001Good evening and welcome to the regular session more time board of education May 13th. If you stand for the pledgece 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. Thank you very much. I'll do it next time. Do it next time. Check on it. Um board members, you do have an agenda with some personnel items and checks. Um volunteers. There's one volunteer. One volunteer. One volunteer. I move we accept the agenda and agenda as presented. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Any comments or concerns or corrections? All those in say I. Nay. I carry it. Uh tonight we have Mr. with us to talk about our West Virginia being tiered system of support. Uh board members, you
002do have a packet in your folder for starting his presentation tonight. Welcome you to come up to the wonderful lect turn if you wish to. All right. Thank you. I just want to say a couple words. I've asked Michael to come speak to you tonight. Um, this used to be, for those of you who may remember, RTI, that was years ago. It used to be RTI, then it changed to MTSS, and now West Virginia is WVTSS. It all stands for a multi-tiered system of support and it is a structure um by which we do all our instruction, all our curriculum. It's also now comprehensive to include behavior and Michael's just going to kind of fill us in on give us a general overview of it. And it really should be for us a playbook by
003how we do things in Morgan County. So, um, Michael's going to give this presentation tonight. He's also going to do more in-depth presentation with principles in in June. And, uh, as we've been working along with this, I'm glad Nicole is here with us because she's been doing a lot of work behind the scenes with counselors on the behavior side of things, trying to get this, uh, process nailed down for Morgan County and how we do things. So, I appreciate Michael being here. He is uh not to make his head big, but he's an absolute expert in this and uh not only here in Warm County, but people across the whole panhandle contact Michael for uh advice and guidance on things. And Michael, thank you for being here. Thank you. Um as you see in there,
004it does say West Virginia tier system supports. Um, this is this first as multi-tered system supports because West Virginia has a tendency to like to rename things and then in a few years they rename it something different as Mr. Banks was saying RTI they renamed to SPL support for personalized learning. So that tends to be confusing. So I try to just keep it with the generic term so that way we all hopefully if they change we'll continue to to press on because this is a framework that is very successful and helps schools um be more successful. Uh so I'm going to go over a definition of MGSS briefly u then what it is and what it's not and then talk about the keys to success and then briefly mention as Mr. Bank kind of already
005alluded to our own Morgan our guide for Morgan County tiered system of supports. So this is a very brief but uh precise description of what multi-tered system of supports is. It's a framework that helps schools identify and address academic and behavioral health needs of all students. Um, I'm sure you guys probably are familiar with the tiered system. So, it's like a a pyramid where the bottom is your foundation that every single student gets what we call tier one or universal tier and then the second tier or um targeted interventions um for some select students that may need it. And then there's the most intensive tier at the top of the pyramid. Um, and multi-tered system supports as with RTI. Um, PBIS, you guys might have heard of that also positive behavior intervention supports. They all
006follow that kind of tiered system um of providing supports and making sure you have a strong foundation in order to not overwhelm your other two tiers. Uh, also in my definition here, a lot of them will put academic, social, emotional, behavioral, mental health. I combine the social emotional, the mental health, the behavioral on the behavioral health. If you look that up, it just kind of simplifies it. It brings all those concepts together. And that's really what we're trying to do is bring that together. Look at the whole child instead of having silos as far as academics, behavioral, mental health, social, emotional, or whatnot. What it is and what it's not. It is uh a way to help us organize our processes and procedures. It's not more pasta on your paper plate. So often people think
007of MTSS as something that's just more to your plates. We're just giving them more to do, something else uh for our staff to have to understand. And it's not that. It's more of taking that plate where you've put on the 16 different kinds of pasta salads cuz you don't want to offend anybody. You want to make sure you taste a little bit of everybody's everything and you just keep stacking it on there and next thing you know it's melting and it's falling in your lap. This is more like taking a tray and putting those pasta salad, those potato salad and chicken, whatever in the different compartments. It's helping you organize what we have within our school system. So, MTSS helps us organize our one tier one, which we'll talk about more with as far as
008what our guide is for the county. Um, making sure that tier one works for most of our students. It also then organizes how do we identify the kids that needs uh what what interventions do we have for them? Do those work? Are they addressing the needs we have within our school? Which kind of leads us to the next one there, datab based decisionm. Uh I'm often in meetings where emotion or that squeaky wheel gets the oil. So they know the kids family or they know uh the horrible stuff that they went through or the traumatic past they have. Not that that doesn't matter, but often that'll lead a meeting into going 30, 45 minutes when if we focused on the data of what the student needs, we could have addressed that need. we could have
009provided them, got them into an intervention within five or 10 minutes instead of talking about it for 45 minutes. Everybody leaves a meeting. Everybody's much more sad. And usually we haven't got any any further in the problem than where we began. It's also preventative. Uh unfortunately with MTSS, RTI, SPL, whatever you want to call it, support personalized learning response to intervention, it's often seen as the pathway to special education. And that's something that it's hard to change in people's view of looking at it as preventative. It's not the pathway to education, special education. It's a way to prevent students from needing special education. So, we need to get those services and interventions in earlier so they don't need special education. It's not something that, oh, let me just jump through these hoops so I can
010get the student special education. Uh it's also all about increasing academically engaged time which is a up there in the students least restrictive environment meaning the classroom that they were assigned to the classroom they should be in uh according to where they live. Uh it's not a way to get them out of your class. Uh a lot of times um especially summer interventions we might give too much of that intervention. Instead of uh providing let's say 15 or 20 minutes and that addresses the need and gives the student what they need, we might spend 30 or 45 minutes and then we're keeping that that student out of the classroom um instead of with their peers in the classroom where they belong. Another thing we often get confused in with our intervention services is uh trying
011to teach the skill. So intervention services should intervene and help them with what they are struggling in so they can get back to the teacher who has that certification. So intervention for like Taiwan isn't teaching reading. We're intervening with reading so they can get back in the classroom and learn the how to read from the teachers that have that specialty. So that's another kind of mixup where NGSS helps us make sure that what we're doing is very efficient and effective um instead of keeping them out of the classroom for too long. The last part there addresses the whole child. We're not blind men with elephant. You guys have probably heard that story where you have multiple blind men in the room trying to identify what the elephant was. One touch the body hits the wall,
012one grabs a whole table, it's a rope, one grabs a hold of the leg, it's a tree. In uh education, we tend to be that way too because of a silos. So you ask the mental health specialist, well it's because of their depression or ADHD. You talk to the behavior specialist, well it's because they trying to escape whatever the trigger was. You talk to the reading specialist, it's because they don't have good funological awareness. This brings it all together. So we're talking about the same child. They're not separated into these silos that we have within our school systems. We come together to talk about the child and their needs and then address it accordingly. So hopefully our services are much more effective. You guys stop if you have any questions or wait till the end.
