001Okay. Come on, ready. Welcome. I'd like to call this May 11th Board of Education meeting to order. Please rise and join me in saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance 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. First order of business is to approve the agenda if I can get a motion. I so move along with the agenda and the addendum. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Uh, no audience. Uh, we'll move on to school reports and fanfare, uh, year-end reports from our principals and curriculum director. Not sure who's going first. >> Mr. Gotlieb, I think. Gotlieb. >> Or Mrs. Anderson, one of the two. Okay. He
002just told me that about 5 minutes ago. >> [laughter] >> Bear with me. Is that on? There's a button on this side. >> [clears throat] >> Is that on? I think it's on. All right. So, this list is just a summary. There are so many things that we can say because we have amazing staff, um, not just in our two buildings, but across we know that. Um, this, like I said, is just a snapshot. Um, our teaching and learning, our data continues to to excel, um, if you were to look at our NWEA and Acadience data, it is as high if not higher than it's been, um, historically. Um, we have amazing teachers, celebrated our district teacher of the year from West, uh, Betsy Um for programming, we um continue to have strong partnerships with
003um the high school, with the Black Hills State University. Um we continue to celebrate Spartan pride across K-2 with t-shirts starting at the kindergarten level, and then um we have our monthly assemblies or um quarterly assemblies at both buildings. Um we utilize the um Spearfish Foundation for a ton of different programs. Um going down to our community partnerships, again, tons of partnerships with Black Hills State, um middle school, high school. Um some other external um organizations, um VFW. Um something we did new this year um at Mountain View, and I can speak to it um for a long time cuz it was super successful. We had our um kindergarten and early childhood resource fair, and we had over 100 families come to that. Um we got most of our kids signed up for kindergarten screening
004at that. We brought in so many different community partnerships just right there. Um it was a 2-hour event in April. We had over 20 um vendors um or booths. Um and we had a ton of positive feedback on that. Um you'll see that we've um continued to have um uh partnerships with um the library and um all of our holiday programming and um this month uh you'll you'll see um if you look at our calendar, there's tons of activities. Kids are going to different communities, um uh community organizations, and um kindergarteners just uh went to the um city hall, the library, the uh fire departments Where else do they go? Um, and the police department. And then, um, second graders had their, um, ex- exhibition with um, at at West and invited tons of parents.
005Um, it was well attended, so. Uh, you can read through this. I don't have much more. I just know that the teachers, um, do an amazing job and they they continue to bring new ideas and we we continue to to support them. Are there any questions? If I could share just one example of, uh, the high school partnering with Mountain View students, anyway, Mrs. Foote, >> Yes. her students, uh, created a monster, if you will, and they had to draw a picture and then they had to describe it on a piece of paper and then a high school art student in a pottery class had to make the monster. And I went to Mrs. Foote's class today and talked to some of the students that made them. And, first of all, the the art was
006awesome. I mean, the the pottery your ceramic figures were awesome, but the excitement that they had to make these for these kindergarten students, uh, we'll be taking them over on Friday to pick them up and so the high school students can interact with the and give them their monsters. So, that was pretty cool. Yeah. Thank you for driving for that, too. Yeah. We have a ton of ton of partnerships going on just to celebrate that that. Anything else? Thank you. >> Thank you. All right, we'll see. Is this going to work? Um, I might regret this comment July 1, but that was the greatest presentation I've heard out of West Elementary in A LONG TIME. >> [laughter] >> UH, JUST A COUPLE THINGS HERE FROM CREEKSIDE. Um a lot of this is carryover from things
007that have happened year to year in the school. Um but a couple things I wanted to point out that were a little bit different. Um our K kids, uh this was a fundraiser that they chose this Hobo's Healing Heart and they raised over $2,000 and that's for outstanding medical expenses for pets and that was a choice that the kids came up with um and presented that check at one of our honors assemblies that we run each month. Um Battle of the Books, yes, we do that every year. I don't know if you guys have been a part of that, but that is crazy and it it was pretty cool to be a part of, but it was exhausting. Um there's a lot of things that that have been kind of neat to see with owls.
