001I call to order is 603 p.m. in we I call the one July 28, 2025 special school board meeting budget hearing to order. It's 6:03 p.m. We are in conference room C of the Fischer Administration building at 12121 West North Avenue. Miss Summers, please call the role. Miss Rosinski >> here. >> Mr. Bower >> here. >> Miss Bach >> here. >> Mr. Morris >> here. >> Miss Himemer Rolland >> here. >> Dr. Worley >> here. Mr. Wadier >> here. >> Okay. Um we are going to move to number two the verification of the meeting posting of the budget hearing. You can see an attachment of that um on the agenda for this evening. the affidavit of publication. >> That all. >> Okay. All right. We will um move on to number three on the agenda
002presentation of the 2025 2026 school year budget. um the full budget books available um linked to the meeting tonight and there was also sent out that was sent out ahead as was a video um quick tutorial video for navigating it. Um so anyone who's here tonight if you haven't had a chance to look at that or watch the video want to go through it yourself um there is a um a great guide. So, >> okay, we back real good. >> Okay, so um I'm going to get into this slide a little bit more later as well, but I was talking about the catch 22 of being in a desirable community um usually results in higher property values. And by the state formula, when you have higher property values, you receive less state aid, which means
003your property taxes are higher. So, um, property taxes are lowest in the poorest communities in the state. Um, the absolute poorest last year was either Bo or Two Rivers. So, there you would see the lowest property taxes and also probably you could say the most affordable housing or the least desirable housing. I guess those sometimes go together. Um the highest property taxes would be in places that receive the least state aid. That is in Wisconsin it is um tends to be lake property. So places like Monacqua, York County, um other vacation areas and then suburban Milwaukee and suburban Madison. So that's kind of the general lay of of Wisconsin. Um and there is research that shows that the strength of or the perception of the community and the perception of the school district results in
004higher property values and it's kind of this cyclical um desiraability, right? So we we we're have the fortune of being in a desirable place which leads to higher property values and that's the catch 22 then of higher property taxes. Okay, if anybody wants to follow along in the in the audience here, um there is the on the lefth hand side there's a website you can access the full digital budget book um simply by going to that website. Um I recommend the best the meth best method is on a a computer or tablet. Um, if you have your phone and want to follow along, you you can actually scan this QR code and um, go through the whole budget book that way, too. I'm going to be going a little bit out of sequence, so uh,
005if you're trying to follow along, it's not going to be exactly page by page, but you'll have everything uh, at your fingertips. As far as navigating it, if you are following along, just kind of a brief introduction just to the the new budget booklet itself. Um, you have several options once you get there. You and like I said, I recommend that you navigate just on your desktop, but you can uh I'm trying to get my mouse here. >> Go back. >> Sure. Yeah. People were trying to Anyone need more time? Tim, we want to try and get that board. >> I think I'm going to continue that. >> Ah, okay. Okay. >> So, I think >> Okay. There's also one behind us. Anyone needs to scan that correctly? >> Are we good? Okay. Okay. So,
006as far as navigating goes, on the lefth hand side is uh I'll call these the chapters. You also have the ability to download to PDF. So, if you click uh PDF, it's going to ask for your email address. You put your email address in and it will send you a PDF. And you have the option to um you know, if you want to share the link, you can do that as well. So here I'm just showing you the expanded if you're following along. If you were to click on this down arrow on the introduction so this chapter you'd see the multiple pages uh involved so you can easily skip around. Hovering over any of the charts and graphs will often give additional detail. So here's a picture of in this case if you were to
007hover over one of these graphs it will give you some more detail. So that's one reason that the digital version is better than the PDF. And finally um there's uh options for next or prior page. Now we're now this is the if you're following on the mobile you'll see little arrows at the bottom of your screen to go backwards or forward. Again, this is the mobile view. Okay. So, that was the brief introduction. There's a video too. The video is actually also posted now uh on the introduction on the second page. Okay. So, our general service model, we service about 6,800 students. Um this is last year's enrollment by grade level. Here you can see the the general demographics of our school district. So our free induced population has hovered in that 20 to 25%
008range. Uh like many school districts peaked shortly after CO or right around CO. Uh we're we're kind of reverting to the mean again. And generally speaking, our population is becoming u more minority, less majority white. I don't think that's probably news to anybody. We've talked about that over the years. Okay. So, like I said, about 6,800 students served. Our cost per day per student is $93. Our student toteer ratio is 12.8 to1. We're the 88th wealthiest school district in the state of 420. So, about the top right around the 20th or Yeah, right around the 20th percentile. Our total operating budget is $114 million. We maintain about 1.8 million square feet. That doesn't include uh outdoor facilities. So that lots and lots of acres of fields and things as well. Um we we also we're
009um we're one of just a few districts in the state that run the recreation program through the school district. We have an additional almost 14,000 participants in recreation programs last year. So, you know, beyond the 8 thou or 7, sorry, 6,800 students we serve, recreationally, we serve another nearly 14,000 participants. And I had to move this so I can Okay. And 921 last year full-time employees. So, we're also one of the larger employers uh in in the city. So, and I've been here now about 13 months. Um and and this is my analysis on the right hand side. So kind of my takeaway so far in my 13 months has been um that our community's pre preferred service model is highly results focused. I think that's what hopefully every school board's you know focus is
010um with an emphasized investment on sometimes competing things and that's where where um the challenges for me um because um what I've heard both at board meetings listening s sessions at schools things from our employees is we value low studenttoteer ratio we want competitive wages and benefits we want neighborhood walkable schools We want um plenty of people support outside the classroom. So social workers, guidance counselors, um school psychologists, other supports. We have a heavy emphasis on ADA. We want low teacher turnover and we want many options for students. That is really really hard to deliver with any kind of efficiency. So that becomes our challenge I think. And when I talk about um how how do we do that? Here's a picture of our um revenue cap to our school district revenue cap compared to
011inflation going back to 1415. So that's about when act 10 came out. So So if we use 1415 as the benchmark, what we can see is we lagged significantly behind inflation. So the revenue cap is what the state tells us that we can get in revenue. So essentially it's a spending cap. They'll never call it that, but basically that's what it is. And the revenue cap formula goes back to 1993. So what it is based on is the amount you were spending per student in 1993 plus what's become an arbitrary yearly increase. So when the revenue cap was first put in place, the increase was tied to inflation. That has long since been uh eliminated. It it is essentially arbitrary. There's years where we get some money. There's years where we get no money. Uh
