001[Music] All right. Welcome. I would like to call this meeting to order. I am particularly excited to see so many faces of parents and students and community members in the audience today. So, if you will join me for a moment of silence. Amen. Thank you. All right. This time we will stand for the pledge of allegiance. And we have Miss Annie Campbell from Wala High School. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, at this time we will have uh the approval of our agenda. Any questions or discussion on our our agenda? All right, seeing none, the agenda will stand approved. All right, so moving to special recognition. We've had
002a little bit of a change of plans. Um our K9 officer that was going to present our new K9 dog has had a little accident unforeseen. everybody's okay, but we just now will push that to our next meeting and they will be here hopefully in May. So, we will forgo that off of our special recognition uh part, but we look forward to introducing him at our next board meeting. And now, it is my distinct honor and privilege as a proud Wahala High School alumni that we get to introduce the 2025 girls state basketball championship uh team. And at this time, I would like to welcome Miss Jennifer Crawford to do the formal introductions. Thank you so much. First of all, I want to say thank you for allowing us to be here tonight and um
003taking part in the celebration of this team. I am so incredibly proud of them. And before I introduce them, I just want to be sure that it is known that not only did they win a state championship, which is a huge accomplishment and something to celebrate, but they also won the first team state championship at Wajala High School since 1952. And they also won the first ever girls team state championship at Wala High School. I have told this team, I have told our community, I've told anyone that would listen that these girls, this team, they are legends. They solidified their place in history at Wajala High School. And so again, I am so very proud of them. And I would like to start by first introducing um our head coach of the Lady Razerbacks, Mr.
004Byron Winfrey. I guess I'll say a few words. It's been an honor to lead this group. This a special group. Um they're great in the classroom, great to be around. We have I mean it's just just been a blessing. Thank you school district. Um obviously I was hired here four years ago and so it's been a blessing to be a part of this school district. It's it's a great place to work and um again I'm just thankful to to lead and be a part of this community. I guess I'll introduce my coaches and players. Uh Gary Wood is my assistant coach. Guess I'll go seniors down to freshman. Uh first senior is Giana Ortiz. We have Lake and Oliver, Danny Campbell, Woody. These four been me since I've started, so they put up with me
005for four years. Um, they they they did a great job of setting the foundation, and this is the result that we got. So, I'm very proud of this group. And now my juniors got Cammy Roach, Mary Chapel, Chapel, Miley White, and Mackenzie Tatum. All right. And I have two sophomores, Maya Cobb and Ashlin Freight. And then my two freshman, Bailey Cannon Bentley. This is definitely a special group. They're going to do great things in life outside of just basketball. They've already made an impact on this community. So, I'm just thankful that this is a group that I I was given and coach can say the same thing. So, this is a great group. Very proud of this group. This is the legends. Um I wouldn't be standing here today if it wasn't for this group
006here. So, I'm very proud of what we did and what we accomplished. So, We decided it is a lot of fun to win a state champion and we'd like to do it more often. So, we're we're going to take this as the first of many to come. And girls, we'd love to get a picture with the school board. So, if you guys can maybe use this uh platform here and we'll ask the school board members to come around and and get a photo with you for our website. Ashlin, it's funny. As aggressive as they are on the court, they're actually really shy. [Laughter] Y'all step up so we can take advantage of the step and you'll be able to see people best. So you want the first group down. Make sure you can see Miss
007Dodd. All right. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. There we go. Thank you. All right, we know the school board meetings are super exciting. I don't know why anybody wouldn't want to stay for them. So, moving on to our board highlight, we uh want to recognize school library month. Good evening. Good evening. Um, first of all, thank you for this opportunity to highlight the hardworking, compassionate, bookloving librarians of the Aon County School District. When people think of libraries, they often think of books, and rightly so. But what I want to share with you today is that reading and libraries aren't just about books. They're about building community within and far beyond the walls of our schools. The modern school library is the instructional and learning hub of the school. It's a vibrant, flexible space focused
008on digital andformational literacy, innovative thinking, creative expression, meaningful communication, and collaborative learning. And at the heart of it all is the school librarian. Librarians play a key role in fostering a love of learning and supporting students academic growth in countless ways. Sure, we promote books But our work goes far beyond that. We teach research and technology skills. We co-plan and co-e with classroom teachers. We facilitate storytelling, media creation, and studentled school news programs. We help students become creators and critical thinkers in an increasingly complex world. And our work doesn't stop there. We host book fairs that ignite excitement and make reading accessible. We organize literacy nights and family and me reading time where older students read to their toddler siblings, building family bonds and growing confident readers all at once. We review and purchase materials
009thoughtfully and intentionally, always aiming to reflect and respect the lives and stories of all of our students. Most importantly, the school library is a safe place, a place where every student, regardless of background, identity, or ability, feels accepted, seen, and celebrated. It's where they find themselves in book characters, and in fellow readers. It's where they can ask hard questions, explore big ideas, and dream bold dreams. The thing about the AON school district librarians is that we don't just lead students to reading. We salt the oats. We give them a taste. so rich and satisfying that they develop a lifelong hunger for stories, knowledge, and curiosity. And sometimes the simplest activities have the biggest impact. Teaching language and story skills through song during story time, for example, can transform a child's understanding of rhythm, rhyme, and
010meaning, and it's joyful. So, no, we're not just librarians. We carry libraries within us. We hold and share stories with our students and our communities. We are architects of readers, thinkers, dreamers, and doers. And that's why the school library matters. And that's why we matter. Thank you so much for giving us this time. At this time, we would like to ask all of our librarians that are here with us to stand and be recognized as well. Thank you. And you are correct. Y'all do so much more for our students. So, thank you each and every one of you. All right. Now, for our school highlights. First up, we have Kiwi Elementary. Good evening. Thank you all for the opportunity to be here tonight and speak with you to share the heart of Kiwi Elementary School.
011Our students, our faculty, our families, and our community who support us in countless ways every single day. This school year, we chose to lean deeply into the idea that learning doesn't happen in isolation. It thrives in connection. Connection to teachers who believe in the full potential of every child. Connection to families who walk alongside us. And connection to the community that cheers us on every step of the way. In focusing on sorry, excuse me, in focusing on connection, we have been intentional about creating opportunities for that space this school year, the space of togetherness. So this school year we started a new initiative with inviting all pro dads to our school. All pro dads is an opportunity for fathers and children to come together monthly to learn and grow together. Also new new this school
012year is our family and me time where our families have three opportunities per month to come receive engaging lessons by certified teachers and working on pre-academic skills with preschool children ages 2 to four years old. Recently we had our career day in March where we celebrated that over 78% of our presenters that way from were from our very own school families. So our families don't just attend, they participate. They come alongside us not only to celebrate their children, but also to learn with them. And it's learning together that makes Kiwi unique. So part of what we do each day is try to think about unique ways to promote and encourage learning. So with our book vending machine, we celebrate and encourage learning. Teachers have coupons that they give out to students, eager readers or students
013that are most improved to be able to go purchase a book from the book vending machine. Also, we have a principal's wall of writing again where we celebrate learning through learning. So, each month teachers submit author's work to display on the wall. And as you can see, there's a candid shot of students just enjoying the writing on the wall. I would also like to spotlight collaboration at QOE. So this past school year, our first grade team collaborated to create Downtown, a presentation that you can see there on our hallways where students had uh a unit with integration on social studies and map skills that integrated with literacy and they celebrated that learning for the whole world, the whole school to see. And then after downtown was Berb City and that's where the action of course
014took place. And then there you can also see just our community partnerships with the YMCA where our our students learn lifelong skills with learning. And you can see they're connected and we're doing that together. Focusing on academics, our students this year, they rose to the challenge and we celebrated inducting our largest beta club ever with 33 new members this past fall with a total of 44. So, as you can see, we had to figure out a space large enough to accommodate. And while they're working on service learning projects, they're excited to do so. We also celebrated Carrington Robertson. she could not be here this evening, but Carrington was the state winner for the D essay contest. And just to brag on Okone County, there were a little over 500 submissions statewide and our county submitted
015over 260 essays. I also have here for us um Kiwi's end of the school yearl snapshot where we are looking at growth across the school year and we are celebrating four out of six grade levels that scored above the 60th percentile in literacy and over 58% of our our grade levels scored four out of six grade levels scored above 58% in math. So, that's a celebration for us. And we're not quite to the end of the school year, so we still have um a few weeks in front of us. Without being at school each day, you can't learn. So, we were intentional about looking at our attendance and wanting to improve that. So, our counselor this year had a 25-day perfect attendance challenge where we targeted students that have um a history of truency and
016attendance intervention plans. Our goal was to improve so that 88% of those students would meet that perfect day challenge. We exceeded that and 93% of our students met that perfect attendance day goal. I can't end this evening without um talking about Monday, not just any Monday, but manual Mondays. If you remember in December, I shared with you all manual Mondays at QE where we prioritize hands-on learning um at the beginning of each week and focus on minimizing screen time. Here you can see just a few snapshots of hands-on learning, not just on Mondays at QOE, but every day because we think that's important for students to be engaged in hand hands-on learning. I end this evening just with appreciation for the wonderful faculty and staff that we have at KOE. I believe they are the
