001And then they I don't know. Oh, is it seven yet? Not yet. All right, good evening everybody. It's 7 PM. Today is Tuesday, June 24th, 2025. We'll go ahead and call the meeting to order and we'll start with the pledge of allegiance. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Thank you. I think before we get started, we'll go ahead and excuse two board members who are not present. Uh I would entertain a motion for someone to excuse. Uh I don't think we need to do them separately. Can we? Yeah, I'd make a motion to uh excuse Mr. Walcott and Mr. Keed. All right. Thank you. We do
002have a quorum present, so we'll go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Motion carries. 30. Uh changes to the agenda. Dr. Finch. No changes. And communications. All right. Uh we have the response to public comment as a placeholder. There were no public comments in our last meeting. And we have staff retirement recognition. And so we do have one of our staff members here, but we before we introduce her, we will uh recognize uh staff members who are not able to be here this evening. So Carolyn Bodri was is a bus driver for us and is retiring with 11 years of service. Appreciate her service. John Knight is retiring as a custodian at the high school with 12 years of service to West Valley. Julie Martin, a
003par educator out of Tan Valley has served in the library for many years there. Uh Julie is retiring with 26 years of service to the West Valley community. And Carmen Zamora uh most recently serving as secretary at the middle school is retiring with 33 years of service. So we appreciate all those staff members who were not able to be here this evening. And we do have Pam Bailey is here this evening. So Pam was featured on Kima TV. Uh she has 31 years of service to the West Valley School District as a bus driver and 29 years were for the Mountain View route. So 29 years uh serving Mountain View families, 31 years overall. So Pam, come on up and we'll give you this nice pat. Thank you. Thank you for being here this morning.
004Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. Can I open this before I go? Oh, yeah. All yours. Okay. Thank you very much again for all your years of service to the West Valley School District. Um, item six on the agenda, public comment of non-discussion agenda items. I don't know if we have anybody who would like to speak. Did we receive a list? All right. If you would uh go ahead. We I don't we don't see no microphone today. So, you're just going to have to use a loud voice today. Yes, sure. It actually works really well. Well, tonight I wanted I um can I before you start, can I ask you for the benefit of everybody here to introduce yourself so everybody knows who you are? And I have two grand girls in
005the town which is I think the best but I don't know the other uh I last week um heard a story on the news and it was about a mother from Ventura California and uh she was recently given permission to prayer to pray during her public comment time and they said that that that was legal. That was her exercising her first amendment rights uh of freedom of speech. Uh uh this story is is also on YouTube if you'd like to get more details on that. And uh so my request and I during my public comment time whenever I come weekly or by weekly whatever I would like to be allowed to say the Lord's Prayer. Thank you. Anyone else? Public comments. Anyone? All right. the public comment for non- discussion agenda items is closed. We'll
006move on to item seven, approval of consent agenda. Um there are a number of items there. Any board member can bring any of those up if they would like. Uh this is the time to do it or we can go ahead and vote and approve the consent agenda. I I'd make a motion to approve the consent agenda as a whole. I had um on one of these items, I had a question about the budget. Is that a different item here? That's a different item. Make sure I didn't mark it. The budget development is coming up as a discussion. Okay. I see it's here later on the agenda. So, I'll wait for that. Okay. We have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. We'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor signify by
007saying I. I. Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. 30. Next on the agenda, [Applause] item eight, budget development. Uh, Dr. Finch. All right. Our director of finance, Sheila Wood, is here this evening and she's going to talk us through an overview of the process for the budget development. At our next meeting, we actually have a program for the long-range facilities committee and Corey Plagger from DA Davidson's going to be here as well. Uh looking again at the defeasence of funds and also if we were to move forward with the recommendation from the long-range facilities committee um what that cost would be for a bond issue as well. So that's going to be in the first meeting in July. In the second meeting in July, Sheila will present the first reading of the budget for the upcoming
008school year. And then in August would be the second reading and the approval by the board. So Sheila's going to take you through um what what's going to happen between now and that first reading, the work that she does um and and our others in the finance department, what they are doing here behind the scenes, what they'll be doing uh to prepare for that first reading of the budget that will be in our second meeting in July. Okay, my name is Sheila Wood, director of finance. I'll be going over the budget process. This process takes a lot of people and a long time to prepare. I just want you to know that we begin in February and we create um a budget timeline and a checklist and then the CFO will show begin the enrollment