012the most recent state budget locked in uh $325 for roughly the next 400 years. I don't anticipate that will last 400 years, but until some other bill happens, that's what's in place now. Um, so what we were doing in 1993 plus an arbitrarily yearly increase times our current average of students. So a three-year average of students equals how much revenue we get. So essentially how much we can spend. You can see we were significantly lagging behind uh inflation and what we added with our referendum last fall right here. inflation is the line and then this this kind of icing on the cake I'll call it or or bar is the new revenue we got from the um referendum. So basically it caught us up to inflation. Had the state law, had they never changed what
013they put in place in 1993, us and likely most school districts would not have needed a referendum because we would have had enough money without the referendum to um uh meet the needs of the community and board. Okay. So, proposed budget. Uh here's our our budget timeline. It begins in December of every year. So in just a few months uh we'll be working on the 2627 budget and that begins with enrollment projections and the board uh this was the first time we had them approve general budget assumptions so that we could uh start building a budget. Uh January we worked through open enrollment seats and we presented a budget forecast. Um part of that was a five-year forecast. The intent of the five-year forecast is to be updated every year. So, um, that will be
014updated again. Um, part part of the difficulty or or challenge with a 5-year forecast, probably in almost any business is that unless you are, I don't know, Apple or something, you're probably going to show a deficit five years out because you're you're going to be likely in most businesses um maybe slightly underestimating your revenues to um uh protect yourself and and building in an inflation factor for expenses and that's going to result in a deficit. Now, every school district I've worked in has when they've done a 5-year plan has always had a deficit 5 years out and you make modifications over the years so that you don't have a deficit. So, that's just something to keep in mind when we look at a 5-year forecast. In February, uh we work through retirements. We begin working
015with our buildings on their department budgets. March we go through staffing and preliminary non-renewals. Staff recruiting starts and is ongoing through sometime September. Um April and May we began with our first preliminary budget being presented as well as the staffing plan approved by the board. Our contracts were issued and returned. And now we're at our budget hearing. So just a few steps left. In September we'll have our third Friday count that will finalize our revenue cap. So, we still don't know exactly how much revenue we have, we won't know that until we have our official student count. And even though we're um uh moving forward with a a a recommended preliminary tax levy, that's not finalized until October when the board not the board, I'm sorry, when the state certifies our state aid because our
016revenue cap is dependent on state aid and property taxes. So, there's still a few steps left. All right. Generally understanding Wisconsin accounting. So, uh, DPI requires that we use an accounting sequence and essentially if someone's looking at our budget, they're going to see a series of codes and, um, and there's sort of a cipher uh, for those codes. So if someone were looking at the detailed budget that is available now um you would see on the left hand side is going to say fund 10 and it's going to say fund 10 equals general fund. Um a location is our site. So I don't have all our sites memorized but um I think site 403 is is either east or west. So each code has a cipher and it explains what each of those things are.
017The only difference between revenues and expenses is on the revenue side we call it sources. Oops. And on the expense side we call it objects. And there's a link in the digital budget book right out to DPI to explain all these things in detail. Okay. So getting into our our budget, our all funds. So again, we operate um a general fund, a special education fund, a debt fund, a capital improvements fund, a food service fund, and a community service recreation fund. So our all funds budget uh is highlighted here. Revenues versus expenditures. We can see um going back each year whether we had a surplus or deficit in each of those areas. And again, in the budget booklet, this will give you exact details. So, here's the uh actual numbers behind each of those funds.
018Tim, is there a way that I can hide this close? >> I just do this. You just click on close caption. It should shut it off. >> Where do I do that? Laura, maybe should be close. Let's see. Can you minimize that? I can't do anything. Maybe that's better than nothing. >> I'll do my best. I'm I'm just having trouble seeing what I'm trying to what what I'm trying to read. Um so here you can see our all funds uh budget on the top are revenues on the bottom are expenses and then uh change from the current year. Couple things I want to highlight on our general fund. You can see our our revenues are going up about 18%. That is due in large part to the operating referendum and our capital projects fund is
019going up um from you know basically nothing. Uh that's from our our capital referendum. Okay. You'll see it's only $45 million in 2026. That's because we borrowed already $15 million in 2025. I want to emphasize what we're looking at on all of the charts and graphs for 2025 is still budget. We're not presenting actual yet. On the expense side, the biggest change uh now remember we we are not increasing our expenses to match our referendum. In large part, the board already made those investments over the last two years. So that's why we're not seeing an 18% increase in expenses. We are catching ourselves up in revenues. So, our expenses in the general fund are going up about 4.3%. Which happens to be about what our salaries and benefits package is. The big change is uh
020you'll see a major change in our um debt service funds. that is where we have this every other um year expense in debt service that we're utilizing as as essentially a loophole with the state aid formula so that we can capture as much state aid as possible from the state. I estimate that's been about $22 million over the last five or six years that we've recaptured from the state. Now, sometimes when people are looking at our budget and I I've noticed they look at they're comparing year-over-year and it seems sometimes that it's selective of what year is picked as the starting year. Um that is not and sometimes that starting year isn't including a year we paid debt. So, we just need to remember we have purposely built years in where we pay debt and
021other years where we don't pay debt to best benefit our taxpayers. Okay, again just highlighting those uh those areas. Okay, so our general fund. So that that is the main operating fund of the school district um for for nearly everything except special education. So, our general fund uh our revenues are budgeted at $1786,562 and expenses are at roughly $ 106.6 million. So, we have a budgeted surplus right now of about $1.2 million. That budgeted surplus is a purposeful strategy the board asked me to implement or asked administration to implement to rebuild our fund balance. Now, we're looking at our general fund by revenue source. So, where does the money come from? Well, in our district, as I was saying, we're we're considered by the state a a wealthy school district. So, most of our money
022comes from local sources. And local sources is almost all property taxes. Other things that would be considered local sources would be, I don't know, the $5 you pay to get into the football game or something, but it's almost all property taxes. Next in line is uh state sources, which in large part is state aid, but it would also include things like um categorical state aid, so not just general state aid. Next is interd district payments within Wisconsin. So this is this is basically our open enrollment revenue. Then we have revenue from federal sources. So we are we are not um again part of being a relatively wealthy school district is you don't get much federal money. Generally the federal government uh when they are giving out grants it is targeted to high needs areas and
023they don't consider us one of those. So that's why um our federal grant money is not a a major source. And you can see here um the largest increase for us this year as far as sources go is to our local sources and that's due to the referendum. All right. On the expense side, uh us like most school districts, our largest expenses are salaries and benefits roughly 70%. Next is purchase services. to explain what purchase services are. Um that is generally um something that you hire someone to do but they're not your employee. So in our case, one of our our our leading purchase services is our um uh custodial services that are outsourced. Um anytime we hire say an electrician, that's a purchase service. If we hire uh someone to come train our teachers,
