001Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Please take your seats. Our meeting will begin shortly. They're ready. Okay, let's get started here. Before we proceed, I'd like to take a moment to officially transition the role of school board president. It has been an honor to serve in this position and I want to thank my fellow board members, staff, and our community for their support and I'm proud of what we have accomplished together. At this time, I'm pleased to hand over the gavl and the responsibilities that come with it to our new president, Carlos Bustillos. I have full confidence in his leadership and vision for the board moving forward. President Bustillos, the floor is yours. [Applause] [Music] It's yours. Can I have this? Nam. [Music] Oh. Oh, yeah. These No, no, it's not. It'll be It'll be Wednesday.
002It'll be Wednesday. But I do have a little bit to say real quick if you if I could. Um, thank you, uh, Trustee Ooa. I want to begin by expressing my deepest gratitude to you for your dedication, your service, your steady leadership as president. Your commitment to our students, staff, and community has set a strong foundation for all of us to build on. I am truly honored and humbled to accept this role. Serve us serve alongside each of you on this board has already been a privilege and I look forward to continuing our work together grounded in collaboration, transparency, and a shared commitment to student student success. Together, we have the opportunity to continue to make meaningful strides for our for our district. And I am confident that by staying focused on our core values
003and listening to the voices of our community, we can keep Isla ISD moving forward. Thank you again for your trust. Let's get to work. [Applause] [Music] Thank you and good evening and welcome to the Isleta Independent School District meeting of the board of trustees. The board invites the public comment during the that the design designation portion of the meeting. Notice of the meeting provided instructions on a public signup and the rules for participation. Legally, the board may listen but may not enter into discussion on the issues raised during the public comment. It is it is with this great honor to call the meeting to order with fellow trustee Chris Hernandez, trustee Shane Hagerty, Trustee Connie Woodruff, Trustee Cruz OOA, Trustee Katherine Lucto, Mike Dwire is absent and excused and myself Carlos Bustillos at 607. Seven.
004Secretary Woodruff, would you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence? 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. Honor the Texas flag. I aliance to the Texas. One state under God, one and indivisible. And now a moment of silence. Thank you, Trusty Woodruff. Secretary Woodruff, do we have citizens input today? Yes, we do. Our first speaker is Heather Seenor. Thank you. Yes. Um, good evening esteem board members, president Bios and Dr. Dea Tore. My name is Heather Senor, YTA board member, and proud special education teacher. I want to start off by saying how proud I am to work for this district. I love my job and
005I love where I do it. We are the best district in this city. Not just because of our performance, but because of the people that make it. The teachers, the support staff, the custodians, the paraprofessionals, the cafeteria workers. We are the reason the district is the best. And it's time for that our treatment to reflect that. Recently, employees finally saw money released from the state in the form of House Bill 2. And the law clearly dictates that a percentage of those funds be used for employee raises. And yet that money now being finally put into our paychecks, the district simultaneously pushes forward with increased insurance premiums. Effectively cancelelling out any gains. That's not justical, but I believe it should be unlawful. Let's be clear, the district's debt is not the fault of its employees. It
006is unfair and frankly insulting to continue put pointing out past raises as justification when those raises don't even keep up with the cost of living. In fact, the step increase referenced in the last meeting is less than a tenth of a percent of of um salaries that oh I'm sorry employee salaries far below the state average of 4 to 6% increases for public employees in Texas. What message does that send? It tells our hardworking staff that any gain will be clawed back behind the scenes at the expenses of our employees rather than the district. It tells us while the district can afford the best paid administrators in the city, it can't offer the bare minimum in affordable health care for the people who do the work daily and do the essential work. And I say
007respectfully and urgently, if we could afford the best paid administration in the city, then we could afford the best paid employees. And that includes not raising insurance premiums on those who are already struggling to make ends meet. You cannot build a legacy of excellence by balancing budgets on the backs of educators and staff. This is about people's lives and their health and about whether they can afford to go to the doctor, to take care of their children, to simply breathe without the weight of financial worry. So, I urge you do the right thing. Show the city what it looks like for a district to truly stand behind all of its employees. Let's not just be um the best in our name. Let's be the best in our heart, in our actions, and how we care
008for our employees. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have [Applause] Jeff Senor. Good evening, uh, President Bios, board trustees, superintendent. My name is Jeff Senor. I'm the president of the East Teachers Association. It's about time the Texas leg legislature and the governor have stepped up to the plate to do what is right and take that first step towards funding our public schools in Texas and most importantly taking care of our students especially here in YSD. While our educators are going to finally see a significant increase in compensation for all the hard work they do inside and outside of the classroom, this increase still has been a long time coming. If you break it down, the increase can be seen as nothing but back pay for the increases in compensation that have been denied in the
009past. Nonetheless, it is important that all our employees see some type of compensation increase. It is also important to see such employees as our hourly staff not get the short end of the stick when it comes to compensation increases. Too many of our employees are still not making a livable wage in our district, and this must be addressed. Our bus drivers are the first ones to see our students and the last ones to see our students at the end of the day. Our food service employees give our students the energy they need to tackle the daily demands of learning in the classroom. Our custodial staff provide safe and clean classrooms in order to have pride in their learning and in their schools. Our security officers provide safe schools and learning environments. Our maintenance grounds and
010office clerks provide unmeasurable support across the board. And in the classrooms, our pair professionals are helping our students make the connections to those allimportant TEICSS. Everyone who has a stake in the development of our students and our future must not be left behind and must be recognized and given that show of support for the work they do. Yes, that comes in the form of compensation, but it also comes with respect and support. The district has set the precedent of insulating its employees from the cost of insurance increases in the past and that moment in time has come again where there should be no change from the norm. Do not wipe out any pay increases by forcing employees to have to pay more in their insurance costs the following year. We have some very highly compensated
011employees in our district who are absolute experts at finding a way to shield our employees from any insurance increase. I ask you all on the board to take the courage and make that tough choice and support our employees who continue to make YSD the shining star in the region and the state of Texas. Thank you all very much. [Applause] And next we have Ro Hernandez. our ESPs. These are hard our hardworking ESPs, lunch ladies, um pair of professionals. My name is Aulnandez and good evening, President Bustillos, board of trustees, Dr. Deator. I am a kinder pair. I am a Y t a Riverside Elementary representative. I am here to speak on behalf of all ESPs. I am here to ask for a raise. Teachers and counselors, librarians, and others, coaches, math coaches, science coaches are
012getting raises. ESPs are the backbone of our schools. We go beyond the call of duty. Paras are pulled out to cover for teachers that are absent. Paras have duties morning, lunch, after school. Paras with CPI are certified are pulled out on occasion to aid teachers with disciplines. Custodians become crossworkers. Also, they can't be at their place because they're out there cuz there's not even sometimes enough to cover. Security guards sometimes instead of taking care of the outside are inside taking care of their discipline too. Crazy. Yes, it's hard. But we do it. We go beyond the call of duty. And we do it because we love this. I know that it says other jobs is a sign. And we go beyond that. And we do that every single time every single day and every single
013moment that's needed. We're there. I care for every each and every one of you ESPs, teachers, everybody. But we all do need to be also respected and be part of everybody. As teachers, as librarians, as superintendants, everybody should be equal to. If there's a raise, everybody should get a raise. So, if you can do it and find a way for the superintendent and you can find a way for the teachers, find a way for the ESPs, too. It's very important. I would really love for you guys to find a way for us, too. Bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria people, paraprofessionals, security guards, take us into consideration. Thank you. [Applause] Uh, next we have Rammon Federico, support Good evening. Uh, my name is Rammon Federico and I I represent Bair and Riverside all over, you know. Uh
014my first recommendation would be like getting all our uh uh like uh Alicia Shakon Eastwood nose and getting the 9, 10, 11, and 12 getting them together and at Riverside making a academy to make because Riverside needs uh attendance and PE kids, you know, it would make it a better high school. Okay. And that would be my recommendation. And the other recommendation is having good teachers out there. And we got to create a better image than the p than the p private schools. Okay? Because they're beating us to the punch. You could see it. We got to stand out with technology. Whatever is coming on, we got to hit it on. It's okay. You deserve all the money, but you know, first you got to have a supervisor that takes care of you. And you
015if you deserve it, go for it, you know. But you have the supervisors got to tell you I'm I'm next owner of a company, so I don't know better than that. Okay. And uh teachers, let's go out there and we really have to keep our kids in the community. I don't with grandma. But, you know, there's a lot of real estate coming in, rebuilding the old houses, and uh people are buying them. Okay? So, we're not if we lose, we'll lose a little bit. We want to keep as much. But, you know, your job is on the line. And if we don't work together, Republicans, uh, Democrats, let's work together. And that's the only that's the American way. Okay. Thank you. That's the end of u citizens input. Thank you. Thank you, Secretary Wruff. I