017most dedicated teachers in the county that show up early to start their day and they stay late making sure that they are prepared to meet every student's needs. I also want to show appreciation for you all and just thank you for your continued support at Kiwi Elementary School in Okone County. Thank you. Mr. Holiday with Wajala Elementary School highlight. Good evening. How are y'all doing? Good. Great. All right. I I know y'all love big meetings. So, I think I invited my whole class uh not class, the whole student body to get I I I invited our unified club and some of our um staff to um I want to recognize our special ed department. She she took it, didn't she? Um but I last year at this time when when you all asked us to
018present, I I start thinking when I get finished last year of what I'm going to do next year. Um and there's so many things that go on in the school uh that I could spend three hours doing this for you all. And I could actually spend probably several days doing this for y'all. But um as I as I started thinking and and looking around and just noticing my staff, noticing things that were going on in the school. Um I would I would argue with any principal in here that um I've got the hardest working staff in the district. Um and I know they're all hard working. I know some of the Kiwi folks in here too, so I'm just giving them a hard time. Um but we've got a hardworking staff. Um teachers on a
019daily basis um spend their own time, family time, getting things ready, um preparing for for school, preparing for class, preparing for their students. Um but I've also got a group that spend even more time doing other things like paperwork and individually planning for each student. Um and those are my special ed teachers. So tonight I want to recognize them. I'm gonna ask them all to come up here. Oh, come on. They've each prepared a song to sing tonight. Y'all stand up here. Not all of them can make it tonight, but um they're they're here with us. I told them I'd read their name. Uh but I I want to give this these folks a round of applause because they work their tails off every day. They put in countless hours. This year's been a little
020bit difficult. They've got a new um plan, ed plan, uh system that they do their IEPs in, and it is a challenge. Um I was trying to find something in it today and I had to ask. I can't find things in there still. So, they use it all the time. And um it has been a challenge this year. Um as we are preparing for next year, I've got some folks that have been working on schedules, working on inclusion for their classrooms. Um, we've even tested some of that out this year. Um, trying to get ready for next year. So, I I applaud you all. Um, thank you for all you do. Um, just raise your hand when I I call your name. U, Jennifer Groen could be here tonight. Annette Hobik, she's our one of
021our PIP teachers. Shelley Helms is a resource teacher. Emily H. Hearnden, one of our self-contained uh teachers. Chris Jensen, one of our self-contained teachers. Lisa Jensen, resource teacher. Sandra Maddox, speech teacher. and Allison McCall, one of our resource teachers, and they couldn't do it without these folks, um, our aids that they're teachers, too. They they're right there with them, beside them. Uh, they work hard. Uh, they teach our students. They test our students. Um, so Lisa Price couldn't be here this evening. Um, Angela Pelfrey is Pepe. Shelby Watkins is a self container aid. And then Veronica Wright, she couldn't be here. So, um, I got everybody to me. Yeah. All right. I want to make sure um give them one more round of applause. I appreciate all they do. Y'all want to stay up here
022for the kids, too? I saved the best for last. You y You want to All right. Um I need all of my unified club members to come up. Y'all smile. Y'all get recognized. Anybody else? That it. All right. Um, our unified club, we are a unified champion school. Um, do you want to explain what that is, Miss Hearnden? Yeah. Okay. You can stand right here. Y. Okay. So, yes, the unified club is a club that is based on Special Olympics program, which is a nationwide program, but specifically we go with the South Carolina special education program. And um our school was designated as a unified champion school about four years ago. So 2025 is its last year, which means we're up for renewal. Um which means you know it that next year we're going to
023have that title again. So um Unifi Club seeks to make sure that all students throughout our whole school are recognized and respected as members of the whole school body. Um so we really seek to make sure that we are building friendships, relationships, um whole school engagement opportunities where all kids can feel encouraged to go to school, respected and um just supported. So we really love Special Olympics. That happened on Friday and it was just a great event for our fifth grade buddies and all of the students um competing. So we loved it. Just to share a little bit more about the unified club. Um they had activities all year. Um they would get together. Um they would have character lessons for our school which included our Chick-fil-A um character words. Um they had reading buddies
024buddies. So they would go to different classes. They would come together and read with each other. Um we had kindness day plans uh for for all of our classes. Um they did a coffee shop fundraiser to race for uh Special Olympics. So, there's a picture in here and the coffee was really good, but my face did not look like it. So, if you see that picture, I don't know who captured that. They they caught me at a bad moment. So, um so they had bulletin boards and promoted kindness throughout the school. Um and inclusion of all of our students because we don't want anybody to be left out. Um if y'all know me, I'm a relationship person and this is this is my group right here because they made those relationships and they took care
025of each other. Um we had kitty grass for the teachers. We had spirit week last week before Special Olympics. So each day was a different theme. Um and we had a lot of folks participating in that. Um and then we actually had some of our students participate in the school news and that's always a treat for me. Um Hunter's not here tonight is Hunter Hunter wore a shirt that matched the green screen. So Hunter looked like a floating head on the uh the actual news and it was great. I loved it. Um and then to top it all off, they had Special Olympics. So um I'm going to read the names of all the students. Um recognize them. Not all are here tonight. Um, but guys, we'll have something special for y'all towards the end
026of the year. We've got a little recognition for you. Um, so thank y'all for being here tonight. But here we go. Kinsley Kelly, just raise your hand, Will, uh, Galarza, Connor Smith, Elena Woodward, Aydah McCall, and I'll brag on Ada too. Ada was a D winner for our school. Uh Trent Cherry, Ronan Fingerstat, Mary Ellison Gagger, Mary Ellison, uh Landon Camp, Colton Moss, Landon's at the game. Is he at the game? Thank you. Does he? Yeah, he had to go to that one. Uh, Mattie Pury, uh, Samantha Merillo, Cage Wilbur, Lon Collins, Andy McCall, Tucker Batty, Brayen Parker, Jude Holiday, Ferrell, Candy Smith, John Gibson, Axton Tarnowski. Yeah, you told me you're gonna see me after school today. Ollie, that's right. Diaz, Jackson Mallister, and Hunter Lockage. I didn't forget anybody. Y'all are good. Yeah,
027you did. I didn't forget. All right, let's give them one more round of applause. And thank you all. So, you can see those. You can see me in the background there making a a strange face. That was not because of the coffee. They caught me in the wrong second. And the coffee was really great, guys. Um, we had special Olympic practice, so they got together and got ready for the games last Friday. Our candygrams for our teachers. That was a nice There you are. And then here's our Unifi Club. And see, there's the green screen. If you uh want to imagine that floating head, you're in there. You're down there at the bottom, aren't you? That's you. I I didn't put my glasses on, so All right. Thank you all. Thank you'all for letting us
028present tonight. And parents, y'all did a great job raising some awesome kids. And thank you guys for coming. It's always such a pleasure to see all the great things that are going on in our schools. And again, I I know the school board meetings are really, really uh exciting. So, if y'all do want to leave, we certainly don't don't mind you bowing out. [Music] All right, moving on to public comment. Do we have anybody signed up? No, ma'am. All right. At this time, we will approve the minutes from our March 10th, 2025 meeting. Did everybody have a chance to read over those? Any questions or discussion? All right. All in favor of approving our minutes from last meeting. All right. Okay. Now, our superintendence report, Dr. Thorland. Uh, thank you. I just wanted to uh
029update you on a couple of student activities that kind of stand out since we met last. Um, our steam night was Tuesday, March 11th, which was the day after our last board meeting. And, uh, that was just a great night at our career center where our schools as also community partners come and, uh, try to teach students about science, technology, engineering, and math even with an arts focus as well. And, uh, just a really good event and some very, very interesting activities and displays. So appreciate the community and our schools participating in that. Um later that week we had the the pedal car race at Hamilton Career and Technology Center. We got a few pictures there. That's a fun buildingwide activity where different disciplines within the within Hamilton Career and Technology Center come together and
030build those pedal cars and do the marketing and the fundraising and all. It's just a really cool activity. So, um, had fun there. And then, uh, as was referenced by the folks from Wala Elementary, Special Olympics was this past Friday. Uh, Mr. Smith and I rode over and I got to visit with all of our schools and and just see the excitement and joy there. And I also want to publicly thank SWOO because um several years ago we didn't have a location to do Special Olympics as an area and it was left to the schools to do it at their own locations and it just lost some of the excitement and some of the um uh just camaraderie ship having everybody together. Um as Miss Scott referenced earlier just learning through collaboration having all the
031students in one location. So, shout out to Swoo for hosting that event. But just three very, very positive events that have happened since our last meeting. Um, wanted to uh give you a town hall update. So, those are just meetings that uh Dr. McDonald or Mr. Smith and I attend at all of our schools. It's an optional meeting for our faculty and staff. Um, they don't have to attend, but it's an opportunity to come and just share concerns, celebrations. um gives us a minute or two to to share a couple of things going on from a district perspective. So, you've got three pages stapled together at your place um with some more detail, but those took place from the beginning of February through about the middle of March. We did visit all of our schools
032and um have a chance to talk to so many of our faculty and staff members. So, um appreciate the opportunity to do that. And then I'm going to let uh Mr. Smith tell you real quick just a little bit about testing coming up in the next month. Sure. If you uh follow the link that's on your agenda, it'll take you to the testing calendar which is also linked on our website. So our parents and community all have uh access to that calendar as as many of you may have heard testing season is officially open for the year. Uh we began uh even today with some map testing in third grade. But as in the coming weeks, you know, uh that we're fairly busy between uh SC ready uh tests in our elementary and middle schools,