024that's a purchase service. So that's our third um leading transfers is fourth and what is transfers? That is the essentially the amount that we have to pay from the general fund to our special education fund. So special education is currently funded at about 30%. That's going up next year. So this transfer will go down, but we wouldn't need to transfer $12 million if the state fully funded special education. So that kind of stands out like a sore thaw. And then finally um the other thing non- capital objects think of that as consumables here. Our largest increase is salaries and benefits. Um that makes sense. It's our largest expense. So year-over-year um that would be our largest increase. All right. Um now special education fund. So, our special education fund that always has to balance and
025but the only way it balances is with a transfer. So, the revenues and expenses are always going to be the same. Um, so our budget there is 20,479,000. That's the budget um, frankly over the next couple years or maybe over the next year I want to go back into and dive into of Luke and Stacy more because it's increased the most uh, of our uh, areas where we spend. So perhaps that's purposeful. I just haven't had time yet to to figure that out. So, that will be a spot that we look at further. And here I'm highlighting the transfer that's used to offset the underfunding. Again, um our revenues, the largest source of revenue is the transfer. So, you can see that piece of the pie here in blue. And next is the state revenue
026in uh green here. On the expense side, like we'd expect, salaries and benefits are the largest and again, purchase services uh third. Okay, here's a picture of what I was talking about our debt. So, this is our debt fund and you can see I tried to draw with the red line um what our expenses have been year over year. So you can see that pattern of low expense. Uh essentially we're doing two years of I'll call it mortgage payments um every one uh every other year. So we're doing a zero payment and a double payment. A zero payment and a double payment. And what that does is it recoups more state aid. And so this is just a picture of that. All right. I want to pivot into our capital referendum. So, there is um
027if if anyone goes to our website now, uh Jesse Tuttle, our our director of communications, just added a link for us to uh what you're going to see here. So, there's a a button you can click that'll take you right to this page. And it's going to open up to this sort of heat map. And this heat map, if if you if you were live on it, I'm not going to attempt to go there because I'll I'll mess things up. Um, but if you hovered over any of the buildings, it's going to tell you how much we plan to spend at any of those buildings. And the heat map, uh, the size of the circle is indicative of the amount of money that we plan to spend at that building. There's multiple tabs at the
028top here. So, these are things people can use to track our work. The first tab is showing our actual expenditures for each of the buildings. So right now, and it's broken into three buckets. Um there's a pure ADA bucket, there's a pure deferred maintenance bucket, and there's a bucket of work that combines the two things. So that's why there's three colors. You can see it at uh here we go, Madison. We've done work in I've got myself cut off here a little bit, but we've done work in the the blue and the red areas so far. Um, and in East, we've only done work in the orange so far. This is this will be updated monthly so that it can be tracked. Uh, anyone that really is into Tableau, uh, you can sort by building
029or by year or by project code. I'm also including a full check register. So each month what will be updated is every check we've paid to every vendor or the capital referendum. So you can see the date we paid, who the vendor is, and generally what work was done as well as the dollar amount I didn't highlight. There's also a project tasks. So that links back to all the tasks that uh were there. And there's a tab for budget to actual for the overall project. So, I'd encourage anyone to go out there and just, you know, take a look at this. All right. Our recreation uh program, I talked about us having um more than 10,000 participants. um in the summer of 2025 alone, we have 133 programs um serving I I think probably like
030zero years to um I bet you people in their 90s. So really um every type of uh community member in our district is served by our recreation department. Here you can see our revenues over expenditures there. Now, recreation is funded a little differently, right? Because um it's funded with really just two sources. Either income coming from the participants. So, when we sign up for a class, whether you're a resident or non-resident, you're paying a fee. So, our programs are funded by either fees or taxes. And then since we staff most of the programs but not all, you can see again our expenses are in large part salaries or benefits, but we do have a number of recreation programs that are run by outside um uh businesses essentially. So um I think like Skyhawks is one
031of them. If anyone has a elementary age child, Skyhawks does a lot with like sports. So we're we're hiring them to run a program for us. Okay. So we're nearing the uh end of the agenda now. So here's how it all comes together with property values, state aid, and property taxes. So again earlier I talked about how this is you know a strong community um is is built around schools the perception of local community and in large part those things drive housing demand right and when there's more demand property values go up and the state formula says as your property values go up we're going to take away state aid kind of counterintuitive um but their theory is you can afford more. Okay, that's the state theory. Again, here's what we looked at from a
032revenue cap standpoint. So, they're saying um you get you get only so much money and in our case and that's split out between property taxes and equalized aid and where you are in this sort of balancing act depends on how wealthy you are as a school district. So, here's kind of an esoteric example. Um, I'll do my best to uh um explain this. So, what I'm showing or trying to show on the left hand side here, we're pretending that our state collects just 50 $50,000 in taxes. And our state's main ways they get money are from income tax, sales tax, and corporate tax. So, they're they got these three revenue sources. So, in total, they collect $50,000. And if they were using the entire state budget to just pay that out to school districts and
033state aid, so their whole budget to pay out to districts is $50,000 and they only have to pay five districts. So I'm trying to really simplify this. Okay. School district one at the top here, this is going to be the least wealthy school district, whoever that is. So in Wisconsin, that's like bait. Their state aid is going to be 20. If their budget's 20,000, they're going to get 20,000 from the state and their property taxes will be zero. The most wealthy district will be exactly the opposite. They'll get 0 from the state and their property taxes would be 20,000. Everyone else is somewhere in the middle. We're right about here. So, we get some money from the state, but not even half and half. Here's how that looks for some real districts that spend just
034like we spend. So what I'm showing here in the this column, this is the spending per student in I'll call them operating funds plus debt. So four similar districts in terms of spending. Each of them is is I ranked by wealth as the state ranks them. So wealth is defined as property value per student. Okay. So, in of of this set, we are the most wealthy. We're very similar to Middleton, Suburban Madison. Uh Reedsburg and Spring Valley are more rural districts. And you can see kind of what I was showing on the prior slide, the least wealthy districts versus the more wealthy districts. Even with the same dollar spending, the amount of state aid versus property tax, right, changes based on the wealth. So we can see uh we're actually aided slightly higher than Middleton.