016remind everyone that this is only a workshop and no vote will be taken tonight. Dr. Deator, do we have any presentations this evening? Yes, President Bustillos, members of the board, guests. We have one presentation this evening. Uh I would ask uh Miss Lindley Camurn to lead us in our 2526 budget development presentation. Good evening. Good evening, President Bustillos, members of the board, and Dr. Deator. You'll notice that each of you have a budget book with the 202526 proposed operating budget. I will um caution you that this is prepared prior to the passage of House Bill 2. However, the last page is an insert which we'll cover during the presentation that talks about what the impact of House Bill 2 will do to that proposed operating budget. And if I may ask for your patience, let
017me get all the way through the presentation because I think we'll answer at least 85% of your questions as we go through it. And if there's anything left at the end that I missed or that you would like to um go back to, I'll be happy to do so. You have a hard copy of the presentation where you can take notes and keep up with any thoughts or suggestions or comments you may have as we get to the end of it. And let's see if there we go. So, we're going to start by talking about and reviewing enrollment, average daily attendance, declining birth rates, and staffing. You've seen this uh graph many times as we've gone through budget development. It depicts the change in enrollment. You can see that prior to n 20 year 2019
018and 2020, our average student loss per year was about 369 students. At that time, we budgeted for a loss of 500, which helped us develop a fairly conservative revenue estimate. We believed that estimate was reasonable and would carry us through post-pandemic times. However, you can see from 2020 through 2021 and to current day, our average student loss has been 1316 students per year. This year, we only lost 851 students, but we've been budgeting for a loss of 1,500 students. annually and developing our revenue estimates based on that estimate. I think that just jumped like four slides. There we go. So, Dr. Deo Toé mentioned at the last board meeting in response to a question I believe by President Billios, what's happening to our kiddos? Why are we experiencing a decline in enrollment? And he was
019absolutely spot on. You can see from 2016 through 2017 that our graduating seniors were 2,951 students. However, our entering kindergarteners were only 273 students, a decline of 248 or 8.4%. If you follow that table all the way to the right, you can see that in this fiscal year at snapshot in October, we expected to graduate 2784 seniors, but we only had 242 kinder students entering the district. A decline of 742 students or nearly 27% um over that particular year. Ah, we're jumping. So obviously with the decline in enrollment, you would expect that we would adjust our staffing accordingly and Miss Russell Garcia's team along with the entire HR staff has done a phenomenal job of that. For the entire 9-year period depicted on the slide, our average classroom teacher loss has been 58.8. Um, obviously
020we don't lose partial personnel, but you could see that we averaged 59 FTEEs per year for that nine-year period. Since the pandemic and our loss in enrollment has risen significantly, our average loss of teachers has been almost 77 per year and that's intentional and we are not, again, as Dr. Deator mentions over and over, we do not have a reduction in force. We've never had a layoff. This is strictly a result of positive attrition. We place all teachers in a job that still want a job. Lest you think that we're only reducing at the campus levels. I wanted you to be able to see where we have reduced at central office. And when we talk about central office, I'm not just talking about this building, but I'm talking about every support department, which includes child
021nutrition. It includes transportation, includes all of those maintenance and operational folks that Miss Lucero, it includes everyone outside of this building and in this building. And you can see that since the pandemic, we've averaged a loss of 28 FTEEs per year. Prior to the pandemic, that loss was 19 across that those same nine years. That was my actual questions right on topic with when you said positions here at central. What is what type of position is it? Is it like a um entry level position? Is it a mid-level? Is it what what what it's across the board. It I can tell you that in the finance and purchasing department, it's been a director, two directors. We've consolidated directors. There are clerks. But again, no one has been laid off. This is through positive attrition and
022a voluntary choice to either resign, retire, go somewhere else that we have elected not to fill those positions. So there it's all positions from clerk to senior administration including associate superintendent. Thank you Hector. I think you're driving from the back now. In terms of total FTEES, including classroom teachers, central office personnel, you can see that the decline has averaged since the pandemic 115 FTEES per year going from 6,53 in 2021 to 5,482 this fiscal year. This is only full-time equivalents. We are not including any part-time personnel here because they come and go so quickly, we don't include them in our full-time count. So typically we talk about budgeted numbers here and I have provided for you in the past several graphs to talk about actual expenditures compared to revenues. But in this particular instance, I
023wanted to give you a table thinking it might be in more more informative or easier to track. So in fiscal year 2022, our actual revenues earned were 405.3 million compared to total expenditures of 388.1 million. In that particular year, we saw an increase to fund balance of 17.2 million. The next fiscal year, our revenues were 387.9 million compared to 405.6 million, a loss of 17.7 million. And in fiscal year 2024, which concluded June 30th, 24, our revenues were 387.3 million compared to expenditures of 416.9 for a loss of 29.6 6 million in that fiscal year. These are actual revenues and actual expenditures reported in our financial statements. I will point out to you that in fiscal year 22 and 23, we were still experiencing the use of ESSER monies. And so our expenditures in 22
024were marketkedly less because we put people in ESSER funding. And so when they were being paid from ESSER, they're not reflected in fiscal year 2022. when they came back to the general fund in 2023 and 24. You can see then the dramatic increase in expenses from 388 to 405.6 million. Next slide, please, Hector. So, this is the graph that you've seen um over the last few months. Many people like the visual. Um I understand the table can be informative as well, but this graph I think is um very telling. So you can see that prior to the pandemic, our budgeted revenues and budgeted expenditures remained almost on top of each other. Very seldom did we have a variance of more than 1% between the two. However, starting in the pandemic, you can see those lines
025begin to diverge and for the first time in 22 2021 and 2122, you can see expenses starting to rise. And in 2223, for the first time, expenditures exceeded revenues. And so expenditures in that year were 405.7 compared to 387.9 in revenue. That line, those two lines have continued to diverge with expenditures constantly being above revenues. And you can see that in this fiscal year, we're estimating a gap right now of about 45.4 to 45.6 6 million at the end of this fiscal year, which is why I've told you we will need a payroll loan to get us through August, maybe at the end of July, we'll need that loan. We actually intend to bring it for approval on June 25th so that we have it in our accounts when it's time to finalize payroll in
026July and to ensure we can meet August payroll. Keep in mind, we get no money from the state in April and August. So, we will definitely see a cash deficit in August. We made it through April, but we will not make it through August. And then in the 25, sorry, Hector, back up one time. So, you can see that in 2526 with the recommended budget that I'm proposing for you this evening, the gap is about 27 million. That is after a significant effort to reduce expenditures across the district, not only in personnel, but in um operating expenses, so transportation, maintenance, and operations. And all of that comes with a risk. Um, we'll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment. Okay, Hector, thank you. One more little Can you just talk about
027what it means when you reduce funding to transportation and and those other important services? What does that look like for a student coming to our district? So, our our directive from Dr. Deator and through information from the board is not to to affect student experience. And so what you might see is that we reduce the number of stops on a route. Now it doesn't mean the child won't get to school. It may mean the pickup time is slightly earlier that it may they may be on a bus slightly longer. There will there may be instances when we don't have enough bus drivers reporting to work because we did delete 40 vacant bus driver positions. So there may be times when a mechanic's driving, when dispatch is driving, when everyone who has a CDL is out
028on the roads driving a bus. in the trades sections like maintenance and operations where we have HVAC technicians and we have plumbers and we have master electricians. You could very well see me saying, "I'm sorry, I don't have someone I can send out right now because we're not incurring overtime to turn on an air conditioner if somebody forgets to tell us there's an event and we didn't turn on air conditioning." So, there are some significant changes that you could see, but it will be at the adult level. It shouldn't affect student experience. Okay, Hector. Thank you, sir. So, when we originally brought forward the budget and we started looking at what are our revenues based on student enrollment, again, prior to House Bill 2, the gap we were trying to close, as Dr. Deator mentioned,
029was in the $40 million range. So from there we have identified through the retirement or early resignation incentive 145 FTEEs who have accepted that early retirement or resignation notice for a savings of $9.8 million. We also worked with Dr. Tone and the federal and state groups to identify costs that were eligible to be paid from title funds. So we took them out of the general fund and moved them into federal or state monies saving the general fund. We also are reducing substitute cost and that is through the reduction of professional development provided during the school day. So no professional development that exceeds half a day unless it is um supported I think through g or title monies for uh substitute costs. And then at utility savings for campuses, we, as you well know, we've got
030several closed campuses. For the first time, we're turning off utilities at those campuses. We aren't going to water vacant uh yards. We also have identified two campuses that you have already approved for sale, and we're bringing three more to the board for approval on June 25th. So, we believe we can have a $750,000 reduction in utilities across the district. And then finally in discretionary at the campus level we analyzed every discretionary budget and I can talk a little bit more about this in a moment but in discretionary funding we're talking about anything below the personnel line. So we're not talking about personnel here. We're talking about hospitality travel um just discretionary things that they spend their monies on. And we identified about 11% that we could reduce from the campuses and still allow them to