013Keep looking forward to All right. You're educating us. We're getting the question here. All right. Well, I don't have tiered services for a couple days. All right. So, the keys to having a su successful MTSS, easy for me to say. Uh, number one, your administrator has to be the expert within the building. They have to be the lead. They have to be the one that takes the bull by the horn and leads that program and understands MTSS and make sure that their programs, their processes, their instruction is all on board with and and organized within the system. uh we have to have clear and consistent expectations regarding those processes for identifying needs whether it's uh individual student classwide or even maybe schoolwide. Uh making sure that we have clear expectations of what instruction what curriculum
014we're following so we don't have multiple curriculums or multiple methods of curriculum going on or instruction excuse me within one building or maybe even within one classroom. Maybe they're trying using different kinds of curriculums within one classroom and making sure that we're following the same programs. Another key which is very important is making sure that our tier one sufficiently meets the needs of approximately 80% of your student population. If you don't have a strong tier one, then you overwhelm your your intervention services. You have too many kids needing tier 2 and tier three. That means you need more interventionists and you're taking them again more kids out of the room and we have more kids being served by interventionists instead of our teachers. So it's really important that our tier one addresses at least 80%
015of our student population. Again, this is academic, behavioral, mental health, whatever the need is. Uh explicit efficient referral and problem solving process that does you that utilizes database decision-m. So this is where um not only making sure that everybody in the building understands what kind of data are we collecting and how do we use that data. So making sure we're not just doing assessment for assessment sake, any assessment we give is something that we use. Uh and then teachers understand, okay, these are the cuts or these are the target scores I should have within my room. And if they're not meeting those, then maybe I need to refer them for a student assistance team meeting or some kind of help. Uh, our tier two and tier three interventions have to be evidence-based and they have
016to be implemented for fidelity. This is another one. Unfortunately, we're not the only school system does it, but we'll have a evidence-based intervention and let's say it requires 40 minutes 5 days a week. We do it 3 days a week for 30 minutes. If it's evidence-based, you got to follow the pro protocol. You got to do it with fidelity for for it to work. Um, and so if you can't follow that because of time constraints or personnel restraints, then we just need to look for a different intervention that does fit our needs or what our resources. Whoops. Sorry. Um, explicit entry and exit criteria for tier 2 and tier three. That way, it's not just a once they get in there, they're there forever. That we know when does the student need to exit, when
017do they maybe need to go to tier three intervention, when did they drop back down, or when can they exit completely out of intervention services. And the last uh students who are referred for special education evaluation making sure they receive ample intervention services being that I usually get these um I do get uh referrals at times that do not have intervention. So the student there's a need or someone's identified a concern they have went through intervention they come to me that makes it a lot more trickier for me to then do the evaluation say yes there's a problem they could potentially meet special education criteria but I think you should go back to intervention services first sometimes parents are on board with that sometimes they want the special education because they see it as more
018protections for the child um we are currently working on the guide book for multi-ter system supports um which we'll address is primarily going to be heavy in tier one because that's where we want to make sure everybody is on the same page of what is expected at all of our schools um and that everybody understands this is the curriculum we're supposed to be using. Uh these are what interventions we have within our building. These are the supplemental materials that you can use. Uh and then it will also have a part where schools will take their own tier 2 and tier three services and plug them into like a framework or a table that we've created. And then that way we know for every school these are the tier 2 services they have for reading, math,
019mental health, behavior, whatever the case may be. This is how the kid gets into it. This is how the exit criteria is. This is the duration of it. How many times they go a week. So you almost have like a menu so everybody understands these are the services we can provide for the child. So when we are doing that database decision making those decisions that those meetings go much more efficiently and effective and that's it for me have to educate me is my um experience the principles are the ones that are already supposed to know this database and this set of interventions from one two and three what the student are what they're supposed to utilize for the students or is that a team that you get together that always acronym correctly that should be
020pulling into that. Yes. So it should be a team. Um not the teacher should be the lead as far as understanding what needs to be done and leading those teams and being involved in them or it is a team. Um and we call them student success teams. Um and that's another term that's been bounced around called different things at different times. Um but it kind of it takes that data, disseminates it, makes those decisions much more quickly to get kids into like tier 2 interventions and decide when do we have need to have a more formal student assistency meeting where we might bring in the parent. Um you might bring in myself or somebody from the outside in order to discuss the problem more in depth. And so those teams that get together, is that
021a ongoing thing that you're doing going into with the principles or is that something that they meet on a monthly basis? How does that process work to identify the students we're talking about to get that? So different right now, this is part of the reason why we're coming up with this is to try to get some more consistency. Okay. Um is schools do it differently depending on so like the high school continues they they have support for personalized learning which was one of the terms that West Virginia's Department of Ed turned RTI into. And so they still have their SPL meetings and teams that they meet on a weekly basis to go through much of what I've talked about here. Okay. Um, and then like the intermediate school, they meet on a weekly basis and
022it's their student support team. They call them problem solving teams or student success team. I'm confused myself. But so the name changes but the concept of the team has stayed the same and the principles lead on those teams. Uh, yes. Okay. At each school and that's how we have set it up. That's the ideal. That's what we're working towards. That's the ideal situ but that's the ideal situation for the principal to be that person. Yes. Okay. Nice. Now, that's my opinion. I'm one person. That's why I try to work with everybody else because, you know, I got my two cents, but that's the only two centers on her head. My peripheral two of you at least, but he may have been on the same thing cuz our principal should be our instructional leaders. We don't
023all believe that, I believe. And um that's why I was curious on how that process works and what that team gets together. That's a tall task for a principal to handle by themselves. Yeah. Um and like all the other duties we have on them. I didn't know. Do we pull APS into that too? Um some some of the schools have APs on those. Yes. Um I think you can use administrators broadly. In this case, it would be the principal or the assistant. But uh there would have to be in my opinion uh good communication. So I would in my opinion I would still expect the principal to be uh knowledgeable and understanding what's going on within their building and be very privy to this document and how their services work. Uh it's like if it's
024done correctly, the intermediate schools won that they have got to the point where they can move through their almost their entire case load of kids that are receiving tier 2 and tier three services which is like 50 something kids within one of their meetings which is like 40 45 minutes. And so that's that's the ideal is that again using data. So all you're looking at is data points of have they met it? Have they not? Yes, they have. All right, they need to be exited. Or no, they haven't met it, but it's working. Now we continue. Or it's not working, they're regressing, we move them up to tier three, next student. Um, and unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, that squeaky wheel, too many of our schools talk about a kid for a good 30 minutes.