035So it's not an exact uh correlation but close, right? Um we're about 18% aided by the state and our property tax has to cover 54% of our expenses. Whereas the Spring Valley is almost the exact opposite. Okay. So that's even at the same spending level. This is a chart showing our equalized value. So what equalized value is, it's the sum of all the property uh in Wawaossa. So going back to 20145, this is what our operating tax levy was. So you can see really stable. I talked about it not keeping up with the uh the inflation or consumer price index. Um you can see in 20145 it was about 42 million and as late as 2223 it was only 2 million more than that. Our debt levy we were a district without debt for many
036many years. Um this the beginning of debt uh was from the 2018 referendum. So you can see where that kind of um goes into play. We've long been a a a supporter of community service and recreation. So that uh levy has been there pro probably forever with the district. And then you can see finally our total levy. And the total levy divided by the equalized value equals the tax rate. Right? So that's the amount that someone pays per,000 of property value. So you can see in 20145 our tax rate was $8.34 and it has changed over the years. I think that's actually on the I'll go back. This is our tax rate over the years visually. Here's a picture of our actual levy. So again, the blue line is going to show our operating levy.
037The green is our mini service or recreation. And then you can see what happened when we added debt. And you can see the jump in the blue line is our uh operating referendum. So visually showing our total levy. And then finally, what I have started to do to try and compare tax levies, school tax levies from community to community is find um the first thing I do is I find what is the average what is the average value of a home in a community. So for us it's like TOSA. So what's the average value in TOSA? So, from Zillow, uh, as of July 2025, the average home was $412,000. And I believe in the budget book I even put the address there. >> Um, then I found a $412,000 home in West Dallas and a
038$412,000 home in Elmrook. And I looked at what were the actual taxes on that on those homes going back to I think I said 1415 here. >> 1415. Yeah. Thank you. Because I wanted to compare if if someone had the same home of the same value in each of those communities, what would their tax be? And what we can see is we're the blue line, West Dallas is the orange line, and Elbrook is the green line. Okay. So until our debt referendum, we were below West Alice. Um we and West Alice recently held referendums, but we are very very close to West Alice and you can see Elmrook significantly ahead of us. Again, part of that is due to spending that back to 1993. Um, what I have learned over the years is Elbrook was
039a district that in 1993 when they knew this law was coming, they increased their their spending per student essentially to prepare themselves for the future. They're one of the few districts that did that. So, because they did it, they've had larger spending capacity, what is that, 35 years now? 30 years. Um, which is one reason that their taxes are higher. We're very close to West Alice. Uh I was actually surprised by that. Um so again when I this is just me comparing a single value a single house over the years um at different keys. Okay, that is uh the the presentation. Um I would direct anyone that wants you know way more detail again to go to the budget book. You can go through page by page and again the very last page will give
040you a link to the entire line item budget. >> Thank you, Mr. Ethe. So, I'm going to read the full public comment at board meetings. Our public comment time will start once I'm done reading that. I don't want people read to think that I'm using up your time. Um, but I want to just read all the way through. Sometimes at budget hearings we get haven't been at a board meeting in a while or haven't looked at um policy 0167.3. So we are now on item four on um our agenda for the budget hearing and we will have public comment time. Public comment at schoolboard meetings policy 0167.3. Members of the board value the input of students, parents, staff members, and community members. The board's regularly scheduled meetings provide an opportunity for opinions and concerns to
041be expressed publicly. The board values all comments and will respectfully consider input in decision-making. The board will take public comment on both non-aggenda items and agenda items at each regular board meeting. This is a special meeting, so we're taking public comment now on our budget and later on we'll take public comment at our regular board meeting on uh anything that's agenda non-aggenda. Okay. um and may take public comment during special board meetings. That's what we have right now. The public comment period will occur near the beginning of the meeting. Tonight, it's after the presentation because we wanted you to be able to have the um explanation of the information um by Mr. Eer and shall not exceed 30 minutes in length unless extended by the presiding officer or by a vote of the board. Individuals
042must limit their comments to three minutes. Participants must be recognized by the presiding officer and will be requested to preface their comments by an announcement of their name. Public comments that are emailed and submitted to the school board email address by 10:00 a.m. on the day of the meeting of the board will be added to the online meeting documents to become part of public record. Email public doc public comments must include the name of the person submitting the comment. All public comments shall be directed to the presiding officer. No person may address or question board members individually or direct statements, comments, or questions to staff or other meeting participants. Board members are obligated to follow the Wisconsin Open Meeting Law, which requires advanced notification to the community of the board's intent to discuss or take
043action on an item. If a public comment concerns an item that's not on the current meeting agenda, board members may not respond other than to thank and acknowledge the speaker for their input. The presiding officer may a limit the number of times a speaker may comment on the same topic. B interrupt, warrant, or terminate a public comment when the statement is too lengthy, directed to anyone other than the board presiding officer obscene or disorderly. C. Request any individual to leave the meeting when that person engages in conduct which is disorderly. D. Request the assistance of law enforcement officers and or security officials in the removal of a disorderly person when that person's conduct interferes with the orderly progress of the meeting. E. Call for a recess or an adjournment to another time when disorderly conduct
044so interferes with the orderly conduct of the meeting as to warrant such action. F. wave these rules with the approval of the board when necessary for the protection of privacy or the administrations of the board's business. Recording, filming, or photographing board meetings is permitted. The person operating the equipment should contact the superintendent prior to the board meeting to review possible placement of the equipment and must agree to abide by the following conditions. A, no obstructions are created between the board and the audience. B. No interviews are conducted in the meeting room while the board is in session. C. No commentary, adjustment of equipment, or positioning of operators is made that would distract either the board or members of the audience or otherwise disrupt the meeting while the board is in session. Broadcasting of schoolboard meetings.
