001Start with some things that I'm excited about, some content of what's in it. Uh first I just wanted to say that um this process, at least for the last 4 years, has been one that we've been we're very involved in. It really begins for us in November this time like November and even further back for Ron and Joe and those guys. Uh but it really is something that we take we try to do a lot of thinking on the front end. Uh we knew kind of ideas of what this budget would look like. Our board's done a great job setting a strategic plan for us that we need to make sure we're aligned to. Uh one of those big ones being our promise of 2028 where we do the market value studies again for salaries.
002Uh and so when you know what that is, you can't wait till 2028 to do that work. You've got to do it every year to get there. So uh one of our charges to to the team was really to begin in November and before we broke for winter break to have a pretty good game plan on how we were going to try to carry that out when we came back uh and then executing from there. So uh I want to say first of all kudos to the to the guys in front of you. They are the assistant superintendents who uh work really hard and I think it would be fun for people to be able to see how we actually work. Like we every day uh are working on those things and in and out
003of each other's offices and really trying to work to get that done. Uh and and behind these guys is even a bigger team of of our district office uh and what they really do. And in the fact it's kind of neat to work for an organization that understands that all the way down to the teacher level. When I get to go out weekly and talk to schools, they're saying the same things. That's that's part of why I go out every week. Um I always tell the schools when I'm there I'm not here to assess you. I'm here to assess our team back at the district office and and what we say and what we do. And it's so good when you can hear the the priorities and the and and what they're trying to get
004done in the classroom and they'll tell me, "You know, we're using high quality instructional materials to help people move That's why our literacy scores are moving." And I'm going, "Wait, I hear Aaron Phillips back there, right? You know, I hear I hear Dr. Wilson back there." So it's neat that the message is simplified and able to get down into the classroom. And I think um I think that's what's really exciting. So behind these guys are a full set of team a full team of people um who quite frankly have really tightened their belt and been willing to help us protect the classroom uh in the last 4 years. This budget year is no different. Uh we understand where um where the magic happens and it's at the schools and it's in the classroom. So uh
005they they've done a lot to rethink and try to tighten up what they do um and try to streamline what they do and that's that's very important. Um so much so that in the last 2 years uh we've reduced 50 the plus positions out of the district office. Uh this budget will call for more reduction in the district office. Um I don't say that lightly. That's not a campaign promise. I'm not running for anything, right? I'm just saying in the end you have so many dollars, you have outcomes you're trying to get and we try to make sure that we're always putting that uh to what works. Uh and again I'm I'm blessed to serve with a team uh who feels the same way and we know that that's having qua- high quality teachers in
006classrooms, high quality principal leaders, uh and having the staff there. So part of that is uh you'll see for the third consecutive year no change to the ste- teacher student ratios. Uh and so for people who don't know what that means, all of our schools are staffed. Uh Joe and Ron and their team do a great job doing that based off of enrollment projections. Um and it's hard. I'm going to tell you I've been doing this for a long time. Uh it's really hard. The easiest way to find $3 million is to adjust that teacher staff ratio by uh student teacher student ratio by 0.2% or you know, when you goes up a little bit you save $2 million, but that impacts in the classroom. So uh this team's worked very hard to make sure
007we don't raise those uh for the last 3 years that we've locked into those. Our principals have bought into that as well. So that's been great. Um this budget does as I as I said earlier have us move forward uh in doing what we think is the most important strategy having great educators in every school. Uh there are are two investments we'll be asking the board to make. Uh we have two different scales on the salary scale. We have the certified scale which you think about typically our teachers. Uh our our budget is about 87% personnel. Um and that's that's the teachers, that's the custodians, that's the principals, that's the security team, that's all the folks that you think about uh that make that up. So uh it does ask for an investment in the
008certified scale for our teachers. It also asks for an investment in the general scale. Again, our goal is 2028 where we'll do the salary study uh against 20 other districts and we'll true up all salaries. Again, you can't wait till 2028 to do that. You've got to start making steps toward that to make sure it's a reality. Uh and and this budget calls for that. Also very proud of the fact that uh we've navigated a a balanced capital plan. That's tough. For those of you don't know, we are um as part of the school system part of the county's debt service. Um and so we work with them. Uh they're in charge of everything from infrastructure to the sheriff's department to uh the health department to us and ourselves. So every year we work with
009them we kind of have our caps out to 5 years out. They kind of approve it year to year. Our board approves a 5-year out plan. One commitment that we've tried to make is if it's on the capital plan and there was good rationale and reason for it, uh we're going to stay true to that um and we have uh in the 4 years. This capital plan does the same thing, but I won't say it's easy. Cost of everything is going up to build. Uh I think you saw that in our recent conversation with the Powell community and really looking for what's the most fiscally responsible thing to do. And you know, in that case it was a rezone, not a uh not a build, not an addition, not a new school. Um and but