031do the things they need to do and still meet the student experience. That reduction would save us about a million dollars. And then we looked at departments here at central office um as well as fine arts and um athletics, but again only talking about adult experience, not student experience. And through those reductions, we took up to 30% out of hospitality. We took more than about 15 to 20% in travel. Keep in mind that travel and professional development training go in the same line item. So, it's very difficult to say all travel's eliminated because if I reduce the travel budget completely, you would have no professional development for people that needed it or are required to have it in order to meet their certification to conduct business for the district. And then we've added a million
032two, which will be the interest cost for the loan that I'll bring to you for approval on June 25th. That wasn't in the earlier um estimations. So, through the work with Dr. Deator and the chiefs we have reduced the 44.5 million by 17.2 for a total proposed budget today of 27.3 million. This is just a list of the FTEEs that have opted into the early retirement or resignation opportunity. Not all of those are eligible for the retirement incentive, but they were voluntary or seeking to find other employment or already retiring or resigning. And so you can see the the 9.8 that we were recommending there as a reduction. This is the 2526 proposed revenue for um this year of 376.0 million. That does not include House Bill 2. We'll talk more about it in a
033moment. And again, as I mentioned, the deficit would be a $27.3 million um recommended budget. For the first time, I'm not recommending. I don't have a balanced budget to recommend to you. This one was very hard to close. And quite frankly, we can't under operating within the constraints you've given us, which is no financial exigency, no reduction in force, no layoffs. And to get to this number, we abided with those constraints. But that's as far as we can go. This is a graphical representation of the 27.3 and where it goes. You can see that payroll and benefits accounts for 87% of the district's budget. The contracted services, I've been asked um several times about this. At 7% contracted services is the next largest category. That is primarily utilities. Utilities is the biggest cost driver within
034that um particular area. But it also includes professional development that we are required to provide. We know that we have uh new training that's required for counselors. It would come inside this particular contracted service. This is also the fee that we pay to the city of El Paso who acts as the consolidated tax office and collects taxes on behalf of every taxing entity in the city and it's a fairly significant cost. This is appraisal services by EPCAD. This is um maintenance and operations contracts like the the corrupt maintenance on elevators. It is also um what's the big one I'm missing? Legal fees. I'm sorry. Legal fees. Oh, this is legal fees and audit fees. So, when I talk about legal fees, these are primarily driven by not um external legal counsel like you might think
035of just one of our attorneys, but this is driven by um the folks that appeal our tax values at the state level and they only get paid when they're successful. So, it's I don't want to say it's a contingency fee, but if they can't be successful on our behalf, they don't charge us anything at all and they don't proceed with the appeal. In the years when we are successful, and I would think we may have an issue this year because it was a reappraisal year with a significant increase to local property values. So, I anticipate we will need their services this year, which is another considerable driver of the contracted services. And then general. Yes sir. I I just wanted to ask before I forget uh you just well not just at the previous slide
036you said that's the best you can do with the constraints. Are those constraints given to you by the state or by this board? Thank you. That's an excellent question. So um there are two I will call them constraints. I the board has not given me authorization for a reduction in force and we have not wanted to declare financial exigency. If we declared financial exigency, it would require that the state send a monitor at minimum to take over the finances of the district. If um you declare a reduction in force, then you would also be subject to monitoring by the state. So, TEA monitoring at a minimum. Okay. Yes, sir. General supplies, the three and a half% that's primarily fuel. Um, obviously it does include toilet paper and paper towels, but the big driver in that
037category is our fuel for buses. Thank you, Hector, if you don't mind. And then here we have it by function. So you can see that 66% of that budget goes for teaching and instruction while 13% goes to support students. Maintenance and security is 15%. All other things are which especially are the data processing and I didn't mention that's all that is also in those contracted services and so that category is 3% while general administration which is representative of the board the superintendent HR finance and communication and marketing represents 3% of the total budget. All right. So to summarize, when we adopt a budget, TEA requires that we adopt three funds by fund and function. We have to adopt the general fund budget, the child nutrition budget, and the debt service budget. You can see in
038order to balance the budget for the general fund, we are recommending a use of 27.3 million in fund balance. In the child nutrition fund, we would be using fund balance of 538,000. In debt service, because that is a direct levy to the public based on voter approved debt only, we don't need to use fund balance for a total use of fund balance across all funds of 27.8 million. All right. So, let's talk a little bit about the impact of House Bill 2 and the funding. Um, generally speaking in this presentation, I'm only addressing two of the legislative pieces that were approve approved by the governor. House Bill two, which includes the teacher retention allotment and the support staff retention allotment, were addressed in House Bill 2. Senate bill 4 is where the homestead exemption increasing
039from a 100,000 to 140,000 is included. But oddly, the funding to offset the loss in revenue is in House Bill Two, which is why we're referring to both of those bills this evening. So, the total estimated additional funding is 38.2 million. Of that 2 million is tier 2 funding that offsets another cap in revenue that the state has set. Additionally, Senate Bill 4 is going to cause us to lose 16.2 million based on that increase in the homestead exemption. So the way they make us harmless or hold us harmless is by adding 16 million here. So when you see that 16, I have to back it out because all it's doing is offsetting the loss of property tax revenue in another category. And so then on the left side you can see the allotments. These
040are those specified by the state and they must be used for the purpose set aside by the state. So in that column I described the allotment but in the restricted that column is telling you that dollar amount can't be used anywhere else and you can see that um line 17 the teacher retention aotment is $10.3 million while the support staff retention aotment which again is for bus drivers custodians child nutrition workers um anyone who's not eligible for the teacher retention aotment minus central office administration like the superintendent dependent. It also excludes campus principles, campus APS and anyone at central office who has any kind of supervisory role cannot receive any of the amount in line 17 or 18 those restricted allotments. In the unrestricted column, which totals 5.7 million, that is all that we are
041allowed to use to offset any of that 27.3 million deficit I just told you I was proposing. So the absolute best we can do is reduce that 27.3 by this 5.7. And I will tell you that the budget is built and the 27.3 million deficit that's in the proposed budget assumes that we will make the same contribution we've made every year to the health fund. And Hector, if you don't mind, will you go to the next slide? One more, please. So you can see since 2022, the district has contributed per employee per month $592.83. That equates to about $31 million every year that the district contributes to the health fund. Since 2014, the district has increased its contribution to insulate employees by 45%. And if you choose anything to change the district's contribution, you will
042deplete the 5.7 in the unrestricted use and you will increase the deficit beyond the 27.3. And with that, I'm going to um ask Miss Bivo to come forward and talk with you first about the health plan and the structuring of the health plan and this particular contribution. So, I'll try to do you want to go to the podium or you want to sit by me? Um, whatever. There you go. I don't think they set it up for presentations. Oh, okay. So, this is Elizabeth Bibo, our consultant from hub, and she's going to walk you through a presentation that should be up there for your viewing. Good evening, U. President Bastio, Superintendent Deator, and board members. Liz Bibbo. I am an account executive with Hub International. We are your employee benefits consultant, and I will be
043discussing tonight some recommended health plan changes as we uh contemplate the budget that Miss Lindley just discussed. your current plans. Uh, currently you have four plans. Oh, that's pretty. Yeah. Okay. I don't. All right. Well, give me a moment. So, Miss Boo, go ahead through the presentation. You my follower on the board and let me go see if we can get you some other copies. Okay, sure. So, currently right now you have four plans uh which you offer your employees and they are uh named plan one, plan two, plan three, plan four. Plan one having the lowest deductible if you use the um you have a tiered network plan. So with the provident Mel. Yeah, I was going to say can we wait because we cannot see any of these numbers and again I I
044know the trustees want to really see and look it's very important. Do we have Yeah. Yeah. We can pay it. Yes. So Mr. is going to bring around a sheet. It includes these four plans along with some additional information. I think you should be able to read it and that will give them a moment to go print whatever that gibberish was in English. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Cameron. Thank you, brother. Okay. Is this better? Can everybody see this a little bit better? Unless you if you can see it, we'll proceed. If you can't see it, we'll wait. Can you can everybody see everybody good with this? Everybody good? Can we move forward? Yes. Okay. Thank you. So to um to go back through the plan um construction currently you what you will see in
045the green columns those are your current plan designs. As I was saying, you have four plans named plan one, two, three, four. The uh current the plan one is your um uh lowest deductible. So, you'll have two deductibles. If you choose to stay in the tenant acco network on plan one, for example, you'll have a $300 deductible. If you use the Etna Broad network, you have a $600 deductible. As you move through the plan designs, plan two, you have an increasing plan deductible of 500. Plan three of a,000. And then your qualified highdeductible health plan, the deductible is dictated by the IRS. For 2025, it is $3,300 for an individual deductible. The difference between the three plans and plan 4, the qualified plan. Once you meet the qualified plan deductible, that is also the same