045The board encourages all residents to be well informed about school affairs. Therefore, regular board meetings are livereamed and even the special public um meeting is being recorded. Um they're available for viewing online on the district's website. Um executive sessions and inservices for board members are not recorded. So we have two board members that will one will be keeping um Mr. Morris will be keeping the 30 minute time for me and Mr. Bower will be keeping track of your three minutes so that you can get your all that you want to say arranged and in the comment before we have to ask you to stop. Um we will be taking comment both um and we'll be taking comment in the room. Um and I would just say that we really want to hear from everyone who
046has comments. So let's share the time. um let's um organize ourselves so that um people can share the time and share the space. Um we learn a lot um from public comment and we appreciate that you've taken the time to be here tonight. If you are um in the room and want to make public comment, please do approach the mic. Just a reminder that right now is the budget hearing public comment time. Um and then there will be some other agenda options later on in our general meeting. Thank you. And remember, all we ask for is your name um before you give your comment. Thank you so much. Please proceed. >> Good evening. My name is Kendra Kovar. I retired from teaching in June of 2023 after teaching for a total of 33 years. My
047last 16 years were spent at Whitman Middle School. In regard to the budget, I know that many of the members of the community, including the 2030 task force, are wondering why the district spending increased by 45% since 2021, yet outcomes have consistently declined regarding students. Therefore, I'm sharing a few ideas that may have caused these changes. Please note that the significant spending changes and decline in student outcomes occurred immediately after the appointment of demand means to superintendent. Additionally, many highly qualified teachers have left the district due to the toxic culture, misleading benefits, and the mismanagement of funds. Upon reaching the state's qualifications for retirement in 2023, I was seriously considering my options for the future. Remember, it was 2023 that the district offered a 12% raise to teachers. Prior to the raises being communicated, Sarah
048Zelazoski, chief of talent and HR, presented the staffing plan for the upcoming 2324 school year. In her discussion of that plan, I discovered that I had been removed as a staff member from the plan for the district. Therefore, I pointed out the omission of my teaching assignment to Sarah Zelazoski. The next day, I received one of those see me emails from Sarah Zelazoski and my immediate supervisor. In that meeting, I was told I was left off the plan because HR had heard that I was retiring. Yet, I had not given any formal notification of my choice to leave teaching, nor had I been informed by administration of any reasons for not renewing my contract. In that meeting, I was told that there would be stipulations on my contract if I chose to return to teaching
049due to my negativity. Mind you, I had never been contacted or informed by either administrator regarding my negativity prior to this day. I asked for documentation of such negative occurrences. The HR and my supervisor had no documentation to back up their opinion. In that meeting, I also brought up an $800 stipen that I had been approved for prior to the 2223 school year for a specialized certification that I had earned. I was told that I would no longer receive that stipen unless I signed a contract to return to my position the next year. This concerned me because Sarah Zelazoski's plan indicated that I would not be receiving a contract in her board presentation. Needless to say, I left that meeting facing quite a conundrum regarding my future employment with the district. Yet, approximately 2 hours
050after that meeting, I received an email from Sarah Solazowski offering me that $800 stipen in return for my resignation. Yes, you heard that correctly. I would be paid by the Wawaossa School District only if I resigned. The email reads exactly, "Good afternoon, Kendra. Thank you for the opportunity to touch base. >> I understand you still have more to say. Um, we have gotten to three minutes. Could you figure out a ending, please?" >> Yes. Thank you. I appreciate. >> Basically, the email states that I received the $800 if I resigned. So, in conclusion, the community is asking why the district is spending is up 45% since 2021. Maybe we need to take a closer look at Mr. means leadership style, a mass exodus of highly qualified teachers and other misappropriations of funds like bribing teachers
051to leave by offering them stipens. >> Thank you. And as we ceue up the next in room, um come on up to the microphone. That's fine. Um just letting people online know that if you're thinking of um uh doing public comment for the board budget, please have start having your hand raised so that we know how many people online are interested. All right, go ahead. >> Okay, thank you. And I know in policy 0167.3 the board is allowed to extend the public comment section beyond 30 minutes. And I would just encourage you to think about that because we are all the people using our money to support the students of our district. Um so I'm going to try to make this easy with the budget handbook. I looked I read it and so page numbers
052on page 113 I noticed that um we did not report the statistics on demographics for students with disabilities. and I would encourage us to include that in that. Um, on age 24, the special ed fund is not miss listed when it talks about all the different funds that we have broken out. So, that's not on there. Um, on page 51, I was a little confused about the statement that said school age parent costs are also changed to this fund. So, I didn't know what that meant. And then I wondered, well, is that a typo? should it be charged to the fund? Um then on pages 49 and 92 uh we talk about spending on paper. So I noticed that the actual for 2024 was 1418 $1,418 but we have budgeted for 2620,000. So I'm wondering
053did we have a zero that we put in there that shouldn't be in there? So, um, you can find that. It just was a little confusing. I actually think we probably spend more than $1,400 a year on paper, but did we really mean to say 14,000? So, and then how if that is an error in the budget, um, how does that get resolved? Um, I love the idea that Scott Eker said about talking to Luke and Stacy about the spending in special ed. That's a great idea. there's been some ideas or comments shared with our leaders team on some of that. So I I appreciate you going deeper diving into that. The other thing that I'd really like to encourage is last summer we learned that one of the biggest buckets of spending in the
054legal area in our district is on special ed. So you know fighting parents who are trying to get something for their child. So, here's the conundrum, and this has been talked about, I know, in pockets across the state with legislators, is can there be a cap on legal spending and special ed? Because as the district gets more and more money, um it's more that they can you the district can use to fight parents of kids that might just be trying to get 15 minutes a week of speech therapy. So, I'd like to see something like that. And um this has been talked about um with some of our legislators and I I think it's a good idea um and that can be done by board action potentially. And then lastly um administrator administrative benefits and