025Instead of having this process well ironed out where they can go through that data, whatever, whether it's mental health, behavioral, academic, they have those data points they're looking for. they have the assessments, screeners, whatever that they collect and then they have that data in front of them. So they sat down at the meeting and that's already there for them and they can go through it much more quickly. That's ideally that way the administrators aren't spending hours on end on a weekly basis having to do this. Um so that that just the thought about also being a depository for resources. It's human nature. Whenever you start getting into a I believe it be probably that you would get locked into one thing here two we're going to do this intervention that's the best thing we have
026that's what we're going to put this child into and it may not be if we have an auditory of other items that we could go through of some nice yeah plethora nice reminder to give people what's going right what's happening what's available well that's one of the more difficult things with this process is also using data not only to identify a student that needs a certain intervention but use data to figure out Are our curriculum successful? Are tier 2 interventions successful? Are they addressing the needs that our data is giving us? Um, and that's something that that just takes deeper dives into that information um to to find out. Sorry, thanks for coming. That's okay. I think a couple things to understand Michael the system is fluid. So students can move from one to two
027to three and back to two and back to one. And even one very common misunderstanding is that once a student qualifies for and begins to receive special ed services that they're in there forever. Our goal is for that student to improve enough that they don't need special ed services. They've moved back into the tiered system of support. So, um I think a lot of people just kind of assume that once a student qualifies and receives those services that they're in there for their whole academic career and that is not the goal. So, that fits within this process too. Um, another thing that I think is commonly misunderstood is the tiers. Um, tier 2 instruction is something that is often seen in a in a what we would think of as a normal classroom. So, uh,
028it's not where when they get to tier 2, they're automatically pulled out and they receive specialized instruction from an interventionist. It can be within the classroom. And if you walk into a elementary classroom, you'll see different reading groups and kids at different levels and the teacher and the ECAT facilitating that. And those kids are all different levels. Could be somebody in tier 2 and somebody in tier one all throughout the classroom. So it is a uh process that works. Um we feel like uh we need to do a lot of refinement with this and one of the things we would like to do is have our interventionist next year until we get the process to a place where everybody clearly understands how it works meet with Michael on a regular basis so that all of
029our interventions are interventionists are hearing the same thing and understanding the process so that we're K through 12 our intervention is understood and done in a similar fashion. So, um, unfortunately we, you know, we had that turnover. So, the more our intervention is, they they don't have to just jump in and and, you know, just try to figure out what to do that we can get that, uh, instruction and training from Michael as we as they go through the year. So, um, I I I'm really excited about this. This process is also tied into that committee that I was referring to earlier about um, Miss Miss Golden and Mr. shade overseas. So once this document is decided upon and those curriculum intervention tools are decided, if somebody some school wants to use something that's not
030in there, then they have to go through this process of getting approval from this committee and their their guide is this document. So if it's research, evidence-based, and it's something that we feel like we could try a pilot on, then this committee would approve it. If it's not, if it's something random that the principal went to a conference and they heard something great, they want to try it, this committee might say, "No, we're going to stick with this because it's working because we have the data to show that it's working." So that committee and this process is is tied together. So that's all. Thank you for your time. Thank you [Music] all. Lecture is yours. Excuse me. that they're welcome to leave or they want today to sneak out. You're welcome to stick around and
031you got a budget to do. All right, the FY26 budget. I'm still back on too much pasta on the paper plate. That one's a good one. This I'm sitting there thinking this is kind of like putting the cheeseburger and the hot dog and the baked beans and the macaroni salad and the macaroni and cheese and the coleslaw. Balance it perfectly. So you can pick that up and carry and pick up your drink in your silverware. I don't know what Michael said, but I was thinking about Okay. Uh, first of all, as you saw, you have a binder clip there with a bunch of handouts. What that is, there's a one page that's the presentation outline that I'm going to be going over. There's a second uh the second one is the complete budget, revenue, and
032expenses. Just so that's out separately in case you want it. Then there's a copy of my presentation and then a copy in the back of this full step seven plan which we're going to be talking about during this and also approving later in the budget. Oh, you can't see that very well, huh? Okay. So, uh we're going to be talking about three funds. 11, the general fund, fund 61, the special projects fund, and fund 51, our capital projects fund. Uh, as you know, we have to have a budget for the next fiscal year turned into the state by May 30th. Uh, tonight we're going to go over it. If you so choose, you'll approve it for publication. It needs to be available to the public um on our website here to be you can pick
033up or it will also be in the messenger for 10 days and then you're scheduled to adopt it on May 27th. That's the budget hearing. After that, it's submitted to the department bed via weeus and then the office of school finance reviews it, checks it nine ways to Sunday, and if it's okay, then it's approved by the state superintendent. Uh, as you know, there's been a lot of things recently that's changed the way not only we educate kids in West Virginia, but also things that have affected the budget. To name a few, we have the Hope Scholarship, we have charter schools. Um things are uh very uncertain at the federal level. We don't know what's going to be happen there. And of course the co pandemic has drastically change the way we do life. Actually
034um as you know our money expired on September 30th and we've reached that funding cliff that we've been warned about for many years once that money is gone. In my opinion, I think we spent our uh SR co monies very responsibly and in a way that left our general fund uh built up pretty good because of the choices we made on how to use that. So, um again, I think we're in pretty good shape there. Mr. banks and along with the directors and some others have taken a very thorough and systematic approach at looking at the things we have purchased previously with our ESR money and uh the things that they feel we should be keeping and maybe the things we will no longer have. So I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Banks
035to talk to us about that first. Thank you. Mhm. So the next sheet uh it says budget planning proposed FY26 funding has broken down into uh five different categories. Instruction, curriculum benchmark, professional development, students and software. So all of those things we have looked at and tried to we asked questions about the usage and some things we have completely eliminated based on um them not being used and you know just a handful of people using them. Uh and some of them uh we have uh ramped up a little bit because of the usage. Others uh still we have negotiated quite a bit to try to reduce costs so that we can present a budget to you that's balanced. Um, I'd like to just go through this document before I get into specifics. You'll notice the
