation analysis update as the final item under the

004discussion section of today's meeting. >> Okay. So, we've got a motion to amend the agenda. >> Second. All in favor? All right. So move to now approve the amended agenda. >> I make a motion that we approve the agenda for the March 9th 29 2026 meeting with the um app with the additional item on the agenda. >> Second motion and a second. All in favor? All right. Thank you. and we will hear more about that a little later. Sure. >> All right. Now comes our one of our favorite times of the evening. Um I would like to introduce Mr. Josh Holiday to give highlights from Wajala Elementary and then we'll be hearing from Miss Amanda Scott from Kiwi Elementary. >> Good evening. How are y'all? >> Great. >> Good. I want to be the first

005from the Wala community to say go Razers. Congratulations to our ladies that are on the parade uh right now. So um but let's talk about Wala Elementary School. Um, every time we ask this, I always try to think, what what have the other schools not done? Um, what have we not presented? What have we not shown? Um, and I've told y'all this numerous times. I'm about the whole child. We talk about the the physical activity. We talk about activities after school. We talk about academics. We talk about those things. So, I've got two of those things tonight. Um, I don't know how this works. >> The outside. >> Outside. Okay. Um, so we're going to talk about Beanstack and our walking club. Um and these both of these programs have multiaceted things that help our

006students out. So u our Beanstack program is really to promote reading. Um several of our schools in the district use Beanstack. It is a interface where students can log their reading. Um so instead of the paper reading logs that get lost, parents forget to sign them, we have this program that our students can log that in. We had a little bit late start this year because we've got a new librarian. Um so she had a lot of things going on and she was learning this year. So, we've started this and we set a goal originally um and I'll get to that in a minute, but we've had to reset our goal several times because our students have done so well and they're just excelling at it. So, but this program is to promote reading. Um

007it logs their minutes that are read. It offers incentives. Um during the year, we we draw names. Um every morning on the news, we call four or five students up to win a prize if they've read so many uh minutes in their their log. So, u they've started that. There's I think there's something to embarrass me. I don't know yet when we re reach this goal. Um they're kind of keeping it secret. So I've agreed to I don't know what yet, but um I'm sure it's going to be an embarrassment. Y'all will see that. And I'm okay to do that for the kids. Um so we set goals for our students, we set goals for our classes, and we can set goals for the whole school. So um like I told you, I'll show you

008a screen here in a minute. You can see we're almost to our goal um already. So it tracks the students participation, and it even gives the Lexile level so you can kind of see where our students are reading at what level they should be reading. Um, I've got my son up here. He didn't know he was going to be a a guinea pig tonight, but I'll I'll show that. Um, but he is above his grade level in that those readings. So, the average um reading levels with that. Um, and then it also allows our teachers to to participate. So, as adults, we always model this. Um, I'm not going to mention any names in in the crowd here, but we were talking about the importance of reading just a minute ago with the agenda. Faximile

009was on there and some of our folks that are a little bit younger than me did not know what a faximile was and I said it was a short short uh for or it's a long version of fax. Um I don't think that technology is much around anymore. We email and scan things and send those but I'm not going to mention any names ladies. Um so not giving you a hard time but we always learn. That's what we do. So it allows our teachers to model and we we enjoy doing that for our students. Um just like last week we had Read Across America week. Um, I got to read to some classes and and had a really good time doing that. All right, so here's our interface. Um, as you can see, and I'm

010I'm getting old and my glasses I have to put them on. Um, but you can see we we're in 15,000 minutes of reading so far. If you look up there with our goal is 150. Sorry, that was that day was 15,000 minutes um up to that point. But 150,000 minutes. We're That was the other day when I put this on there. We were 140,000. We I thought we're going to cross the threshold this weekend, but we're at 100 I think 147,000 right now. So, we're getting ready to cross that. So, we're about to up that goal again. When we initially started the the company told us to do 75,000. We beat that in a few weeks. So, we've upped it again. So, we may have to shoot for 250,000 and I'm okay for readjusting. We'll

011reward them for that and then we'll we'll keep going. So, so it has interactive reading. You see my son there. Um he's not his his one day streak was not good that day. Um he should have a you know 20-day streak on there but uh he must have got lazy on those. But you can see his Lexile level. Um it's above his grade level. So that's his average. Um you look at his um sorry you look at the number of days that they go through. Um you can see how many minutes he's read. So they've just started this back in January. Like I said we had a late start on it but um but they have really participated. I've got some kids that have just excelled. As a matter of fact, I was going to

012bring some of our leaders, but it keeps changing. So, I was not going to commit to two leaders and then bring somebody in that had beat them. So, that's why we we did not bring them tonight. Um, they offer incentives and badges. So, teachers can set this up to where if you read during a certain time, read certain subjects, um you can earn a badge. So, those badges, they keep track of all those things. So, it is an incentive for them to read. um they want to collect those also with the prizes that we have um morning every morning we we draw names for those and once they reach certain points they get those too. All right. So, we love reading. You see one of our classes. Uh that's Benny the bean that Miss Satderfield's

013holding there. Um that her class earned that. So, they sent it to her. So, they're proud of that. Um if you look, you can't really see it from the crowd out here, but the top picture up there is our prize center. So, students stop by and get things out of there. Um for ReadAcross America week, one of the days was to decorate the bean and we've got those all around the school. So, all the students, it was a book character. Uh they decorated those and put them up around the school. And then we've got our uh bean stock for bean stack here. Um and it measures how many our how our classes are doing and how our school is doing too. So um and I told you we're about the whole child of Ohio Elementary.

014So um walking club, I know that doesn't sound like a big deal. We do a running club in the afternoons, but not all of our students get to participate in that. So I had a couple of teachers, I can't take credit for this, couple teachers and a couple of our assistant principles talking about our kids want to do this. um we can move things around and we can have walking club in the morning. Um our SIC as Megan knows um we we've talked about some kind of physical goal for our students. So Healthier Generations is one um as a partner with us. We we look at those. Mr. Schickling knows this too with our cafeteria. So we set a goal to have afternoon and morning activities for our students for physical activity. So this fell

015into that. Um so what they do is every morning we have a different grade level. Uh we supervise that in the mornings. students have been been getting to school early so they can be there. Um we've had students come to school that don't always come to school to be there. Um so we get them there on time. Um the teachers have an extra planning so that helps with teachers. Um so once a week they have an extra plan period. Um they enjoy that too. So get students on time. We make sure that the teachers um get that time in the rooms to get ready for the day or whatever else they need to do. And then they've reported the behavior is better on those days just because some of those kids get the wiggles out,

016they get some of their energy out, they're ready for the day. Um, and then most of all, we just we have fun with it. So kids look forward to that. And we just want to offer that opportunity. So I don't want to take all night. I know uh Amanda's got to go next. So u but if y'all have any questions, feel free to come come see me, come talk to me, give me a call. We'll answer them for you. So thank y'all. >> Thank you. Good evening. We're so excited to be here this evening just to share a couple of great things happen happening at KOE this school year. Um so I've got a picture of our faculty and staff together. Some things that we have focused on this school year is learning together, leading

017together. Um, so two main things we'll talk about this evening is presence or attendance at school and then also progress. Here we go. So everything that we do revolves around our mission at Keely. And so tonight you're going to hear me talk a lot about collaboration, cooperation, us working together, learning together, growing together, and then also challenging each other. Not just challenging our students um but challenging each other as faculty and staff to learn together and to grow together. So this year at QE we have um scheduled two faculty meetings per month where the first faculty meeting we have what we call in-house PD where our teacher teams um plan together to provide professional development from for our faculty and staff. Um I believe we have a wealth of knowledge in our building and so

018what better way to learn and grow together than from our very own. So, here you see a couple of candid shots. Um, starting with our August um, PD with our kindergarten and first grade team where they presented to the faculty and staff getting the the school year started well with classroom management, routines and procedures of just that reminder that especially our little ones, they need to learn everything. Um, and along with that, um, we also learned about handwriting and just the importance of that being explicitly taught. um we have learned with going through the letters training that there is a direct correlation between handwriting and learning to read. So we took some time to focus on that as well in August. In September our steam committee um led professional development where we did a whole

019problem based learning activity and I learned firsthand how competitive teachers are if you put them in the room together and give them a task. So that was a lot of fun with the hands-on activity there. Um, in November, our fourth and fifth grade teams work together to talk about vocabulary specifically in the content areas. Uh, we know that fourth graders take SC science and so um, we thought it would be a great idea to learn about how to explicitly teach u vocabulary in fourth and fifth grade and and in the classroom in general. Um, in December, our character ed committee um led a little hands-on activity where we focus on fine motor skills, but it was also in preparation to a family night where our families um rotated through the building of creating a craft

020with very little directions and working on those fine motor skills as well. Um I have third grade team who in a minute will um talk about um them partnering with second and third grade um to lead uh student data tracking professional development that we had back in February. But our most recent um PD experience was with our hospitality and special events committee where um really the focus for um the activity was team building working on communication and collaboration. we divided up into two teams and worked on completing a task where we had to rely on each other to accomplish that task. Um so I will have um Miss Mali Childris and Miss Carol Ashenberg share a little bit with you about um the PD that they provided for us at school um in February. And

021that title is a link. Hello and thank you for having us tonight. We're excited to share um a little sneak peek of what we shared with our faculty. So, our focus this year as a grade level has been on student data tracking and how students can take ownership of their own data. Um so often we discuss data as teams and with admin. Um but very rarely do the students get to really take part in those conversations. So if you will advance to the next slide. Oh. Oh thank you. Okay. Okay. So, as we know, with all good things in education, it's backed by good research. So, in creating our student data tracking folders, we looked to John Hadtie's effect sizes of visual learning. So, there's a bunch there, but we highlighted a few that are

022really embodied in what you'll see in a minute in our folders. Um, so teacher estimates of achievement. We see this in how we set goals for our students and helping them create a plan on how to achieve those goals. Um, and then I think the most important one is that self-reported grades. So, um, Corbin, I'm going to have you come up already so they can kind of see what I'm talking about. So, in a minute, Corbin's going to share his folder, but with our student data tracking folders, um students are taking all of the data that we look at, which is a lot, and they are keeping track of it themselves so that they're visually watching themselves growing things that maybe they're not growing in and how to make a plan to make everything grow.