033end of course tests for our high school uh core subjects and uh and then as well as AP uh advanced placement and some other uh some other tests. It's really an opportunity for our students to show what they know. uh for us to uh to determine uh of all the all the hard work that our teachers have done throughout the year uh in making sure that each of our students has mastery of the content. It kind of gives us a little progress check for each student and lets us know where they are relative uh to the goals and expectations for mastery, but it also uh a lot of these measures are the measures that are included on our state report card. And so they give us an opportunity to review how we're performing. We know
034our teachers are working hard uh and they're doing great work and so we're looking forward to some of the successes that are on the horizon in some of these assessments. So, thank you uh for that. That's it for me. Okay, Mr. Shickling with our legislative update. Yeah. So, I was really excited. I saw the big crowd. I thought they were here for a legislative update budget presentation and and all of a sudden uh so but I um I'll talk through you know I think I'm up for legislative update because it's predominantly related to funding schools. Um so you know when we start putting our budget together we are looking at a house ways and means usually that's the first step. They come up with a funding proposal. Um they come up with an amount of
035um total revenue to allocate to schools and then um try to divvy it out amongst the you know the formula that we've talked about before. Um so now we're to the point where the Senate has also taken a look at the House Ways and Means package and decided to adopt most of its provisions. Um which we love to hear because there had been conflict or what we were hearing is conflict between the two. And so then we start talking about do we have to plan two separate budgets based upon which you know house or which chamber wins out. And so now to hear that they are in concert and agreeing upon a lot of things uh means that we can start to plan with a little bit more um fundamental solidarity. So um the first
036thing I'll talk about I that is the second item here is the provisal 1.3 which is the big funding prov um I'll also talk about paid family leave which is something that just came out of the blue. Um, and you know, Dr. Thors and I think got uh communication from um the state where this not wasn't initially thought of as an education bill, but it does have impacts for school districts. Um, we'll talk about mobile panic alerts because we do have an update on that tonight. And uh there's funding um considerations there for us and then Helen forgiveness as well. Um so the first item here um is paid family leave. Really this is for state employees, all state employees. Um but uh some of the language in there uh lead led us to believe
037that it would pertain to school districts as well. Um and so once that came through the House Ways and Means got a favorable report and that language was uh distilled a little bit more it was confirmed that that would impact schools. And so what it would do is we passed I think it was two years ago or maybe last year um a paid family leave um policy for six weeks um and that was for maternity or paternity depending on the type of delivery um you know how someone was adding to their family. This would extend that to 12 weeks of paid leave. I think you know I don't know maybe the state's seen a trend nationally where that's more common private sector maybe doing that. Um so our evaluation of that was um we code
038our leave a certain way in our finance system. So we were able to pull a report of how much did six weeks of maternity or paternity leave cost us and that was roughly $235,000 for the paid leave for those folks. Um so if we were to double that to a 12-week absence, we submitted a fiscal report or they they call it an impact statement for a district um that we would anticipate another $235,000 of incurred cost. Um, and so the way that that is intended to work is the legislature will solicit those the those reports will get taken back to the legislators and then they'll evaluate is this does this impose an undue burden upon districts? Is it an unfunded mandate or should we fund it if we're going to pass it? Those types of
039conversations. So, uh, remains to be seen what'll happen there. Um, for the budget which, uh, you know, we have a parameters section of our of our budget presentation. the this encompasses what many of those parameters are for us. So, um the proviso that passed the House Ways and Means and now the Senate Finance Committee has confirmed would be a $1,500 per cell increase for the minimum teacher scale. And so that's right now there's five columns depending on level of education and each cell for every teacher would go up $1,500. Teachers would also then get gain a years of experience. So, we call that a we call that a um $1,500 plus step is the way that we would phrase that. Uh, one thing to note here is that this would eliminate or collapse the bachelor's
040plus 18 column. Um, so what we have done right now is we have costed or or forecasted our budget with every one of our teachers seeing that 1500 per cell plus step. Um and then I think what we would do in the future is for individuals that were brought in after this year or not already um employed with the district, we would begin to then put them on that bachelor's step and then the next thing they would do is metriculate the masters if they obtained a master's degree. Um of note also authorizes the state superintendent to reduce the department of education workforce by 25%. Um not sure exactly where that came from or what the rationale is behind it. There was not a lot of publicity there. Um I can only make an inference that
041maybe they're thinking if they lose some sort of federal funding then they would have to reduce their workforce in kind. Um interestingly it produc prohibits South Carolina student athletes from profiting from NIL deals. um something that I think it maybe has been a little bit loose in in terms of um either legislation or regulation here. Um and it also would amend the unencumbered teacher time requirement to include school school nurses. Um so you know I think uh probably feedback received that school nurses there's usually one per building seeing kids all day long um similar demands placed upon them and so looking to provide them uh the same amount of unencumbered time. So those are the highlights of provisal 1.3. The next one is the mobile panic alert system and this would mandate an implementation of
042the panic alert system in all schools. Um one of the caveats or requirements is that it has to integrate with a local emergency response. Um and so you know we've gotten updates from um Mr. Han from Miss Hughes. We have them now. Um, and they do, you know, as as one of the people that's on the back end of that system, I've seen an alert goes off, tells you what what room in what building exactly pinpoint on a map. Um, so we've met that requirement. The reason that this is important for us is we incurred a substantial cost to do that. Um, so Senator Alexander was at our legislative delegation breakfast a few weeks back. um we spoke at at that time about the the you know the cost and the um request for a
043fiscal impact statement there and we submitted that and so what we submitted was it's approximately $1 million for a four I think it's a fouryear okay four-year contract for the system um as well as $600,000 in cost to retrofit some of our existing building PAS and alarms so that they can communicate with the you know essentially the brains of this system. Um, so we are hopeful that we won't incur a penalty for being ahead of the curve and that there's going to be some sort of consideration. Um, and you know, thankfully Senator Alexander was was there to hear that and um, express maybe some sympathy to that concern as well. So um, last is Hurricane Helen forgiveness. This is something that we had been hoping for would, you know, wave the requirement for the days
044that we were um closed due to hurricane Helen, especially when, you know, power was out, internet was out, you didn't have the ability to do a e-learning day because people don't have access and they're too disrupted to sit, you know, sit still and sit in front of a screen regardless. They're trying to clean up their homes, things like that. So, um, we were hopeful that this requirement would be waved so we didn't have to add on, although we already have planned for potential need to add on days. Um, interesting things about that, the Senate committee adopted an amendment um that would specify additional days can't be forgiven unless the state uh superintendent of education certifies that all of the approved avenues have already been pursued for forgiveness. Um, so I don't know exactly what that
045means. I think it means, you know, you've you've you've tried to make them up and for whatever reason cannot. Um, you know, there is a there is a local element of a board can forgive them as well over a certain amount. Um, the amendment also requires that districts that seek forgiveness for additional days have to then submit a plan to um create a schedule in the future that would examine lengthening school days or having Saturday classes so that they would not need to request forgiveness in the future. Um, so a lot of moving parts. Um, and this is just a small segment. The the legislative updates have been coming pretty fast and furious. Uh, but these I think are the most meaningful to us in current operations. Um, any questions that I can answer there?
046Okay. Still left. Yeah. Okay, for the financial report um for last month um local tax revenue you see is a little bit lower uh because we've gone through the bulk of our collections. I'll talk about a forecast um during the budget update. You know, we asked for a little bit more money than we have in the past last year. Um and so if we look at collections to date there we're at 51,14,000 of a requested 55,650,000. Um and so what I'm what I'm going to do then is you know show what I believe is the amount that we stand to collect for the year um and how that may vary in terms of performance to budget from from prior years. Um but in terms of revenues there's um nothing really terribly descriptive there. Um, expenditures,
047you know, again, it's it's kind of a broken record when we talk expenditures. We're we're predominantly salaries and people continue to get paid and we're right about 10 or 11 million every month because of that. Um, so nothing abnormal there. Um, and then looking at the check dispersements. Um, again, it's predominantly just dispersements for um, capital. Um we're trying to get some stuff started now for the summer and also trying to close out some stuff that was in that initial phase um of improvements. Um and we're also now because of strain on the general fund, we're purchasing devices um technological devices out of capital funds. Um so you'll see a lot of expenditure there for technology. Um and then lastly on the uh capital expenditure, um Mrs. Gibson has removed. You know, last month we
048had that large list of completed projects and then projects planned or in progress. So, completed have been removed and now we're down to the ones that are either just started or or currently running. Um, so I'm happy to answer any questions there might be for the financial report. Any questions? All right, hearing none, we will move to our fiscal year 26 general fund budget. Okay, on to the fun stuff. Um, don't let that 35 pages scare you. I'll try to do my best here to to get through it. But, um, I do want to recognize that, you know, I think, um, we made a big ask last year that was fulfilled. And so, I think it, um, you know, is incumbent upon us to articulate what our needs are and be very transparent about that.