046as your out- ofpocket. So, the plan will pay 100% once you meet that 3,300 individual out of pocket. on the other plans, plan one, plan two, plan three, there's a difference between the the deductible and the out- of pocket. So once you meet your deductible, if you were to have a service like an MRI where a co- insurance would be charged, you would pay the plan co- insurance until you met that out-ofpocket max. Also on the plan 1, 2, and three, you'll have co-ayments when you visit the your doctor's or or the emergency room. Unlike the high deductible health plan where you would um you would pay that uh deductible first dollar coverage until you met that 3,300. Again, then services are covered at 100%. In order to close the budget gap, there is a
047requirement really to make changes to the plan designs. Currently the um the plan so you have self-insured plans and they are funded through the contributions of the district and the employee contributions. When we use your average enrollment in these plans and we multiply the employee contributions or m multiply that enrollment times the employer contribution plus the expected employee contribution for 2025. Our expectation is that that will total $41 million. When we look at your claims, the cost of your health plan for 2025, our projection is that that is going to be $60 million. So there is a difference between what you're collecting in premiums and funding with the district and what your plan costs. What's your projection? So for our projection, we used claims through um February of 2025. We use a rolling 12 month
048and then we use um a medical trend, a pharmacy trend. Um no, we're they're specific to Isleta based on the demographic and the cost of care. Um, and we do know that your medical and pharmacy trends are higher than um what we would expect to see on a national average. So then what there are other costs that go into the the projection. So, your administrative fees for your uh what you pay for ETNA to administer your plans, your stop-loss insurance, uh things of taxes, small taxes, not significant. And so, all of those costs really what's driving it is the expected claim cost for 2025. In order to make changes to to to rightize that um we are recommending plan chi changes that will um that will get at that cla expected claim cost differential and
049help you close the deficit be or s or deficit between what you collect in premiums and what you paying claims essentially. So we have been working and I'll point you back to the spreadsheet on a two co two plan design. So rather than having four plans, you would now have two plans. You would have one co-play co-pay plan. That would be the first plan in the blue proposed co-pay plan. that would have a deductible of 2,000 in the acco. And I'll just say that about 98% of your employees use the acco $4,000 out of pocket. The co- insurance for the acco would be the plan would pay 75% the employee would be paying 25%. You would continue to have co-pays for doctor visits. You would have a $20 co-pay for primary care. Um, and you
050would have a $50 co-pay for urgent care on that plan. And there would be slight changes, increases on the medications. The middle tier being the preferred brand, there would be a $10 increase there and a 20 um and then a $70 in a $10 increase on your non-preferred B brands, that third tier. This co-pay plan would then be alongside your qualified high deductible plan. And that high deductible plan, the only change that you would have on that plan is the IRS required deductible change to $3,400. That is required by the IRS. It was published about a month ago. Uh we would keep that out of pocket at the same level as the deductible. So, your employees who chose this plan would continue to have that 100% coverage once they met their deductible and their out
051of pocket. We also once we make the plan design. So if you think about your claim costs driving uh the majority of what you spend on the health plan, these plan design changes are necessary in order to help mitigate some of that claim cost increase. We also need to ensure that we have some increases on in employee premiums so that we can again pay for the plan um and not run a deficit on the health plan. On the bottom, monthly contributions, we have again the first three are the current contributions and then the proposed increased or the proposed contributions for the co-pay plan and the qualified health high deductible health plan. These are on a monthly basis. If we make these proposed changes, our expectation is that your cost will equal what you're collecting from
052premiums and from what the district is putting into the funds currently. We assumed in these projections that the people who are currently enrolled in the co-pay plans would stay in the co-pay plans and the people that are enrolled in the high deductible health plan uh which is a qualified plan would stay enrolled in that plan. By making these changes again, the health plan would be uh expected to be in balance for 2026. Can I ask a question because I I can't really tell where she's getting these numbers on this paper. I don't know if anybody else can or not, but I really Yeah, I I think that I'm with Connie like there it's kind of hard to see how you arrived at at all of this without understanding what what got us here today and
053why we're projecting these numbers. I don't know if that's what Connie means but I that's kind of like you're saying all this is going to increase and this is why and but there's not really the Yes. If we could go to the first appendix slide. Yes. So in looking at this slide, what you'll see on the blue is the contributions. So those are what the employees contribute and what the district contributes. When you look at the black line, that's your expense line. So that is what the costs of the health plan are. That white space in between the black line and the blue line is what is currently being paid out of the fund balance. And have we I know you've come and presented before and I I don't I don't remember all of the
054numbers, but have the projections in the past that you all have provided have how have those projections been actualized? meaning the confidence that we have in the numbers that we're talking about tonight. Meaning that you're presenting this is the projections but a past of your projections that have been on target. Um so I would say uh for 2024 um we did see an increase in medical expenses which which which were not contemplated in the projection. So your trend increased on specialty medications much higher than what we had expected in our projections. So there's things that might affect projection. I think I would like to see and I don't know if I'm way off I'm out there in left field. You know I go you guys and I go that way but to understand this would
055like to see what that looks like for our sake and for the public sake. This is a huge decision that we're going to have to make. So go if you go to the next slide please. So here you can see on the um this shows you what your medical trends were your pharmacy trend and your total trend over the last uh three periods. So you can see on the first block the blue is the rolling 12 months. So your medical trend in the rolling 12 months has been 9.3%. However, for calendar year 2024, your medical trend was 12.9%. That that's not my question. Okay, sorry. My question lies in with the projections that you all have made over the past years. How have they compared? Are we in line? Are we within 2% of what
056you all projected? Are we behind 3%? Where are we at with the projections that you all have made in the past? And where where do you anticipate that leaving us? So, in our projections for the 2025 health plan year, we have a 3% claim fluctuation corridor. So we are saying that our numbers for we have that 3% so that we can protect the district from um a large claim year that wouldn't have been expected. We've done the same for our 2026 numbers, but to your point, we are using 25 claims to project for the remainder of this year and then we're taking those and we're projecting for 2026. We can certainly bring you where the projection versus where the claims have come in. Absolutely. I guess the history of the projections and how they align
057with what actually happened. Like we call it budget to So Mr. Lucer, I don't think I have a budget to actuals projection on health this evening, but there is a slide in here that will take you through what you're seeing in revenue per plan. So it will help you understand what each plan cost. And actually, you're on the slide. Um, Hector, if you don't mind, back up to There you go. No, one more. There we go. So, this is the 2025 health plan as it exists today. And you can see at the top we have plan one. And we show then employee only, employee and spouse, employee and children and how many participants are in plan one. Then we show in the next column Isleta's contribution per those employees per month into the plan. So
058you can see that Isleta is paying 73.2% of the employee or of the cost for employee only to be in plan one. If you follow that over to the right then you can see the employee contribution per month into that plan. And finally, the total between Isleta and the employee for $810 times the 167 or 187 and I'm sorry, I can't read that far away means that we are contributing to the fund 1 six 6 million. If you go to the bottom of that category, you can see that in plan one, 2.3 million is coming into the plan for plan one. Right down at the bottom, if you'll look, you can see the total paid in claims for plan one. In 2023, it was 3.1 million. In 2024, it was 4 million. So, the plan
059is getting revenue of 2.3 million, but spending in 2024 4.2 million. So, that's that's not a budget, but that's actuals. And the budget really is the ASLA funding plus the employee funding. That is the budget. That's the revenue budget for it. However, we're spending 4.2 in the last year. And then if you follow that design all the way down, you can see for plan two, following the same pattern, the plan is raising 18.8 million in revenue, but plan two cost us 30.0 million in 2024. Do you follow me there? Yes, Miss Woodruff. I I don't see I don't see you following me. at the bottom. No, that's okay. Dr. Shakon is I appreciate this page. I I was trying to get at was how accurate are your projections over the past few years? That's what
060I'm trying to figure out. So, the I would say that our this funding has not changed. So, you on average have funded $41 million you've spent well over $41 million. Our projections are really a, you know, we're we're projecting that you're going to spend $60 million this year. That is a direct reflection of the claim spend. That is pharmacy spend, medical spend. So, as Miss Lindley pointed out, you are spending 50 in 2024, you were spending $54 million just on claims versus your budget of $41 million. These numbers have not changed if that makes sense. So, our budget every year because of the premiums in the in the district's contribution that is the revenue. I'm sorry, sir. I think I have Hold on. I had uh Trustee Hagerty was next. I had a few questions.