023So, um they've been doing great with that. Um and then we also want to look at classroom discussion and feedback. It naturally creates a great opportunity to have conversations from teacher to student on all that they're doing here at school. So, here's what it looks like in the classroom. Yes, students are actually using words like I'm growing or, you know, I've gone up. They're they're understanding that they need to be growing and they like hearing how they're doing instead of, you know, one day take the test, the next day forget about it. They like to see how they've done and they're taking ownership. Corbin brought his tracker with him and and he's proud of it and he knows, you know, what he's doing and that he's growing and he owns it. We had um we

024had done some graphing on some fluency and found how competitive the students were not only with themselves but with each other and they were wanting to see that that graph climb. And so we're seeing that now with all of the students with their trackers. So, it wouldn't be student data tracking folders without having the students present their own data. So, we're gonna give Corbin a little bit to share some things about his own folder. Take it away. >> Um, so this is my student I mean, hi, my name is Corbin Roger Hensley and this is my student data tracking folder. It shows uh where I'm at and what I need to work on. You can see here I need to work on my spelling strategies. And some good things about it is I can see

025where I'm at and know where I can be. And so, right, so I I want to share one of my goals for EOA is for um my grades and I want it to be A's and B's which here you can see that you can also you can see it here and here and here here and also there and there which they help me see what I've what I've accomplished for my math. I want to do A's and B's too, which you can see I've done that well to there al and here and here. So, also my benchmark are leveling up and I'm actually proud of that. >> You guys want to see it? >> Oh, yes. >> Absolutely. We're buddy. I I can't tell you how proud we are of you and uh you're going

026to be CEO of a of a corporation one day with all these analytics. >> Was awesome. You killed it. >> Again, about learning together, leading together. This is just a prime example of what we've seen in our building this year and I just think it's such a celebration with us all learning together and leading together. Corbin, >> so proud of you, bud. Um along with everything we do at school each day, uh attendance, we know that if kids are not at school, uh we can't teach them, they can't learn. So that's been something that we focused on the last couple of of years. And I would like to ask Miss Harden, our school counselor, to come forward. Um Miss Harden does everything under the sun. And so she came to me with this idea of

027challenging students to motivate them intrinsically. we know elementary students have no control over whether or not they come to school. So she said if we can encourage them, motivate them, make give them something to work toward, um I think it'll make an impact and it definitely has. So >> okay. All right. So originally I had big bears that I gave um to the classes. So there was four of them and so the class with the best attendance gets the bears for the month. Um that's worked pretty well. They get very excited. They get very unhappy with me when I take the bears away for the next class if they don't get it. Um, but I really felt like I wanted to do more. So, I found this program called the 25-day attendance challenge. Um, and

028basically the program was supposed to be for you need to come 20 out of 25 days to meet the challenge. Um, but when I started it in mid last year, um, I decided that I thought that was a little much. So, I made the challenge harder. So they can only miss three days um out of it. So they have to come 22 out of 25 to meet the challenge. Um when I started this year with the kids um up until fall break um I only let them miss one day to make it even harder and they did beautifully with it with the ones that were um doing it. Um as we got kind of closer to flu and cold season, we've moved it to three for the last couple times we've done it. Um, and

029then for this time we're probably gonna move to two and then as we get towards the end of the year we're gonna go one again to try to make it a little bit challenging. Um, but the kids love it. They ask me all the time like is it ready? So they get a certificate and then they get an ice cream um if they meet the challenge and they get very excited. When are we going to have the ice cream? What's the last day? Um and they know, you know, when they're there or not and they love it. Um, and you know to one of my fifth graders who's in it, you know, she says I can do anything for 25 days. Um, so it really is feels to them like it's an achievable goal that

030they can meet. So this is some of my data. Um, so I just took a couple kids. Um, so you can see um, some of them have have had really not great attendance in the past last year. Um, and you can look at their data for this year as of today. Um, and it really is working for them. They're very excited. Um, they want to be here because they're here more. They feel more connected to their peers, to their teachers. The work is easier. Um, they're not falling behind. Um, and I think that they can see that as well, that improvement and that want to be here, want to be with their peers and and they want to come to school now. Um, and then these are what the certificates look like. So, I give

031them one for perfect attendance if they come every day and then I also give them one just for participation for meeting the goal. >> All right. And that is the end of our highlight for this evening. So, thank you so much for having us. Um, again, we believe in teamwork and all learning together and leading together. And thank you for having us. >> Thank you. >> Another great job, uh, Corbin. That was that was phenomenal. So, congratulations on that. All right. Now, it's time for uh on our agenda reserved for public comment. This is a time that we value greatly as it allows us to hear directly from our stakeholders that we serve. We appreciate you for taking the time to be here tonight to share your perspectives, ideas, or concerns. Per our district procedures,

032the board is here to receive your comments, but we are not permitted to engage in dialogue or respond to questions in real time. However, we will make sure that the district leadership follows up with all presenters to address questions that may come forward during your comments. to Miss Bay. Do we have anybody signed up for public comment? >> No, ma'am. >> Okay. All right. And now at this time, if we can get approval of our February 9th, 2026 board meeting minutes. >> I make a motion that we approve the board meeting minutes from February 9th, 2026. >> Second. >> Motion is second. All in favor? Thank you. And now, Mr. Shikling for our first item of discussion, February financial report. >> Okay. Um, I'm going to go through the financial report. I'll try to touch

033on I think a little bit what we're going to see in terms of the budget review as well because the the financial report really is just a one 12th snippet of the performance of the budget throughout the course of the year. Um, so on the revenue side, January is the month where um I'm sorry, February is the month where we receive January's collections for taxes. And so h house bills are um are due in January. And so you can see there there's $ 35.5 million out of our $59 million budget came in that month. So, um, when we talk about cash flow and our reliance on fund balance until that sum comes in, that is going to now carry us through the summer. Um, with, uh, pretty pretty big influx there of revenue from tax

034collections. Um, there are several different iterations of property tax relief that are paid to districts by the state. Um, and so you can see one of them's labeled tier two or I'm sorry, tier three. Um, and the other one is, well, there's two more of them actually. There's a homestead exemption revenue, and then this is tier two up here. Those are these two are fixed amounts. Um, I'm I'm sorry, I'm looking at my screen. So, uh, tax relief reimbursement tier one, and then, uh, homestead exemption tier two. Those are static values. Those do not change, have not changed. Um so you'll see very similar numbers in the next year's budget when when that's presented. The property uh tax relief tier three is something that is based on um a pool of funds at the state

035and it grows by CPI plus the state's growth in terms of uh uh total residency or or citizenry. Uh and so that one we'll see I think we got a notice that it's going to go up to 17.7 million next year. So there is some growth there about 700,000 that we can utilize in budget next year. Um but again you can see here that's a that's a monthly payment. So that's roughly one2th that we get on a monthly basis. So tax items whether they're local or state uh is about 39 million our largest month throughout the year every year. Um then looking at some of the state aid payments uh again it's our monthly allocations there. Um, we have seen as the course of the year goes through some changes to that funding formula aid

036line 23. Again, that's something that shifts based on what enrollments are doing and by the end of the year when we have our final student count, that's when we get our final allocation. Um, so that's one of those things where the state had had made a proposal to hold harmless a district if there's an attrition of students throughout the year. Um I don't know that that's going to make it into next year's budget, but um all in all, $43 million on the revenue side. Um and then again in the items on the expenditure report, the numbers of each function are not listed, but when I go through the budget review, we'll we'll talk about the coding at the state level. Um these are codes that all districts need to use for their financial reporting. um

037and some of them get limp lumped together. So where you see exceptional programs that's largely special education and that might encompass eight or nine functions whereas primary programs might only encompass one function. Um but those are blocked together and then you can see predominantly again within any single one of those um 80 to 90% of that is going to be salaries. um support services are on the second page and again a typical month about $11 million in expenditure. So this is a month where we're very net positive in terms of cash flow. Um and then on the expenditure side uh fairly routine month as well um nutrition services, some roofing projects being finished um and utilities make up the larger ticket items. um capital report has had Senica middle now that it's completely uh finished

038removed from the bottom and so the rest are ongoing elements of the study that we did a couple of years ago and wrapping up the first tier of all of that um immediate need work. So I'm happy to answer any questions there may be on the finance report. >> I don't know whether to ask this question now or hold this question for later. I'll just go ahead. Um, so the Senate passed House Bill 3858, which is concerning boat taxes. >> U, there was an article in the post and courier that listed uh, how this was going to affect the top 13 or so districts in the state of South Carolina. It looks like uh, Okone County will lose $2.6 million. Um so then in what you just mentioned about um the tier three funds >>

039uh so we we really don't have any playing around money as as I'm looking at this situation. Um ultimately, according to the article, that the school districts will see um and this is their words, not my words, a millage increase because there has to be some way to make up that $2 million loss. Uh is this something you think we're going to be able to uh do within our budget looking at that kind of cut back from from funds available? So yeah, my understanding is that that would be a a graduated implementation. Um we are a heavily reliant district upon property taxes and real property uh includes homes, vehicles, automobiles and boats. Um you know my experience what happens when there is any sort of abatement uh a feed and loo project is is a

040similar concept. So when any when any value of property is removed from or exempted from having to pay a tax, this is a function of numerator denominator. And so then I think it's incumbent upon us to have a conversation with the county um about the different categories that fall within what they call what we call adalorum, which means basically at value at whatever property value is. Um normally the consideration when an exemption is granted is a a municipality government entity whatever it is um oftentimes does not have the desire or capability to reduce budget which means for us 90% of budget is people so it would be cut people >> um or reconstitute how the remaining properties pick up whatever that burden was. So um my initial thought is to the extent that it would

041impact us if that's 1 million 2 million then that value would be dispersed out amongst the remaining categories of property um predominantly bearing that burden would be 6% homes or businesses. Um and so then yes that millillage would need to incrementally increase upon those um to make up the difference from those that were exempted. The alternative to that would be to simply seek expense reductions. But um you know as as we go forward and talk about the process this year I think we are being thoughtful about maintaining a uh lean footprint regardless of the revenue picture. >> So I hope that answers your question. >> Does thank you. I think it's important uh that representation of the district is is present when these decisions are being made from the county. um not only in this

042regard but in the fee and lie of tax decisions that are being made because those heavily affect us and we have no control over the decisions that are being made nor have we in the past had any input. So it's just a great opportunity for us to have open discussion and and show our faith in doing what's right by the taxpayers. Thank you. >> Next is the budget review by function. >> Okay. So, this will follow um I'm not going to go into great depth on the revenues. I talked a little bit about them during the financial report, just kind of understand the local versus state. Um this is going to primarily focus upon um the expenditure budget. And so this will be um first step is a um overview of the principles of fiscal

043management. I'll go over enrollment and staffing. It's kind of how do we determine what programs are needed and and how many people do we need to deliver those programs. Uh and then we'll go over the instructional and support functions that we talked about in the finance report. Basically page one and page two of the finance report. Um in our minds in the finance office 100s are instruction, 200s are support and that's by the state's manual for budget codes. Um and then we'll also take a look at midyear budget projections. I call it a fund balance projection. Um but it is kind of a guesstimate as to how our budget is performing right now and where it might end up. Um so the first slide here is the principles of fiscal management. This is something that