049So, that's the goal here. Um I will go through kind of that principles of fiscal management already. We've already talked about that before. Um tonight will be something new. It'll be compensation analysis looking at some of the um some of the positions that we staff and looking at our regional counterparts and how do we compare. I'll go over, you know, the the components of state versus local funding. And then I'll go down uh through our expenditure plan. Um and then last but not least kind of summarize it all for you. So, um, the principles of fiscal management, again, I think that this is something that will be important for us as we make a request to the county to fund our budget. Um, kind of talk about some of the rules that we are are
050looking to adhere by when we talk about long-term fiscal planning. Again, maintaining rates of pay that ensure market competitiveness. So, it's the first element there. It's why it's the first part of what we're going to look at tonight for a budget presentation. Um, and then also the need to conservatively budget for revenues. We've talked about our concerns about the state not fulfilling all of the aid they've forecast um interest earnings things of that nature. Um and I I do also, you know, talk to Dr. Kerman and Dr. Thorsland today and preparing for tonight's meeting. Um the importance of having really a third party's objective metrics of what is good fiscal operations for a school district. Uh and so that's what we are looking at here from Moody's. Moody's is our bond rating agency. They look
051at school districts across the country and they say the measures of good fiscal practices are XYZ. And so I think the ability to look at that from a third party's perspective is important. Um I'm I'm happy to say that when it comes to the terms of fund balance, meaning our accumulated reserves, if you will, um we're in a very strong position. So 25% is that cutoff to be very strong. Our board policy is a minimum of 20%. And so if we're in excess of that, we're in good territory. Um, you know, if you look at mi municipalities, it's 30% or more. Um, school districts operate a little bit more lean. I think that's because, um, oftentimes there's a tax, local taxing and state aid capability for funding. Um, the other component of that is revenues
052as compared to expenses. So, you know, a 5% variance or 5% more revenues than you're spending is viewed as very strong. and we're not quite there. So, we're in the strong category. Last year, we finished with about a three and a half percent positive variance on our budget. So, um things to note as we talk about, you know, matching the long-term revenues to expenditures, um we don't want to find ourselves in a situation where, yeah, we're on the higher end of that fund balance, so we're just going to spend way more money than we bring in and spend that down. That is going to violate one of these principles, right? So, that's what's important to us. Um, looking at that historical budget performance, again, we've kind of iterated in the past. I think this is
053more for our um, ability to present it to the county council. Um, there was not too long ago we were hovering very close to that 20%. Um, Esser funds, some additional things at at the county in terms of Duke's assessment value, some a positive interest environment, and we accumulated some balance, and over the course of time, we've been responsible. and when we we when we believed that was approaching in excess, we reinvested it in things that we had deferred spending on before. Um so that's the moral of of this story here. Um one of the things I do think it's important to note because of the growth in our budget, primarily driven by state's expectations for for pay, um in order to even maintain a flat fund balance in that percentage of budget, we need
054to generate a $2 million surplus. So the budget grows, you need to have money left over to c to pace your fund balance. So if you're stagnant, you have no money left over. By by mathematical certainty, you're falling behind. Um so the next thing we'll do is look at employee compensation. Um because this drives, as you'll see later, about 89% of our budget. Um and that's because we started contracting subs through a third party. So subs are now a contracted expense. If we were paying subs directly, we would be 90% or more of our budget. Um, so the first thing is building administration. Um, you know, what I tried to do here is take our counterparts and always use a star for us. So you can kind of find us quickly on on the landscape
055here. Um, you'll see for principal compensation, um, we're very competitive on the low end of that principal scale. Um but again mi middle to slightly behind the average um on the top end um and and the reason I chose you know in the past we've looked at a curve over time how do we compare it five years 10 years 20 years what you're starting to see in our region is there is a striation so there are clusters that are sticking together and so if you compare just to the average you'll find that some districts are driving that average up um but that everybody else is kind of scattered somewhere else. And so I thought this was a better visualization rather than looking at that, you know, at every five-year interval. Um for assistant principal, you
056can see that we again are very competitive um at the at the starting point. Um and then when you get to the high end, you've got, you know, we're kind of near the lower end. And I think the wisdom there is um you know the assistant principal position is somewhere where you're gaining experience, learning, you know, how to manage a building, hoping that at some point you're going to move on potentially to become a principal. And so there's a natural inflection point there where we want to be competitive. We want to get people in the door and attract them and then we want to grow them and hopefully they'll develop into being a principal. um not that there's any you know some people find that the AP job is right for them and so they're
057going to do that for you know a long long successful career. So that's where we stand in terms of administrative compensation. Um but again if you know the the the potential perception out there that our administrators are paid too much, there's too many of them. Um you know the the numbers that would would play out that we are not leading the pack in terms of administrative compensation. Um, for a teacher, we look at both the bachelors and the mast's column. Uh, this is where the, you know, the bulk of our staff are. We've got maybe 30 40 staff that are in between these or on the on the doctorate level, but predominantly our teachers are going to either have a master's or or a bachelor's. Um, I think one thing to note there, we really
058made a a substantial effort to recruit new talent. We recognized, you know, there is a teacher shortage. the development programs are not putting out as many candidates as they had. Um they're central to maybe Colombia, Clemson, you know, so we are going to need to attract um some some new talent and so we really wanted to set the mark high with that beginning teacher pay um at the bachelors. U but then you see there's kind of a graduated we start off really high but we don't grow as quickly for that first 10 years. So there had to be some compensation there to make sure that the budget would work. Um, in terms of the masters, we we hold a pretty steady comparison all the way through the pay scale. Again, we're not near the top
059of that pay scale. Um, but we are somewhere in the distribution that makes it competitive. Um, as far as classified positions go, um, these are the areas where we have practiced some compression over the past couple budget cycles. So, we've we've given larger increases to the bottom of the scale than we have to the top end of the scale. again with that intent of becoming more competitive. We know we've got a large number of employees that are at that 28-year top level experience. They're not getting their step anymore. They're getting that cost of living, but they're not getting their step. And so then the concern is if we don't have competitive entry wages um and folks decide they're going to start retiring, who's going to take their place? Um so we now are to a
060point where we've got competitive entry wages. we're right smack dab in the middle in terms of competitiveness for um some of the top end of those classified positions. Um bus driver is one area where we're continuing we're we're really struggling to continue to be competitive. Um we are in that range but um we have given a larger percent of salary increase to bus drivers than any employee group for the past I think three years since I've been here. Um and so we we continue to you know try to attack that area but our counterparts are recognizing that and doing that as well. So um you know it's a it's a moving environment um in terms of competitiveness. Um and then some of our other clerical positions. I say bookkeeper database clerk in the in the
061title here but it encompasses many of our clerical positions. Um you know an area where we really need to continue to focus to to try to be competitive. Um, so that's an analysis of the um, how we compare because a lot of what we talk about when we talk about how much we're going to pay and how big our budget is is what people are earning. Um, and the this is just a reiteration of prior points, you know, because the intent was to make sure that we're standard standardized in terms of what we present to you, gain your approval for, and then take across the street. Um so again, you know, large growth in the state teacher salary, large growth in employee benefits over the course of the past three or four years. Um and
062state aid has increased 30% in order to support those items. um the state funding formula and you know we we talked about this I think two meetings back um we're right in there in terms of what our average um ratio of teachers to kids is but the the difference between us and some of our regional counterparts uh again you look at a Pickkins County um they are very they are very close in terms of their proportionate share to their taxpaying ability um so if there's supposed to be a 75 25% split lit. All things being equal, Pickkins County is responsible for 26% of their funding of the teacher increases. We are responsible for 41%. And there's only five districts below us. Um, again, based upon our index of taxpaying ability, that's the state looking at
063our u property wealth and they're saying, "You have property wealth. We expect you to leverage that." Um when you look at the state funding history again just a recap of the fact that as numbers change from the beginning of the year where the projection takes place to the end of the year where our final numbers are certified we have experienced a a you know downturn or decline of maybe 50 60 students every year from start to finish. Well if you multiply 60 students times the state's contribution of $6,000 you know close to it you're talking a fair amount of money. And so we've, you know, between what we've budgeted and then collected, we've seen a decrease of either a million dollars or 600,000 the past couple years. Um, and so the reason I bring that
064up is because here is the projected state support from the Ways and Means Committee. Um, and for the line items that support our teacher salaries and benefits, they're increasing about 1.4 million. So you're going to see that our budget growth is um, you know, five million or so. post about a 4% growth on our budget. Um 1.4 million of that's going to come from the state. Um and again, that's that's only intended to fund teacher salaries and it's only intended to fund 59% of the teacher salaries and everything else has to come from a different bucket. So that's what we'll talk about when we get into revenues tonight. Um in terms of the local share, we are tied right now with Pickkins County as the second lowest operating tax rate um in the state at