061One is why why is this the first time we're getting a presentation on the medical insurance? Why don't we get it more often? Why don't we get it at least quarterly? Another question I have is what you're proposing is to take 75% of our employees and increase their their deductible by a minimum of thousand dollars and then we're going to increase their co-pays across the board and we're increasing some of the prescription costs. The third question I have is you said that specialty prescriptions have been higher this past year. Are we doing anything as far as those those plans? The um I haven't I have it here. the manufacturer copay assistance programs or the patient assistance programs. Are we doing any of those outreach? Then what is it that's causing that to be so much
062higher if we're utilizing those programs? Thank you. So on the um specialty medications, yes, your persu your health plans have both the manufacturing coupon plan and the patient assistance and those are um part of the prior authorization process. So once a prescription is uh triggered for prior off then those programs the employees would be outreached to by member services from the health from the prescription plan to help people enroll in those programs if they're um if they qualify for those plans because all of those will have qualifications to them. But you said they are being used. So then where's the Yeah. Where's that high use coming from? I'm sorry. Where's that where's that high cost coming from if we're using these? Oh, so on your specialty medications, it is mostly um on treatments for cancers.
063And then in regards to taking three plans and going well taking four plans going to two, how do we how do we justify raising deductibles that high? And then how does you you said that 3,400 or 3,300 this year, 3,400 next year is the minimum deductible we have to have. Yes. on the high deductible health plan. That's a qualified that's a family individual deductible and that's per the IRS. That is the qualifying uh that that's dictated by the IRS. Individual 17 something that's if you have an um in I don't want to misspeak but one has to do with an aggregate deductible and one has to do with the embedded deductible. So you're right now you're having the aggregating deductible. I I need that better explained because I don't I don't get it. If the
064minimum is 17 and we're charging double saying that the IRS says you have to charge as much. So the IRS uh requires if you're going to have an individual deductible of so each family member has a $3,300 deductible. Each family member has a $3,300 deductible. Not Isn't there a family deductible? And once you hit the family deductible, then the way that your plan Yeah. So the IRS, this is a this is an agent, this plan qualifies as a health savings account, high deductible health plan. In order to have that qualification that employees can contribute to a health savings account, you have to follow the IRS guidelines on the deductible, which is 1,700 for an individual. No. If if you're going to have a qualified plan that includes an HSA, the deductible has to be the
0653,400 and the 7,000 for a family. Um I we don't even have the HSA benefit listed here and I think it's bears it should be talked about because it's a significant asset that I don't think our employees are wellversed in. I know certainly as I've been talking around the district people don't understand what the benefit of an HSA is and why why you might especially if you're young and healthy why you would want this and even if you're not young and healthy why it might be a benefit. An HSA is the single vehicle allowed where you get to deduct it pre-tax. So, it comes out of your paycheck and you don't pay income tax on it. When it goes into the HSA, it grows tax-free and it can be invested not only in a in
066a money market or interestbearing account, but in other eligible investments. And then finally, when you take it out, it is tax-free when it's used for medical expenses. And it's portable. So any employee leaving here can take that HSA and it's always there. It's not like a flexible spending account which expires at the end of the year. And so the deductible is mandatory set by the IRS on an on an HSA eligible plan. But then we also have real life where the the brand new teacher, the one that's young, doesn't have a family yet, isn't going to put into HSA. And then we have the family that can't afford HSA because they're working towards paying off their deductible. So there there's nothing left over, especially if the deductible is How is it 3,400 a person? It's
067not 7,000 max. I believe it's 7,000 max for a family. No. So right now on your on the high deductible health plan you have 829 employeeonly individuals enrolled in that plan. I thought we had 1230 1230 total but 825 are employee only employee and spouse is 38 employee and children 235 so the total in plan 4 is 1230 1230 and they're in that plan because it's a a high it qualifies for the HSA savings account I doubt it I think they're in it because it's cheap I'm personally in that plan and I'm in it for the HSA I I mean, it's possible they could be in there because it's it's inexpensive, but the the the plan also pays 100% once they meet that $3,300. Are you 100% sure that it's 100 I mean 3,300 per
068individual on the plan? I think that's what Trusty Haggard is trying to get at here tonight. Per individual. Yes. Yes. Yes. No, for two. Two individuals have to meet the deductible in order to pay for the um to meet the 100%. That doesn't equal $7,000. So, if they meet $6,800, they're good. They have to meet 63. They have to meet $3,300. So, in that case, if they meet, it's okay. Yeah. No, I know. I'm just seeing twisted around. I apologize for that. And Trusty Hagerty, you you raised a great point about why haven't you heard this before? We just awarded the TPA if you remember and that contract was specifically for the third party administrator and we told you we're going to have to come back to you to talk about rates. This is not
069something you don't have to make decisions and obviously you're not voting on anything about this this evening but by the end of August we do have to make decisions and it has a bearing on the budget. So if we try again to insulate employees by not raising anything we're going to be to support it. I need the numbers worked over again because there's no way we can't do that. I I just don't see how the teachers can afford an increase that much. And I think we can absolutely look to a third option. The reason we brought these two is because it's very similar to what's offered around us and what's offered at the city. So the proposed co-pay plan is it's around us. That's what's going on to the east and the west of us.
070That's a basic plan. the qualified high deductible plan. You can see a third of our employees are in there. And so they understand the benefit of the HSA, which is why it's not just the the premium, it's the benefit of the HSA because it grows until you quit contributing to it. And the the the contribution limit changes increases every year and it renews every year. So that's why these are the two basic plans that you're seeing this evening. Do you want to add something, sir? And then I don't know if it's changed, but didn't it used to be that like current plan number one, we couldn't get rid of as long as there was at least one person in that plan, like it was grandfathered from way back in the day. As a self-insured entity,
071we can change the plans at any time. And and I guess I would go back to our example that's on the board because I want you to have a clear at least have a clear understanding of this information that's here today. Now obviously we can take me back to that slide please. Um so plan two is where um 1,848 employees are total right. That plan generates 18 million but it cost 30. So plan two is the least sufficient self-sufficient plan of any of them. Plan three generates nine I can't read it. I'm sorry. 9.3 And yet it cost, thank you, Hector, it cost 8.98. So it's just slightly under what it needs to be or just slightly over. And yet again now you can see at the very bottom in the left hand column that
07231 million is what the district is kicking in every year and has been for the last five or six years. While employees are bearing $10.6 6 million of the cost. And so 41 million to your point, Miss Lucero, that is the budget and has been the budget since we went to an acco four years ago. The total cost as she's pointed out this evening based on the trends and it's a fair trend because if you look at 2024 total expenditures for medical and pharmaceutical is 54 million. That's what we have actually spent for 2024. It is totally reasonable to believe that if we continue as we are, we're going to spend 60.8 million in 2026. But I also feel if we were having these meetings at least quarterly, then our people could brace themselves earlier
073on for an impact this this tremendous. I think that we roll these numbers out and it's going to hit them really hard because it's almost from out of left field that this thing's coming from because we hadn't seen these numbers before. We haven't heard about this until today and we need to approve this by two months from now. So, I'm pretty sure I re I covered this information last year because it hasn't changed um when we talked about employee compensation last year. Okay. But throughout the year, you're right. To your point, they've only got two quarters before they have to start contributing at a new level in January 2026. That's when it would affect a paycheck. But they have to make the decision by what? October. September actually is when open enrollment occurs. By the
074way, no ma'am, we won't. We you don't have to formally approve it, but it's obviously a portion of cont's funding level. So, if you're going to ask us to contribute more, then I need to increase the deficit in the budget that we're talking about to do so. Tristy Hernandez. Um, well, first of all, thank you uh for the presentation. I appreciate these numbers. I appreciate your expertise, and I understand when your expertise is up here. It's really hard to communicate down here, but we have to make an effort. The purpose of this workshop is for the benefit of the public and not just us. You know, I get to ask very um you know, specific questions, detailed questions to Dr. Death Torres, to Miss Lindley and and I'm able to come to a better understanding.