036first column is the cost that we're anticipating. The second column is funding FY25. And you'll see that several of those are ESSER funders. You'll see that ADMEXL, you can go down through, you see those that were ESER funded. And so those are obviously of concern to us because we had a different funding source that is no longer there. And then the next column over is where we propose our funding source for these items moving forward into next year. So with that said, I'm going to go and highlight just a few of these things and and I did take these to both the uh curriculum instruction committee as well as the strategic planning committee just to get some feedback. And I'm going to start with the instruction category. The last one on there is Edenmentum. So,
037Edmin is our software that we use for a virtual school and as an example of a process that we used here, um Beth had called the company and said, you know, is there anything that we can do to reduce the cost here? We had been paying for it on an annual basis. So, if a student enrolls in August and they're in the Morgan County Virtual School, then we pay for that program the entire year if they leave in September. And so what she negotiated, she's a very good negotiator um is that we pay for this month by month. So then a student comes in in August and they leave the end of August, we're just paying for it for August. So that cost has been greatly reduced as a result of that. Um that's an
038example. Moving down the list, the ones that I want to highlight that I've spoken to you about recently as far as priorities for the district under professional development letters. So the reason there's no funding source in FY25 is because letters is new and it's an initiative from the state. It is something that we are very uh pleased with. It is evidence-based. It's it's really the way to go for reading instruction. And the reason the ticket the the cost is so high is because this first year we're sending Summer to be trained as our trainer. Plus it includes all the K3 teachers and statements that would go along with paying them for that. that item next year would probably be in the line in around 25 to 30,000. But up front uh we do have the
039cost of uh the training. Um and the teachers would have a second year. This is a 2-year program for our teachers. So uh the good thing again about Summer being our training trainer is anybody who's new, she's catching them up as they start in our system. The next one is a big item. Uh last year instructional empowerment was paid for out of ESRE funds. It was a ticket of $47,000 for Warm Springs Middle School and Berkeley Springs High School. So we met with instructional empowerment many times. Um we have asked them that we we said that we would like to add Pawpaw to the list of schools that they work with grades 6 through 12, but we can't afford a price tag of $47,000. So, what we really did was we reduced the amount of
040in-person visits that they are coming to our schools. We feel like Berkeley Springs and Warm Springs are doing a good job and that they could benefit as much from virtual meetings as in-person meetings, uh, coaching administrators and staff. So, that's the biggest reason for that cost reduction. As I said before, we're adding another school, but yet we're reducing the cost. So, what Paul would experience would be similar to what Warm Springs and Berkeley Springs are experiencing this year. They'd have more in-person visits, more um uh on a weekly basis, there would probably be somebody in Paul working with that staff on uh engagement strategies. So, I I also um before I move on to capturing kids hearts in your folder, this is just you just got this yesterday. I'd like you to just take a
041look at this. I thought this would be helpful as you look at um that uh instructional empowerment item. This is data that we received um yesterday. And across the top, I'm not going to spend a lot of time with this, but I do want to point out a few things. So, if you could look over here, this this bar graph right here reflects the continuous conditions for learning rigorous standards, and those are interviews with students and staff. So that's qualitative data that you're looking at where whereas the next several bar graphs the standardsbased student evidence activating student teams and verifying learning those are all results as as uh evidenced by walkthroughs that the IE has done or that administrators in the school have done or even our academic coaches have done. Um the next column,
042data for continuous improvement, that's more qualitative data. That's interviews with teachers and students. And then the final column that you'll see, that's an average of all of these. So that represents both schools and you can see the improvement from the beginning 3.4 up to 5.8. Uh you'll see improvement across the board. The most improvement you'll see is a condition for learning rigorous standards. So the expectations the climate in the classrooms has improved greatly as a result of this process. And again those that first bar graph and that um 1 2 3 fifth bar graph are interviews with teachers and students. And then if you're interested down here at the bottom is a breakdown for the two schools. So up here across the top the bar graphs represent both schools together. And then down below you'll
043see the numbers for each individual school. So I did want to share that with you. We we are very pleased with the progress that has been made. So are the principal Mr. Harris and Mr. Naida. Um and IE is also um you know telling us that they've seen great growth. I Mr. Naida would agree with this. We saw more immediate growth at Warm Springs. Um growth at Berkeley Springs was slow at first and then you know really around December and January we started to see a lot of growth as teachers got on more and more with the process. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. We have teachers that are saying I don't want to do this. We have teachers who say I'm not going to do this. It is not perfect. I'm not saying that every
044teacher is on board with this but um we are seeing we're we're very pleased with this and we think it's going moving in the right direction. um you you walk into a high school classroom now, you'll see students talking meaningfully about things, not about what they did over the weekend, but they're talking about what the teacher is asking them to talk about. And again, we're very pleased. So, I wanted to bring that even though we just got it yesterday. I don't have a lot of other data to share with you. And we can certainly do a presentation later on to kind of sum it all up. But before any decisions are made by the budget on the 27th, I wanted to make sure you saw this graph and so you could see the progress that
045we've made since the beginning of the year. Beth, before I move on, is there anything that you'd like to add? Did I cover it all? You covered everything. Okay. Yeah. I would like to ask questions. Yeah, I got three pages here, but they're all the same. They're all the same. Yeah, I when I gave Betsy three copies, I didn't tell her they were all the same. I was like, "What am I missing?" Okay, that's it. I thought I just had a messed up copy, that's all. Can Can I ask uh the capturing kids hearts? What What is the expense there? I mean, we just sort of see it as a program for positivity. What What expense is there with the capturing kids heart? So, um Nicole's here. she can help me with this too, but
046there's a there's a dashboard and a whole lot of resources that our teachers use for some of the things that you hear about like good things about launches and curriculum that is associated with the program. And then the support that we get from um capturing kids hearts they do what are those things that they do with the principles on a regular basis? The uh what are those called? Attraction visits. Traction visits. Traction visits. So, they come into our schools. Um, they survey, they help us survey students and parents and and staff. Um, it's not something that we could probably do without some support from them. Um, you know, as I talked about before, you know, it's just one of those things that we probably need that right now. We utilize their climate and culture surveys