065110 mills. We had been the lowest prior. Um we uh one of our coastal counterparts had such rapid growth in their assessment values that they dropped their millage rates and so they have dropped now below us. Um our local tax paid to the count to the school district has increased 11% but the effective operations rate meaning the the what that is as a percentage of assessed value has declined by 4.7%. Um, and again, you know, we've seen this before, but I added the little bullets here um to show in in comparison to the the tax rate. We asked for a $1.8 million increase two years ago. Um, I'm sorry, three years ago, the rate declined by close to four points. We asked for 2.3 million. The rate declined by close to three points. Um, we
066asked for close to a $6 million increase and the rate ticked up by one point. So, our request for this year is going to be rough. I think it's 3.2 million and I say I think I I have it on here. Um, but that seems to be the sweet spot where hopefully we're matching growth of a million, right? And and it would balance our budget as well. Um, but again, if you look at our counterparts, you know, Pickkins Pickkins has remained somewhat flat, a little bit of a bump, but their expected local contribution is 26%. Um the only one who's above us in the in the 40s is Georgetown and they just recently raised their rate by six mills um to support all this growth in teacher pay and and other employee pay. Um here's
067what I alluded to in the finance report. So you know what we have asked for in terms of our request is the first row at the top. Um the funds that have been collected is the second row and then the positive variance or the benefit to the district is the third row in green. Um and so you know part of what we part of what has generated this fund balance for us has been collections from the county turned over to us that are in excess of what we budgeted positive variance. Uh and of course we're very thankful for that. It allow has allowed us to maintain our strong fiscal position. Um what the concern is right now is those collections based off that finance report to date are 51 million $104,000. Um, if you take
068the the time frame, the same time frame from last year's collections, that March to June time frame, the total collections were about four and a quarter million. So, if you were to apply four and a quarter million to our current collections this year, we would fall short of that 55,650,000. Um, if we're taking into account growth, maybe we will end up collecting that 55,650,000. Uh my concern from a forecasting standpoint would be that positive variance that existed. We're not seeing that in terms of the pace of collections right now. So unless something were to change in the next few months, we would be looking at collecting what we asked for rather than depending on a surplus. Um and and so when we talk about trying to match the expenditure in our budget to our true
069patterns of spending, we're trying to make up for that on the other side. If we're not going to have extra revenue, then we need to make sure that our budget encompasses every dollar that we're going to spend. And so that's the effort that we have been kind of graduating those two together. Um so in terms of the operating budget, we are right now 88.1% salaries for next year. Um again those parameters from the state ways and means now would be or I'm now would be the Senate as well um is close to a 3% um starting pay bump for a teacher. In fact, it's exactly 3% for our bottom bachelor's cell. As salaries get larger, that percent increase gets smaller, but teachers also have the benefit of the step on top of that. So the
070average take-home teacher pay would be roughly three and a half% um depending on where you fall on that on that grid. Um we are attempting to do the same with classified. The classified um salary schedules have u been increased by 3% across the board. And so for take-home pay again we we did some of that compression. So on the lower end of the scale 3% plus a step might be a little bit larger growth than 3% plus a step at step 26. Um, but again, that take-home pay range might vary from maybe three and a half to four percent all the way up to maybe a 7% for the classified staff. Um, and then for the administrator group, uh, you know, again, larger salaries that you're compounding. So, there's a two and a half% cost
071of living for the administrator salary bands. Um, the past year we did not give administrators step when we com when we compressed that pay scale. Um the at that time the plan was two years of positive work evaluations. So there are some administrators that will not get a step because they've only been with us a year at this point. Um but the majority of them would also get a step then. So two and a half% plus a step. Um in terms of benefits, uh one of the things that I I want to note as we go through, you'll see oftentimes as we compare year-toear, the benefits look like they're growing at a greater rate than salaries. The reason for that is and and I I it's very convoluted how our finance system works but in
072essence we assign a person to a grid and we say next year the grid goes up 1 1500 3% whatever it is system do your thing forecast everybody and then it you know computes. Um when it comes to benefits, it can only compute benefits for a person who has selected benefit plans that exist in the system. It does not know how to forecast benefits for a vacant position because there are no benefits selected. And so in the past we have practiced we really have not budgeted benefits for the vacancies. Um we have benefited from the fact that we generally seem to have about the same amount of vacancies. So the benefits we may not be paying for a vacancy make up for what we didn't budget in the past. Um but this year I I
073sought to try to correct that practice. So manually took the vacant positions said assume X amount for health care for each person usually a a single plan if we're thinking a person will come in with a bachelor's a younger person not hasn't started a family yet a single plan and then the contribution rates for retirement and have put those in. So if it looks like there's inordinate growth to benefits, that's why um actually the the health care increase we've had in the past few years, there is no increase this year. The only thing we're doing is we're adjusting for the fact that last year if they said I think it was 11% increase. 11% wasn't the same for each tier of the plan. So in some plans we didn't budget quite enough. In some plans
074we budgeted a little bit more. We tried to equalize that and use the real numbers this year because there's not going to be an increase. But there you will see some variance there on on in terms of health especially because we've we're budgeting for health plans for the vacant positions. Um for non-personnel uh you know this is just looking at so of that 10% or 12% that's left what is that? Uh four and a half million of it is utilities, keeping the lights on, keeping us warm or cold, warm or cooled, and on and our internet connectivity. Uh two and a quarter million is our contract with Kelly Services. So again, if you were to move that back into the personnel component, we'd be upwards of 90%. Um we have right now we're we're looking
075at close to $2 million for software. Now software includes not only student instructional programs um but we have monitoring of uh student you know what they're accessing online to make sure they're not reaching certain content. Um we have dashboards that look at item analysis and student performance for for exams. Um we've got now we've got the Centiggics visitor management system. We've got our enterprise system for personnel. So we've got some systems that have a substantial cost associated with them. Um, repair and maintenance. This is generally about where we where we come in. Again, we've bumped that up based upon our history. About $3 million usually for just your wear and tear items. Um, you know, going in fixing things that are broken, contracting maybe to rent a lift, to change out the lights in a
076certain gym, things like that. Um, SRO contracts are about a million dollars. We pay that to the county for the SRO's in our schools or those that those that we support. The county supports a number of them as well. Um, student service contracts, again, that's increased recently as we've had difficulty filling speech and mental health positions. Um, we have look to increase that value. Um, and then insurance. Um, insurance for an organization the size of ours. We have $600 million of physical assets. Costs a lot of money to ensure that. Um, and the cost of replacing those assets is not going down. So, one of our concerns is when you look at the appraised value or the replacement cost of our buildings is about two two times what it might have been five years ago.
077Um, so that's another cost that we just need to plan for and be able to contain. Um, in terms of the instructional budget, um, there is more detail in in the packet in our binder. Uh but generally speaking, the the teachers in the classrooms doing the work, that's 63 and a half million dollars. Um you're looking at growth there predominantly again those salaries and benefits three and a half%. Um when I get into the forecast of what we're looking at for this year, um because of the phenomenon I was talking about in our finance system, last year we budgeted those vacancies at the top end of what the replacements might cost. So if we budgeted 75,000 for a teacher and somebody come came in and took that job and and and took it at 50,000,
078we're going to have a positive variance there. So when I look at forecast at the end of the year and I'll show you that you're going to see a much larger variance for salaries than you would any other item because of that phenomenon. um contra contracted services the predom you know the the real growth here is the instructional programs that had been funded through ESSER from 2021 through several years um we've decided they're important they're rendering value to us our kids are depending on them our teachers are using them and we'd have to now pay for them because the stimulus has ended um in special education um again very very low growth here for salaries just because what we're finding is as we strictly adhere to what those case loads are for our students, you
079know, how many IEPs a teacher will manage, how many students they're going to have in their classroom, and so how many FTE do we outlay for that? What we found is that um Gibson recommended we do we really be strict upon those guidelines and as we recalculated those numbers we found we may through attrition be able to reduce several positions here and so that's what you're seeing on the salaries again employee benefits that looks like this inordinate growth but um if you look at the prior u or if you look at this slide one of the areas that we have difficulty filling positions which is why we're contracting ing for some of them is speech in particular. Um and so when you take more budget more positions that were vacant than any other part of
080the budget and assign benefits to them, you get larger growth in that part of the budget. Um so that's what you're seeing here. Um for instructional uh other instructional functions, this is going to be homebound full day K. The the main thing of note here is that our full day K program is um largely supported by the state SERP fund. Um and so that's a restricted state grant that we get this year. It was not a its growth did not pace the growth of the teacher salaries. So we had staff that could no longer be contained in the state restricted grant. So now they're being funded by the general fund. So we forecasted them because we can't put them back in that grant if it doesn't grow enough uh for the for the expenditure side.