055tuition. This was talked about the reimbursement. I learned in the meeting last week that we don't have any caps on how much money that we pay for administrators to go back to college to get their PhDs as all of us are trying to pay for our own kids education or our students are trying to um pay for things. Why are we spending tax dollars at such a high level with the, you know, our HR director said that some of these staff that leave the district are their reimbursement is being waved. So, we've literally paid for people to get a PhD and um we're not getting the money back. That's a spending area we should look into. Thank you. Thank you. Next one in the room. >> Good evening. My name is Chris Murker. I represent
056the 2030 task force, a community led initiative launched on May 13th. It now includes about 130 members and 200 about 300 followers on Facebook with new supporters joining every week. Uh you can find our work at www.tosa2030.com and community members are welcome to sign up for our weekly newsletter and updates. Many of you uh may have expected me to speak tonight about the budget. I will. But but I I rise instead to address a more fundamental issue. Why the secrecy? Why the continued lack of transparency? Tonight, the board once again retreats behind closed doors. This time citing a vague complaint against a fellow board member. No names are mentioned. No details are provided. >> Excuse me, Mr. >> No effort is >> Excuse me, Mr. Marker. >> This is regarding the agenda this evening. >>
057The budget for this one is this comment period is budget. But if you agenda, this is on the agenda tonight. >> We have another comment period in the general board meeting. >> So you can >> But this is on the agenda tonight. >> If you can tie this to the budget, you can >> Absolutely. It it it deals with transparency on the on the board. >> Please tell us about your questions about the next year, the 2025 2026 proposed budget. That's what public comment we're taking right now. >> This this ties inirectly ample time later on for the other. as long as you're tying it to the proposal. >> This ties directly in. You have to hear me out. Otherwise, you won't you won't >> Well, I was having a little trouble following, but it
058seemed like you were going into something up on the agenda later this evening. >> So, no names are me. I'd like my time back, please, for the interruption. >> I apolog No names are mentioned. No details are provided. No effort is made to help the public understand why this is necessary. We know what this is about because we're the 2030 task force and the community now comes to us on everything related to the growing problems and crises swirling around this board. If anyone in WASA wants to know what's really happening, all they have to do is visit our website or read last week's newsletter. And that right there is the point. Because of the board's continued pattern of secrecy and governance failures, the 2030 task force has become necessary. We are now the place the
059public turns to for answers, not you. Ask yourself, what is it about this complaint that requires secrecy? If the issue involves a text message about WS Stem, why not address it in public? Was it so egregious that warrants confidentiality? Did Mr. Wadier embuzzle funds? Is he secretly a Russian agent? This is what happens when you shut the door on your constituents. You create a vacuum into that vacuum rushes confusion, speculation, and mistrust. It didn't have to be this way. If the board had simply chosen to hear the complaint in open session, the public could have seen your process and maybe even trusted your judgment. But instead, here we are once again wondering what's being hidden and why. And let's not forget, this isn't just about a complaint. It's about a decision that led to a
060closure of a school, WT STEM, and the erosion of public trust that followed. The community deserves to know what role this communication played in that process. So, we'll do our part. The 2030 task force will publish the file later this week so the community can understand what's really happening behind closed doors. And yet this is just one example of the mounting issues the board continues to ignore. You have still issued no response to the export part two. Our follow-up governance report detailing systemic breakdowns and requesting formal action. A new letter from nine Madison elementary families outlines a toxic culture citing high staff turnover, PTA collapse, and parental fear of retaliation. These concerns mirror those raised by McKinley families which led to the removal of principal Ted Martin but only after months of community pressure. The
061DPI's ESSA report flag race based disport proportionality and student support failures of Wawaossa Virtual Academy. Underwood and Eisenhower still met with silence at Tossa East. Whistleblower reports remain uncknowledged. And of course, back to the budget. No forensic audit has been commissioned even as the board prepares to pass another unbalanced budget and launch the largest capital capital spending plan in district history. When will the board respond to this multifront crisis? What exactly is the board waiting for? >> The district is on fire and you continue to act as if everything is just fine. If you did your job right in the first place, then we task force wouldn't need to be here tonight. >> Thank you. One second. Um I'm going to just just so people online know what to expect. Okay. Because they can't see
062your thing. So you may go ahead and then we're going we do now have a hand online and so after you we'll go to online. Thank you for your patience. >> Thanks. My name is Kathy Campbell. Um I've been a Wawa Tossa resident for 44 years. I've worked with students from different schools here with youth for 30 years. Um, and I'm very sad to hear all the stories I'm hearing and also seeing and how I saw the decline in the students capabilities. Um, and it all does relate back to this budget which um, I'm just going to mention I'm CPA by trade. I did many budgets and things like that and I I appreciate what you did. You have a big budget, but tonight's meeting I was expecting to hear more of the questions. I
063don't know who this woman is. I don't remember your name. I'm sorry. Deb, that's the kind of stuff that I thought was going to happen tonight by the board members that they were going to question what's this expense, what's that expense, you missed that, you missed this. Um because as a board member you really should know the ins and outs of the budget and the numbers behind it. Um and so tonight what I felt and couple years ago I went and looked at the audits of what was done here. Um so I learned a lot about how you know the budget what it means the objects what the words. So tonight I felt like all I was getting was this is what the budget what the budget's about. This is the wording. This is how