075But we got to do a better job at making at making these presentations very simple. I think the question really everybody wants to know the answer to is why is this happening? And I know you just gave you you feel like you just explained it, but I think and I was myself I don't I don't fully understand. Here's my understanding. The reason this is happening is because there's been an increase in claims. Is that correct? Is that the simple way to say it? Yes, sir. Okay. And then I never heard an answer to trustee Lucto's question. Let me try asking another way. We know that in 2024, let's use plan one for example, it was 4.2 million. I'm sure in 2023 we had a projection. What was that projection for 2023? Come back. We we
076I don't have what the projection was and I don't want to wait until the next meeting to know if I can. Yeah. If you I'll be on, you know, it's it's on me too. Sometimes I hear we'll we'll get you an answer later. We'll follow up and then I don't hear that answer unless I'm asking and asking. So, can we have a budget? Oh, yeah. I mean, you can't. So I just wanted to So to your point, sorry to interrupt. Go ahead. I I mean if you don't have an exact number, can you confidently say we were very accurate? We were very close and what we projected in 2023 to what actually happened in 2024. I I think I just want to step back and talk about the claims projections. We we don't know what
077your claims are going to be in any given year, right? So we did see going from 23 to 2024 something unexpected. For example, the cost of plaovid which was the which is um prescribed to people when they have COVID. In 2023 that was paid for by the federal government. In 2024, your plan paid over $500,000 for those drugs. We also in 2024 didn't anticipate the number of people that would be utilizing GLP-1 medications for weight loss and for diabetes. that contributed um probably $400,000 in increased spend from 23 to 24. We also had several more large claimments than we would expect on a plan of your size. So there are multiple things items that changed the projection for what the claim spend was going to be. But even knowing what the claim spend was going
078to be for 2024 and 2025, we did not raise contributions. Um let me understand something. We we we do in-house insurance. Yes sir. So when we have to pay medical bills that's us doing it. It's not a insurance company or is it an insurance company? So there is a stoploss. We have reinsurance so that if a claimant gets to 350 is that stop loss today. 350 375. So once a claim reaches 375, our reinsurance will pick up the claim cost after that. But up to 375 on each individual claim at each January one, we'll pay all of the first 375,000 out of our pocket. If that 60 million doesn't if we don't fund it and it stays at 60 million, yes, the general fund is paying that bill. And our sister districts and the city
079of El Paso, they als they're all um selfinsured. Self-insured. Yes, sir. Great. Um, specialty medications that does that include the uh weight loss? No, those are those are not considered specialty medications. Specialty medications are medications that are infused or have to be um typically there are medications that have to be infused or administered by a a physician or yeah but the yeah the GLP1 medications so those medications that are used for weight loss and for diabet the treatment of diabetes those are preferred medications. So the preferred co-pay would be collected for those medications. They're not considered specialty and we will be covering those this year too. Do we have the option not to cover? You you have the option not to cover weight loss medications but the diabetes medication. So the ozumpic and the maro
080those are for the treatment of diabetes and they are covered in the therapeutic class. You cannot exclude those medications but you have to be diagnosed with diabetes. Correct. Type two diabetes. What would the projected cost difference be if we are not covering preferred medications like ompic and other weight loss? So, if you don't cover the weight loss medications, um we those medications, and I'll get you the exact numbers, ran about $450,000 to the district um in the 2024 plan year. So, about half a million. Mhm. Okay. Thank you very much. That's all my questions for now. Let's go with Katherine then we'll go with H Mr. Haggedy. Go ahead. Um I just wanted to follow up uh how I guess starting with you kind of alluded to it in working all this out will employees
081with these two choice plans will they have the same benefits both health-wise and prescription wise that's the first part of the question. Yes. There's no difference in what would be covered under the medical or pharmacy plans. Okay. And uh Trustee Ernades asked about how much how much goes to Jose and Manger and all that. Um it was about 450,000. How many of those are for diabetes patients? So all so there's two classes of medications. So if you think about Ozic and Mangaro, those are diabetic medications. The WGOI is the weight loss. And I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it's it's a couple hundred on the weight loss and probably about 400 on the diabetes, but I will get you those numbers. Okay. So So in the 450,000, that would include diabetes.
082No, that's just for the weight loss medications. Okay. The other question was uh who who then negotiates it would not be you all as a third party the cost for or is it you for prescriptions and things of that nature? CV so at CVS is your um pharmacy benefit manager and they negotiate the the contracts for how much the unit cost is. What we do is negotiate what your discounts are off of those unit costs and what your rebates are for those. And that was part of the process that we just went through with the award to the TPA at the CVS. Okay. Thank you, Trusty Hagerty. I had a few follow-ups. I think one um one of the things that seemed very confusing when I was asking my initial questions is one of the
083two documents has a an error in it I'm assuming because one says that the maximum well the um the deductible is 3,400 per individual or 7,000 per family and then on the hub one it's 3,400 per individual and 6,000. So, is it is it six or seven on the 2026 qualified high deductible health plan? On the on the 2026, it would be the 3400 346,000, but it says 347. Yeah, but on the long sheet it says 34 and and 7. That's my error. It's 346,000. The IRS only dictates the individual deductible. The family deductible is determined by the district. And then I think we should take a a hard look at the paying for the medicines as far as weight loss only because how much are we spending medically for individuals who have health complications
084due to being overweight? and how much of that is offset by them getting those medicines and and reducing that weight and hopefully reducing that that level of uh strain on their bodies. So along with that, is there any data that shows how much we're spending on medicine and healthcare in general for stress related um issues? the the answer to the first question on the weight loss. What we are proposing or what we have been considering is introducing a program whereby if you are um prescribed a medication for weight loss. So understanding that there is some benefit for people to take those medications. What you don't want is for people to take those medication to pay for those medications because they're trying to do, you know, lose weight for a wedding or something like that. You
085want to make sure those medications are going to people who are trying to make improvements in their health. But in order to qualify, don't you have to meet Don't they? Currently, currently right now on your plans, there are no BMI requirements for weight loss medications, but they check your not your mental health, but they they make sure that you're doing it because you want to be healthy long term as opposed to No, that's not a requirement for for having access to the medications currently. We are proposing that there is a program added to your plan. So that if people want to take those weight loss medications and make changes in their health, they will participate in a program and have access to those medications. Ideally, what we want to do is help people because those
086are appetite suppressants. So once you go on those medications, if you're not making lifestyle changes as well, when you stop taking those medications, the weight loss suppressant is now gone. So we are combining the access to weight loss medications with a program that will help people address um their lifestyle, their diet, give them nutritional support, etc. Yeah. Who's covering the cost of that program? I'm sorry. Who's covering the cost of the program? The district will cover the cost of that program, but it is a when we look at um the cost of the medications, the cost of that pro program. there actually is a a value to the district and we've um used that to decrement our claims expectation for 2026 by in by putting that program in. So seeing that that's a a health
087benefit and we'll produce healthier employees. Isn't that something we can pitch to the insurance companies and say why don't you help us cover the cost of this program? They do give us um a $100,000 wellness fund as part of the the the district uh contract. So, we can use those monies uh to pay for that program. How much above the 100,000 is that program? Um it really depends on how many participants we have, but I believe the cost of the program is $143 annually per engaged employee. So if you have it, it really will just depend on how many people I mean we could estimate if 50 people participated in it. So 50 participated we'd make money. You're not you're not making money, but what you're doing is you're decrementating your claims cost because you're
088saying if people are enrolled in this program and they're participating in healthy life choices, then their claim cost will be less because they're managing their um health. And then regarding the stress related issues, do we know? I mean, we we we could probably identify people who with stress isn't really a diagnosis code that comes through on any of our reporting, but we do we could um probably tell you how many people are participating in programs relating to stress that are available under your health plan. I I thought I see that. Um, I think it was 2014 we had to sue the um, is it Express Scripts or one of those guys to get our rebates that we weren't getting from our prescriptions? What's our percentage of rebates we're getting for our prescriptions? Now, so it's
0898 and a half million. It's roughly eight and a half million in rebates per year. It was like 4 point something that we weren't getting that we had to go after. In 2016, right after I joined the district, we learned that Express Scripts had not paid and it was three and a half million that we sued them for. So now you said it's about eight something. Are we getting all eight or I think that was that was all my follow-up questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have a question. Um crazy question. So, so if if we have So, in my insurance, I'm I'm I don't I'm not part of the district or anything, but we we have a lot of employees obviously that uh contribute to the claim to the to the insurance.
090So, it brings our cost down. Is there any way we could maybe, you know, bring in a Sakoto district and us combine our our employees to be able to bring those costs down? Is that something that we can probably do? So what's driving your costs are utilization and the um demographic mix of the people who are utilizing the plan rather than combining with another district that may or may not have the same health status and concerns. concerns that that we have now that we're dealing with relative to utilization. I think we would be more focused on um helping people to um ensure that they're you know if they use mail order rather than going to the pharmacy that will save the district money. if they use um if they use uh teleaalth rather than going
091to the emergency room, that will save the district money. So really doing those types of things as opposed to um combining with another district that probably has the same utilization and illness burden that your plan has. So, do we have a full court press on our employees letting them know that all these incentives are there to help with the cost? Yes, we have there are two on-site representatives whose sole or part of their responsibility is to make sure that we're doing employee engagement and that we're looking at the patterns of utilization and helping employees understand what programs they have available to them. We have very robust wellness activities and such. But but if that's our goal, then why does the cost of mail order cost twice as much as well but you get a 90
092retail because it's only 10 bucks. Excuse me. I'm sorry to interrupt you. You get a 90day supply. So you there is an incentive to go to if you go to mail order you're paying two times for 90 days as opposed to if you go to the retail three times you're paying three co-pays. But if that's what we're looking at doing to keep cost down if we lower the co-pays which I don't see as being the majority of the the total bill pay of the total medicine down to close to zero. It's just an example of one thing that we in a you know there is no silver bullet right so there are all types of things that we need to be focused on to really focus on the utilization patterns of the plan but in
093reworking those numbers if we could look at that as a possibility if if it's a $0 co-ay to call tele medicine I'm going to call that before I go sit in a waiting room somewhere so incentive advise if you will the cheaper options for the district's burden. Yes, ma'am. Gotcha. I guess give it like a a win-win type. Sure. Now, what is our participation of our employees for we going back to the question that I had previous? What is our participation of our employees going to look for these incentives? Do we have a good participation or is are we lacking on that? Go ahead. If you know that No, I don't I don't have that number in front of me, but we can provide you a report. So, you have a there's a plan called
094Navigate, which is the uh wellness platform for your employees to participate and we are um revamping that program for 2026. Thank you. Any other questions? One more. So, comment. All of this is great information and and it's it's wellreceived, but as we get into the budget discussions and things that we're we're having to make decisions on fairly quickly here, it it feels ex we're it feels very reactive. Like you talked about taking measures like um an incentiv incentivized program for the health and that will reduce cost. How by how much would that reduce cost? Um, how come we can't take those measures first and then increase the cost? Like it this feels very reactive. Are there other measures that we can do or have we already done that have a proven track record of decreasing
095costs? I'm just going to say a little bit. This is not uh a place where I feel like uh I'm an expert, but I I think part of it is our employees have had the benefit of going over a decade without seeing any increases at all to their health care premium where in many districts um you may see employees get a 2% increase and then the following year another 5% and so it's a bunch of small little increases that get them to this this plan right here that happens to be the Sakor Independent School District's plan and the reason their reaction wasn't as um alarming as as ours seems to be is because they didn't forfeit 10 years of increases and get it all at the same time. They were slowly working up to that.