081It's support functions. Um you know again that's about a 3% growth. Nothing really extraordinary here in terms of attendance counseling school health sites um and school library um and general building. I I think you know I talked to Dr. Kerman and um Dr. Thorsland earlier today um about maybe realigning some of these because the numbers are um the groupings of these functions may not truly depict what we think of when we think of support of the classroom. So what we're thinking of or what we what we will do and amend um the minutes of the meeting is take curriculum and instruction and supervision which really are complementaryary to classroom instruction. take that and the building principle and move them to support. And so we'll call that supportive instruction. Um but again, you know, you're looking
082at really salary and benefit growth. Um there are some positions that um we we were thinking of repoting based upon the state guidance. I've talked to some of my counterparts based upon internal conversations. I think we may or may not do that. Um, so again where you say building admin includes certain positions like ISS aids, there's a case to be made for those being instructional. So we might move those back to instructional. Um, but all said and done, you're seeing a similar pattern here. You're seeing salaries about three and a half to 4% if we're maintaining all the positions. Um, if there is attrition, salaries are slightly lower and then the growth in benefits and and the growth in contractuals. um operations. You know, some of the larger growth here is in contracted services and
083supplies and materials. Um again, that's where your utilities are. That's where your building repairs come in. And much of that is largely based upon our expenditure patterns. Um for other functions, really the only thing of note here, um the contracted service is the um athletic trainer for the school buildings. We've moved that to pupil activity or budget that pupil activity. And then the salaries and employee benefits. These are the um you know the the relationship between salaries and benefits is a little bit different here. The benefits are less than half. Usually our fringe rate is 47%. Here they're a little bit lower because these are generally stipens for staff that work in a full-time position but now are coaching or um advising a club. And so this is additional compensation for them. So health care
084is not in there. It's really only retirement. Uh but that's going up again as we look at uh we're being outpaced by our counterparts in terms of what our coach is making. We're losing coaches to some of our regional counterparts. Um some of our regional counterparts provide stipens for certain advisors that we don't and so we're looking at putting those in. Um and so that's why there's growth in that area. Excuse me. So all that to say um this chart will show you the dollar increase from this year's working budget which is your second column FY2425 working to next year's proposed budget and the dollar increase and the percent. The other thing that it includes on the right side of that blue line is the projected spending for this year. Um and again projected spending
085meaning if if we have a certain amount of employees retire or separate I don't know exactly how much their their earnings payouts will be for their earned leave over you know over a course of time. So this is very difficult to pinpoint so these are generalizations but you see the largest amount of variance is there in the salaries and so because of that as we're becoming more precise about what we're budgeting on the salary there's not as much growth there. Um, we're going to be pretty tight, I think, on benefits this year to what we budgeted because of that phenomenon I talked about. So, you do see more growth in the benefits, but I think at this time next year, if things play out the way we planned them to, and hopefully they do, we
086would see less of a disparity between salary and benefits. We'd see more balance. Um, and then in terms of our contracted services and supplies and materials, I mean, we we pretty much spend those out. uh and a lot of that is in our area of support to the buildings and infrastructure. Um so, you know, you can see kind of a breakdown now across the budget in those big categories and what the personnel costs would be year-over-year. Um if we end the year with roughly $2 million unspent, that's less than a 2% variance to what we budgeted. Um in my opinion, that's that's pretty tight. That's a pretty tight variance. Um, in terms of our funding sources, you'll see the same format here. Again, um, when we're looking at that local tax revenue line, we're not
087used to seeing a number that's a fraction of a percent to budget. Um, so again, that one's that one's a little bit tight. Um, local fees and interest, you do see a number that's much greater than budget. Again, that's one of those areas where um we feel like or or our I should say our u financial management practices would say don't budget revenues based upon an interest market that could change tomorrow. You know, you hear the news every day about well what if tariffs do this? Well, what if rates do that? There were three years ago where we generated $60,000 for local interest. Um so while while that does benefit us now, we can't maintain an expense structure that relies upon that revenue. Um what you'll see in state classroom um aid is a $
0881.4 million increase. Um again, we're we're budgeting very close to what the state is telling us to budget for. So we're being slightly defensive there. We're not budgeting we're maybe 300 $400,000 less than their total. Um but if the phenomenon we've seen in the past few years plays out, hopefully that means we collect what we budgeted. Um and so then transfers in direct costs, that one's um that use of the transfers in from our grants and our our um cafeteria program where we can use some of that federal money to supplement our operations. Uh because, you know, we we use payroll staff to process grants. we we cut checks for grants and so there's a certain amount of overhead you're allowed to take for that to supplement your operation and that's what that line item
089encompasses. Um so all in all what we're asking for across the street um at the county um it does a couple of things. Number one it funds the parameters of the budget that we established um but it also does so under the framework that we're looking for in term of this is good fiscal practice. um not because we say so, but because other parties say so and they evaluate us. Um and so when you look at that change to fund balance in last year's budget, we budgeted an amount of revenues that was $830,000 less than we planned to spend. So the good news is we're hoping that we'll be about $2.5 million to the good, not $800,000 underwater. But this spending plan would include an ask from the county that brings that number to zero.
090So it's matching our revenues to our expenses which is one of the tenants of that framework. Um so the the request for local advalorum would be 59 million200,000. That's a 6.4% increase from last year. Um and you know it's a little bit it's a little bit larger than that. It's actually 3.5 million u because we're backing down our pilot our fee and loo revenue. We're not seeing as much revenue from fee and loo coming in anymore. Um there was a time frame where we got a higher percentage of those and as new projects have come online we get a smaller percentage of them. So that I you know we're concerned that that revenue source will dwindle. So we're increasing a little bit of that adalorum reducing the fee in L but both of those are
091local tax revenue. Um so ultimately we're going to ask about $ three and a half million dollars more of the county council. That's a 6.4% ask. uh to put that in you know in in comparison of last year. Last year we asked for exactly 12% which was close to six million. Our tax rate went up one point. Um so our hope I I think would be that this is respectful of growth also funds our needs. Um but again I want to iterate um I don't feel comfortable in us saying this will result in a millage rate of X um because that is not our our function in terms of of what we need to calculate. Um so that encompasses all 35 slides and a lot of talking. I'm more than happy to answer any questions
092you might have. Um I I want to feel confident that as Dr. Thorsland and I um go to present this to the county council that all of our board members feel as though they can support it and that they understand it um and that they're that they're prepared to make that ask of the council. So if I could I'd love to just point y'all to that fourth tab. I'm sorry to interrupt that just um because I do think this is a very clear summary as Mr. Shikling has talked about how our budget is, if you put subs in there with with personnel, we're at 90% people and uh this is just a quick spreadsheet of where all of our people are and who they are, what positions they're in. So that is a one-page look
093at 90% of our budget. And uh you know when you look at a increase in you know if there's an average increase of 3% on salaries well you can see all these people getting that that that's why we're asking for more money. So yeah and uh when you look at the the ratio between total fringe to total salary that that really is made up of three components. So you're it's it's um the state retirement system which is almost 25% of a person's earnings on the dot 7.65% for FICA you know Medicare and social security and then whatever health plan they're entitled to and select and so any one of those costs are not up for our discussion or negotiation. Um, so you know, you you take the 32% right off the bat for retirement and
094you add on even an individual health care plan that costs $7,000, you know, you're approaching 40 45 47% of salaries on average and for some of our for some of our staff, you know, in certain positions that might be 60 or 70%. Um, so it is it's a large component of our budget, but that's why staffing and personnel is about 90%. Any questions? Thank you very much for the all the work you put in providing us with all this information. My pleasure. Makes it much easier for us to understand. It's it's a twisted hobby of mine actually. So, well, we certainly have a lot of time to review and ask more questions and dig deeper. So, this is only first reading approval tonight. So, All right, moving on. A strategic update from Mr. Hanby. Uh,
095yes, we are excited to say that we are up and running. We're operational in all buildings. Now, we're not fully operational because as as Mr. Shikley mentioned, we are having to um retrofit some of the PA systems. There actually eight of our of our buildings. But the badge works the way it's supposed to. there's a certain number you press to get the office and admin, you know, those kind of folks there. Um, and it's been used already. Uh, we had a student fall and hit his head. They did the button uh the right amount of times and here comes admin and SRO and the nurse and we've had it in a couple of others schools where we've we've used it. Um, we had a uh evening. We we met one day at five o'clock at
096Wala uh Elementary and we had the sheriff's department. We had uh several of the municipalities represented with law enforcement and we did three test runs and I I was in there. Miss Hughes went back in the back with a deputy who had the radio and they uh put her in a room and when she did the panic code red uh pushes um you could hear the the the deputy with radio um say she just now pushed it and within like two seconds dispatch came home said we have a code red at Wah Elementary. remember this is a drill, you know, and they were able to pinpoint exactly what room she was in and they walked uh even though the officers have a map on their phones with them that shows it's always not as easy.
097What we what we learned at that and what we decided to do is we're actually going to put maps in when you walked in that they can grab off the wall and have with them. But she walked them through. Take take a right when you come in, go down, it's fourth room on the right or go to the middle hall. It's this room. Um and so we had that there there's going to be um a a debrief that goes into more detail, but that law enforcement was very pleased with that. Um so we we feel good about where we are with um the Centics. We currently have about 150 employees who have not been trained and if you're not trained, you don't get a badge. Um the majority of those are adjunct coaches who are
098not necessarily in the building during the times they may be at practice and those kind of things. Um, we're also working with um Danielle from Kelly to work on getting our subs trained. Um, and again, I I just want to pass credit to to Philip Price, our chief technology officer, Miss Hughes, Taylor Graham, and Jesse Bunning and technology for all the work they've done doing the training sessions and working with our with our staff on that. So, um, we are excited about this. I got even some uh positive comments after the parent advisory meeting the other day. Some parents stayed to talk about how they excited they were. But it um as soon as you go to the code red uh it takes over every screen. If your computer's up, it takes over your desktop.