009process, right? We are constantly monitoring that. That's the first step. So, we're also reviewing all the OSPI bulletins, budget updates, allocations, templates, and for availability dates. That really determines the timeline of my budget. I cannot move forward if those are not available. Um, so that's can be a hiccup in the process. I was trying to ask you a question. When when do those usually become available? So, the first template became available late May. And that template is where I put the enrollment in and it's by class or by grade and other sessions as well. And then that gives me a big chunk of my um revenue. But that's I think it's May 18th 19th around there that that came out. Is that pretty normal every year? It is. But they also every year OCI has
010to go through that and put in the new formulas and all the increases or decreases. So like if they do a salary, it has to be calculated in there. This year there was a percentage for this bed department that changed. So they have to update that. So it's not like they just roll it and it's available. They have to do a lot of manipulation to create all the new the templates. Time consuming very time consuming. So anyway, the local revenue is then based on uh the history with any known changes factored in which would be all the local receipts. So that's your fines and your fees. It can that's also your um LEA dollars is part of that calculation. That's an OSPI template as well based on assessed values and enrollments. The grant revenues like
011at this time I only have a few grant allocations that I know. So I'm still waiting on some of that information. So I do not have all my revenue at this point. We create the budget database. I visions is the software that we use and I do that at the end of March, beginning of April. And what I do is copy that database and create it as a provisional what we call it to prepare the budgeting has all of our staffing, all the history. We have to go in and clean up all the staffing. So we have to for people that were hired mid year go in and change their dates. For people that are resigning, we have to remove them, add new positions. a lot of cleanup work to do and any kind of
012movement for account codes. So that's a big piece of it. Then and that is also where we will key our revenue once we get it. So I have about half the revenue right now that I know. Another half I don't know yet. That's where we move into the expenditure piece. And I just mentioned that we do all the staffing changes. We do the FTE increases or decreases. We're looking at contract days. We're looking at the benefit rates. So like the seven insurance changed have to update that in the system and this is the biggest part of the budget because your expenditures are about 80 to 85% of your salaries and benefits are. So that is the biggest time we we spend more time there than anywhere. Once the budget revenue and expenses are calculated comparison
013reports are generated to ensure all programs have a budget and are reasonable. So I do um a lot of comparison reports and some of those have to be done manually to make sure. For instance, time sheets do not uh encumber. I have to go and add those manually. Subcosts do not encumber. I have to go in and add those in randomly and those are large. Once that's put together, we do have to load it into another OSP template, reconcile it all out, and then we have to do that by each fund. So for the capital projects fund again work with the CFO on expected projects and then we look at expected revenue. So that piece is usually simple but since we uh passed the bond it's got a little more complicated and then next year
014we'll have 50 cents of debt. So we'll have to factor all that in as well. Debt service fund. Um I rely on our we have a debt schedule um for our bonds. I rely heavily on that schedule, but I also work with DA Davidson. It's not required by me alone. So that's where I get that information. The ASV fund is very fairly simple and I work with the secretaries to prepare that. We project it out, compare it to the priorities, make sure it's reasonable. Transportation vehicle fund, I work with our uh director to project all the expenditures. Revenue is depreciation and we get that from the OSI website. Then we also must prepare the four-year forecast. All of these have to be uploaded into a template, which sounds very simple, but it is not. Then
015it's sent over to the ESD where they review it, we reconcile it, I make any changes, and I like that step to be done before I present it to you for first reading. That way I know it's been reviewed by a second set of eyes. Actually, it's probably a third set of eyes because I have as many people review as I can get to review it. Then we advertise it in a local paper. That is a step I'm getting ready to do. We'll present it for the first reading and then hopefully present for the second reading and it'll be adopted and then we finalize it and certify it. That's a large overview. It takes a lot of time and a lot of people. But that is the steps. It's all intermingled. It's not like you
016I'm working on revenue till I can get the revenue that I know. Then I go to expenditures and work on that. When I get more revenue, I go back to the revenue, finish that up. The grants is a lot of unknown amounts right now. So, waiting on some of that information questions. Yes, questions. I have a couple. Great. Um, can you can you dive in you kind of hit on just a second ago and throughout talk a little bit or can you explain a little bit more by what you mean by you have about half the revenue now and you're waiting on the other half. Is that [Applause] can you detail that a little bit more please? Yes. So I have most of the revenue but the grant allocations I don't know I don't so