008That was a big event for our school and watching the the work that our kids and our teachers put into that is pretty neat all year. Um we are expanding the the bike rodeo that's been happening. It's kind of been just a fourth grade event. We're going to open it up uh to all the grades. They're going to have their bikes come over and get worked on by different people here in town and it's really anyone that can can bring a bike to get worked on. They'll give them a quote. We bought some bike helmets for kids and then trying to expand that a little bit more with mountain biking club with Mr. Johnson. He's going to come over and do some Creekside rides with students. Not sure he understands what he's getting himself into,
009but we're going to see how this goes Thursday. Um this year we did start an art club. This is our first year for that. It's it's by kind of a nomination, but they we did it that way so we could get more students involved in it and do it at different times throughout the year. And those students come in at 7:45 a couple days a week to kind of create art to put around our school and show it off a little bit. Um and then our music concerts, our programs, We did add one and because Elders Wisdom is only just a few classes, then we did a Veterans Day concert right around that and we were we ended up moving it a couple days after but got a lot of thanks from local veterans for
010doing that and so that's something that we plan on continuing to do and building on. >> [clears throat] >> The talent show is coming up here in on Fridays. We're going to see what that looks like and that'll be a new experience. And then just couple other things for our third grade. Uh you know, one of the things I wanted to point out, Miss Anderson talked about it too, all the work that our our staff puts in. Our scores are starting to come in from South Carolina assessment but right now at Creekside our math scores especially are very strong. And I just think that shows all the effort that they put in to try and grow that. Right now for third grade it's up 11% from where it was last year and all of our
011cohorts as they've traveled through have improved quite a bit as well. Um and then in fourth grade we had a couple students that got in some different competitions this year. We have fourth grade student that won the I Voted sticker and so got to present that to her in class and then also a fourth grade student that won the work zone awareness billboard contest. So his artwork will be on a billboard. I believe it's exit eight about just being safe around construction sites. And then fourth grade did team up and they're going over to Miss Johnson's classroom at the CT center to try and build that partnership to go over and see foods and nutrition. If you've ever seen fourth graders with a knife and cutting things, I'm not sure Miss Johnson knew what she
012was getting herself into with that. That was scary. >> [clears throat] >> Math in fourth grade is up 7% and our fifth grade numbers I think I have 8%. Some different scores are in now. I believe it's actually at 9%. Um just finished up our transition or some of our transition stuff over to middle school and getting to see both sides of that to see how big of a jump that really is for some of our kids and so I just trying to help with that and get them more prepared for middle school. I think that's all I got. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you. >> [clears throat] >> Well, Spearfish Middle School has been a great place this year. Um if you notice in there teacher of the year Kristen Rath, but we also
013have VFW teacher of the year Anton Peterson. He won the regional one. He is in for the state award now. So hopefully Mr. Peterson can earn that great honor. Um the counselors have a lot of things that they do. We created Hope Squad last year to help us out identifying students with uh suicide needs and self-harm. That's been a great organization to get kids engaged helping each other. Just have to remember the kids are not counseling each other. They're identifying and bringing that information to the adults. Um Great Kindness Challenge is always interesting. Uh lots of dress-up days, lots of things that get them engaged uh and seeing kids going out of their way to be kind to other people at this age is always challenging. Sometimes it's hard to think of others. You can
014see the students and the staff of the month there. A long list, but one of the things that we added last year was a start attendance award. Each month we calculate which uh start team has the best attendance and they get a box of donuts. It's really that's all they get and um it is quite a a battle and it's quite an award. It's the only time they want to run down the hallway towards me uh because usually we have donuts uh galore for them. So, you can see a lots of different classes, too, throughout the year. There Last year we ended up with a couple classes went back and forth the whole time, but a lot of others joined in. Science Fair this year was a huge success. Black Hills State had some leadership
015change over due to a person retiring, and actually the high school jumped in and did some more judging. We had every student was judged three to five times in the regional when usually we only got one to two times. A great situation for us on both ends. The high school kids did an awesome job. And they also get cash awards. You can see all the food drive there from sixth grade and seventh and eighth grade. The whole building went to food drive this year, so huge success overall. Lots of honor roll students. The list gets longer and longer each year. Um Some things that we continue to add is our clubs and activities are huge part of what middle school is all about. So, I would tell you to take some time, look down through