044we have implemented. I think we're on our third year now of these. Um one of the goals is to maintain rates of pay that ensure market competitiveness. And so we've done a um analysis of compensation that was presented last month which um bore out some some observations that may need addressing to maintain this primary uh objective here. Uh one of the goals is to conservatively budget revenue or expenditures that have a potential for variability. So what that means is if they're not um you know the tier one and tier two we talked about those revenues don't ever change. they were frozen when they were frozen and we get that every year. Some of them do. Some of them do v have variability um and quite a bit and so you look at a trend line

045average you try to take the low end of that and then hope for the high end and that's what conservative means. Um also try to utilize the matching principle of ensuring that whatever program or service we're offering there is a recurring repeating source of revenue to support it. And so when the state revenue and fiscal affairs office um gives their report, they talk about recurring money that can be given out to schools versus one-time money. We use the same philosophy. Um budget for a modest annual surplus. Uh the thought there is if you don't have a surplus, you have a deficit. And so you you don't want an excessive surplus, but when you pass a budget, you want to make sure that budget can appropriately um in entail or or um contain everything that you

046need to spend money on. And just like a family budget, then hopefully you've got a little bit left you can put in your savings account versus not have enough to pay the grocery bill that month. And so um what we don't want to do is we don't want to end up in a position where we do have a deficit. then we have to make more aggressive reductions in staff or more aggressive asks for tax revenue in order to make up that difference. Um monitor and adjust the expenditure footprint. Again, you'll see an effort in uh the first uh analysis of budget here. Um that represents our our uh intent to monitor and adjust that expenditure footprint. And then again, if fund balance is necessary, so if we do need to take some of our savings

047to close the budget, we need to figure out how to not do that in the in the years that um come after that. So, we did have a year a couple of years ago where we budgeted some fund balance to close the gap. Um but then we didn't spend everything that we had budgeted and so we didn't need to spend the fund balance to do that. So, um, what I what's displayed in the top right is kind of the budget triangle. Um, and that's where you're looking at the revenues that are available to fund programs and then the programs and services that we intend to deliver. And so, again, we have to kind of quantify what those things are, assign to them a cost, and then make sure the revenue is there to support them.

048And if there's an imbalance there, then that's where the fund balance is, the bottom of the triangle is. either you're going to draw from that because you have a deficit or you're going to add to it because you're in a surplus. Uh so moving on to the the next slide, this is the uh this is a snippet of the the staffing document that is used to project pupil enrollment. Um and so a couple of things to frame the conversation here. Number one, this is only general fund. So, when we talk about the the budget as it is and and do presentations, um the budget that's approved by the board and by county council is the general operating budget. It does not contain cafeteria. It does not contain capital expenditures. There's a number of federal grants

049that we um have budgets for that are not tax reliant and that are not approved by the county or the board. And so some of those do have interplay with the general fund budget, but they're not directly represented here. So what we're looking at is the projection uh for student enrollment for next year and that's based upon um the ending enrollment from last year and then the beginning enrollment of this year. And um think there has been a trend where we've talked about our loss of revenue from the start of the fiscal year to the end of the fiscal year where the 45th day numbers demonstrate attrition to 135th day numbers and the budget process requires that we have a budget in mind and have some projections done well in advance of that 135th day.

050So I think what's happened is there has been um a cycle for a while where we have had projections that are slightly higher than what student enrollment ends up being by the end of the next year because again it's a look forward. But this projection has has in is intended um to try to adhere closely to what the belief is that the student enrollment will look like at the end of this year. Um and so that you see a 900 or I'm sorry 9,421 in the total column is the student um student enrollment that's projected for K through 12. Now that doesn't include about 400 students that are in PIP programs or 4K. So but tr traditionally we've set our enrollments about 10,000 and we're now getting to the point where we really can't say

051that anymore. Um this represents a reduction of uh nearly 400 pupils from the uh prior projection. Um so what you're seeing there is you're seeing the calculated staff by our intended ratio. Um we staff elementaryaries at 18.5 students per teacher, 18 in the middle school and then 23 in the high school. And so what that what that gives you is the quantity of what we call FTE that the principal in that building has to allocate to their programs and their classrooms. There is a certain economies of scale there where you know that in some buildings you may have 32 students in a certain grade level. And so are you can't run one classroom with 32 students. So you're going to run two classrooms with 16. So now you're going from one extreme to the other.

052So there is some economies of scale, but you can see the actual ratio that we're that we're planning to staff at. And you can see the net change um in f allocated FTE is a reduction of 16.5 positions. And so that's not cutting program, that's not reducing services, that is less kids require less adults. Uh and so I want to make sure that that was clear. This is doesn't represent a reduction in service. It represents a adherence to a formula and the numerator and denominator have different metrics now and so we're going to have less FTE. What you don't see on here is another column that is our title one programs. And so our title one programs based upon um both the um the socioeconomic status need in a building as well as its enrollment

053may garner additional FTE beyond what's here in the general fund. And when we talk to a principal we don't we no longer say these are your title people and these are your general fund people. we say you've got 32 people and you can use them however you need to use them and then we'll figure out their budget codes and put the right ones in the grant later. So that's part of what we did in our transition in the title programs um with the assistance of Dr. McDonald and um and uh Lynn Howard. So that's what our projections look like and um I'll carry that forward now into the instructional um functions. So, as we scroll into the next section, um what you're going to see here is totals. And I didn't divide out. Um it

054gets it gets a little bit busy on the eyes. Um well, it's busy enough as it is, but when you break out benefits, salaries, contractuals, especially in some of these where the the contractual costs might be $5,000 a year for a whole area of the district. It's not worth cluttering a page with that. So what you're seeing is a total for that function. Um the expens expense functions that we categorize as regular K12 instruction. So these basically are encompassing of the staffing allocations we just showed. These are teachers and classrooms. Um that's just break broken out by grade levels predominantly by the state. So kindergarten is kindergarten um primary I believe is grades one through three. Um, elementary, I believe, is four and five. Or I'm sorry, maybe primary is one and two. Elementary is

0553 through five. Um, sorry, I need to check myself on the grade levels. I get confused by the terminology of primary and elementary. Elementary is predominantly middle school. So, it's going to be grades four, five, all the way up to eight. Um, primary is going to be early childhood up to grade four and then kindergarten is kindergarten. High school is 9 through 12 and then career and technology is anything that doesn't fall now that's all high school age but it doesn't fall into high school because it's a separate function for the career center. So when you see career and tech really you're talking about Hamilton career right there. Um over you can see budget performance over the past few years. Um this is the area where we're projected to lose 16 FTE because that's purely

056classroom allocations based on student enrollment. Um right now that is uh 654 teaching positions for us and that's not going to include certified positions like counselors, psychologists, librarians. Um those are in non those are in support functions. Um so this is purely classroom teachers. Um, you do see a little bit of interplay between primary and elementary. Again, that grade level as as sometimes as people switch the grades they're teaching, we don't get them coded properly in payroll. So, it might project them for a fourth grade classroom, they end up in a third grade classroom and there's a differential. Um, another one of the changes that we made is when we brought the monitors uh aboard to ma match the uh unencumbered time. uh at first we had put them into an admin category because they

057were not in classrooms and then we made the determination that they can still be related to functional ser or I'm sorry uh instructional services and moved them into an instructional function. So because of that, there are certain years where you might see uh an overage in primary versus a an underbudget in elementary. Uh but the net change roughly is a few hundred,000 um from budget to actual across all these functions in general instruction. So they balance each other out um in their allocation. Um and so the current year's budget you can see was um tailored higher towards primary. One of the things we did there is we again it's for budgeting and pay payroll efficiency. Um we had staff that might have been broken up into three different functions. U they might serve an entire

058elementary school. And so part of their salary is in kindergarten, part of their salary is in primary, part of their salary is in elementary. And because of that we're now projecting three different positions and three three different payrolls. So what we what we did in last year's budget is we consolidated all those folks that serve primarily in an elementary but are not a kindergarten teacher. Um so that might be a related uh um fizzed art. We put them in the 112 function exclusively. So that's why you're going to see that last year was over budget a little bit and then it grew drastically from year to year. That's simply because we put their entire salary there rather than splitting it into different categories. Um, that's helped a lot in terms of having less lines in

059spreadsheets when we budget. Now you're talking about one person instead of the same name three times in three different percentages. Um, so moving on to special education. This is actually um I think nine functions in the state's accounting manual. And this breaks it down as specifically as visually impaired, hearing impaired. Um some of the larger ones uh that are kind of catchall categories um a learning disability that is not specific to one of the senses oftentimes will fall into um function 127. So why you see is the largest there. Um we've also seen growth in the um 10 161 which is autism and behavior. Um so again you can see um there was a little bit higher variance last year in terms of spending across the different categories. One of the things that's been really

060difficult here is um oftentimes speech is uh difficult category to employ um and so we have had to contract some services. So when you look at total budget performance, you might see unspent salaries, but you might see over spent contractuals, and that's a trade-off there where you're now having to contract some services where you've got vacancies that are difficult to fill. Um, but overall, you can see there's um modest growth uh and for the current year's budget that we're under right now. And again, we re reconstituted where some of those folks fell. if they were splitting time. So they might be a special ed teacher who's 7/10en of their time is in function 127, but then they assist with some behavioral situations. Again, we we put their um their full FTE, if you call it,

061uh where their primary effort was. And a lot of that was a relic of the way the state used to fund schools before we got this big block of aid. They would give little buckets of aid and they would say you have to spend all your aid for 128 in function 128. And so now that a person is not split between there in terms of where their money comes from then we can allocate their FTE to be a little bit more efficient. Um so that's an explanation there for special education about 235 positions uh FTE in special education. um that would include both certified and support staff. Um so a teacher's assistant for example or an instructional aid is still an instructional position. Um and so that would appear there in that 235. Um we've

062got 11 vacancies there. So you can see a higher percentage of vacancies that we know we need to fill going into next year. That's when someone notifies us that they're not going to return or they their contract's not going to renew. So again, you do see more turnover in that special education function. Some of those roles are very challenging roles. Um and so they're often challenging for us also to to find um folks who have um you know the wherewithal to to go through some of the situations that they don't need to need to go through. Um but that's a breakdown there on special education. Um moving on to there's other instructional functions. This is kind of a catchall for a number of different things. You'll find adult ed in here, summer programs, um full

063day 4K, and um homebound, gifted and talented. So, one of the things that we noticed was there were a number of teachers that were listed as gifted and talented that every year they remained in the gifted and talented function, but they may be switching in the content areas or the classrooms that they teach in. And so you can see what we did is moved all of those teachers back into instructional functions. Um there is gifted and talented supply money um that is based upon a pupil weight on uh or pupil add-on weight. Um but we did not have uh 100% accuracy into who the teachers are that are teaching the gifted and talented. So we moved them back into instruction. That doesn't have an impact on um pupil weights. doesn't have an impact on staffing.