047that in lie of using the West Virginia environmental climate culture surveys that they put out. Most most of the principles have given feedback that the climate culture surveys from CPH are more relevant for the students because it talks about the things that they are talking about in the classrooms like the social contracts the good things. Um so yeah, thank you. I forgot about the surveys. I know there's a cost big piece for that. What about the um I don't see it on here and maybe it's somewhere else. The paper tutor thing. Yeah, we we're not where what's we I know we've talked about that. Where did we leave off? There's a Yeah, there's a state free West Tutor West Virginia that the governor had announced right after we bought paper. So, it's still there as
048far as I know. Um we have talked with the paper company a few times. Um they it's just really expensive. I don't know. It was a lot. Yeah. So we're looking into the West Virginia model. The government information to parents about how to access it. Well, I mean I guess we will do. Yes. Yes. We're deleting deleting it. That's funny. I just told my daughter tonight it's like get on there. She was asking about math. Does she I'm just curious. Does she use it a lot or I have I have I can't answer that. I don't If I had to guess, I'd say no. If I wanted to do the same thing, you said no. We don't. So, the last thing on that list that I just wanted to bring your attention to was capturing
049kids hearts. And I think we've kind of answered those question thanks to Laura's question, but again, it was funded by ESRE funds. And we uh you see both of those that uh uh and Ann and I worked a lot on this. Uh we are recommending that we use Medicaid funds for that. uh moving forward and she can certainly answer any questions you might have about that. But um so those are the the four things I wanted to bring your attention to. All the others are uh mostly reductions in cost uh that we have been able to uh you know do through this process. All the things at the bottom are more operational things that we need to keep our school system running and efficient and save people time you know along the way. And of
050course the student admissions in there too that we would like to continue with permitting students to go uh to free to athletic competitions. Is that also for like concerts too or is that just athletics? I I had a question about that. Is that I don't know that we have had anyone charge anything for any concert or anything. Okay. Any student any event they turn ticket in, they come in, they turn it back into the SHs, right? and it comes back to the board office and that's how we did prior reimbursements. When you say turn in a ticket, I didn't I missed what you meant by that. That is how they give out tickets. Yes. The students still get a ticket. They aren't charged and then we receive paperwork from the school of beginning and ending
051student number ticket numbers to know how many actually were allowed in free and then we reimburse that. Um, we're looking at a different process now because uh we're no longer to send money directly to schools or the office of school finance. There's some that's another accounting problem. So, we have another process for that. I don't know if we've talked about that in athletic committee. I think I think athletic committee. I thought we were talking about that. Yeah, I can touch on it briefly. Remove expenses. Go ahead. I want to No, you're fine. No, I have I will talk about it later. You want to talk about it now? I just know every time I went to the football game with Emily, she didn't have anything. She just walked in. No, no, not the student. Well,
052they may be keeping track of it at the game and just taking the ticket. They started it this year and they had they were giving out at the middle school and high school games that I were at that I was at. Unless she just slipped by. I don't know. I mean, I just I don't I don't remember. She helped me climb the fence at seven bucks a game. I was going in the whole um yeah no I and maybe I am maybe they did do something when we came in but I just don't remember her physically they won't get the reimbursements anything so okay so that's what I wanted to share with you tonight um both the process that we went through and some of the highlights of things that were paid for out of
053ESR and what our game plan is moving forward. Okay. Any other questions before we move [Music] on? Jeremy got turn that back. That's the last one. You won't ever have to turn it again. Oh, okay. Well, it should actually be on another slide. there. Now we're good. Budgetary considerations is where we should be. Okay. Well, I'll just keep moving forward until we do that. Um, above and beyond what Mr. Banks just spoke about, there are some other things we need to consider when doing the budget. Um, first of all is our charter school allowance. Um there is about 248,000 being taken off the top of our state aid for an estimated 31 students enrolled in charter schools. That's how many were enrolled last year. Uh so that's uh almost $8,000 for students as it's going
054to uh back to the state or actually don't send it to us that goes directly to the charters. Um that's an estimate and that number will be shed up probably the first of the year around January, February. So, it could go up or it could go down based on how many uh students who live in Morgan County that are enrolled in charter schools. Uh, next is uh the third basic that went up by $100,000 this year. Yes. Yeah, we get to all that. Yes. It was 19 students last year, 31 this year. Um, you interrupt as much as you want. Ask any of you interrupt or ask questions. In fact, I enjoy it. So, my problem. Yeah, it is easier. Um, okay. Then, uh, this is the last round where we'd be getting ECAST in
055our third grade classroom. So, uh, there is some funding built into the formula for that. And I believe we have seven third grade classrooms. You on the spot? It's all right. Yeah. Yeah. Um and then we have our excess levy called that has uh the different uh amounts for the various categories that uh have to be built into the budget that way. Um looking at employee salary and benefits. Uh first of all, we have our personnel planning that started in December and you folks have seen the results of that come across the board agenda in the past several weeks for those who were be adding and those that unfortunately we would have to cut. And the big thing in benefits is of course the legislative increase PEIA was roughly another 14%. And I'm told that
056that's to continue every year until 2028. So, it's going to continue to rise, but that's what we pay. Both the employer and the employee share went up very similar amount. Um, yes. I mean, as an example, we're just a few dollars short of $20,000 a year for each employee who has family healthcare coverage. That's the employer share. So, that's Yes, it's significantly higher than what it used to be. And also I'm sure you're aware is there was uh no salary increases this year. Uh but there is talk of a special session maybe to address that coming up here in a few months. Okay. Then uh support from the general fund for other things. Uh first is our child nutrition sponsors contribution is the portion that we pay from the general's fund to supplement the uh
057free lunches for or free meals for our students. uh that's what makes up the difference between the actual cost and the federal reimbursement we receive. And then our federal state grant allocations for this year are kind of questionable at best, especially the federal uh we've been advised to budget uh what we budgeted this year, whatever our 25 allocations were to go ahead and do that for our 26 budget. Usually by now we have some estimates as to what they're going to be and they're just aren't at this point in time. So, um, yeah, that's they tell us they're not going to get cut much, but I guess, you know, we have to wait and see. And, uh, unfortunately though, because of things like PEIA that I just talked about, those allocations aren't costbased. They are