016it. There was a career day this year that we got to be a part of in Rapid City with our eighth graders. And then we did a career day here, helped fund by the funded by the foundation. Wonderful opportunity for our kids to get down there in Rapid City. One to see other middle school kids, but to see all kinds of entities from colleges to businesses that were and it was just for eighth graders, and it was a great opportunity for them to kind of get their feet wet a little bit, get excited about high school. And then we had our career day of over 60 different people coming in and showing our kids what there is in the world out there. Everything from Black Hills State to our business community. Band and choir this
017week is a busy week for us. Choir concert tonight at 7:00. It's also band concert on Thursday night at 7:00. Then we have our large group contest, which is like our state testing for band and choir this Friday in the high school. So, huge amount of time going into that, and that we thank all the kids and the and the parents. Something I would note middle school activities, 87% of our students were in a club or activity in our school, which is huge. 380 students is just amazing when you start thinking about and the and all the clubs, nobody nobody pays those teachers anything. They come on their own free time. I walked into the archery um uh banquet the other night and the entire commons is full of parents and everybody's supporting it. So
018uh thanks to all the parents that support those activities, but I would tell you to take time and look through all those clubs and activities. There's a lot of things going on in our school uh and it's due to a great staff and great students. So any questions you might have? Thank you. Thank you. All right. For the high school, um we we try to post as much as we can of these celebrations on our social media. Uh so I'm going to pick a few things that maybe just a highlight of those, but maybe some things you didn't see on social media, too. So um just kind of starting off, uh if you didn't see this one, our debate team is a 10 10 out of 11 time state champion, which is a big deal.
019Last year was the only year they didn't win out of those 11 years. So congrats to them. We have had in the last 2 years two students sign up for the national legislative page program and two two years in a row we had a student in the national capital as a page, which is a pretty pretty neat thing. We're offering more AP uh classes and therefore offering more AP testing. Um and that data is 1 year behind, but um in that we had 80% 82% of those students taking an AP test scored a three or higher, which is a huge accomplishment. Um we're offering new courses in our in in our CTE auto class, auto brakes and suspension has been a big hit this year. We also uh had 19 students graduate last year. Uh
020I shouldn't say graduate, but finish the CNA coursework and become a certified CNA. Um this year we have a few more than that even that are testing currently. So, hopefully we're kind of following that trend of growing that. Uh we started an Educators Rising chapter at the high school, which is part of following our strategic plan. It's been a been a really good success starting off uh strong. We even had one student, Taylor Vitto, who qualified for nationals, um which is a fantastic thing. Um with our first year as a chapter to have a student qualify for nationals is a big deal. Our student council raised a National Honor Society Honor Society raised $1,879 and 643 lb for the food Spearfish Food Pantry. So, uh that's a great thing. And two other things I wanted
021to add that weren't weren't on here cuz the data wasn't in quite yet when I was writing this was um one is our ACT data is coming back and we're tracking with really strong scores um comparatively especially to our surrounding area schools and with the state average. So, I don't want to give away numbers yet cuz things are still coming in, but it's looking to be uh fairly good. And then we also today celebrated our 9th through 11th academic award winners, which means if a student has a 3.74 or higher for three consecutive quarters, they become an academic award winner. And then we do the seniors that will be this Wednesday at their award ceremony. Um but for freshman we had 40 of those students, sophomores had 21, uh juniors had 40 students, and the
022seniors actually have 54 students who uh got that award. So, um things are going great at SHS and any questions from you guys? Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Williams. All right, good evening. I'm going to talk a little bit about uh curriculum instruction, but then actually mostly about our strategic plan and the progress we've made this year towards those goals. Um for curriculum and assessment, some of my colleagues talked a little bit about the assessments. I will echo what Mrs. Anderson said about uh the NWEA scores. They looked the best they've ever looked. That tracks growth and achievement. We had in the winter, that's the last winter that's complete, the best scores we've ever had. So, that was really a wonderful thing to see. South Dakota assessments concluded last week in all the