010we but we're looking at that. We've had these conversations across many uh different uh communities and trying to decide what's best and most fiscally responsible so that we can something people don't understand either all the time. It's the same pot of money that pays for a building that pays for teacher raises, right? And when it comes down to it, we've got to be and again I applaud our board. Uh we've had a lot of really good conversations about what does it mean to be fiscally responsible? Uh so that we we cuz we can't promise that we're going to do this for our staff and our teachers and then also continue to accrue debt because that becomes just like your house, a payment you've got to make, right? Uh so it's very important. This board's been
011very supportive of that. This budget is also one that we do that in. Uh I'll say this too. All of these things have happened um probably the most proud that while we've continued to get student outcomes uh over the last 4 years, uh over 10% gains in both English reading ELA reading and math across the board, uh four consecutive years in all four core subject areas of growth that we see in proficiency grow in all of those. The one I'm probably most proud of we've seen all of our subgroups of students last year they all progressed uh and they all moved forward. That's huge for us when everybody's winning that means we're doing something as a district. That's extremely important. Uh while keeping vacancies down to under 10 out of 4,900 positions for the last
0122 years, uh we had a a job fair, a career fair. Uh what do we call it? Our We have so many recruitment fairs. Thank you. We have a lot of fairs. Um county fair? No, but the recruitment fair uh this past weekend and it's actually really good to go going into that 70 vacancies all for next year. And that's known what our retirements are and all that sort of thing. So uh you know, there was a time when those were up in the 200 300 range. So uh we think we're going to have another great off-season to make sure we have great educators in front of every student. So all those things are great while we continue to try to be fiscally responsible and keep the dollars in the classroom. Um I'll close with
013just one more shout-out to Ron Mc- person uh and his team, the finance team. Um I don't think we make it easy on them. Uh with the things that we ask them to do sometimes we're like uh in November to say, "Hey, pull these numbers, work these three models, let us look through this and try to make the best decision." But uh they always say yes, they always bring them back and and they make sure we're not illegal. Uh so we always do those things in the process. So Ron, thanks for you and your team and what you guys do. So uh with that I'll turn it over to Miss Loftner and we'll begin breaking down some of this uh budget proposal. Just a little bit shorter. Here we go. All right, we will go
014ahead and get started. Like Dr. Rysewyk said, we have a large budget so there's a lot to unpack. We're going to take it piece by piece and we'll actually be reviewing previews for three separate budgets. So our general purpose budget, our school nutrition budget, and then our capital improvement plan. So we're going to start with just an overview of the budget development process, the timeline, what goes into informing uh a budget including those key considerations that really impacted the FY27 proposal that will be made to the board next week. We'll talk a little bit about our budgeting philosophy. We'll talk about some of the highlights, some of the things we're excited about in this new budget proposal. And then we'll also share with you the next steps that you can look ahead to um in
015planning for this next next fiscal year. So I'll start with the budget timeline. And I'm not going to go piece by piece. I know you all can see the screen and there are a lot of moving parts and that really is the message that goes into the budget development process and the timeline. There are a lot of agencies, a lot of community touches, um and organizations that we know we need to engage in this process be- because we want every budget to be well informed. We want it to be anchored in the needs of our schools, the needs of our students, and the desires of our community. And so we're going to share that as well, but you can see just looking at this spread, the budget development process really begins the moment we pass
016a budget. So the moment that vote uh takes place next week, our finance team, Ron McPherson, Joe Snyder in the back, um Miss Himmelgardner and her folks, are already thinking about FY28. And we do that so that we can engage all of the right government officials and agencies, make sure we have all of the right district touches, we have the right school touches, and most importantly we're also giving ourselves lead time to engage the community, hear from the community, synthesize that feedback, and apply it forward in the form of the proposal that we make each fiscal year. So when we think about stakeholder engagement in particular, it's represented on that previous slide, but I wanted to dive in just a little bit more deeply here. We really begin that process in August with something that's
017pretty unique to Knox County Schools. We have a multifaceted staffing committee that meets every fall and meets throughout the budget development timeline. That group is comprised of principals, it's comprised of district leaders. We've got representatives from our region leadership team and it's also worth noting that among that principal pool, we have principals from every grade band and every region. So we want to be as representative as possible. And what this group is really helping us do is look at our school staffing formulas. You heard Dr. Riswick talk about this being the fourth year in a row that we will be able to maintain that commitment in staffing our schools at the ratios the staffing committee has recommended to us, has said this is best practice, this is what our schools need to be successful. So
018that's really who's behind that work, they're the driving body ideating around those school school staffing ratios. In October and November, we progress to broader community engagement. We release a community budget survey every fall and the goal is really to help identify where we should prioritize our spending. And so that survey is then taken in turn to our regional teacher and family councils to further contextualize what we heard. We have those key findings and then we want to dig into why this moved, you know, to the top of the list, why this fell a little bit lower in our prioritization this year, so that again we're keeping a pulse on what's needed and what's current and what we need to be reacting to with a budget. And then finally, we arrive here and we share out