096And so last year when they increased um the employee contribution by I believe 12% it feels a lot different than when you come in and you're trying to increase the employee contribution by almost 25%. I think that's part of the that's why you know Mr. Hagerty had that reaction because it is significant. Can we go back and put together a third plan that tries it to temper it and and give us more time to to maybe not try to do it all in one year or two years, but in three years? Yes, we can go back and look at that. I think what's most important is anything that we failed to do here will be reflected in our deficit getting worse rather than getting better. Because at at the end of next year, when we
097find ourselves here next year, if in fact it costs 60 million and all we did was generate, let's say, 50 million, then the 10 million will have to come from our unassigned fund balance. So there's a bit of a risk. I I will also tell you that it's really hard to predict and project because for example, in this last year, without going into too many detail, seven employees made up $1.2 2 million of the increase in healthcare. Did they hit the They did stop loss all seven. Yes. And stop loss has gone from $3 million to now they want $4 million because there have been subsequent years where we've had an excess of employees reach the 350 that then they've had to cover. So now what they're saying is, look, if a district your size
098typically sees three employees that meet the stop-loss threshold and you guys are at six and seven every year, then we're assuming more risk because we're covering everything after that. So that's another million dollars on top. But if you'll um allow us to go back and see if we can find something that is tempered, which obvious going to it's going to put the risk on us, hoping that we have a good year in healthcare. Um and that it doesn't see $60 million that it sees something less than that. But then with by coupling the increase to the healthc care premium for all of us and the plan design changes, we kind of meet almost in the middle. It's a lot better to go to Lindley and say we're $4 million short, $5 million short than to
099go and say we're $20 million short. That's kind of the way I I'm looking at it. Um what's the difference it cost between a teller health visit and a regular visit? I didn't hear I didn't hear what the difference in the cost I guess like the average cost of a tellah health visit versus a an inerson visit oh a telea visit and inerson yeah so um the average cost for the teleaalth is $59 and then uh if you go to your primary care physician the average cost is probably $165. So, if we can incentivize that teleah health visit by getting it down to zero, then we're still saving what a good hundred bucks per visit per employee. And hopefully that would make up that difference if we did hit that 60 million because there's another
100thing that you could consider the qualified high deductible plan, the health savings account. There's nothing I don't believe to prevent the district from investing for the employees into the health savings to a certain amount, right? So, you know, if we're going to save money because we're going to a new plan design, then maybe the district instead of spending $600 a month, which is $7,200 a year, we invest on behalf of every employee that decides to go into the health savings account. $250 every month. So at the end of the first year they're at 3,000 $300 every month. So that they're at 3,400. You know, something like that where it's not necessarily coming out of their pocket, but coming out of our pocket and then they're putting in a little more so they get to that
1013,500 sooner, which then would um make it so they get 100% pay for everything that they need. Yes. Well, we're not a we're not we're not a taxable entity. So, um I guess we'd have to look at that. I've seen that happen before, right? And so, we don't leave them out there with no money in their health savings account. We start them off and we put money in their health savings account every month and then they get the option of matching that pre-tax, right? And so, you know, if a teacher's at the 25% tax bracket, that means they're getting $100 benefit for $75, something like that every month. I think the hardest part is hitting that deductible in the beginning. So, if that's if that is doable, I think that that can certainly be something
102that would be a lot more attractive to we can work with with hub and that way when we go out to educate all of the teachers at all the campuses, we let them know. And by the way, we're going to contribute or match what you put into it up to a certain amount and you'll get to that $3,000 $3,500 deductible much quicker. If you have a young teacher within, you know, three, four years, they've got 12,000 $18,000 in that account that goes with them anywhere they want to go. No, you can. There's no cap on how much you can sock away. It's only annually limited, but you can invest it as long So you guys are going to come back to us with some more information and some more proposals options. Yeah. What I'd like
103to recommend is that we we we understand that there's an inherent relationship between the budget and healthcare, but the budget um not be held hostage by health care because the budget has to be adopted before June 30th. And then after you have some time to marinate over the numbers that you saw here, um, Miss Leaper and I can make oursel available if you want to come in and talk about anything in particular that has to do with the budget. So you feel good coming back on the 25th of June that you're adopting the budget and then you can almost and we can almost focus exclusively on what are we going to do about healthcare. Um, I just want to clarify on your statement right now. Was it that if if we do not increase employee
104monthly contributions, that would mean another $10 million to the current projected deficit. So, we'd go from what was the deficit? 19.5 after HB2 funding. So, that would take it back up to 5.7 goes to offset the deficit. It's around 2122. Right now it's 27.3 minus 5.7 was the unrestricted money that could be used to offset it. And if we if we do not increase uh monthly contributions, then you're anticipating an additional $10 million to that. Yes. If it reaches that $60 million number, it's actually $19 million more. And I don't know if you want to do it now or or later in the meeting. You know, I'm going to ask what is the current what is the current dollar amount in our general fund? We have a current amount. We're looking at subtracting 22 million
105from that. And if we don't absorb uh employee uh monthly contributions, then we're looking at 32 million subtracted from what we currently have. What do we currently have? It's in the 70s. So, at the end of last fiscal year, we had 72 million, I believe, in unassigned fund balance. At the end of this fiscal year, we're going to reduce it to probably 37 million. 35 to 37 million. So, the 27 million that's in this proposed budget, maybe minus five because we might be able to put some of the unrestricted money. You're going to pull fund balance down to roughly 10 million. So we might be at zero if if we don't absorb these um if if employees are not contributing more to absorb. Yes. But you are going to thank you trusty Hagerty and Trusty
106Lucettle um for for your questions and and showing that there's other options that can help reduce that monthly contribution without adding to the deficit. And that's the goal, right? So, I look forward to that. Uh, that's going to be a huge conversation that we have to take care of. So, um, that's it for now. Thank you. Okay. Thank you everybody for your questions. Well, did anybody have any questions? Any more questions to ask? Just one last one and that's if in the future, say next year, we give ourselves a little bit more than nine days for a budget workshop before we have to vote on the budget. Yes, sir. Thank you. And just a couple of things. One, um even though we may end up with that 20 $21 million deficit, we're going to keep
107doing more of what we've done in the current year that resulted in $17 million reduction to our um deficit during the 2526 school year as well. Um and um we're going to bring to you uh some properties uh that are currently in negotiation um that we hope you will approve uh the sale thereof. So we never stop. Bobby never stops in her office looking at every position that becomes vacant as to whether or not it's missionritical. uh we assume that uh you expect us to comply with the law and redirect all of the money from HB2 that is supposed to go to the teachers that it get to the teachers and we're absolutely going to do that. We're going to look at redirecting the money that is supposed to go to support staff and redirecting
108it to our hourly employees. We're going to look at how we can make the zero teacher, the one-year teacher, two-year teacher feel valued somehow because they've been excluded from the retention bonus. Um and then after that it it uh it really needs to all be redirected to the deficit because taking from that and adding to compensation only to come back and have to face health care is giving with this money and then taking back with this money and we never want to do that. I did have a couple more questions on I don't know if we're still continuing on this document. Go ahead. um mostly around contracted employees or not contracted employees but contracted services. Are there positions that we're not staffing a as people are retiring that we're replacing with contracted services? Because it
109looks like we're spending a good amount of money in some of our schools on contracted services to the point where it it stands out as are there employees that could be doing these jobs instead? Like at Dolphin and Riverside Elementary, it looks like 10% of the elementary school contracted services are being spent just in those two schools. And Mission Valley has 470,000 in contracted services. But then if you look at it, we're spending more like double in contracted services that we are in salaries. Is that something that we can like pay our employees more to go get certified in other things that they could be doing so we're not contracting all these services out or can we hire a few extra people that know what they're doing instead of having to pay that? So I
110think in the contracted services that is outside contracted services which I think is what you're alluding to. So you're looking to see if we can hire people to do those jobs. Is that what you're asking? And would there be a cost savings? Oh like it is easy just because the numbers are so different. We're paying 2.15 million in salaries but we're paying 5.34 in contracted services. at a particular campus or districtwide? Districtwide. Okay. So, if you keep in mind at incontracted services, not just copy machines and Tyler Munis and things like I'm assuming it's like database programmers and software programmers, but we have some pretty amazing folks here and I think they're very talented to where we could probably just send them to school, go get certified in this too and do the things that