058based on what things actually cost us. They're the amount we get is determined by other factors such as percent D and Nicole can weigh in, probably more than that. But so those allocations now don't cover the amount of salaries and things they used to because our salary costs and benefit costs have gone up. So the general fund is having to pick up more things from what we used to pay for from those grants. And last on there is our uh our lease purchase uh loan and also our QAB from our energy management program and also the B Springs High School renovation. [Applause] All righty. I'll try to make this pain. Painless. It is painful. Okay. Next page is our revenue. There's four types of revenue in our general fund. Local sources, state sources, federal sources,
059and then uh what comes in from our fund balance. Uh we've talked about a lot in the past few meetings about our local sources. We've improved our regular levy rates, our access levy rates. We talked about our property values increasing our our population density which is we are considered in the low density range which is um less than 10 students per less than 10 students per square mile but greater than five. So there's only one lower than us and that's considered sparse. Um it's our fixed costs, some of our fixed costs, and also some of our prior year expenses such as maintenance and um transportation expenses. Uh all factor into how they come up with how much state aid we receive here. Thank you. Um uh I know we talk a lot about enrollment as
060well. Our enrollment is down. Uh this is this graphically shows our headcount enrollment from uh 201213 to 2425. Our headcount uh is 2111 without charter schools. And when you add those 31 charter school students back in, we're back to 2142, which actually makes that close to last year, which was 2144 with charters, but the headcount then was 2125. Okay. Go ahead. Next uh this is a bar gra our line graph showing the same thing and uh kind of actually can give you a better picture of how our enrollment has declined. Uh it last peaked in 20 what's that 28 2008 and basically went up a little bit in 14 and has declined pretty steadily ever since. Um next is our share. This is basically 85% of the taxes that we're going to collect locally is
061uh subtracted off the bottom line of our state aid funding. So as our property values go up and we collect more taxes locally, it has an adverse effect on our state aid and we get we receive less. Um this is actually about $130,000 higher than it was last year that it's coming off of the bottom line. Okay, this one I know you guys are all uh familiar with this comparing our final computations from 2425 to the final comps that this budget is based on. Uh up at the top you can see our enrollment. This is FTE full-time equivalent enrollment is uh down 29.83 students to 299.18. I'm not sure what that was. not kid but um students from last year FTE but we're up 12 charter students to 31 uh which makes a net decrease
062of 17.83 students in full-time equivalency. I'm just again going down through this very quickly. Our allowance for professionals uh you can see the decrease there. Uh again basically because of um enrollment and also uh we have fewer employees as well on our on our certified list. Uh but I know uh everyone is always anxious to know this number. We are 19.31 uh employees over in professionals service. uh we did see an increase there because of the the new ECATs for third grade. Uh we are over uh 15.05 in service over the formula. And of course, this does not cover any of our unfunded positions as well. So, uh adding the pluses and the minuses all the way to the bottom, our total basic state aid is down almost $248,000 over last year that we received.
063Yeah. Yeah, we're doing great. Uh the second page uh states that number and as in uh our PEIA allocation, our retirement allocation and also we get a little bit for alternative ed. Um and the PEIA allocation did increase because of the cost increase. So that kind of offsets that what we were down and we ended up with uh more state $140,661 increase in state aid. But again, most of that is our PEIA allocation. So that's all it can be used for. Any questions so far? All right, good. I'm trying to get through this. So back uh we're back to this sheet again. Uh on the highlighted in orange is our total state aids, total state sources of 17.2 million. Going down to highlighted in purple is our federal sources of 150,000 which are our Medicaid
064reimbursements which that includes the Medicaid cost supplement every year and also just our reimbursements as we receive during the the year as the year goes on. fund transfers in below that uh that is uh from indirect costs in our fund 61. What is transferred into fund 11 that is significantly lower this year because we don't have our ESR funds. We have lots of indirect costs coming in from those funds. And then going to our fund balance, this refers back to where Mr. Banks was talking about using our Medicaid money. Uh we have there's two types of fund balance shown here. We have the assigned fund balance which is money that came in assigned to a specific uh funding source such as our step 7 A, B and D monies are assigned. Our bus replacement monies
065are assigned and this Medicaid cost settlement is considered assigned because it came in from those sources. But at the end of the day, they are all unrestricted and we can use them for whatever purpose we wish. and we have uh you know this Medicaid cost settlement money has helped to bring our fund balance up and we have a a good bit of it and so I think this is a great way to use it. Uh it's advised to not use it on our uh Medicaid or special ed students because it affects maintenance of effort which is a whole another thing in the weeds. We can't count that as uh funds used uh in special education or county. So, it's best to use it for something that doesn't fall the net. And I I won't get
066too far in the weeds. Um, which brings us to the bottom. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot. The unreserved fund balance is what we typically carry over. Uh, that is $2 million and that is identical to the unbudgeted the fund balance of last year that we carried over. So, we did not increase that. Um, for reference, we we had a $6.9 million carryover last year into 25. Uh, the 2 million was budgeted, which left us 4.9 in reserves, which is 16% of our general revenue, excuse me, general fund revenue, which is a really good fund balance. So, I think we're by only using 2 million of that, we're doing great. All right. Uh again this is uh the revenue is shown in graphic form. Uh 33% of our revenue is coming from state aid and 37%
067from our regular and excess levies. And then you can see the other miscellaneous sources there for which it comes from. All right, taking a time out here because this is hard to get this to kind of fit in, but it is part of our state funding and part of what we're going to be using for our expenses. Uh, this is our step seven A plan. You have in your packet, not in this handout, uh, all the verbiage that goes with each one of these with our step 7A monies. Um, we've already employ uh, excuse me, approved the employment of personnel, which is for, uh, our TSS and our tech coach. Uh the technology is for uh safety and security, but we also have in the uh verbiage of that and this was prior to this
068um this 26 step 7A that we can use that for a student management uh system and also for benchmarking. So in this budget we're looking to use uh that $57,81 to pay for schooly which is back on the sheet Mr. banks talked about and uh also our um no I'm sorry our I Ready benchmarking program and part of Horizon benchmark which we think is going to be the new one correct. Um then going on down the the team leaders, those are our SAT chairs, our James Rumsy, um tuition we take from step 7A, Morgan County achieves as a catchall for our fairs, our educational trips, um some staff development, just a catchall for a lot of things for students, our textbooks and educational software, which this year is social studies and prek and our school