099It takes over your laptop. We were in the library. It took over the circulation screens. It takes over the video boards and it just says we're now in a code red. This is not a drill. Go to your place, follow your directions, etc., etc. So, um, it was a whole lot faster than what we had with the panic buttons that were under under the desk that they push. Um, and, uh, again, we're very pleased with that how that that's worked out. Mr. Handy, you've already mentioned it, but I think you and Miss Hughes did a great job at parent advisory, and they were so excited because this is something they asked for in their first meeting, and it's been delivered, and there was so much excitement in that room. They were that I had several
100come up and and and talk to me afterwards individually too to say they were they were very pleased with it. It's a uh um I I think it's going to be one of the best things that that we've done. Honestly, even the day-to-day stuff is important. Getting a getting a nurse down there quicker, getting an SRO, getting a administrator down there if there's a fight. It's it's going to expedite all that. So, and I think they realized that because you gave those examples had it already been used, right? And I think they realized that it wasn't just for the worst case scenario. It was for every day. We hope we don't ever use it for that. We hope we just use it for the for the other things. But in the event we have to,
101um it's going to um make police response better and and it's going to make our school response better. All right. Any other questions, concerns? All right. Dr. I just have one. Have we already paid for that? We we did some money. We had we got a little credit because we currently use their identicid system. Um so we had that out for several years. So we we got credit for that, but we uh we moved some money in the capital fund or use some money in the capital fund to to pay off the majority of it. Okay. Thank you. But so so all we'll have to pay is the I think it's like $4,000 the software upgrades each each year. the rest of it and they like they replace the badges if the battery goes out
102and those kind of things. So, right, it is it is an item where when we have a multipleear contract like that, we pay the full amount. So, we'll disperse that money. Um, but we hold a liability for each year. So, each year we will expense it against our budget. So, we do we do need to budget for it to be there. Um, but really instead of cutting another check, we're just changing some codes in our system and counting it as a cost that year. Thank you. All right. Marketing and rebranding. Dr. Thorsland. Uh, yes. Just in some um individual conversations with board members. there's been a desire to um possibly look at getting help from a marketing company just to I think one thing is to get good news stories out to the community more
103so I um it was mentioned earlier how how the room kind of emptied after the the beginning here and and I don't know how many people are sitting at home watching this meeting on online so just an attempt to look at at getting the positive things going on in the school district out to the community, maybe some different ways of doing that, utilizing social media, possibly even print media. Um, so this was really just an attempt to uh get it in front of the people so um they know what you guys are thinking, but for a chance for y'all to talk and maybe give us some direction on which way you want us to go. The one thing that stood out when we were at the schoolboard conference in um in where did we go
104or county um Miss Holder and I sat in on a session from Florence Florence District 1 and they had gone through some rebranding and remarketing strategies and it really showcased how how well their students are doing and their teachers are doing and their staff are doing and how how proud they are to market our to our community. Um, and and I'll I'll say this to anybody. I believe our our district is the best educational opportunity in our community. And if we're not telling our story the best, then who's going to tell it for us? And a lot of times negativity, you know, filters through Facebook faster than good news. And so we have a a huge opportunity in front of us to showcase not only the great things that our students are doing, but the
105awesome things that our janitors are doing, our our coaching staffs, our teachers, our librarians, and then as we have families move into this community and they go to a realtor's office and they say, you know, hey, I'm moving here from from wherever and I want to hear about your schools. And a lot of times these these parents are are perhaps not choosing a public school situation uh to put their children in when they're moving to Coney County for whatever reason. They have that right and and we support that right as well. But if we had something a a story to to to tell them and say we are a really great public school system here and we want your child to to come to our school and and be involved in our school and we
106want you to fit into to whatever school it is. um there's packets there that the realtor could perhaps give them and and share our story of the awesome things that we're doing. So, we thought this was a really good opportunity to just rebrand and and kind of refocus on the positive things that are happening. Do we have anything out there now? Is there nothing? I mean, we've got our Facebook page, I believe, that, you know, Miss Jennifer's been working really hard on some updates and stuff, but and also, um, we want to update the information that young new teachers Yeah. that we want to we want people to want to come to work here. And we are, we haven't really done a great job of letting them know what things are available, what what you
107can do in social time in Okone County, and what's available close by. I mean, we've got a little video and it talks, you know, a good bit about the hiking and but a lot of people don't do that. So, what other things are available? Uh, so that we can promote the little theaters in the area, the the community events at some of the performing arts centers and those kind of things. So, we just want to be able to let the community know what good things are going on in our schools and let prospective employees know what good things go on in the communities kind of handinand uh let everybody know how great it is to live here. That's good. So, we do we did explore a little bit and realize that there are several different
108marketing companies on state contract that would prevent us from having to go through um a procurement process on our own. We can just utilize companies who are already on state contract. So, um I think in some of those conversations I've had, um maybe there's a desire to to hire a marketing company that would come in and actually give us some strategies that we could maybe even choose from, kind of a menu of different items that we might could employ. Um so is that um we could uh explore that a little further, maybe get some information um by next month and and then maybe at that point you could uh select firm or or um instruct us to engage with a firm to to come in and over a few week period give us some ideas
109of of which direction to go and then we could determine where we needed help and where we could self-perform certain things. That's good. Absolutely. Any other questions, concerns, discussion? I guess one question I'd have would be would um any board member like to participate in selecting of the firms because um Miss D helped me out. It was quite a few. I think there are more than 40 45 firms that offer marketing services. there even more that would say offer photography or video services as well. I did a little looking to see if we could identify a few that might be in the upstate region that might be easier to work with us, but there's still pretty significant number. I mean, of course, I'm always willing to volunteer. Okay. Okay. Well, maybe we'll contact the two
110of you um when we compile a list and and uh just spend a couple hours going through the pros and cons of each company and and try to um by next month's meeting have a recommendation because this would be a contract that I think we'd probably seek your approval on to engage. Okay, moving on to discussion and possible action items. our security update. Okay. And uh so as you requested last month um we did survey our staff and then parents and community members. Miss Dodd has compiled those results and uh I think this is a very good summary of of those results for you. Um without getting into specific questions and things, it's a pretty good overview. um you know safe environment I think 81% of our staff said they agree or strongly agree that
111we have um safe environments only 63% of parents and uh anyway I don't need to go through all those you can certainly see those but that is the information from staff and from the community generally about 20% difference um between um our staff and the parent, you know, just as far as like you can see the safe environments about 20 18 points difference there um on how safe our environment, how they feel about that. But then also even when it comes to um the benefits of weapons detection outweigh that one's not quite 20, but you can see go ahead and implement it. Um staff was 66%, parents are 88. to um just get information and uh I think Mr. Hamby has some some pricing that uh he can share. Um I just in our discussions
112it it seemed like certainly I think I can speak for our staff that we would lean towards opengate um their mobility of those systems. They're battery powered so they don't have to have plugs to use. they can be moved from the building to outdoor community events. Um, so I think if we were going to recommend a system, that's probably the the system we would would recommend. We checked with some other districts who have purchased and and vendors and and uh Mr. Hammy, you want to share? We do. I got a quote from from the open gate folks and uh what we're looking at really is when you add in the the extra batteries and things is about just a tad under $20,000 per device and a device is the set of polls that lets somebody
113the group walk through them. So um then then the question uh becomes uh when we're looking at high schools and the multiple points of entry we said we would look at three um you know let's take Waja for example where the students come in from the parking lot the parents drop off their kids and the bus kids get out at the same place so they they come in there and then the front entrance um but you need more you can't just have three devices because When some when you're going through that first device, let's say at the student parking lot door and they're going through that first device and they set the alarm off, then we got to send them to somebody else and they've got a table set up and they check their stuff
114and that and then they've got to go through another one. So, for each spot you have those set up um or at least two of the three spots we talked about, you've got to have two. Um we have talked about um and just want to know what y'all want us to do if we go this route. uh having you know looking at what Stevens County Middle had and they had at the front office they had the one per you know just kind of installed non-movable permanently. Um so you know if you do that you're looking at five per school because you wouldn't send them they would just go back through that one because it's not going to hold up the line. You'll be looking at five per three high schools career center. So that's uh
115probably a couple five time five times four for that and then one at the alternative school if we because they had high school to to get us. So we'd be looking at 21. So you know a little over $400,000. There is a small licensing fee again a software update fee and it's $4,800 a year that goes with it. But but once you get them you get them. You know you're not buying them. Now, they'll tell you that they got the next greatest thing in about three years to get you to try to upgrade, but uh you know that that's where we are. Um and then of course if we you know y'all want to talk about other schools and and middle school and that then we just start looking at um you know three entryways
116there too in most cases. Well, going back to the survey real quick. Um, Miss Dodd, if you don't mind going back to the one where the the school level was on there. I think the majority of of folks kind of said, you know, middle school and high school. You can look at that. Um, 42% of staff and 73% of parents said all schools. If we look at staff specifically um there's the um staff version in the top. So 42 said all 42 said middle and high and the smaller ones and I know we've discussed perhaps a phased approach you know putting in a and that's what the the most of the ones we talked to recommended. They said it was very difficult implementing it across the board. Now that would be seven eight schools for
117us. So about half of our schools because if you again the career and alternative school go with the high school and then three middle schools. So So parents were a little a little different on their responses. 19% said high school and middle school and 73% said all. So, you know, I know this is a difficult decision, but and and and just for full disclosure to the um you know, where the where the funding would come from, I'm I'm going to Yeah, one option would be capital. Um, but I have to say this, the the capital budget keeps getting things added to it. And so we're going to have to look at what we have on the agenda now as far as our 12 14 year plan we have because we are um absorbing things. Everything's
118gone up. The cost cost of building has gone up and that and you remember with Sacramento, we saved for three years parts of our capital every year. We average about $12 million a year saving. Before we could go and build that, we actually pushed it back one year u because we couldn't save enough. So, um I just want to get out there that that the capital fund is is getting hit with with a lot of stuff. Um so, that could delay some of the other things that we see if we is there is there grant money or federal money or state money available for something like We hope that maybe the state's going to help reimburse some of the strategics. And then there are the safety grants that we apply for and we have have