064Uh it just made more sense to concentrate people in one area for budgeting. Um also looking at a number of different school districts now that the state has its dashboard. There are a number of districts that don't record salaries and benefits in that area but do have supplies and materials. Um 4K is another thing that um in our principles for budgetary management, you know, we want our grant funds to be self-containing. Um this is we do have state funds that are called SERP that's early reading early childhood reading and that's 4K and what we found is that allocations there vary year to year. So um we are not going to midyear terminate a 4K classroom in any given building. And so what happens is we have to move some of that effort back into the

065general fund if can't support it. So you can see there have been there's been a growth in um SERP and our budget has kind of trailed it. So in FY24 SERP was overspent. We took those positions that ended there and budgeted them. Then it was overspent and then we took those positions that were there and budgeted them. So hopefully we're hopefully we're going to get to a point where SURDEP does not continue to have attrition um because we don't love that trend. But again, we're not going to terminate the programs. They're they're needed. Um, I have the personal benefit of having two children go through them and I couldn't have been happier with them, you know. So, we've made the effort to support them and make sure that they keep going. Um, and then MLP

066is multilingual proficiency. Uh, used to be ELLL and then ML. Um, and the state uh created a a budget function for that a couple years ago. And so that's why it was zero a few years back and then we migrated. Uh I want to say we've got 10 or 11 staff members there now um fully budgeted. Um last year you can see it was over spent. We um had transferred their salaries but kind of left their benefits and the in the instructional area and so this year we budgeted all salaries and benefits to make that correction. Um so that's where we stand on total of all instruction. Um any questions so far? Okay. Uh, now support functions. These are these get into what the state categorizes as 200 um 200 budget codes. So these oftentimes

067are going to be positions that are based out of a building. They report to a principal. They are ancillary to classroom teaching, but they may not be a, you know, grade three teacher or a math, you know, uh, ninth grade math. Um so you've got counselors here. Um school health and and psychology. So that means nurses are here. Um school librarians are here. So these are largely some of the things that um kids are utilizing in the building but are not in a classroom giving them direct instruction. Um you can see that spending in school health in psych sites um has grown quite a bit. Uh part of that is adjustments that we made to um the nursing salaries to be more competitive. Uh part of that is that sites have been very difficult to

068budget for. Um so we have had vacancies u that you know certain times the vacancy may not may not have been carried forward or we were contracting forward contracting for it and it didn't get picked up in the budget uh forecast. So I think this year was a much better year in terms of encapsulating everything we needed in that function. Um and then school library again the the es and flows there are just um what the salaries and differentials are for the individuals. There is uh there is a uh or was also a school health um state function that got rolled out into the state aid uh or I'm sorry into our educational foundation aid EFA and so that led to some salaries that were not in the general fund moving into the general fund

069for nurses. That also happened for uh not career counselors, career counselors are still in there. Um this was two years back. There was one c we had three people in that position. There was another state aid line that rolled into the general fund. So you'd see an increase in general fund spending, but there was also an increase in that block revenue that came with it. It's just not as evident when it's in one large sum of $36 million. Um we've got about 105 uh positions here. And again, it's, you know, we looked at student enrollment and we saw a reduction in enrollment because classroom teachers, if you have less kids, you'll have less classes. Um, that's not always the case here with counselors and with school nurses. So, you know, you might have 35 less

070kids in a building or 40 less kids in a building. That doesn't mean that you're going to reduce 10% of a school nurse, right? You're still going to have a school nurse. So, some of these positions are fixed. you know the concept of fixed versus variable costs. So you you may not see any change in FTE because we still have the same number of buildings and so we still need the same number of people serving in these functions. Um there has been an increased reliance on contracted services here for mental health supports and so that's something in the salary versus contractual conversation again that becomes evident. Uh moving on to the next ones. Uh these are uh predominantly what we think of just general administration. Um this is not operations but it is oversight uh

071leadership. So here you'll have instructional design, curriculum, professional development also oversight of special education. So those are largely um either district staff or satellite staff. um board of education and superintendent is in this category and then building administration is going to represent all principles, all assistant principles, but also support and clerical staff in their offices. So that would be um data clerks, uh bookkeepers, uh receptionists, anybody who is in a support role there. Um and that's roughly 150 individuals. So you know this principles and APS alone I want to say is something like 70. We got 16 buildings. Some of them have two or three. So about half of that's building administrators and then about half of that is support and clerical for those individuals. Um for operations, this is about 245 FTE close to

072250. Um this is another area where there seems to be a little bit more high turnover. Um especially in the custodial functions which is uh in in 254. You know, there's a a a central group which is Bountyland Educational Campus where we've got a district level support folks in the facilities department that are going out and taking care of work orders. They may be specialists for certain trades. And then there's building custodial support and uh facility specialists as well. All of them fall under that 254. Um your finance offices I think now eight or nine individuals. um security and purchasing is that's predominantly going to be um the Centiggics ongoing legacy cost of the Centiggic system and our contract with uh the Aon County Sheriff's Office. That's about a million dollars for the 10 SRO's.

073So 10 SRO's with salaries and benefits is roughly 90 $95,000 each. Um so that's that encompasses almost all the costs there. Um and of course information technology is going to be both the technology department but also all of the administrative costs of software systems we use. So um where there are instructional programs that help with student assessment um our young man today was talking about his MAP scores um those would be paid for out of the instructional budgets. Um but the you know the lion share of cost is going to be personnel enterprise system infrastructure um monitoring uh you know student accounts things like that. Um and so all of those fall into that information technology. Um so total there for operations is close to 30 million. Uh but we've got a lot of infrastructure

074and takes a lot to operate it. Um this is also one of the areas where um you can see two years ago there was uh you know $2 million of o overexpending there. Last year was about 900,000. Um then there was some substantial growth coming into this year's budget. So, this is an area where um there's been an effort to try to more accurately depict what our needs are in terms of maintenance, supplies, utilities, um and even transportation. You can see transportation had an overage that was cut in half. The variable hours that drivers were driving were just something that we had not been budgeting accurately for in the past. And so, we've graduated in over time, more and more effort into the budget. And part of that is the transportation group also has seen

075some of the largest pay increases um both as state legislation and also as competitiveness the competitive necessity um for some of our districts in the area. So um that's a run through of operations. And then lastly there's um kind of these miscellaneous areas and um some of that is pupil services which is extra classroom. A lot of that is going to be athletics coaching and then um our uh plays safe contract for trainer services. So all of our coaches stipens um come out of that pupil service budget at all the different buildings. Um community services, the only reason it's on there is the one year that we paid off the pledge to the YMCA as a one-time expenditure. You can see that throws a pretty big variance two years ago. Um and then all of

076the the 400 series there um where it says proviso pdm special revenue these are all transfers out of the general fund. So the is especially in the audit season, the way it works is you take all of the expenditures on staff, salaries, contractuals, all those functions we've already covered, instruction and support. Um, and then there's a category below all of those that is in the in the revenues, it's transfers into the general fund and in the expenditures it's transfers out of the general fund. Um and so last year the conversation was had about um you know reducing a mill in the capital budget by utilizing some of our fund balance. And so you can see that in the in the prior year FY24 we did not transfer money into capital. Last year we transferred 1.9

077million into capital. Um so again that reduces fund balance but it's not technically an expenditure. Doesn't count against you in terms of running a deficit if you will. Um you can also see transfer of special revenue that is the um proposal that was brought to the board um to invest some money into pupil activity buses the bus fund as well as investing some money into a technology fund that um can be utilized to offset some of our purchasing costs uh in the future when we may need to use capital money to to or offset capital money to purchase devices. So again that's more of a budgetary maintenance tool. Um, that's a practice that we have employed several times is if it looks like we're going to have a surplus that we we don't necessarily need

078to maintain our general fund balance, we'll find one-time areas that we can transfer it to. And that's why that's displayed there. Um, so midyear projections, I'm just going to take you through our current um our current performance. Um, the midyear projection, again, this column is our best guess. Um it's it's one of those things where I would say, you know, don't hold me to that in June, but it's kind of where we're trending. Um so local tax collections, we made the request for 59 million. Again, around this time last year, um the agreement across the street was we'll cap that millage at 110 and whatever the growth of a mill renders goes either way. So if there's not enough growth, then we're short on our revenue number. If there is enough growth, we'll capture whatever

079that growth renders. Um so as of the last um budget report we gave today, I think the number was 56 million 55 million and change. Um we just got the notice from the county today. We've got about 1.2 in collections from the prior month. So by my best guess, we're looking at between 60 million 6500s something like that. Um which would be in in uh in uh I'm sorry, higher than what we had requested in excess of what we requested. So, um you know, last year we finished the year with about $200,000 short of what we had requested. So, it appears right now that growth is favorable to us. Um fee and Lou again is a variable number. Um Mrs. Holder, you said yourself, we don't always know when an agreement will be made and

080what it means to us. So, I don't have a a strict schedule where I can say in this year, these are our payments. That's one that we budget kind of to where the middle of the average has been. Um state taxes, it looks like we're doing pretty good on those. Um again, we budget those conservatively. Um there are some some items like rebates for new new connections for utilities, things like that that may or hopefully push us to the positive. Um, in terms of local non- tax interest on invest in investments, that's one of those areas we budget um um pretty conservatively. I want to say two years ago the budget there was 60,000 and three years ago the actual revenues were 60,000. Um so that's when there was 0% interest rates before all the

081all the Fed actions hiked them way up. And now we can see that there's cuts, you know, there's been progressive cuts over the past year. Um, so $450,000 is still a pretty conservative number. Um, but two years ago we collected 1.8 1.9 on our investments. I think this year we'll probably be in the low ones. And so again, you don't want to bump that revenue budget up to one and then not collect that. Um, in terms of our state funds, you can see at the beginning of the year, um, for the the general aid, we budgeted 37.8 million. that was about a half million dollars less than what the um what the budget projections were off the state website. Um and you can see that we're now short of those um by what's our current

082allocation. So hope my hope is that that does not um we don't see further attrition in that based on pupil enrollment by day 135. Um if anything, I hope it'll hold still or maybe improve, but um that's what we're forecasting right now. Um school bus driver aid is again tough to target. It doesn't come out until like the middle of the year. So we're usually conservative there, which has worked in our favor a little bit. Um but you can see total state sources were actually projecting to be to the negative about half million dollars. Um indirect cost transfers. Um, some of the federal grants that we have as well as our cafeteria fund allow you to take a transfer that's called indirect cost. Um, what that means is the cost of keeping the lights on,

083the cost of running payroll. Um, some of these things that are not exactly finite and can't directly be charged to those grants. There is a calculation the state does and they say okay if you get a million dollars in this grant you can take 3% of that and you can transfer it back to your general fund in recognition of the fact that that federal program is running in a building where you're keeping the utilities on uh and those staff are being paid by your payroll people. So that's what indirect cost means. And so we budget that usually conservatively because we don't know if all our indirect costs are going to materialize or what that rate's going to be. Um and so predominantly that's cafeteria costs coming back to us from our um food service maintenance