064you understand it. But I didn't learn anything about the real budget. And so I don't know how a vote could be had about the budget when board I don't think from what I see really knows the ins and outs. And the public who came we don't really know the ins and outs. And I know the budget's online. I didn't know that before I came here. Um, but again, I've looked at audits and in the past, I'm still waiting for the answers of things that were brought up by the auditors that, you know, variances have to be done. Financial statements weren't brought up to date. That's where we got into all these problems. And it scares me that I'm seeing and reading about a $350 million, you know, project referendum coming up when we haven't resolved
065and had, you know, protocols to fix what we've done in the past. It's it's got to change. And scares me that wobbs is unaffordable. We just got our valuations for our homes and now we're going to be adding on the referendums we already passed and now more referendums. There's not going to be anybody here to live anymore and the quality of life in Tulsa is changing. So, thank you. Thank you for sharing the concern. Just um a point of um note that the board does get a chance to ask questions that comes in the general meeting. This is the budget hearing which the focus here is to have and the the general meeting is also public but this is an opportunity um particularly take very focused public comment when we um when we um have
066our general meeting tonight. We will be asking questions and we've had a lot of um people send us questions as well. So thank you for bringing up your concerns uh and I hope that helps clarify the structure of the meeting. We're going to, as I said, we're going to go to our online hand. Um, so Jamie, if you could invite Jeremy, sorry, if you could invite um Kayla's iPhone, please, and then you should be able to talk. You just need to unmute. Hi, my name is Kayla Murker. So, please don't cut me off because I am going to address the actual budget. Um, so Mrs. Worley, um, I know you're Dr. Worly, but my husband Chris Murker isn't Mr. Murker, it's actually Dr. Mker. So, we need to have respect kind of go in both
067ways. So, I'm a parent, um, a Wabosa parent and a former PTO president. I spent many years volunteering in our schools supporting our teachers, staff, and students. Tonight, I want to speak as a mom and as a member of this community who cares deeply about the future of our schools. Let's be honest, and you know this, things are not going well. Families are losing trust. These are families and community members are losing trust. Teachers are leaving. Students are struggling. and the district keeps telling us everything is under control when clearly it's not. We've had DPI reports flagging serious issues around racebased disproportionality and student support. We've seen whistlore reports go unagnowledged. We've watched school climate collapse at multiple buildings and of all of it is met with silence from this board. Meanwhile, property taxes in
068Wabatos have gone up between 20 and 30%. The steepest increase many of us have ever seen. And the single biggest driver of that spike is the school district. You are asking more and more from families while delivering less stability, less accountability, and less transparency. And families are starting to ask real questions. Why do we have twice the number of administrators and staff as Elbrook? a district with higher performance and fewer scandals. Why our facility costs 350% higher than theirs? Why was principal Ted Martin reassigned to be the director of the recck department after his leadership was found to have contributed to serious problems at McKinley as confirmed by your own independent reports? How do you justify these choices? This isn't sustainable. It's not right and it's not fair to our students, families, community, and staff
069who are doing their very best every day in the buildings that feel unstable, unsupported, and ignored. We need answers. We need action. And most of all, we need leadership. You are elected to oversee a school district, not a crisis management agency. Please stop pretending everything is fine. The people in this community see what's happening. and more of us are speaking up. Thank you. >> We have another comment in the room. >> Oh, I I just had a handout from my prior uh comments to to help you. Um so, if I may approach, please do. >> Okay. >> Thank you. Any other comment in the room on the budget? >> Okay. >> And then we'll take one online. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh Joe Mloo. Um I really wasn't planning on speaking tonight, but after
070listening to that, I feel compelled to. Tonight, you will be allocating and appropriating money for the budget. a very large amount of money for that budget. I will remind you that is not actually your money. It is money that's been trusted to you by the residents of the city of Aatossa, including two rather large referendums for which our taxpayers will be paying well into the future. You need to be very conscious about how you are spending that money. We should not be looking at this like, oh, we've been given this money, now we should find ways to spend it. What would be more appropriate is to find ways not to spend it and return that money back to the taxpayers. Unlike the pre prior referendum, which again is still ongoing where we kept on trying
071to find different things that fall under the umbrella of that of that referendum and not and then just basically leaving that taxpayers on the hook. that taxpayers in the city of Wawaossa have shown great trust in you that needs to be reciprocated back to them. We have seen ongoing issues with leadership and accountability and student achievement in this district. That needs to stop. It needs to stop tonight. When you are looking and discussing this budget, we should be looking at ways to cut the budget and return funds back to to our residents and to find ways to improve the ongoing situation with the problems in leadership, accountability and student student achievements. You are here to teach students. So their achievement should be top priority. We should not be standing here working on different buildings. Buildings
072do not bring about achievement. Teachers bring about achievement. Administration does not bring about achievement. Again, it's the teachers that do. We should be looking at cutting severely cutting the budget for administration and appropriating it more to our teachers that are doing the actual work of teaching our students. There's a lot of problems sitting in front of me at this board and you need to take a long hard look at yourselves and the role that you play in those problems and make take corrective action and take corrective action starting tonight. Thank you. >> Thank you. So we have a hand online. Um Jeremy BJ E will be next. >> Uh BJ, you can talk now. Just you have to unmute. Thank you very much. My name is BJZ uh and I'm very glad that I was
073able to attend remotely. I had actually called in the first the very day that I received the postcard uh regarding this meeting and nothing, not a word was said on that postcard about what to do if you needed accommodations. It did not even say go to our website uh and see more. I might have said that more about the meeting. Um but I am uh because I am not able to travel right now. So this was very necessary and I especially appreciate the public comments that have been made and actually have been made for several years now. Especially the fact that every pretty much everyone who works in the school who who is a parent or guardian of a student has stressed again and again that monies should be given uh raises should be given