023buildings. The data is still coming in, but something we are noticing is that in particular students who started with fully aligned curriculum are really showing some some great progress. That's where we're seeing the most growth. We're seeing growth in other places, too, but our theory that if we fully aligned it, that would help really seems to be holding true right now. Um I'll have much more on this in the fall when I report back to you. Right now, the data is embargoed, so that's about all I can share at this point. As a reminder in the curriculum world, we're in year one with our social studies curriculum. These are the new standards that were approved at the state level. Um you know, again, it's radically different than it's been in the past, so it's been
024a real growth opportunity for our staff and something that we've been been working through this year. We are in year one of our math study. So, we did a five-year buy for math. We typically buy for six years. We've started that. Um the staff overwhelmingly wants to stick with what we believe is working, which is Envision by Savvas. Our biggest question now is whether or not we update the copyright or stay with the the one that we have. So, really some good things there. We'll be looking to pilot the new one next year to help us make a decision whether or not we update that copyright or not. So, mostly what I'm going to talk about tonight is strategic plan and the progress that we've made on those particular goals. I'm going to touch briefly
025on all four of the pillars, but I might not talk about every objective because some of them relate more, frankly, to what you folks do than what I do. So, uh the first focus area is teaching and learning and I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, but this objective addresses our drive to continually improve our achievement in our district. Um or sorry, this one is attendance as a method of improving achievement. So, this is as of late last week when I pulled the data. So, if you look at the attendance box, you can see that our attendance is up. Um we already have very good attendance as a district. We have attendance that a lot of districts um couldn't dream of having, but we have improved that a little bit, so I
026think that's a great thing. Chronic absenteeism is something you would like to be low. Chronically absent students are students who miss 10% or more of the school year. Um you can see that that number is decreasing. The students who are in the warning bucket are decreasing and students who fall under the good attendance have increased, so we're happy to see those trends. Some of the things we've done this year, the data team has really tackled attendance. We looked at some ways to communicate better through our social media. Um many of the principals are doing home visits, so a lot of different things that we're doing to At the high school and the middle school level, they actually surveyed students to find out what some of the barriers were that were preventing them from getting to
027school and trying to act on those results. Also under this first pillar of teaching and learning, we'll talk just a little bit about some of the strategies that we're using to improve academic achievement. We implemented PLCs this year for professional learning communities. This gives our teachers an opportunity to get together regularly and identify what's working well, what's not working some so well, learn from each other and um help students grow through that. We made a slight tweak to our English language curriculum this year. We adopted something called version three of Into Reading. Not a big difference, but it does have decodable readers and even better adherence to science of reading. We're thrilled that we are in a partnership with Black Hills State. That's a 3-year partnership through a grant through the Department of Education. On
028the right, you can see what we did this spring with that grant. Next year, we'll be focusing on writing instruction. Our ELA committee has identified that as an area to work on. Under resource management, I'm just going to briefly uh talk about our paraprofessional training. So, one of the things our paras said in last time we did our surveys is we really would like some more PD that's really aligned towards us. So, these were the topics for the paraprofessional training this year. Mr. Williams talked about this, so I won't talk too much about it, but we did start Educators Rising. I'm thrilled to be helping as an advisor with that. It's been a real fun process. As he mentioned, Taylor Vido was a national qualifier. And as we've been doing this, um one of the
029things that has really stayed with me is that research indicates that about 60% of teachers teach within 20 miles of the high school where they graduated. We have tremendously talented students in Spearfish, so we're hoping that this organization can help some of them stay around and um eventually work in our school. For family and community engagement, um this is really about communication. And we uh we surveyed stakeholders actually um Kirk did that this year, and we found that they weren't particularly thrilled with our website, so we updated that and kudos to Mr. Mr. Hardesty and the tech folks. They very quickly created a wonderful new website for us. We also have a new app, and we're also using Thrillshare now as a communication platform. I don't use that too much, but I've heard really good
030things from the principals about that. Anybody got some Thrillshare? >> [snorts] >> It is in use. It is in use. Okay. Um we launched our Facebook page, and we also um, well, we launched our Facebook page. This is some of the information about um, the analytics, I guess, behind the scene. We've had 177,000 unique impressions in the upper left-hand corner. Um, probably hard for you to read all this, but you do have it on your handouts. Um, photos, not surprisingly, get the most interaction. We are reaching mostly people in the age group 35 to 44, and it is more popular with women versus men. The United States is where most of our viewers come from and a few from Honduras, for whatever reason. Um, and then you can see it's mostly reaching people in our