084cont management contract. So all in all on the revenue side um we're projecting about 1.7 million uh as a positive variance. Again when you look at the totality of the budget that's about a percent. So, you know, it looks like it looks like really big numbers, but when you look at it in in the context of the total operation of this machine, it's not that big of a number proportionally. Um, and so then we'll look at uh expenditures and expenditures are a little bit too difficult again to go through function by function by function. So here what we do is we aggregate it all. So salary, certified salaries and classified salaries are easy enough to break apart. Part of the reason you'll see more variance on certified salaries is two things we've talked about. Uh

085one of them is some positions may go vacant for a while and in the meantime we may we may start contracting for whatever that service is. So if it's a mental health provider, if it's a speech therapist, you know, those are the two most common. You'll you'll see that below or I'm sorry on the next page you'll see that we've overspent on contractuals in areas because of that. Um, so that doesn't necessarily mean that this money is not being spent. It's just not being spent on salaries. Uh, another one is, uh, our use of Kelly Education Services as our, um, network that assists us with our substitutes. We would charge long-term vacancies there as well. So you might have the double whammy effect where we're not spending the salary, but we are paying the contractual

086cost to Kelly services to fill that position and we may be paying um for some sort of level of service as a contractual depending on what the job is. Um so that's where you're seeing variance in certified. Again, there was carryover from title one as well where the state's allocation for title one went for us went from three to four million last year. and we said, "Well, we've already submitted a plan. We already have 30ome people staffed out of title one and we can't add 30% more people to the plan in the middle of the year." So, what that allowed was for some carryover. It allowed us to extend some positions further than we had planned to extend them. Um, but that is also a one-time thing. So, that was some cost avoidance for budgeted

087positions that we were not paying in the general fund, but they're going to they're going to come back to the general fund. So it would not behoove us to delete them and then have to add them back. So that's part of where that variance comes from for salaries. Um across the rest of them, they're pretty non-escript. Um there was at the end of the budget process last year, um it changed the initial the initial proposal for um PEA was that the employer wouldn't see an increase in premiums and then by the end of the budget process there was an increase. It was 2 or 3%. It wasn't a huge number. Um, but that's what we're seeing here is the second half of a year, right? Our budget goes from July to June. PEA's budget goes

088from January to December. So, for half the year, we're going to see a little bit increased cost and then we'll pick that back up in the next budget cycle. Um, so all in all on personnel, we're we're looking good in terms of our variance. uh when we look at then the non-personnel expenditures I also tried to put in some of the larger elements here. So for contractuals for Kelly services you can again see that we've got several um positions you know we put in a budget we thought was adequate. We've got several vacancies that are being paid by Kelly and when that happens it's not at a daily sub rate but it's at a regular teachers pay wherever their certification is. So, it's more expensive than if you had a one day submit per DM

089rate. Um, so that's where you're going to see some variance there. Um, technology contracts, we're actually pretty close on that. We had um three programs that we paid for with ESSER funds last year and we decided to keep I think two of them for an additional year and so one of them did not make it in the budget but would be rolling off and so that's why there's a variance there. um other contractuals, that's going to be maintenance, student services, and a lot of times what we find is um there are items where there a need for a building for a repair. They're pretty expensive, but they're not expensive enough to warrant a capital project. And so very often times the maintenance budget be because some, you know, pipes break, things need to be uh

090fixed, um the maintenance budget will oftentimes come in over. But again, these are difficult to forecast. A lot of what we do is look at prior year's expenses because if you just look at what purchase orders are encumbered right now, sometimes we'll liquidate half of those by because we haven't spent it and sometimes we'll have mater uh expenses materialized we didn't plan for at all and so it's really difficult in those areas to kind of know what you're looking at. Um utilities I think we're doing pretty good there. Um again the methodology there was look at expenditure to date and then take the few months remaining multiply what we had last year times three or 4% and that's where we would end up. Um and then equipment we did have a couple of emergency needs

091that led to a little bit of an overage on equipment. So all in all on uh you know this is usually the area budget as we saw in the breakdown of prior years where we would be a little bit over. Um so about $500 $600,000 projection over budget um in the contractuals and supplies. So if you net those two out it's about $2 million to the good on the total operating budget. Um last year we were a little bit higher but we did some transfers out and we actually ended up net neutral. So again um our thought process here is if our fund balance is within policy limits and we had some surplus we would be able to make similar decisions. Um that is about it in terms of the total review of budget. Are

092there any questions that I did not answer that I can't answer? >> Very thorough. Thank you for that. Anybody have any questions? >> Madam Chair, as we hit as we as we go into the next agenda item, which is one that was uh was added at the beginning as as an amendment. First of all, I want to give Jay, he's got to go again. So, I want to give him just a little bit of a break. I know that that was a a lengthy presentation uh but really want to make sure uh that you have the information that you need uh to make the decisions through this process. I want to appreciate a couple of things uh about Mr. Shikling's presentation though. One, I think it honors the complexity of this budget. Uh, but I

093think he also really makes every attempt and transparency to make this information accessible uh, not only to the leadership team and the board, but really our entire community. And that's our goal throughout the budget process. As I look through these, there' be two things that I would kind of call to your attention. One is the the tight margins on these. you're seeing ones, twos, uh, in terms of percentages off that comes from some of the structures and processes that Mr. Schickling has put in place uh, over the years, but it really serves to honor our taxpayers and in running an efficient budget, not one that's padded, not one that has uh, has any fluff in it, but really recognizes the needs uh, of of our school uh, to to deliver the service that that we're

094required to deliver. Second thing which really takes us to this uh to this next topic is that between 80 and 90% of our budget in in this in a service function that we're in uh is around compensation and personnel. Uh last month we uh we really uh delivered a presentation to you that was really uh beginning um of a conversation around setting a budget for this year. uh and really when it comes to compensation I come back to that first guiding principle of the last presentation. One is around competitiveness and when we talk about competitiveness we mean uh that uh we want to be able to attract and retain highquality people to deliver the services for our kids that deserve the very best uh that we have to offer. But two, we want to make

095sure that we honor our taxpayers. So we don't want to be uh the highest necessarily, but we don't want to be the lowest either. And so as we seek in whether it's it's bus drivers or school nurses or or facilities and maintenance in every function in our district, we want to be competitive. When it comes to teacher salaries, we've gotten a lot of questions and I know you have as well, which is why we're circling back uh to this. Uh when we looked at that uh that salary schedule uh as a first option for you to consider, uh we wanted to make sure first of all when we look at the AOP in our region, we want to make sure we're competitive. when we look at the the five Andersons, uh, Greenville, Pickkins, some of

096some of our neighboring districts, we want to be competitive. But then when we also compare these salary cells to the state minimums, we want to be uh competitive. In reviewing our our current salary schedules, uh we recognize that in some places, in some cells, we're more competitive than in others. And so as we look forward uh to seeing uh if the governor's $2,000 proposed raise comes through uh also in conversations across the street with our county council in partnership, we want to make sure that we provide a little bit of clarity based on some of the questions that we got between last month and this month. And so I appreciate you adding it to the agenda. So really just pitch it back to Jay now that he's had a chance to catch his breath uh

097and talk about maybe some updates that have been made to this spreadsheet as well as take any questions that you might have that are more specific. >> Sure. Um well I thank um Mr. Smith for the introduction. Um I think the first thing I need to do is explain that uh part of it is I made a mistake on what we presented last time and so I think it's just important to note that and explain it. um you know there was a lot of effort made on the salary schedule to target our competitiveness in the region and specifically where we have a number of teachers and specifically earlier in their careers. And so um the largest part of that effort was taking step zero and making it commensurate to what we wanted to be in

098terms of competitiveness. And then from every step that you know gradually above that step one to two then two to three three to four you wanted to ensure that there was uh you were maintaining that distance between those steps andor growing it. Um and so the focus was all from the top to the bottom. Um then in the bachelor's plus 18 the reason it's highlighted is because the state has done away with that cell. So then there was a large focus on let's make sure that no one in the bachelor's plus 18 is surpassed by somebody in the bachelors. Um which again led to some graduated changes. And then lastly, the goal was let's try to be as close to $1,000 or more for everybody uh in terms of a year-to-year take-home pay change with

099the acknowledgement that in certain levels of credentiing, we're unlikely to have folks that have that level of credentiing but are in their second or third year in their career. Um so ultimately in the master's plus third column um there were seven or eight cells maybe up to 10 cells where I didn't catch that the master's column had surpassed the master's plus 30 um because there was not that great of a difference between them to begin with. Um, and so that, you know, the take-home pay was still about a $1,000 increase, which was part of the goal, but we don't want to see somebody feel as though, um, you know, and there wasn't an intent to disrespect anybody, but um, there are certain positions within the district that by their nature, they're going to have a

100master's plus 30 years of experience. And so then they see that, talk to their colleagues, and feel like, you know, there's a slight. And of course that wasn't intentional but it was a mistake in how this was constructed. So um as a result there was a change where there was an added increase to the master's plus 30 um in some of those earlier cells up into the middle point. Um and so what you can see now is those year-to-year take-home changes are no longer a thousand but getting up into 1500. Um but also then the masters plus 30 maintains a minimum of I think the lowest one is $495 but the goal was 500 plus uh between the two. And so that effort was made just to make sure that folks understand that they're valued.

101That was not something that was intended to slight anybody. Um and so you know across the board when we're trying to make our dollar count there are uh some inequities in terms of what take-home pay people receive. But again, we're concentrating the effort where we feel like it needs to be concentrated. We're making that commitment. Um that we really don't want to see anybody with less than a thousand dollars year-toear. Um and aside from folks that have maybe topped out and are not also getting their their step, um we're going to be well above that number for the majority of our staff. U so I wanted to make sure that I properly explained what some of the questions were and then what's been done about it. I appreciate that. Thank you. >> Am I always

102the only person that has any questions? >> Well, I do have a couple. >> Um, so our scale goes to 28 years. >> It does. >> I'm sure that's because you can retire at 28 years and get and gather full retirement South Carolina. This used to go to 29 years. Um, and some districts go to 30. Um, and this just came to me. So, um, I don't know if y'all done any looking to see if these other districts that we're competing with go further. And by that, I'm asking that question so that uh, persons who achieve that 28th year, maybe if we went to 2930 instead of retiring and have that expectation that they'll keep working, maybe they would not retire until 30. Um, just something to think about. uh and also if we predominantly

103have one class of employees say uh I don't know uh school counselors or speech pathologists or mental health counselors that are falling in this master plus 30 range. Is that something that maybe other districts pull out of this teacher pay scale and do that separately like we do uh principles and assistant principles separately? Do we have some people that maybe we should look at? Obviously, we can't get this done by next year, but something down the road that we should look at possibly pulling them out so that you this isn't an issue. >> Yeah, I think that's a great point. Um, we've we've taken a look at doing that before. Um, we do offer uh certain stipens for some of these positions that are not on the salary scale. um they're dependent upon some of