074more more to people who are studentfacing and I noticed the 4.3% average of that is the salaries and benefits. I uh I imagine I can go online now after this because I would like to know what is the largest percentage someone received and where is that person? Are they in um uh a Fiser building or are they in a school and who is getting the lowest uh percentage and I would bet they're not at Fiser. We need to be listening to all of us that are part of this community and want the best for our students and yes for the people that work there. But it uh I am going to take a good hard look at who got what in terms of raises and I believe that was also done it already for the
075the next fiscal year when the budget isn't isn't even finalized. Are any of those going to be changed, lowered? That's a a point that I would have. I'm also very concerned um that you all remember that the referendums were not passed by huge margins. There are quite a few people in Wawaossa who did not support them for the reasons that were given uh among others. And you need to remember that there's a lot of people that are looking for you to earn their trust in you in the positions you hold. And I would also like to know why the recck department directorship was not posted was not um part of a review process because we have had a stellar director and that's why those numbers are so good now and I do not have hopes
076that that will continue by someone who was basically gifted a position without any competition. So thank you. That's what I have to say. Thank you for making a comment. >> We have three minutes. So, would someone like to come to the microphone? I don't see any other hands on the line. Thank you. >> Hello. My name is Michelle Chop. I've spent most of my life in Maossa. I'm a Toce graduate. My girls were Toast West graduates. I got a letter this week that my property taxes are going up 30%. Uh, I'd like to um second what Joe said. I think we should be looking at uh conserving our money, focusing it on teaching and student outcomes and not just spending everything we have. It's concerning to me to hear that Deb, unlike me, went through
077the budget and is finding orders of magnitude of mistakes. 14 or or are we really spending in an age of computers $14,000 on paper? Could we not? I mean, I know it sounds like nothing in this huge budget, but I would like to suggest that if we could focus our money on student outcomes, saving money where we can, it was news to me. It sounds exciting. Do we as taxpayers pay for the PhDs of of I mean, I'm paying for I paid for my graduate degree. I'm paying for my kids degrees and really I'm also paying for the degrees of of people who work in this the Wawaossa schools. I I I feel like I was slapped in the face this week for how much money it costs me to live in Watossa while I
078watch what feels like a decline. My kids are out of school now. a decline in the performance of our schools. When I went to Tossa East a long, long time ago, we had as many National Merit Scholars at TOSA East, more that year than it was MUS or DHSA or Brookfield. And now we're closing the highest performing school in our district. and promising, don't worry, we'll spread that all around and it will get better. We're having all sorts of problems at all levels of the school. We're losing good teachers, so I'm paying more for less performance. >> 30 seconds. >> I could move across the street and live on 126th Street and pay less taxes and my grandchildren could go to higher performing schools. It feels like we're going backwards. So, if you could look
079at the budget and wherever you could actually save money and not spend it and where you could focus money on, as someone said, >> studentf facing people, I think it would work out best and the people of Wawaossa would feel like their hard-earned money was being well spent. Thank you. Thank you. We will now close the comment time for the bud. Oh, sorry. >> Comment. >> Yes, you may make a comment >> to everybody in the room. I I would encourage you to attend the resource finance and resource meetings. They uh they are recorded and they're put online. um do we have we are doing to the best of our ability asking for by spending wisely and trying to uh reduce the amount in every every place we can. Um since being appointed to that
080committee I think there's only been one time maybe twice where somebody has shown up and given feedback. Um, I would love it for all of you to they're at the next one. Happy to hear your feedback. >> Thank you. >> Are you hoping to comment? Um, board, I would like to propose that we take the one final comment that has >> comment. >> So, yours one, two, three minutes standing. Okay. So, we'll add three minutes of time. Is that okay? >> Yes. >> Okay. Since I'm proposing it, asking for it, we don't have to formally vote. >> Okay. >> Name is Randy Park. Um stroke and aphasia 35 years ago. So I can't I I do do not uh talk to uh your people or something. is hard for me to speak. Okay. In 2024,
081the total value is $335,000 for the notice of changing assessment. In 2025, the total value is 5 thou $550,000. 60% 60% for one year. I have no idea. My at um the uh CPAs have no idea. This is unaffordable. I'm upset. Thank you. >> Thank you. This will be our last comment that we'll take this evening. My name is Scott Roger. I've been in this community for 45 years. I spent 51 years working in industry. I've watched this city go right down the toilet. You're spending more money. I'm on a fixed income. I'm a widow. My wife passed away years ago. I don't have the money to come up with you're asking for me to hang on to my home. If I sell my home, then I got to go into an apartment and spend
082$2,500 a month for a one-bedroom with a garage. You guys don't understand. I can't give you my budget to work with. You can't manage your own. You can't spend what you don't have. I can't spend what I don't have. I have to cut back on all my expenses because there is no money available. And you guys spend my tax dollars for 40ome years like it's water. It's not your money. It's ours. And the school systems, you guys are not producing brain children. They're idiots. They can't do anything without a phone in their hand. That's no no intelligence. >> Thank you. Now, we will now close the public comment session. This part of the public budget hearing. Um, I do want to make sure everyone knows that there's still a general board meeting that will happen
083and we really encourage you um to stay uh for that. The the time is 7:28. May I have a motion to adjurnn? >> May I have a second? >> Second. Thank you, Miss Himer. Rwand. Miss Summers, please call the RO. >> Miss Bzinski, >> yes. >> Mr. Bower, >> yes. >> Miss Faul, >> yes. >> Mr. Morris, >> yes. >> Miss Himer Rand, >> yes. >> Dr. Worley, >> yes. >> Mr. Wier, >> yes. >> Our meeting is adjourned for public session, the public budget hearing. Um, we're going to take five minutes and then we'll start the general meeting um as agendaized for this evening. Thank you for being here.