031local community. So, we're thrilled about that. We're at a little over 900 followers right now. Um, PLC training, I already touched on that, but we did, I think, really achieve our goal of giving initial training for PLCs. It is an ongoing thing and something we'll continue to work on next year and even after that. And that's kind of it in a nutshell. Any questions for me? Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, uh, moving on. Uh, we don't have any conflicts of interest waivers, so we'll move into informational items from our superintendent. All right, just a few things. Uh, I guess just to put on your radar to keep next Monday evening, roughly 5:30, 6:00. Keep that free. There may be that very very likely there'll be a need for a
032special meeting that evening. Uh, next thing is, uh, the Mountain View alley project. We have a pre-construction meeting on Thursday this week, and then Mammoth is, uh, slated to start on May 18th, next Monday, on the, uh, track and field. That's all have. Okay. Uh we'll move into the action items and the first one is action item A. Uh South Dakota High School Activities Association Division uh four representative. Um if I can get a motion. I'll make a motion to vote for Jeff Kosters. I'll second it. Any discussion? He's the only one on the ballot and [laughter] I would recommend it to cast your votes in in his direction. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. >> opposed, same sign. Uh we'll move into action item B. Um also from the South Dakota High
033School Activities Association and this is for amendment number one. If I can get a motion first. I move that we vote yes for amendment number one. Second. Any discussion? Um I would just say our recommendation is yes. Uh it is just to clarify the difference. There's some schools that are going going into the trimester rule and especially with like our middle school having a trimester, if it's an eighth grade student or seventh grade student that's participating in high school athletics, they need to have that clarification between semesters and trimesters. So, uh it's just clarifying that. Okay. Uh all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. >> All those opposed, same sign. Uh next one, South Dakota High School Activities Association amendment number two. If I can get a motion. Move to approve. Okay, and the
034only thing I can say about this is it should never apply to us, but it's about school districts who happen to close and the transfer of eligibility. So, if it's a small school somewhere and their school closes, that there's the students are held harmless in their transfer of eligibility to another school. Okay. I'll move for a yes vote on that by approving. Second clarify that. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. >> All those opposed, same sign. And the last one is also the South Dakota High School Activities Association Amendment number three. Can I get a motion? I'll make a motion. Vote yes. Second. Discussion? Okay, and this is just clarification for early graduates. If somebody were to graduate in December like we have graduates, to essentially just say that their eligibility ends the first
035day or before the first day of the second semester. So, once they graduate, they graduate early, they lose their eligibility once the second semester starts. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Um moving on to action item E, which is to consider the second reading adoption to the following policies. Our first reading was held April 13th. Um I don't know if you want to go through those, Kirk, or Yeah, again, the teacher and administrative policies that we had the minor changes on, they have not changed since the first reading. The social media policy did change a little bit. There's been an addition of a couple of sentences based on the input from a community member at the last board meeting. Um her concerns again were about the prohibited uses
036and the list of things that are under there and how they may be applied or misinterpreted. Uh I gave that to our school attorney. He provided these sentences that for those in the audience says such list of uses is non ex- non-exclusive and provides examples of uses uses which are generally deemed to be prohibited. However, this list does not override the district's obligation to apply the Pickering balancing test to any and all social media use. So, again, it's not something's going to have to be fairly obvious that it disrupts the learning environment to where we would apply the Pickering balancing test. And so anything that's listed in those uh bullet points there um I mean that's not an easy decision. It's one that would will involve a school attorney to to help us determine whether
037it violates it or does not. So I can get a motion. I so move. Okay, all those in favor, please say I. I. All those opposed, same sign. Uh moving on to action item L, which is consider approval for changes updates of the handbook for the 2026-27 school year. You want to go over what they are? Yeah, I can just I mean they're they're they haven't changed unless it's maybe a date or a name or something as presented from last board meeting with the exception of the medical uh uh medication administration. Uh they came from our school nurse. That was in Moodle. I also sent you a copy of that and it just goes it just follows our policy. And so um a lot of times parents will hopefully read the handbooks but may not