104their professional duties and the and the quantity that they uh you know claims they may submit in certain systems. Um I believe there are some districts that do that. I believe there are some districts that do offscale stipens. I think the difficulty is um maintaining a comparison that is apples to apples for an equity, right? >> Um but yeah, I think it's certainly something we can discuss and and do some analysis on. Well, I think that way we could determine if it would be helpful for understanding and development. >> Thank you. >> All right. Any other questions? All right. Thank you again, Mr. Shiklin, for all the hard work on this. >> All right. Now, moving on to um discussion and possible action. Um >> Sure. We're going to ask uh Mr. Witrock and his

105team to come on uh forward and uh deliver a presentation. You know, one of the uh the catalyst for this conversation was uh as we look at some of the maintenance needs of some of our fields, we uh we know that our facilities and maintenance folks work hard uh to make sure that our our folks have have safe places to uh to practice and play. Uh but also that we're able to host uh to host events at at a high level and high quality. As we look at Senica High School specifically, one of the things that came forward is the necessity for a significant repair to that field. There's some drainage issues there. There's a crowning issue there. Uh all uh really kind of got have gotten to a place where we feel like they

106have to be addressed. When you look at the cost associated with addressing those, uh it is significantly above half a million dollars. And so as we begin looking at investing that kind of money into repairing and making sure that the field is playable for the coming years, uh the question came forward of a lot of our neighboring districts are going toward turf fields for for many reasons. Uh but we thought that it would be a good time to bring some information forward around turf fields to you uh so that you could consider if this is an investment that uh that might be timely for us. the uh what I have in the back of my head is this notion of spending 600 se or more thousand dollars on a a field repair, getting it to

107where it's playable, and then being back here in this place three years from now, saying, "Well, now everyone else is going towards turf. It's time for us to start thinking about that. If we're going to make this investment, it might be time to have that conversation now." And just wanted to bring this information forward for your consideration and discussion. Thank you, Mr. Smith. I'm I'm Josh Ruck. I'm the director of facilities for the school district. So, I just want to make sure I introduce myself. And with me tonight, I have uh Dan Dodd. He is a PL PLA, a professional landscape architect. He's also the president of Fitfields. Uh Fitfields, we've worked with them twice now in the past very successfully. They designed our beautiful new track at Senica High School and an equally beautiful

108track at Wahala High School. Um, and so as we started going moving forward talking about the issues on Senica football field, we brought Dan in because he would help us design those drainage issu drainage systems and um, irrigation systems that would be required as you brought down the the crown on the field. Um, and as you said, Mr. Smith, the the the cost kind of skyrocket on us pretty fast. Um and during some of our discussions with my department with Dan Dodd um and uh the AD the athletic director and uh coach football coach at Senica High um as we started seeing those costs rise uh the the discussion of of artificial turf kind of was introduced and I do want to point out that it was not introduced by Dan Dodd. He is very

109neutral in this. um he is equally excited about designing a grass field a natural grass field as he would be designing a new artificial field for us as well. So um so uh as we started going down this road a little bit exploring that option um we kind of realized that there's a lot of benefits to it. There's also some challenges to it. You know first off meaning the cost we're going to talk about some of those in just a minute but there's also some concerns a lot around synthetic uh fields that uh we want to discuss and kind of share some insights with you guys as that we've been learning. So I'm going to things on to Mr. Dodd and he's kind of give you a sideby-side comparison of natural grass versus synthetic fields.

110Um, and then anytime ask a question or we can ask some questions at the end as well. So, >> all right, Mr. Dian, appreciate being here. I'll check my ancestry.com. See if you know this is cool. Um, so anyway, I just, you know, I don't see my last name elsewhere. So, you know, so excited to be here today to answer questions, kind of present a little bit about our company, but you know, ultimately to help you uh on this journey to evaluate, you know, your capital improvements. So, with the theme of the evening, it's more data. So, you know, I kind of wish Corbin was here because he might like this too. He would have liked all the data earlier, too. That was awesome. By the way, very hard to follow that. So, I'm glad

111um you went after Corbin, not me. Anyway, all jokes aside, but thank you for having us. So, I I have a quick agenda. It's going to be eight slides and then open it up for Q&A or interrupt me as we go, whatever you want to do. U a little bit about us. We're going to uh talk about injury concerns, uh health concerns, heat, financial snapshots, uh advantages, um natural grass versus synthetics, and and then questions. So, just kind of hitting those eight bullet points. and and uh Josh called us uh he said these are the concerns we need to address. We built this presentation and what we get asked this all the time. So so it was great to kind of reframe this presentation in your context. Okay. So we want to bring some specifics

112to you to kind of understand what these things are about. Um just a little bit about us. Uh so we're a landscape architecture firm focusing on athletic surfacing. So natural grass fields, synthetic turf fields, tennis courts, running tracks. We work professional all the way down the municipal. Um, and so we we um provide a lot of services in the sports realm because as Mr. Smith was talking about, these are big investments. And so our our company um guides school districts through North and South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee on these decision processes. We recently just we're working through the Greenville um county schools right now to um help them with their procurement of their their fields. and that was done for a variety of reasons and we can talk about that later but they had different um

113kind of uh opportunities and constraints they had to consider in their district. Um so yeah we work with everybody but interesting to the right um just to kind of go through where where these things go we do them both you know we have millions and millions of square feet of athletic facilities you know division one and professional down to high school you can see 66% of our clients through the last 12 years are synthetic turf based fields I mean this is just my data from our company you know so it's a trend it's not only a trend it's kind of it it it is now the leader you know through through our facilities now I love natural grass systems. I I I adore them. They're my favorite. If you ask me, it's natural grass, but

114it has a lot of constraints and it has a lot of professional FTE work that needs to be done to maintain those fields at a very high level. So, synthetic turf becomes an option for for a variety of reasons and we're going to go through those. Um, all right. So, injury and I'm gonna I'm gonna talk a little fast just to keep it kind of because I can go on for hours, two hours. if I could go in weeds. But uh >> yeah, but yeah, I mean I love that but um no no I would I mean you know we love what we do and so I I got plenty of data to go through. >> Sure. >> But this was an interesting study. I wanted to present to you because a lot of people

115go what are the injury rates on the different surfaces and you know we we've heard both sides of the story. We've seen the national news. We've seen the the things that get pointed and kind of um talked about specifically about different surfaces that but when you play competitive sports you can get injured on both surfaces all surfaces whether it's tennis uh you know football grass synthetic u running tracks. So, but this was recent data where they took about 1,500 studies nationally of these the injury data of synthetic versus natural and their conclusion was after reviewing all the data and we read this report that you cannot point to synthetic turf as an increase in injuries. Okay. Now, there's individual studies um and just recently, a week or two ago, confirmation came out on um women's

116soccer injuries on ACL's and MCL's because of the the just it's just different uh built uh knees, you know, to be a lack of a but it's science that drives this and so between shoe cleat interaction surface grass and synthetic injuries happen everywhere. But this is available for you to read from the National Library of Medicine. This is not my data, but this is a resource for you to read in detail. And I always like you guys to, you know, get familiar with the data that's available to make the best choices for you because we're we're just going to kind of share it, but we're not going to push you in choice. It's your decision. And so, we just want to make sure the data is out there. If you have any more questions, we

117can point you to the sources directly to to review the literature. Second thing when we go to synthetic turf, uh, crumb rubber. Okay, if you're not, are you guys familiar with synthetic turf? I just want to like do have you guys been on a artificial turf field? Um, if you didn't play or you might have friends and family that play or sports on it. Um, generally the trend or when they started building these fields, they would use recycled tires and it's called crumb rubber and it's the little black pellets that travel with you from your tournaments from the beach back home. You know, that's just what goes in your car and your washing machine. That's recycled rubber and there is always kind of been an issue around rubber. Okay. So the EPA has and various

118studies are trying to figure out what are the you know health problems with rubber. Um it it's inconclusive in some range but it's hot. Sometimes the chain of command of the recycling is hard because there's foreign tires in our recycling line that have different chemical compositions. And so when if we would do a rubber field we would test it for all the heavy metal agents is required in the specifications. So the vendors that would provide it would meet the health criterias that we set within our design documents. Um because we're real nerds on this stuff. So but we want to make sure we document the correct thing if you would do um crumb rubber fields. But crumb rubber fields are also create a lot of heat. And so you know in in the Carolinas we

119do a lot of work and and and athletic heat is an issue with synthetic turf fields. They are absolutely hotter than natural grass systems, but there's some technologies that reduce that amount of heat by the different infill. So, um, plenty of to read Oh, and originally the EPA came up with the idea when synthetic turf in the early 80s, this was a great program by the EPA to recycle tires nationally and put them in our field. So it was like government driven as kind of an upcycle program from that recyclable effort in the early 80s. The chain of custody on recycling has now gotten very sophisticated where they can document all the process and the chemicals on the recyclable elements and kind of bring it through uh heavy metal analysis and so forth before they

120make crumb rubber. So but with heat recycled rubber being an issue and you can Google this. There's many places in the United States, I mean, um, the Pacific Northwest and California, you can't do fields for the crown rover. Just can't. It doesn't meet their mandates for state legislation. Um, so there's alternative infills. So the next slide, what we really have been doing a lot of is getting rubber out of the fields. And when you get rubber out of a synthetic turf field, you can do different type of materials, but you got to have a shock pad under this organic material for the head injury criteria and GMAX of the athletic safety. We are very pro shock pad whether you do a rubber system or organics because it's built in safety for athletic injury. And so

121what I'm talking about, there's impacts to the turf that can create a secondary impact. You know, you get two soccer players go up for a ball and they hit shoulders and that soccer player and I use soccer because soccer is rough. Uh they don't have helmets on. And you know, some of you know soccer at at high school level is a very competitive game, but I've seen a lot of secondary impacts and when that athlete falls to the ground and he or she needs protection. Um, so the padded systems that we recommend, they're a more expensive, but they bake in some of that GMAX guarantee and head injury criteria testing, and we can get into that as well, but it's it's athletic safety for your athletes. And so, we're always a pro pad company because

122it just builds a safer field regardless of infill. But our organic fill that we find that's equal in value in terms of um a crumb rubber expense is a woodbased product that can lower the temperature of the fields about 30 degrees. This is huge. Now a natural grass Bermuda field on August 10th is going to be 105 degrees. An organic infill synthetic turf field will probably be higher than 121. It'll be about 140. And that synthetic turf field will melt your cleats if it has rubber in it. And I've been on all these fields and I'm just going to tell you, it will melt your shoes in August with rubber on synthetic turf. It's our biggest problem in the industry is rubber. So getting rubber out of the system creates an opportunity to lower the

123temperature with alternative, but it also gets rid of the question, what's in my field recycled heavy metal content and so forth. So the organic options are very good and that's what your your neighboring counties are doing as well. So we have some fields in Pickins. They're all organics. You can go walk on the Daniel High School practice field. That's that's an organic system which would be similar to something we would be proposing here. All right. Finances. Um these are not cheap things to do but to do athletic fields correctly are not cheap in general. I've been on plenty of natural grass fields that are poorly maintained and designed. They hold water. They're high crowns. They're playability issues. They're not maintained well because really the baseball coach or football coach is also in charge of mowing

124the grass at some of these places. Um, and you know, a lot of times we're we're this there's definitely a new generation of coaching staff that does not want to spend their time being a groundskeeper. They want to coach student athletes and they just don't want to spend another two hours mowing their field every four days with a hybrid Bermuda cultivar that needs to be cut at 3/4 inch to play correctly. Um but you know overall synthetic turf fields are going to cost more than natural grass and this is just a reminder that you have to build natural grass correctly. So that's just as important. You have to build them correctly and you have to maintain them because drainage and irrigation needs improvement. A new sod every 10 years is pretty much a requirement. So

125there are some expenses. A lot of people thinks it's it stops at the 600,000 and you're good and you walk away from it. But you're also putting 48 $50,000 a year field and maintenance times and everything that goes into that field. But there's other benefits as well. You got to be aware of the cliff. You have to plan for the cliff because the cliff is we have to redo these things in 10 years, but you don't do the whole system. You just relay the carpet. So, that would be similar to you getting new carpet in your house. Uh the pad and everything might stay in place and you're just going to get a refresh and those will you have to budget for those because those are about $500,000 at the end of the 10-year cliff.