017I can run my expenditures to see what we're going to spend and salaries at least. But the new grant allocations are not out. Those are not in the template that I described. Those are separate. We get an allocation. Typically the directors apply for I was for instance I was just working with one director on a grant allocation for next year and she I don't even apply for that for another month. I can't. So you won't know that amount. So is it so are those uh those being federal grants or state grants or both? Both. The one I'm talking to specifically is two federal grants. Uhuh. And um so there's you know there's a lot of there's a lot of things that you read about in the news about federal funds and and um and um
018can you talk a little bit about or to the extent that you know is that part of is that al the changes and yes the federal fund let me back up a second federal funds come to us through they're allocated to they're allocated to the state then the state passes them out to us. Correct. Um it's through well it's through a state agency. Yes. But right it is some of them are direct. Okay. So, can you ex can you help maybe uh put some color on uh changes uh or uh timing uh issues as it impacts the development of the budget. So, that particular challenge is why we build capacity into the budget because I don't know. So, as an example, the particular one I'm talking about is a federal grant. It's the special services
019grant. There's it's two pieces. It's over it's about 1.2 million not a little bit less than that. When I run the staffing that's the bulk of it is staffing. If we get increases and we balanced to the grant last year allocation it's going to be more when I go to run those numbers. It is going to be higher. So I will budget what we have and I will build in capacity. I talked to the director. She said we always get the max amount and she's expecting it to increase but it's unknown. She doesn't know the exact time for this particular budget year or fiscal year. Um are we uh this is not relative to the uh budget development but are we um how are we doing in terms of monies that we were expecting um
020from either state or federal sources? Like in other words, um are we experiencing any delays in funding uh that has been previously um promised to the district? Not to my knowledge. Okay. Okay. We do have some very small grants that I state grants that I anticipate we probably won't. Right. But they're small. I'm I'm thinking back to COVID times where I'm thinking back to co times where where money monies were promised or allocated to us but the timing was a little bit off between one uh one fiscal year to the next. And so but we're not but these delays in terms of the forecasted revenue are not really attributed to monies that previous monies that have been uh uh or at least in large scale. Not none of our large scale ones that I'm aware
021of, but I don't know the allocation. So I don't know if they're going to cut the amount, but we don't anticipate it. Are you We're preparing as they're going to be some reductions, which is why we got to build a little bit of capacity. Sure. And so that's why it's great to have a healthy general fund because of some of the delays that could have happened. For example, in June a portion we get told from the state as you guys were well aware all of a sudden we're going to hey we don't have enough money to pay you for this month so we're pay the rest in July. So those are some of the things you have to prepare for. Sure. We don't expect anything title any of the larger the existing brands. We're utilizing
022some history in order to get through that but we are taking some precautions for part of title like migrant and those types of things where there's been a little bit communication about not sure what that's going to look like in the next year. And and do keep in mind to add to Joe's comment on fund balance, when the new grants come in, we have to spend it to get it. And a lot of times they're not even approved until November. We've already spent in September and October. We're spending out of our fund balance because we're not getting that revenue. And then when we do make the claim, it's delayed by a month because then you get it. So some of our grants, we're not even getting payments until November, December. But we've spent since September,
023October, November. That's where fun balance comes in. So, one of my go I'm Yes, thank you. Sorry, I'm kind of I questions that ended up being like seven. So, sorry about that. So, that was raising a question and I think you answered, but just to be sure. So, some of our grants operate on a reimbursement basis. We don't get until we spend it first. Is that or these aren't just delays? This is the process for some of these grants. Are they large grants that we get that operate that way? I mean, pretty. Are they large grants that operate that way? The bigger ones that makes it harder. Okay. And if you don't spend it, they take that was a follow-up question. So, so we spend every dime, right? All right. Any more questions? No, I
024got one. Yes. Go ahead. Um you you mentioned the four-year forecast. Had you gotten through that and kind of can you share a little bit of what the four-year forecast is? So it's challenging to predict one year and four years is even more challenging. I can tell you like for instance with um say the transportation fund that's a very simple fund to budget. You buy buses your revenue is depreciation. Your depreciation is based on your fleet. You can go around. You want to walk website information, get a good idea of what your revenue will be. I work with Jamie. She wants to really beef up her fleet. So every year she's usually buying two or three buses. It's pretty simple. But the general fund, that's a whole another beast. And so that one most districts