038always read the policy. So we've uh the school nurse felt it was important to include in the handbooks. So Okay. I can get a motion. I'll make a motion to approve it. With please if you would add in the motion with the added uh terminology from the school nurse. Okay. With the added terminology from the I'll second it. All those in favor, please say I. I. All those opposed, same sign. Uh moving on to G, consider approval of special education comprehensive plan. Move to approve. Second it. Sorry, Anne. Any discussion? The only thing I would say is Mrs. Heilman is the uh uh the writer of this document or the of this plan and uh it's always been well received. It's been used utilizes as an exemplar for other school districts. Um so I would
039recommend to approve. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Uh moving on to H, which is to consider the garbage bid for the 2026-27 school year. I'll make a motion to approve it. Second. So, as in years past, we have only received one bid, and it increased by $94. So, I would say kudos to the city, and that's $94 a month. But, so roughly $1,200 for the year. Kudos for the city knowing that they're the only bidder and still treating us very, very well. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. And Uh H, actually item H, is to consider adding two Educator Rising Advisors. Get a motion and then we'll discuss. >> Move to approve. Yes. >> Okay. I move to
040approve it. Anyone want to do a second and then we'll go to discussion. Yeah, I'll second for discussion. Okay, it's something that I've mentioned to Mr. Williams that maybe based upon the numbers that at least one, if not two, but at least one be hired for this year then as numbers increase, possibly next year. But, this is just the first step in the process. If you approve one or two this evening, then that will need to go to SEA to request an addendum to the negotiated agreement to place them on the extra duty schedule. The recommendation by Mr. Williams is a group three, which is roughly $1,800 annually. So, if it's one, it's $1,800. If it's two, we're looking at 3,600. Can you remind me how many students participate in it? What's that? How many
041students, can you remind me? Uh yeah. Or either or? Yeah, currently right now there's only seven students. >> [cough and clears throat] >> We started you and I, we started since January or February. >> Yeah. We haven't had a full year even with like trying to count them, so. Um we had got had a couple of them. Um we had two teachers and Miss Maine jumped in to help lead it on their own good will. So, um there's really actually three leaders for right now. We could definitely use [snorts] another but Miss Maine has done this before, so she's really up here on the ground. And two teachers that have been helping for a while. So. As it is So, as it grows, um like where it is right now is is one sufficient or
042do you need two or or Yeah, I think one is totally sufficient for right now. Um there will there will be more people helping, but I think Miss Maine will continue to help too and then one one teacher and maybe another person will just volunteer. It's been a great and it's been really working. And yeah, she loves the staff and the staff loves her kids. Um so, I think one would be absolutely sufficient for now. Okay. I'd like to amend the motion to approve one for now and then come back if we need a second one later. I will second that one, too. Okay. Any other comments, discussion? The only other thing I would say and I think Miss Maine or even Mr. Williams mentioned that it does kind of fit in our strategic [clears
043throat] plan as far as hiring and retaining qualified staff. Uh there's no guarantee that any students that go through this and become teachers stay, but 60% as she reported do uh work and live within or teach and live within 20 miles where they grew up, so there's a good possibility. Sure. Okay. Just to clarify for the newspaper so we don't get quoted wrong, Mr. Watson, uh we have to vote to amend the motion and then vote on the new amended motion. So, we have to vote to approve the amendment, and then If you're following Robert's Rules, you're absolutely right. >> [laughter] >> Just want to make sure. >> [clears throat] >> There was a debacle at the city a couple weeks ago, and it was a 10-minute conversation. So. [laughter] So, let's uh let's first
044vote to amend the motion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. And then let's vote to approve the motion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Okay. Thank you. Uh moving on to the consent agenda. Uh as a reminder, we can do all this as one action, or we can um pull individual items off. So, if I can get a motion. With the addendum. I'll move to approve with the addendum. Second. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. That takes us down to Sorry, I'm going to page down to the right spot. That was a lot. Uh discussion uh information updates. Uh the first uh what we have here is our preliminary budget
045for 2026-2027 school year. Mr. Crosswait will present. Thank you. Yeah. I've been waiting for this moment. I know you have. >> [laughter] >> This is my last one. I know it is. You better make it good. You better shine. Now you have somebody to blame if this Second to last, cuz you got to do the final yet. Um what we have in the board packet >> [clears throat] >> um is a Word document titled budget notes, and then obviously a variety of spreadsheets, numerous spreadsheets. So, we can go into as much detail as anyone would like. We can break it down into the line item. My preference would be to hit the summary, which is um contained in the budget notes, kind of hit the highlights, and then move on. If you have any questions,