111we need to get done as opposed to paying somebody outside and then we just pay our own people more. I think that's a great point and Miss Moy is here. I think she can come forward and address some of those. We were particularly sensitive to some of your questions about what about Microsoft and what about Google and what about some of these programs that the district utilizes. Does that fall under contracted services or is it It does. It absolutely does. And so Miss Moy and her team have done a great job of looking at in in fact you'll see some of those central office reductions were in TIS but it was people that that left and then they've absorbed duties. So I think yes. Come on, make your way to the front, Miss Moy. But
112I'm not I'm not trying to pick on him. I just No, no, no. We want We're proud of this bigger so they kind of stand out. She's done a great job. I think she has um combined duties for help desk um and some of those functions where she's gotten early resignation or retirement notices. You can sit here, Miss Moyer, or up front. Um additionally, Microsoft, Google, um right sizing those licenses because campuses use Google as the academic suite, right? I don't necessarily use all of those elements of the Google suite. And so what she has done and I'll let her as she gets situated and ready um pick up the mic from me. But we did rightsize the Google licenses. And then we realize on this side of the business side of the house I
113need Microsoft Excel every day all day. But at the campuses maybe only one or two people do. So if you're ready to take over, Miss Moy, I'll let you have it. Okay, cool. So, I don't think you heard me, but I was telling Mr. Hagerty about $450,000, I believe, in all the savings in terms of contracted services between those various suites through an analysis of the licensing requirement. Absolutely. Good evening, board members. President Bios, congratulations. Superintendent Deator, Diana, associate superintendent of TIS. We did we took um your um comments about Microsoft enterprise agreement licenses and we took a deep dive to become better stewards of our spending and our money and we identified we had more licenses than we needed. So we went ahead and um really uh relocated our A3 level licenses which is
114the entire Microsoft 365 suite to those job functions that really need the 365 full suite. those students that don't necessarily need the full 365 function, we reallocated our funds to give them A1 licenses. The A1 licenses are comprised of, you may or may not know, our web applications. They still have the full functionality of the Microsoft suite. However, there's certain tools that might not be available. You have to use it online. you can access it offline but those would be um given uh to employees that do not necessarily need the full functionality. So we did a deep dive into those job functions specifically discuss with certain directors um of those um departments to see okay do they really need to sit um or do they have a device in front of them that they need
115the full functionality of the 365 to your point they're I think the majority of students are on our Chromebooks and you can't download an offline version of Word anyway or PowerPoint but I I feel bad because I feel like my frustration frustration was it wasn't directed at you. It was I guess towards you. But my frustration lies in the amount of money that software companies charge for these licenses. Especially when they see school district and they see dollar signs and they raise their their prices or they don't tell us that you're using 50 of your 200 licenses that you have. We're just going to keep that quiet until you figure it out. Right. So, one of the benefits that that we had from going to this different price level after we did a a needs
116assessment and an analysis of of the licenses is going with the level um D and option B price level. Our student licenses are actually um zero. They they give us our student licenses for free. We have to meet a we have to meet a certain threshold of of full-time employees licensing and we do meet that threshold under the current pricing level that we have. In addition to that, because we do not want to have any impact on our student learning or any impact on what they already have or see, they will continue having that option of having the full desktop version for their own personal devices for up to five devices. So, they can use that at home and that's um no cost to the district. And that's only because we meet the threshold of
117full-time employees. Same with Google. With Google, we have the entire suite. That's our ecosystem. That one unfortunately we can't tailor to be alakart like we did with Microsoft when we did that analysis. Um but with Google, it's our our current learning platform and what we use for the classroom. Um and it also has the capability of Docs, um Meets, and all those other tools. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for that that $450,000 savings also. That really helped. Uh really quick. Oh, first thank you Trusty Hagerty for those recommendations and Miss Moy for following through. Do we have a dollar amount on what has been saved? Absolutely. So we uh last year we had our contract in Microsoft alone was $626,84.76. We were able to cut that down to 374,927 just by taking a
118deep dive at our licenses. Very good. That's great news. Thank you so much uh for looking into that, Trusty Hagerty. Very nice. That was good. Our team did a great job. Yeah, everybody did. Thank you. Thank you. The other question I had was on charters. It's my understanding that they cut the type of things we can bill for, but they want itemized bills and it takes a while to fill out those forms. So, the folks that are responsible for filling those forms out, do they have if they're um assistance in the classroom, if they're not the the main teacher, are they given like a planning period so that way they can make those those itemized bills that we can send and and make sure we're getting all the money that we need? Because don't you
119have to write down every time you go to the bathroom, every time you visit the nurse, every time you leave the classroom, you have to write down what it is you did and how long you did it. And I'm sure it's going to take a while. That's another great question. Uh, yes, the billing is exceptionally time consuming. And so in this particular school year, we worked with the nurses because they had the primary billing responsibility. And through our frontline contractor for HR, we developed basically um an what is it an interconnected process where now it does the billing for them. So by coding just their daily activities and memorizing the routine, it takes that then and converts it to the the reimburseable bill that we submit for SHARS. Next year, we're going to do the
120same thing except with the special education aids, I think, and special education staff members who don't have the benefit of what the nurses got this year. And so, we're working with frontline to develop the same routines, if you will, and memorized programming so that it will do that work so that yes, the student goes to the bathroom three times routinely, and it captures that and automatically creates the claim, if you will. And Dr. But you said you're working with front line. That's not something our guys can do. I don't think so. Um, that's probably a Miss Moy question, but I can tell you that the frontline cost to do the program I think was 3500 or was it 75, Bobby? It was 35 3500 to create it and it's done and then they walk away.
121So, it's not an additional cost every month. It's just a one-time let us create the connection between Frontline and your billing software and then it was done. Gotcha. Thank you. Anything else, Dr. Tone? I think it's important too that part of House Bill 2 is what um we're all waiting for is the special ed weights. And so soon you will see that on the special ed side when we code kids, we will start coding them by service. And so that's how TEA is going to determine how much funding additional funding you should get for special ed students. So you'll kind of see mirroring kind of both paces where it's very um delineated what service each child gets when they're enroll with you as a district. If I could piggy back off that, what was the
122reduction in for GT students? Why did they cut? So GT was part of House Bill 2. If you recall, many the last legislation, the last big funding bill, uh GT shifted and changed. So part of the reduction has come from the state that they've reduced the amount of GT monies for availability. So you recall many in House Bill 2 they actually eliminated that GT funding and it became part of the district's responsibility to set it aside. What was their rationale of it? I don't know Benn if you remember how what the reduction in House Bill 2 in 2019 was. Um but that's also when they eliminated what used to be called the high school aotment. remember the high school aotment that was part of the same elimination and they converted into CCMR bonus outcomes. So,
123uh I could research why the going back to House Bill 2 back in 2019 that GT funding changed, but maybe Ben knows that answer. It was something of a negotiation, right? So, as they were coming together and trying to fund um public schools, um they eliminated like Dr. Chakon said the high school aotment. um they believe that the it was the district's responsibility to provide those services to the students. Um, typically the the GT aotment is very small in comparison to special education state comped and so it was the way for them to save money um and pass it on to the districts and then they came back and then they brought it back but they didn't fund it to the complete amount that they used to and and I believe the negotiation piece now
124that you're saying that was dyslexia at that time if you remember dyslexia was not under special education it lived in its own and we did not receive additional funds for dyslexia. students. Now we do and that was part of House Bill 2, but the funding's just kind of switched from one group of kids to the other depending on the legislation. But you are correct, the last time we saw any type of uh increase in GT funding was way before House Bill 2 in 2019. So had to be legislations prior to that where they made GT a priority. I just have on this one, there was whatever was left, they took it. It's like a few hundred dollars. I think it was 147 if I remember. Something like that. But it's $159. $159. Why did they
125even put it in here? But right. Thank you. You're welcome. Any more questions, discussion? Thank Thank you everybody. I may uh with no more questions, may we have a um with no more discussion, may I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Thank you. Beings adjourn. Hey, you gave me a hammer. That's all dinged up.