069allocations is the last part of step seven And I believe someone had mentioned in one of our committees as a question about our textbooks. Uh we do carry that money over and keep it in that bucket uh for when we don't have our large adoptions. U we have smaller adoptions such as this one and some years are even smaller and that helps to build up to pay for our ELA and math which are very large. Okay. Uh what I've highlighted in pink are uh refer back pretty much to things Mr. Bank does. banks spoke about on his spreadsheet and things we've already talked about. Our professional regular salary, our professional salaries are actually uh down a little bit. Um this number, it's a little bit confusing and I don't want to get too far into
070it is it's not equivalent to the amount the dollar value of what we eliminated during personnel season or change. Um, we do uh pad the budget a little bit because we know that probably we may need some of the special aids and some other aids that we cut in real real that reality will be coming back. Uh, we know so there's some class sizes right on the edge and we may be needing to add those folks back in. And then as I mentioned, there are two positions in here that were previously in some of our grants. Um, so that's where we landed with that. uh service personnel is the next line in pink again that is where we are increasing for ECATs and then you can see the uh increase in health insurance premiums that
071had a half a million dollar increase over last year or the total what we're paying for that and if you remember back that what we got in state aid was 300 and something uh down total uh salaries and benefits in our budget is 75.28% 28%. Uh the department of ed uh recommends we have like 75 to 80% in our personnel cost. So we're making that and trying to get this done. Um anticipated about it. Uh that's staff development services that increases our uh instructional empowerment and capturing kids hearts. Uh student transportation and inl there's a bit of a difference there. That's uh shoring that number up for what we are paying for our prek transportation and also we've uh been using some in lu of transportation to make a little better uh uh system for
072our pawpsy students so they don't have to go quite so early. So that's uh in the budget for that down at the bottom the tuition the votech and charters um that refers to some of the things in the top on the top of our spreadsheet. Um, in addition to James Roni, we are also now um we have to pay the charter schools for any student who transfers uh to those schools from Morgan County Schools after October 1. That was fairly significant this year. We also have students in uh West Virginia Virtual School. We have students in Mountaineer Challenge. So, that's adding some money to the budget to cover those. All right. Next. Um, gotcha. Um, payment to charter schools. That's that amount that's, like I said, $98,000 higher, as Aaron pointed out, that's coming right
073off state aid. General supplies, you see the increase of 35,000. That's where the student admissions are. Um, because we the general supplies with that money will most likely be used for uniforms, athletic equipment, what have you. uh on down technology related supplies. The negative there is because instead of just general technology supplies uh that would have been formerly budgeted in step 7A now it's going to be for uh software which if you go down to the next pink thing uh that's where schooly adment all those things hit that all those new new places and on down is our QAP payment our lease purchase payment there's $500,000 their reserve for contingency which is 2% of the general fund revenue and our fund transfer out for child nutrition uh did increase slightly. All right. Um again we
074have uh just shown that in the grant form 55% of our budget is for instruction and the other 45% is for everything else. And this shows uh that our salaries and benefits together uh you can see that graphically are 75%. 51% salaries and 24% benefits. All right. Uh the next pages are fund 61 and fund 51. Uh and actually I'm just going to skip over the revenue and go right to the expenditure. It's a little easier to explain. and fund 61 as I mentioned earlier we were advised to uh budget our final FY25 allocations for these things uh highlighting benefits communities and schools you can see that decrease 30,000 uh we knew that's a declining balance every year and that is one of the positions that we're having to pick up in the general fund
075our 21st century grant uh for the middle school woodmire and also some transportation we didn't have that we didn't think we were going to get that last year and thanks to Beth and Summer. We did receive that grant. So that is in this year's budget. And Berkeley Springs High School, it looks like we will be funding it another way instead of through the 21st century grant. So that's a zero. And then you'll see the child nutrition, our total budget for child nutrition out of fun 61's 2.4 million. I said those costs, just like our own grocery bills, just keep going up. And last but not least, uh there's a $3 million carryover in capital projects for our woodwire HVAC for a total budget of just slightly over $41 million. Not bad for say that. And
076last lastly, I'm not going to get into this is the publication format that will go in the paper and that will be available. [Applause] There you go. Nice work. Nice work. Uh did you want be interested in any more of the step seven opposition or with any regards to what is going to be published in the newspaper at the very end? Well, step seven isn't that's just at the end of I assume so that's not being published. No, the first four pages seven titles there. Okay. The step seven was just so you had the verbiage that went with your approving. Yes sir. Is there is there something in code about um 2% for contingencies or is that something we just decide locally? It's not in code. It's a recommendation for the office of from the
077office of school finance. Okay. It's in our budget instructions as well. Um it's it's actually three to 5% or two years just two years two months uh to cover bills. Okay. Okay. Which is usually about 13%. So right now we have the 2% budgeted in contingency and then when which we should have an excess carryover 2 million that will make up the rest of that. Got thank you. And wonderful job. Well, thank you. Wonderful job. It takes a team to put together this packet of information. Well, I think Mr. Banks sold himself short there a little bit and he we did budget what you want to call budget planning. She's with every director and every principal and they had to analyze what they have now, how much it costs, what they need, what they might
078want. It was a much more extensive process this year, especially with the loss of the funds and it ended up on the whiteboard in there and still we did a lot. Well, we're on a picnic. I thought like a soup like whenever you get a soup ingredient put together. Not everybody likes every ingredient goes into a soup. Whenever you make a budget, not everybody's going to like everything that they hear, everything that goes into that. Um but I truly believe the budget here is a nourishment to our students and be something good for them to grow with. Uh I believe it is focused in instruction uh even education for our educators which is something that we have to invest in. We have to build capacity into our staff. Yes. Um, we only basically approve checks