119gotten um they're they're not uh you know like in the million dollar and and that kind of range, but they they helping us do things like we're putting that the the film uh the shatterproof film across all the first floor. We're getting extra cameras. We're getting cameras on more cameras on buses and and those kind of things. But we will look at grant opportunities and and things to try to do it. But it won't it was not will cover all of them. Does OpenGate have a quantity that you could purchase for lower prices? They did. Um so when I first got the first quote, I did 13 because I didn't take into consideration the second factor around. Um so they did not say that there was a I I mean I'll be happy to reach
120back out to them, but there was a discount if you went up to 25 or that. they they have what it what it costs them, what they charge us, and and then we multiply that by by how many we want. So if we were to put them in the high school and in the middle school, how many units would you suggest total? Double that amount. 21, not quite double 20. So 21 and then we if we did five, 10, 15, 36 roughly. So that's that's putting a permanent one at the at the front office entrance. And and I would just like to suggest certainly we could phase full implementation high school, middle school, possibly elementary. Another way to consider phasing though would be we could, you know, Greenville County employs the random screening. So that
121would also be a way to phase where a smaller number could be purchased and we could do random screening for a number of months, see how it goes. That that's just another consideration, not necessarily a recommendation, but it it would be a way to um move into this space without going, you know, with the amount of parents and staff wanting this. I think we have to pursue our grants, our state, our federal any monies that are available and see what we can get first and then I think we need to implement something because it's pretty strong what they're saying. Well, at this point it it will come in the fall. There's no way because and what what's included in this so we got a little time. What's included in this is also the the training
122where basically they come that the day you schedule the day before school open, they would come train everybody that would be there and then they're there the first day with you to help you as you go through and and and work through it uh through at the school levels. Um but that's that's part of the $20,000 uh fee. What I did was I took everything that was involved with it because like the actual device is like 18,000 but then you've got to have you've got to have those weights that go on them to hold them in place and you've got to have the extra batteries. You got have charging things. So they you know $500 here, $200 there and it ends up being close to 20,000 a set. I'm happy to reach out and ask
123about a discount for you know if you have if they have a number uh you know because if we were looking at middle and high we would be looking at about 35 to 40. Yeah, I do agree with Miss Swain that we should be doing whatever look seeking whatever funding is available through grant opportunities. Have we thought about partnerships with industry that might be interested in uh we can put a Duke power decal on every one of them. I'm I'm just saying. Yeah. No, we have not. No, ma'am. I I was just once I get u your wishes and direction and that then I'll be happy to look at any of those options and and Miss Dodd and I have been having a sidebar a little bit about the trying to to to get the
124safety grant in and maybe we can get reimbursed for I have one more question. Yes, ma'am. Uh I would think that given the circumstances of of the way everything's going currently, a lot of people are looking at doing this exact same thing. So, I think I just want to say that I feel like this is something we need to move on quickly rather than taking a step back and doing all this thinking uh because the longer we put it off, the longer it's going to take to get the devices. Is that correct? It it Yeah, they they they have like a six week lead time. So, but it will take a little while and then we'll obviously set up the training that for when we get back. So I think what the what we're hearing
125as the directive is let's vote on implementing phase a phased approach of middle school high school career center. Go ahead and get pricing for that amount. Can we add OA to that? Okay. OA as as well because they're high school middle school. Go ahead and and get get that going as a phase one approach kind of and available funds. Yeah. Right. So, high school and middle and OA and and career center. Yes. Okay. I do believe last year's um safety grant, it's been $20 million the past two years. I believe that's a part of the budget for next year. That's usually released middle of August or so is when we apply. And just for reference, the first year we got about $185,000 for the window film. This past year we got $460,000. And part of
126what we ask for is dependent on our um poverty index. So I I don't know what other districts will ask next year, but we did get in that $460,000 range this year. But the difficulty for that is I don't believe if we purchased it ahead of time, then we could be reimbursed for through that grant. But we would definitely have to ask Miss Hughes who works with that office to see. But it could be to help with the second phase. Second phase. Sure. And and that was going to be my other part of the equation uh was um misuse the situation and uh what she's already doing and then trying to to help oversee this. Um, it would really be most places have have gone the direction of of having at least someone with a
127law enforcement background in a in a position to work with the folks as they implement that and do that. Now, you know, we don't have to be like Greenville and those that have eight or 10 or whatever, but but I would like to to put on the table that she'll need some help. Um, right. We do that. Okay. So am I hearing then that you're charging us to bring back like so if the number becomes 36 um that we would bring back official pricing for 36 for you to vote on it next month? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. So can we get a motion on the table for that? I make a motion that we charge the administration with getting the pricing for what we need to to implement at the middle and high school
128level, Okone Academy, and the career center. All right. Motion and a second. Any discussion? All right. Hearing none. All in favor? All right. 5. Now, Mr. Smith, thank you. I I I feel like you might have seen almost as many charts and graphs as you look at tonight, but I'm going to draw your attention to the front back page uh that references the math textbook adoption. I really want uh to take just a moment to uh to give you an update uh regarding the math resource adoption process as well as make our final recommendation for your approval tonight. If you look at the very top of that page, you'll see the reason that we're having this discussion. In 2023, uh the state of South Carolina adopted brand new K through2 math standards. And so those
129new standards are going to be implemented this fall. And we want to make sure that our teachers are equipped uh with the resources they need to deliver these standards and and the learning experiences at a high level. Uh what you'll see along the top with those uh those rectangles and circles is really a highlight of the state's process and they actually go through the RFP the request for proposal process and when they come out with new standards and they set criteria and vendors come to them and so they issue us a list of approved vendors uh that that have resources that meet the state's criteria. You'll see in that third circle in 2024 in the fall and winter that there was a public review. These resources were all posted publicly online and so uh any
130community member uh parent uh teachers have been able to review those for uh for some time now. Uh if you look down at the bottom, what you'll see is really the school district of Aone specific process. And that process really is designed to make sure that our teachers uh have an opportunity to deeply review those uh those resources. And so this began in February. We got some early arrival. They send us all copies of these. And so we were able to send those out to schools. Teachers are able to uh work with these online and with physical copies in front of them. there's a a caravan process that every level and every school had an opportunity to participate and our teachers went uh to those locations at uh to the location at Clemson University and
131had an opportunity to look at those. And then uh during our our February professional learning, our secondary teachers had an opportunity to spend uh as many as really two hours reviewing these uh under the guidance of some of our instructional specialists. And so following that, we we sent out surveys. It was a pretty clear preference on the part of our teachers at the elementary and at the high school level. Uh middle school, we were able to kind of identify two resources that were both pretty high quality but were pretty close in their level of preference. We had some additional conversations with middle school teachers and then sent out another survey. Uh and then uh all after uh all of that I really feel like we have uh some recommendations uh that are pretty clear in
132terms of the preferences of our teachers. We'd like to take just a moment. There's a list of criteria by which we reviewed these. You know there there's some important things when you're looking at a resource to be reminded of. Number one, we don't teach a textbook. We don't teach the resource. We teach the state standards. And so the resources that we want to adopt need to be the resources that allow our students the greatest amount of access to that content and provide our teachers with the greatest amount of resource that gives them a place that they can come to and rely upon to meet these criteria. And so following all of that uh I would like to make a recommendation that includes the following. uh one I ready math for the elementary level. Envision mathematics
133which is SAVIS uh for the middle school level. Envision mathematics or SAVIS for geometry with statistics. Algebra 1, algebra 2 with probability, the BW wash product for applications and modeling which is a new course at the high school level. and then the Pearson product for statistical modeling with additional math courses continuing to use existing resources and so happy to try to answer any questions about either the process or our recommendation with respect to math adoption resources. Thank you for your time. Really appreciate y'all's thoroughess in providing all this and getting all the teacher input and feedback for for this. So, thank you for that. Any questions? All right. Yes, please. All right. I'd like to move that we approve the district's recommendation for math materials adoption for the 256 school year. That includes I read
134math for the elementary level, envision mathematics for the middle school level, envision mathematics for geometry with statistics, algebra 1 and algebra 2 with probability. PW Walsh for applications and modeling and Pearson for statistical modeling with additional math courses continuing to use existing resources. Second. All right. Have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? All right. 51. Thank you. All right. Now, moving on to our action items. I think we're about actioned out. So, uh, obviously this is first reading approval of our general fund budget for fiscal year 26. So, if we don't have any further discussion or questions, can I get a motion? I make a motion that we approve on first reading the FY26 general fund budget. I'll second motion and a second on the table. Any further
135discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? All right. 51. Thank you. And then back to our administrative policy manual, section G, second reading, final approval. I believe that we have read this about as many times as we can. And um any further? No, I think um Miss Bay has captured the discussion from last time. Um the good news is we still haven't received the next section, so you'll get a reprieve for a little while on this. Good news. Um, but I think she captured the the discussion last time in those changes and uh should be reflected in those. So, if you approve them on second reading, we should be good to go. All right. Can I get a motion? I move that we approve administrative policy manual section G, second reading, final approval. Second. All right.
136Motion and a second. Any discussion hearing? None. All in favor? All right. 51 on that one as well. Now, board member comments. Um, I just would like to say Dr. Thorland and Dr. McDonald and Mr. Smith spoke to our Rotary Club and it was great. It was just great. I think we just don't understand how much our community loves to hear what's going on in the schools and y'all did an excellent job and we really appreciate you coming very much. Good, good program. And also today, Andrea was there. I got to attend the opening of the reading courtyard at Orchard Park. Jenny Clay was here tonight. She's did an excellent job. She had received a bright ideas grant from Blueidge Electric Co-op to finish up the project and um you need to go see it.
137It's just great there. It's full of hammocks for children to read at Westminster. I'm sorry, Westminster L. I did that twice today at Westminster L. But it is an excellent excellent and it was a beautiful day. They had a good crowd. kids there were showing us how to use the hammocks to read and um so it's it's a great thing to see. She really was very creative in how she used the box. Great. Anybody else? All right. Well, now I will take a motion to move into executive session so we can discuss personnel items, employment recommendations and changes and professional contracts for the upcoming 2025 26 school year. Second. Motion a second. All in favor? All right. 5. Thank you. Thank you everybody sitting through that with us.