126And so I just want you guys to know it's kind of one of those things that's a recurring cost. Um, and you guys can spend time with that. We have more details if you need more information. Um, next slide. But the here's the the secret kind of element where decisions start to get you start to quantify playable hour use, your investment in it. And ultimately, in a perfect world, 3,000 hours on synthetic turf. Now, we're we're not going to be out there, you know, for 3,000 hours, but your grass field is only going to, you know, handle about 600 hours of use. Okay? So, that's limited limited for um that's not a lot of time in a year to be honest with you. 600 hours of use. So the synthetic turf really helps especially helps

127schools that are landlocked, maybe don't have the resources to some of your bigger campuses. You know, they become very valuable places. Um and really you get equitable opportunity and access because increased hours. So you can't deny playable use. So I think it's an interesting thing. Once you build it, you need to play on it, maximize the use hours to get the benefit. But then it's hard to just have sacred ground for a football field for six nights a year and practice only and let it sit in the spring and not do anything because you can also miss out on revenue for athletic clubs. So, you know, you can rent those facilities and a lot of schools do rent those facilities um to different groups and also in increases your capacity of of sport opportunities. So

128if you wanted to add sports, this platform can take the use. Um, next slide. It's a little bit on the breakdown and again I'm get into the stats and get a lot of that, but you know the the dollar per use for synthetic is cheaper than natural grass. But with all that data, really what I have a hard time putting the number on is the equitable athletic capacity increase. That means your car miles per gallon just went from 20 to 30 miles per gallon. So, you're asking that piece of land to do more to put more use on it, more opportunities, get more kids to be active on it. And emerging sports have a home, you know. So, if somebody wanted to bring new sports to you, you have capacity and built equitable access to

129the fields. And so you you do have that additional cost that you have to understand, but you also increase that access because it is no rain events other than lightning. Of course, you got to be safe and get everybody off the facility. You can play in full rain. No one's striping it. It's ready to go. Um, you know, our school, I'm in the um Fort Mill School District. I mean, our field is like soccer, lacrosse, now we got flag, girls flag football. I think I'm gonna be coach next year. I'm pretty excited, you know, just just just a coordinator in the background. But yeah, the opportunities that they maximize that field and it's a kind of an urban campus. So, we have no choice, you know, we don't have a lot of that. But you

130can't you you can always put them on that field. And so that's a cool that's part of that athletic capacity increase that I think it would it only gets valued how you view you know your your collective system of all your assets. So you might have plenty of assets and that might not be that important to you. So but it's something to consider. Um I think one more oh okay before we get into this um to start at the top 32 teams in the NFL 17 are done synthetic turf 15 natural grass. Some teams play in the same stadium. So, it's actually 15 stadiums are grass, 15 are synthetic turf. FBS college football, 70% of stadiums are synthetic turf. However, ACC is 88% grass. ACC is 53% grass. Uh Big 10's 60% turf, and the

131Big 12 75% turf. So, it's all over the boards. And then we're in the state of South Carolina and these are some of the recent school districts. Um Greenville is is one of our clients. Darlington, we're working with Berkeley right now. Are then this is our we didn't go Google Earth everything. This is an estimate. But 64% of the high school stadiums are synthetic turf and they're only increasing. And you know with Greenville, it's just mass students. they need to play a ton of sports and kind of lacrosse started to trigger that conversation to put all those spring sports in one place because um kind of this this whole kind of area has got a you know a a growing sport population. But those are th that's kind of the trend um that that's just

132a recent photo of Wade Hampton. So we we just finished that this this summer. I mean this no couple weeks ago. Um but you can see where where we are going with this in uh in high school stadiums. And then so the three things to close I want to talk um owner experiences never had an owner that selected synthetic turf to regret it. So I haven't had that call say Dan we made a mistake. Um again I haven't had one that went natural grass and said they made a mistake. So, you know, you it's kind of what you want. Um, the future is definitely the capacity of use. Um, the playable hour is a key element. I think the fields are safe. Um, you know, our firm will specify and get you the safest we

133can on your budget. That's our mission for the student athlete. They're flat. They don't have bumps. They don't have maintenance issues. We really embrace non- rubber fields with padded systems from the environmental aspects and then um you know there's a little bit of a generational shift that occurs and Josh's father are some great soccer athletes grass rules at the higher levels of soccer. There's no question about it. Um but a lot of high school athletes we talk to you know might not be they just love the consistency of synthetic. We we We hear a lot. Um, we recently worked in in Darlington and Hartsville, you know, loves they they switched from grass to synthetic and they just feel like their team got better. Now, these are just coaches. I I got cut from basketball my

134junior year. I don't know. But the they they I'm what I'm saying is when you do it, I think if there's enough support, people really enjoy, you know, and I haven't had anybody regret it. Um, but we've also had some really great if we're going to do natural grass the right way and we can do it. It it is it's just more than just putting sod on the ground. It's it's a it's a little it's a technical build um with very specialized contractors. And um and then we could walk you through natural grass maintenance because you want to do it correctly and have the right types of equipment to handle uh natural grass fields. And by the way, your natural grass fields are in very good shape other than the geometry of the original build,

135but the folks that maintain it daily, they do the best they can with what they have. But that has a monster kind of crown. So Josh was like, "Hey, let's just take the crown down." And I'm like, Josh, this crown, we can't just tabletop a field, right? Because then you'll hit the hash marks and fall off the ledge. So they kind of all get tied together in a in a in a grading design. Um, and so when you're exporting that to get it down to a lower, flatter level, it it increases that natural grass cost. So that's it. Appreciate I'm here for your questions. Um, I can I'm just free to 11. I >> have some questions, but they're they're more for Josh than for you. >> Yeah. >> Um, >> good luck, Josh. >>

136Okay. And and I say that because uh I get that since I was at Synica actually was AD when that field was built. So I get it. It's a money pit for uh keeping it like it needs to be. Uh so I guess one of my questions would be when we do this at at Cica specifically, is that going to take care of the places where water stands? So like and I know I could walk right over there and say we still got water standing and so forth. So, so once this is done, is that going to take care of that issue? Um, >> that was one of our primary issues was the drainage. You're talking you're s you're sitting on the home stands left side of the right >> left side left end zone

137there. Um, >> there's really specific systems that you're going to be installing if you win that. >> Oh, yeah. It would it would, you know, the drainage and that was that was also our goal. We're going to continue with natural grass. We want to fix that >> with the crown for sure. Right. Well, I get that the it I get the cost over time. I People don't realize that you got all the pesticides, fertilizers, the pre-emerge, all of the things that you have to do to keep the field uh in playable condition. And then when you have your growing season, you don't want your soccer team out there in the middle because most of that's done in the middle of the field when when you're in the season where you're trying to ready your field

138for the fall. So that's why this all is the way it is. Uh, and I get that. So I I can truly see how this is the direction we need to go in. I also did my own little research about what's going on in the in the general area and in the state of Georgia and in the state of North Carolina. So if we don't go down this path, we're going to be again behind everybody else that that we're competing about uh with all the time. And also injury, by the way, as you were talking, if all of these people are changing and we do not, we're putting our players at greater risk because uh most of the injuries that they incur because of the ch constant changing of surface play. So I I think

139that it only stands to reason that this is beneficial across the board. Um, I'm thinking that there would be equipment that would have to be purchased different for the maintenance of this field. Uh, like after the fact. So, like you've had a a game on Friday night and you had a I don't know wind rainstorm over the weekend and then Monday comes. Who who is going to be responsible for the maintenance of just the dayto-day cleaning, walking the field, making sure that there's no gum or a Gatorade spill that didn't get cleaned up, those kind of things. >> Yeah, we've actually started to look into that a little bit. Those those machines vary anything from 4,000 to 16,000 or more. And they're basically they um clean the debris from the field, but they actually groom

140the field and kind of fluff the fluff up the fibers. >> I don't know if you could add any more to that. >> Yes, that's included. We specify it. We get it as part of the warranty. These are warrantied eight years. They last about 10. Um each manufacturer has a different piece of equipment that they bring as part of the bid package that gets bid through the manufacturers's process. Um, and then there's a training session and they walk everybody through, you know, you're basically grooming these fields like really once every three weeks. You're not and it's you're just taking a groomer is like a giant broom uh on a like gator or golf cart that you're just sweeping the field. Magnet is very important because it gets like if your band's out there practicing, which

141they can now, you know, like you can get out there and use that. Um >> um take the magnet to get bobby pins or or change. Um, no red Gatorade, red Gatorade stains. That's like everybody's got to go traditional lemon. Um, but um, yeah, they each each like, well, we did it competitively. Turf manufacturers each have a little bit of different variation depending on what manufacturer installs your turf. Um, and that and that they have a groomer and comes with it. But there is some maintenance like this is not maintenancefree. It's not a zero game, but not mowing or watering or fertilizing. So, um I would say would you're looking at 8 to 12 hours of somebody's time maybe per month to, >> you know, that would probably be the same guys that are cutting

142and vacuuming. >> That be that'd become their job. I'm envisioning a Zamboni looking device that blows and sweeps and collects with magnets. >> Most of them are pulides, aren't they? >> Yeah, they're pul behind. Um, you know, ju just because just to let you know, like the Carolina Panthers, they play up their field is all green. There's no inlays. They painted for everything. And they have one of those machines that scrub the lines and then they redo it for soccer or they change your end zones. But that shows you the versatility of turf and kind of what they do at that level. No, it's it's it's a you know well and there's also options that we find that we really like with a manufacturer after an installation is to consider their their buy year or