046certainly stop me. Um if you have any questions between now and June when we have the budget hearing and when the budget is adopted, um please let us know and we will do our best to try to find the answers for you. So, if there are no objections, we'll just focus on the word document. >> That works. Um the first paragraph goes into um major funds, the general fund, capital outlay, and special education, and the amount of difference between expenditures and revenues. You can see in the general fund, um expenditures exceed revenues by the roughly $176,000. In capital outlay, revenues exceed expenditures by roughly 39,000. And special education um is a wash this year. We've managed to tie out um revenues and expenditures um for special education. Getting into the second paragraph and pages three
047and four on the spreadsheets, um are the mill levies. Um there's quite a big shift this year from um what we previously have. Ag continued to go up a little bit, but in owner-occupied, the state is going to assume more of that responsibility and take that load, that liability, if you will, off of the local effort. Um you can see it in the owner-occupied where it decreased by $172 per $100,000 of assessed value, um which is a sizable drop. Once again, that levy will just take care of the major funds that the board levies um or approves a levy for, general fund, capital outlay, and special education. Um we get into pages five and six, our projected revenues. Um revenues in general fund are roughly $233,000 less um than in prior year due to um
048a decrease in enrollment, projected decrease in enrollment of 40 students. This year we have 2,304 as the official count, and we're budgeting 2264, 2,264 for next fiscal year. We also used um the 1.4% increase that we have in state aid that came from the state. Um that is all for the general fund. In the capital outlay um shows an increase of, once again, roughly $494,000. I've struggled over year to try to phrase this correctly. This year um I settled on primarily due to growth in assessed property valuations increasing the district's allowable maximum, thereby expanding its capacity to generate revenue. It's not totally correct in that the state will set the maximum for us. The board can levy at that maximum, and it is a dollar amount, so it isn't a mill like we're used to
049seeing, but we run that calculation for the board to try to track where we have been, kind of where we're going, just kind of the historical trend there. Um it's also not based totally off of valuation. It's 3% or CPI, whichever is greater, and then the growth that the district experienced. So, even though it is related to valuations, it's not directly tied to the total valuation amount. Um we also had a discussion in the finance committee meeting. Um these are preliminary numbers that we have from the county for the valuations. I don't know if we'll get anything more concrete before the budget hearing and the budget adoption, but this is what we're working with right now. Um we did have a bit of an anomaly there in the reappraisal category. We typically have an increase
050in reappraisals. Um last year our increase in reappraisals was 214 million. This year it's um, decreased actually 12 million dollars. The growth category is where we picked up most of our increase in valuations and that was a roughly 150 million. Um, it's not only due to new construction and growth per se, but we did have some TIFs go off um, in the school district so then we get um, that increase in valuation for where the TIF was started and the increase going forward. Um, definitely a sizable difference there and certainly impacts capital outlay more than it does anything else. Special education budget um, reflects an increase of 132,844 and that is a reflection on impairment level funding increases um, and assessed valuation increases. Capital out or special education does go off of the bottom line,
051the total valuation that we have there which is different than the other two major funds that we have. Um, quickly going through qualified school construction bond um, that was used to finance Creekside clear back in 2010. Um, that matures in December of '26 so next December that will um, be done. That debt service will be satisfied. Um, the other one for Creekside is a refinance piece and that will go off. That debt will be mature in December of '27. Um, food service revenues are projected to be um, a little bit less. Um, we had a they're very close to where we are right now. It's definitely um, a projection as [clears throat] far as food service goes for the revenue and the expenditures um, but the most recent data that I could come up with
052in our in my conversations with Lunchtime Solutions, this is what we're projecting that to be and driver education is just um, using prior year's audit report as a of a baseline to begin. Um, we the spreadsheets get into the individual expenditures, line item expenditures. You can see, um, in general fund budgets reduced, um, by $440,000. Um, that also includes, um, the activity expenditures. Um, and I had a discussion with Dalton, and we've had this discussion for several years now, in that we have a hard time, um, attaining the budgeted amount for our student transportation, boys, girls, and combined. Um, I probably picked a really rotten year to try to equate those two, but, um, nevertheless, um, we increased boys' transportation by $21,000, I think. Girls was roughly 30, and the combined was roughly 30, also.