079every two weeks and there's numerous and numerous vendors on there, but we couldn't do that without a budget. And those checks have to be accounted for in this budget that we approve hopefully in a month. Um, we may hear grumbling from different community members about how they have to go through the process of getting paid or um, why do you have to hold our check so long or what is the problem? my case is paying me. Well, we are entrusted with the taxpayer money at Warren County and if we don't watch over it like we should do, then we should be held accountable. So, um I want to thank you and your staff for the continued accolades that you seem to get from the auditor every time. Thank you. Uh those are the ones that
080we value most. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. Appreciate that. comments or questions in regard to any budget item or the budget itself. It will be out for publication this week. Um I will put it available for inspection on the website and here at the office tomorrow and then it will be in the messenger next week because it would have had to been turned in Monday. You guys haven't yet. Thank you. It it just has to be published for two weeks. It can be published even after we've adopted. There's no That's not our normal practice. Our normal practice is that we approve it and publish the [Music] facts. Any other comments on the budget? [Music] Brother public comment. Ethan, you're up. You You're going to give that kid a complex. Let's get Let's get Mike
081Pal back here and have a discussion. Um Well, I don't believe I have anything except I don't have anything. Well, I think it's good news. Tomorrow at 1:00 at Paul, Mr. Donnie Henway signs a letter of intent for full scholarship help to Fairmont State athletically. It's it's it's a great story. community embracing him and helping uh his family situation for years and we're all very happy and proud to see that happen. Will you be attending? Oh, yes. All right. Please. That's a long hour. Congratulations. I will do so proudly. Yes. Um forgot the last meeting. Um the economic development authority did a program um for um was called make it Morgan and if you had thoughts of starting a business um they offered six weeks of classes all kinds of knowledge to learn. And uh
082then they at the end they had each business there were seven of them that wanted to um win money towards their project. Um it was judged and um the board office was used here this room and um the EDA asked that I convey their appreciation for being able to use use this room. [Music] Yeah. I miss Casey Camp was here today to talk to add on to what you said. There was a girl that signed a letter to intend to play basketball at Al Gate. Yeah. What's our name? Yeah. So, I wanted to make sure we downstairs since we tal about Donnie. Um, so kudos to those students to move on and uh pursue their athletic career at the next level and scholarships as well. Saw Miss Corbin played three different sports and she was
083just fabulous and finally had a chance to talk to her. Very impressive young lady. Very impressive. Um the uh flooding is of concern right now. We're under a flood warning. Um I don't know a whole lot of details. Miss Case Camp's been texting pictures from over in Pawpa. So uh you know that it's not off the table to consider a delay depending on how much rain we get tonight. I know that Mineral County, Pendleton County, maybe Grant, I'm not sure about Grant uh dismissed students early today. We have widespread flooding up in Cumberland, Garrett County area as well. So, wait and see what uh the night brings us. But as I look at the forecast, it looks like it's supposed to rain all night. I saw half an inch tonight. Well, and then it flows
084down. So, what they get will eventually show up here. It might not be tomorrow, but it might be the next day. Good point. Uh testing is going very well. We've had a few bumps with internet outages, especially when you get an internet outage during the writing assessment. It causes havoc. You know, the other assessments are a little easier to recover from, but but we've had that happen. So, it's been interesting. Um, poor Miss Hubers had her share of disruptions at her school. Uh, senior award for Berkeley Springs High School is 1:00 on Monday. I think that all of you have received an invitation to attend. Uh, of course, graduations are next week, which is also on a calendar. And then one one event which I always really like, um, we have both high schools do
085this. Berkeley Springs, uh, walk to Wind Meyer. I'm not sure what they call it exactly, but that's Wednesday the 21st at 10:00 when all the students in their caps and gowns walk to Whitmer. Walk of success. Walk of success. And then Paul, I think she helped us the date today. Thursday. Um, I think that's all I have. Thank you. Consent agenda. Superintendent recommends to approve consent actions as presented. Minutes of the May 6, 2025 regular meeting, payment of bills, budget, adjustments, and volunteers. I have a motion. So move. Thank you. May I have a second? I'll second. Any comments or concerns? All those in favor say I. I. Thank you. Personnel superintendent recommends approval of final personal actions as presented. We are going to do items professional. So you get to uh do the personnel
086a professional personnel and then pause. We're going to do a motion and Mr. B is going to recuse himself for service personnel B and unless you have any do that for the remainder of the agenda as well. So under professional personnel we have resignation of a second grade teacher big and that individual is also coming back to substitute for us this school year. And then under number three there, we're asking to uh restructure assistant principal for 240 days at Berkeley Springs High School to assistant principal 225 days at Berkeley Springs High School. Okay. So I'm going to pause there for a second. So I wanted to share both pieces of this. So on May on May 27th, you'll have the the recommendations for the supplemental salary schedule. And one of this one of those recommendations
087I want to talk about for just a minute. So if you remember a few months ago uh after really studying the lead nurse job description and the duties and the accountability, I recommended a bump in the stipen for that position. And as I look at Berkeley Springs High School athletics, I I really don't believe we have the manpower. Um I that school has as many programs as large AAA schools. It has almost as much money flowing through there. Uh quite a few volunteer coaches which presents its own challenges when they're not um employees because they don't understand all the rules. There's a lot of uh accountability that in that position and it's only grown. Um so on that supplemental salary schedule I am going to recommend that um we keep the ad statement in place
088that's issued now. Um we would uh need to post that and hopefully fill that with somebody who's on staff at Brookley Springs High School. So that person could have an the stipen and essentially be the athletic director while this assistant principal position takes on the more of the accountability pieces of this job like the finances, the coaches training, the oversight with boosters, which takes a lot of expertise and time. And then, you know, we're going to add to the plate um the admissions and the uh uh the school funds online program and the concession stand, the you know, hopefully using the squares to allow people to pay by credit card. So, I think we're we're only increasing the amount of responsibility for the job. And uh in the current situation, um the current AD, Mr.
089Brener teaches three classes and has four classes where he's an AD and um regardless of whoever gets this statement is going to be someone who teach inspection. I'll make that motion. May I have a second? Second. I do have comments or concerns or questions. Anything further? All favor say I. I hear it. Thank you very much. Approve remainder of step seven plan for 25 to 26. I'll make that motion. I'll second. Thank you. Comments, concerns. All those in favor saying I. I. Nay. The eyes carry it. Counter events board. You got them in marked in your calendar. Hope you got them blocked off. Any comments, any concerns or questions? Super busy. Entertain a motion for a journ with them. So move. I'll second. All those in say I. I. I. We are joured.