143um every six months of maintenance visit by the manufacturer through the course of the warranty. And those contracts can be anywhere from, you know, three to $6,000. But then you get that kind of continuation of monitoring the warranty. And then of course we're here if you have an issue with the field the fiber or anything we can call the warranty and the warranties that we solicit are all third party insured COIs based on it not just a manufacturer warranty. So we make a pool uh third part you know 5 million with a 10 million total in policy that gets wrapped into your project. So Josh will get COIs every year from whoever wins it with an insurance backing against it. Now, they can be vandalized. You know, you don't want to set them on fireworks

144out there and things like that, but generally, um, you your facilities are are pretty much secured at all times. So, >> two more questions. So, looking at this design that's here, this is a Josh question. Um, so the turf would go from track edge to track edge all the way around. There wouldn't be any grass growing in between there. >> Yes, ma'am. >> And my last question for you is who would be in charge of the design of the >> That's a great question. I think that'd be a kind of a joint almost committee between the school admin, the AD, um the coaches, and I think even probably some district representatives, probably whoever's going to be our next assistant superintendent of operations be involved in that and myself. Um I know that with for instance

145that at Senica, Andy Bayer, AD over there and uh and David Crane have already submitted their designs and so they were very quick to jump on the on the mic and they're very excited about it. That's more for the community than me. I don't want to I don't want >> Yeah, sure. And you know, and to that point, you know, you know, I was a principal before this position, I would probably include my SIC community and let them have some say in because obviously once you paint that on, there's there a long time. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> Any other questions? We have this on for possible action. If we would like to take first reading on this tonight, if everybody feels confident that this is a path forward, we can take first

146reading. >> This this wouldn't be a policy necessary. It would just be for approval. If you guys wanted to approve it, we'd move forward with it. I think that probably the the discussion we've had uh would be start with Synica and then we would actually roll out the additional plans uh in future years. This would not be something where we'd want to overburden uh our community or uh or over encumber our our current budget. But uh in light of the the investment that we're going to have to make anyway into the Synica field, uh we'd move forward with the Synica field and then come back to the board uh for additional approval for the uh the other fields. Uh probably one per year over the course of three years would be the way we would

147approach it. >> When when is the best time that you're going to do this? When is it? >> If you were going to do it this summer, it' be immediately after graduation start by time practice. >> It won't affect football practice because they generally practice on Yeah. Yeah. No, it won't. >> So, if we're okay to take first reading on this, um, just for approval, I'll entertain a motion. So I move that we >> madam chair. I move that we approve um for action the field maintenance and updates at the center high school. >> All right. motion. >> Motion in a second. Any further discussion? >> All right. All in favor clarity that be to move forward with Cynica Cica only that we would come back with uh with with further updates as we move

148forward. But uh but >> Okay. >> All right. Now moving on to policy J A- request for field trip change to that policy. >> Sure. Uh this is a a very minor change. You have a copy of it in front of you. There is a field trip request form and that field trip request form simply uh it actually uh speaks to uh or references another policy. Uh we are updating that policy to make sure that that policy is correct. And so you'll just see that uh instead of policy IFCB, it's policy JA that's being referenced there. And so this would be uh for uh for discussion and possibly uh put it under discussion and possible action in case the board uh would will if we uh do uh discussion and first read approval on first

149read. >> We're just cleaning it up so it matches. Right. >> That's exactly right. Yes, ma'am. >> I will take a motion for approval on policy J Oe correction. >> I make a motion for first reading and policy J O- E request for field trip. >> Second. >> All right, motion. >> A second. Any further discussion? All in favor? >> Thank you. >> And the next one, fairly brief. If you go to page two of staff leaves and absences, you'll recall probably uh somewhere in the neighborhood of three months ago uh came forward really in an effort to offer some flexibility for teachers and um moving from uh the minimum of a half day to a minimum of a quarter day uh leave. We've really got some feedback from principles and and schools that I

150think in an effort to make things flexible for our teachers that there have been some unintended consequences that have actually uh not been of a benefit to teachers. And so I I I think that there still may be some things down the road that we can do to help our teachers out and give some flexibility, but in this moment I think what we would like to do is to go back to the to the policy, the former policy to make sure these these current consequences aren't aren't leveraged against teachers. And so that's what you'll see uh in the third bullet. Uh just going from that quarter day back to a half day until we come up with something that works a little bit better for schools, principles, and teachers. Entertain a motion for policy GCCGcd.

151I make a motion that we um approve on f on this reading policy GCC GCD staff leads and absences making the change presented. So move. >> Okay. Motion second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Thank you. And we do not have any uh action items for this evening as we've just taken those actions. Uh so now Mr. Smith for superintendent report. >> Now I'm going to try to be brief tonight, but I do want to uh to honor one of the teachers that we have here in the room. Uh Mr. Nolan Black has is really uh hung in there for a long time uh here this evening. But uh uh uh you know, all of our arts teachers do do a fantastic job. And for our students that whether they're in chorus, orchestra, or uh

152band, this is this is a fantastic experience that these kids get. And and really the quality of it is um is related to the quality of the individuals that are leading these programs. And so appreciate Mr. Black being here, not just for the Wahala uh chorus, the Wala Middle School course chorus, but for all of our arts programs because they indeed are worthy of our honor. Most recently uh under uh his direction, the Wallala Middle School uh Ladies Corral was chosen to perform at the South Carolina Music Educators Association or the SEMEA at their annual conference held at the University of South Carolina this February. And so you'll see a picture here uh before you these 58 uh folks that uh that were at the University of South Carolina as middle school students. If you've

153heard them, you know that it was a a a fantastic uh performance. The students represented Wallala Middle School and really our entire district exceptionally well. They received a standing ovation, which is completely understandable if you've ever heard them at the conclusion of their performance. But uh just really appreciate Mr. Black being here to represent that that great uh team of musicians over there and really our entire district. And so if those that are here in the audience would help me uh honor Mr. Black and his entire teams that are are going to tune in or tune in as well. So they they instead of flooding I just told them if you'll just tune in and listen that they would be able to >> Well, hey, we we want to thank our music educators. We want

154to thank our students and we want to thank our parents for their great support of these programs. uh and it's going to be important for us. Uh just as as long as we do this to continue to support the arts here in school district of Aone County. Thank you for being here to represent. >> Very much appreciate your support, not just requirement for all the arts. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> All right. And now just a couple of mentions. It's another busy week here. Tomorrow night, just want to make sure you're aware at Hamilton Career and Technology Center from 5 to 7 is our Steam night. If you've ever been there, then you'll be there again. This is a fantastic night where we have industry partners from all over our county

155along with some of our teachers from uh primarily our elementary schools. There's just an awful lot of positive energy around uh around steam. On Thursday, our district art show, uh we have uh I I would say we have at least a thousand people that come there to the uh world of energy at Duke Power. This is going to be Thursday uh this March 12th from 4 to 6:30. That's just a drop in. you don't have to stay for the whole time. You're going to see some world-class visual arts uh that's out there and our students and parents are there and so uh they'd love to see you. I also want to remind uh the board and really everybody listening tonight that spring break is next week. Uh it's a little bit early this uh this

156year. Our schools will be closed from March 16th through the 20th. If you have any questions about that, just contact your teacher or your local school. But those are the things that I have uh for a superintendent report this evening. And now for board member comments. >> Well, since I'm on a roll for asking questions, I have another one. Um, I was on a mission to find a softball schedule for West Oak. Uh, I realize that we're transitioning uh with our web pages and so forth. Um, but who's responsible for the school websites? Like I know Miss Dodd, you do our district web page. Who who actually would be responsible for though letting those things be present on the school web pages? >> Sure. Um actually each school does have someone who usually works with

157that, but we are in transition right now. So not all of our individuals have done their training on the new website platform. So a lot of our schools do have their spring schedules. They got shared them with me. So, I've been able to link them. Um, I believed um West Hooks were done, but I'm not seeing that here. That may actually be an error on my part as I'm learning. There may just be a spot that um the right >> visibility is not turned on. I appreciate that. I'm going to look right now and see if that's the cause. And if not, I'll look in that look into that tomorrow to see why it's not up there. >> Well, one of you already know that that websites one of has been one of my frustrations.

158uh even before I retired, it was frustrating that uh at the website that I was working on would be uh just a ditto of the school district web page. So to actually get through that aspect to get to a to a information that I specifically needed as a person not here. >> Yes. >> Uh it's difficult. So, um, and and again, I know we're in transition, but each school web page and when you first pull it up is a duplicate of the school district web page. So, like each each of the icon or each of the areas on there are identical. So, if I go to Wajala High School, maybe I'd rather see something different than the four tabs that we have at the district level. like I don't necessar if I want to look

159at the school board for example, I'm going to go to the district web page. If I'm at Wahala, maybe I need a tab that goes directly to athletics instead of the pulld down menu. Uh I I'm just making a suggestion. >> Yeah. >> Based on uh um something that's more user friendly because >> one of the things that we're working on that we would launch in the fall is a campus landing page for each school that does look different than our district page. So when we did our overall design and the migration process, all of those individual schools look very similar. you know, some of that similar nature is so that when folks know where when they go to one site where it's the same on another site, it's easy to find. So, I one

160own West Hope schedules are there. I didn't click the right icon to make them visible, so I apologize for that. It's been corrected already, right? >> Um, but I'd love to have some conversation as we um finish designing that campus landing page that we would then institute for the start of next school year. that would be a little more specific to schools with information on the front page. It would be easier to find. >> So, like it would have been nice to to be able to pull up Wala High School today and have a blast on the girls basketball success. >> Uh, and I I realize that th those are working pieces that somebody has to be responsible for. And and that's why I was asking is that something that always comes from you or

161is that something that uh someone at the school is assigned to keep those things updated? >> Typically each school does have a web master that's signed. I'll be honest to say that some schools are more accomplished at that than others. Um I think it's a time thing. I think it's a lot to expect, but we're working on establishing those permissions so that it wouldn't have to be just one person at a school page. So, for example, if someone the media specialist felt confident and comfortable, they could manage their media center page rather than it having to be a centralized person at the school. So, we'd like to have an updated identified person that would be the web master for each school, but then also be able to assign those individual permissions to areas of the

162school that they could individually work on. >> Okay. Thank you for that. >> You're welcome. Anybody else? >> I would just like to wish um the district a safe and um restful spring break. >> Thank you. >> All right. At this time, I will take a motion to move into executive session for personnel items, employment recommendations and changes. >> So move. >> Second. >> All right. All in favor? All right. Thank you. We will return. What's All right, we are back in open session and at this time I will take a motion to approve the personnel items uh employment recommendations and changes as presented. >> I make a motion that we accept the personnel items, employment recommendations and changes as presented tonight. Second. >> All right. Motion to second. Any further discussion? All in favor?

163All right. Thank you. And now a motion to adjurnn. >> I move that we >> second. >> Motion and second. All in favor. All right. Thank you. Two pockets.