025have 5% of whatever the enrollment trend is, your revenue tends to follow. You try and you try and keep your expenditures within your revenue trend. So you just apply a percent typically is what you're going to do. If you if you kept your enrollment flat, you would hope you would keep your expenditures flat. That's not going to happen though with this the economy that we live in or if you have CPAs, we'd be borrowing increases. So is the projected enrollment is that a steady growth at this point of what we've seen the last couple years or is it projected to be kind of flat? Co changed our enrollment. Um and it doesn't it's not quite recovered and our trend is going down. Yeah, these are the first start we saw dip essentially for these two
026years. So last year and then this coming year kindergarten are expected to be lower. So we're taking that into account. But then the four year forecast is kind of she's being very kind about the process for it. It's really I mean you have to take every legislation every year is something brand new that changes the whole puts a whole caveat and changing the entire 40ear forecast. So that's that's usually blown up very first year. So you have to review that each year. So we do small percentage inquies for the most part, but we kind of history in order to come up with somewhat of a realization of what what four years from now looks like. And and we always we always keep in mind when you're doing a four-year forecast, it's if you do nothing,
027you know, we're obviously going to react if our enrollment changes the you know, so it's it's extremely difficult to predict four years out. Yeah. It's it's not very useful to be honest. What is the source for the birth rates? Oh, yeah. Washington state. There's a website. Yeah, we pull it from there. And then I have we utilize a secondary company that or source that I use in order to pull some additional data just to make sure it matches. And then we use housing development and child find as part of that process to kind of see where there's students coming in or moving into new developments, those types of things. We kind of take all that information together come up with a conservative kindergarten. Okay. And it's also interesting because I have a lot of people
028ask me, well, West Valley has so much construction, you must have a lot of new kids. Not necessarily. And we're not seeing that. That's not been the case. So, are people from apartments moving into homes? It's the same families. I I don't know. We have not seen that to be the true fact that it's not. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Any more questions? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for crunching all the numbers. All right. Uh that takes us to item nine on the agenda. Public comment for non-discussion agenda items. For discussion, what's that? The discussion items. Oh, I'm sorry. Discussion items. You're right. Public comment on discussion items. All right. I have to read that little statement here. I should have done it earlier. Uh members of the public who would
029like to provide public comment will sign in. Speakers will be called in the order that they signed in to speak. Speakers will be given three minutes for their comment comments. Public comment is not the proper forum to address concerns about a specific staff member. If a person has concerns about a specific staff member, they should take their they should make an appointment with the superintendent to address their concerns. So, with that, I will ask if there's anybody who has an item they would like to speak on. All right, hearing none, we will close the public comment of discussion items and move on to item 10 on the agenda, action items. Um, I have one in there, but we'll go through these, I think, by alpha. So, we'll start with the approval of travel request. Any
030comments from any of the board members or a motion to approve? I just just want to point out that ASA is paying for travel um for these two uh events that are happening in the fall and so there's no cost to the district for travel on those. All right. So, we'll go ahead and vote on those two items if somebody would care to make a motion. I move to approve uh both of the travel requests. Thank you. We have a motion. We'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Post. Same sign. Motion carries. 30. Item B, approval of policy addition revisions and second readings. Um, anyone have any comments? So just these these were approved on first reading and there's been no change to the language uh from
031the first reading. So this is second reading. Okay. Thank you. I have one and I probably didn't catch it the first time around but I'm sure it was there and that's on 6801. Just some of the language I'm just not sure. Was there any significance as to why we changed? It's if you look at on on the memo here, item D is valued no less than $10,000. The previous language was anything above $5,000, something of that. So, was there any reason why we just didn't adopt the same language or did it have a meaning to it is what I'm wondering. Well, that that is the substantive uh change of the policy is moving from 5,000 to 10,000 and I think just basically it's with inflation that the small and attractive items uh now are considered
032anything less than 10,000. I think it's a question because is a little different. Yeah, it's phrased differently. Yeah. Is is there any significance to that or just ignore it? I mean I'm just curious because previously it was says costing 5,000 or more. Now you're saying loan less than 10,000. That makes sense. I'm just wondering if there's a legal significance to that at all. No, that this is the language that was provided for us and it does make sense that the small attractive item would be 10,000 or less, right? Or less than Okay, which kind of leads to my next question. So, um, again, I guess I should have brought these up before, but I'm just wondering, so 10,000 or less. I I mean, I know inflation is a lot, but that could in 10,000 could