053So, total there, there's roughly $80,000 that we increased the budget to try to match our actual, which is kind of backwards from what we typically, um, the process that we typically follow, but it kind of reached the point where it was a little bit ridiculous to overspend when the AD department is working as hard as they can to reduce that transportation cost, yet they will never, and I mean never, meet the budgeted amount that we had set. So, we increased the budgeted amount to more of an actual, um, amount, and hopefully going forward, those two will align a little bit better than what they do right now. The bottom line of the of, um, that whole activity piece is still going to wash out to be the same. We just overspent the budgeted amount, but
054our total expenditures are still going to be the same from one year to the next. Just hopefully they will align more closely with the budgeted amount. Does anybody have any questions on that? I'm not sure if that's >> each year the line item budgeted amount was X, and we were always over it. And now you're just making it realistic, so it'll match. So >> They will match. Obviously, budget-wise, it's hard to attain our targeted um reduction [snorts] in budget for the general fund when we do have these increases, but this isn't the only one that we have to deal with. So we do have a targeted amount that will not that we will not attain it the way it sits right now, but we are obviously giving it a good shot. Um capital outlay reflects
055um an increase of roughly $487,000, mainly due to the laptop adoption piece that is budgeted to be 1.2. Um we have some of the summer projects are a little bit challenging to project exactly because they do span a fiscal year. Um but that's the closest amount that that we could come there, and most of it, as I said, is due to the laptop purchase that we have budgeted coming up. Special education is slightly higher at $95,000. Um we do have um residential placement costs that are higher than they have been previously. Um so that basically is is swaying that in that direction. And as I mentioned, [clears throat] the qualified school construction bonds are almost mature. Um the food service budget closely aligns, if you will, to um the revenues, and so does um driver
056education. The last um sentence there in the last spreadsheet is just a comparison from um fiscal year '26, the prior fiscal year, to um the budgeted amount that we have in fiscal year '27. It's kind of a high-level and brushed through, but any questions that you may have? In the June um board meeting, we will have our budget hearing, and if there aren't any changes, um hopefully, um it'll be approved. If there are changes, we'll make sure and note those going forward and and we'll proceed. Once again, if we do have any changes in the evaluation piece, we'll be sure to note those also. Thanks, sir. You got Appreciate it. Uh moving on to the minutes. If I can get a motion to approve the minutes from the April 13th meeting. I'll make a motion
057to approve them. Second it. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Opposed, same sign. Uh next uh financial reports and bills. If I can get a motion to approve. Move to approve. Second. All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed, same sign. And uh last item here is uh a motion if I can get a motion to go into executive session, please. B- Before you do that, uh just to let everybody, I guess, in the audience know and online that uh there will be likely be action following the executive session. We will turn the live stream back on prior to uh prior to any action taking place. Uh but I would say executive session be 10-15 minutes if you want to wait around. Um but Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you.
058I make a motion that we move into executive session for South Dakota Codified Law 1-25-2 discussing the qualifications, competence, performance, character, fitness of any public officer or employee or prospective public officer or employee. The term employee does not include any independent contractor. Second. All those in favor, please say I. I. We are in executive session.