033include a lot of things like a golf cart that they might use to travel around on the fields to service them and things like that. So, those are not going to be considered Well, they're still part of the inventory. It's just not considered a capital asset. That's what I'm getting at. So, it's still part of the inventory and still tracked. I get that. Okay. Okay. I guess I'm just wondering about some of those items. It seems like it's on the fence, but I don't have any reason to say, you know, we shouldn't do that. I just was curious as to that's a big jump from five to 10,000. It's like double, that's all. All right. The last time you set it five, I don't know. It's been that way for a while. Been a very
034long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, I have no more questions. Anybody else have questions on any of those items under B? Second reading. If there are no questions or comments from the board members, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion to approve all the items under B. Approval of policy addition revisions. Second reading. I would move to approve all the readings of those policies. All right. So we have a motion to approve 2230 transition to kindergarten program 5011 sexual harassment of district staff prohibited and 6801 capitalization of assets. And you can see the items underneath that. We'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor signify by saying I. I oppose same sign. Motion carries 30. Next on the agenda we have the approval of policy addition revisions first reading. Um there are basically
035two items there under C 6700 and 6702. Any questions from anyone? Comments from board members? If not, I'll entertain a motion to approve the first reading of 6700 and 6702. So moved. Thank you, Mr. Thorner. But we have a motion. We'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. 30. Next we have item D, approval of child nutrition bids. Again, two items there. Milk and dairy products, fresh produce. Any comments on any of those items from any board members or any reason for further discussion? If not, I'll entertain a motion to approve item D, milk and dairy products and fresh produce. I move to approve the uh contract renewals as presented. Thank you, Mr. Turner. We'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor signify
036by saying I. I. Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries 30. Next, we have item 11 on the agenda. Items arising. If there's anything I'd just like to share with the board, uh this is the last board meeting that Joe Connley will be attending as a staff member. Appreciate Joe's service for the last four years as our assistant superintendent. And also want to call your attention that Ryan McDaniel is here this evening. So earlier in the uh board meeting, you approved his uh uh hire his um what's it called there? Employ approval employment contract. So Ryan was on the list there and Ryan will be taking over as the assistant superintendent uh for the West Valley School District. And uh would like to invite you to stick around afterwards and just uh say hello to Ryan and
037certainly say goodbye to Joe. But Joe is still uh living in our community and he's got a kid that's a senior next year. So, he'll still be around and appreciate Joe, your service through the last four years. And you've just done such a great job for us. Really appreciate your service. Again, I second that. If there's a motion for that, thank you, Joe. You did a great job for the time you're here. I can think of all the projects that we've worked with on you and done a fantastic job. So, thank you for that. And by the same token, welcome. Uh, I think you're going to have a fantastic time. The job is certainly challenging and um you're in good company. Got a lot of fine folks to work with. So, welcome on board. All
038right. With that, we will go to item 11. Uh item 12, I'm sorry, reports. Any We've got uh enrollment report, safety report, travel log report. Um any questions about any of those items from any board member? All right. Then hearing none, we'll move on to item 13, superintendence report. Dr. Finch. On the superintendent report, I shared about a volunteer appreciation night that we had on Monday, June 9th, and I listed all the volunteers from all the different schools. We had volunteers recognized from all of our schools as well as for Ram Landing and family engagement. I see that one of our volunteers for Ram Landing is here this evening. So, Jill Jill Armstrong is there. So, Jill, thank you for all that you do with Ram Landing. And uh Jill has quite a crew there
039for Ram Landing. and it was great to have them in attendance and and tell them thank you as well as all the other volunteers. We really appreciate all of our volunteers and volunteers are always welcome. So we have annual uh check for the volunteers, background checks, and those are done uh there in August and September. And we welcome anyone who is interested in volunteering at the schools to contact the school principal. And if you're interested in RAM landing and family engagement, those are located at the innovation center and everyone is always welcome. We appreciate all of our volunteers. All right. Thank you, Dr. Finch. Um it brings us to item 14, board reports, board development. Anyone? All right. Um, I want to then we'll move to item 15, adjournment. We'll adjourn the meeting. Today is
040June 24th. We'll adjourn the meeting 7:32 p.m. Thank you for those who made it to tonight's meeting. Board members, just