019our proposed plan for fiscal year 27 with you all ahead of a vote to or from the Board of Education. And so here's just a snapshot of what we heard. We heard a lot and I will summarize this entire slide and the entire body of what we heard really in one sentence and then we'll unpack this, but the one thing we heard loud and clear is that it's all important, right? So we know that public education is forming the foundation of our community and we know that there's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot to invest in when we're talking about learning and preparing students for the next year, the next year, the next year and then their future. And that's a big responsibility and it takes a lot of investments to
020make that happen. This year in particular, we saw pretty similar to what we've seen in years past, investing in our educators is a high priority and that's not surprising. It's also our high highest priority as well and you'll see that reflected in the proposal we're going to cover with you all this afternoon. You can also see that that high quality instructional material and those differentiated supports for students in particular really rose to the top of the list this year and so that's what has helped us think about where we need to put what are truly finite and limited resources. So I mentioned that there are some budget considerations. I'm actually going to ask Ms. Himmelgarn to come up and unpack these with you all further, but you can see them on the screen. There were
021four primary considerations that really went into the formulas formalization of the FY27 budget and so I'll just go ahead and turn it over to Ms. Himmelgarn. As Ms. Lautner said, each year we have several primary considerations that drive our budget build and this year is no different, but these if you joined us last year, if you reviewed our budget book last year, these considerations look largely the same as they did last year. The first is a decline in student enrollment. We are seeing about a 2% a projected 2% decline in our student enrollment for next year, roughly 1,100 students. So if you think about it in terms of 5,800, it's not a huge percentage, but if you think about it in terms of how many staff members it takes to serve that amount of students,
022that 1,100 students, that does have an impact. So there is an overall reduction in teaching positions this year going into next year because of that reduction in student enrollment. We have made a commitment that our dollars are going to follow the students, our resources are going to be where the students are. Second, I would say that this this slide is a huge commitment, represents a huge commitment of the district, a commitment we're excited about and a commitment that we're proud of. This is an investment in our staff members and every single staff member in the district. So a few things are going on on this slide. I'll take it in three parts. The theme of this slide though is every every employee in the district will see an increase in their pay next year. So
023that is that's the most exciting thing. We we know that uh the greatest impact on student outcomes is a high quality educator in the classroom and we are putting our money behind that by thanking our educators and the rest of our staff members and investing in our commitment of 2028 where we reassess market value and reinvest in all of our staff members. So I said three things going on on this slide. So one is a continued advancement on the salary schedule. So every employee eligible for a step increase will receive a step increase. That was the same last year as well. Second thing on this slide is the certified scales will receive a 2.5% increase. That's also the same as last year and that will bring the district into a little more than compliant with
024the teacher paycheck protection act which is a requirement that all educators in this state receive a minimum salary of $50,000 by by 27. The third thing going on on this slide is a 2% increase to the general scale. So that's not something that happened last year, but we are making an investment towards that 2028 promise and rather than saving that money in a different location in the budget, we are excited to be able to go ahead and put that in the pockets of our employees starting next year. So again, a step increase for all eligible employees, 2.5% increase to the certified scale and a 2% increase to the general scale. The reason that this is a major budget consideration is because one, it's a it's a major priority for us. Also two, staff so salary
025and benefits are 85% of the district's budget. So making room for this is a priority, but it did take a lot of work and you all will see that in future slides, the cost of this compared with our increase in revenue for next year. I'll say one more thing about this. I want to camp here for a little bit one because we're really excited about this one, but two because it's a lot going on. As a reminder to any employees in the room that may live on these salary schedules or maybe listening at home, the way that we do increases now that we've transitioned to these new salary schedules is the percentage increase is on the midpoint of a grade band and that same dollar amount is applied to every step across that grade band.
026So the percentage increase to the midpoint, so step 10 of each grade band. Okay, and finally, this is a picture of our revenue growth for both this year and the last five years. We are seeing our revenue growth stabilize, but you'll see on the left side of the slide a five-year capture of what our increase in revenue is from year to year. So this year going into next year, so for for FY27, our increase in revenue is roughly $17.2 million and that sounds like a lot of money because it is a lot of money, but you'll also see that that is the lowest increase that we have received in the last five years. The next slide is a different way to look at the previous slide, but it shows you where each of those where
027each of our revenue sources contribute to the budget. So our state, our local and other sources make up next year a proposed balanced budget of $717.7 million. And I will turn it back over to Ms. Lautner. All right, so I'm going to get a little bit ahead of myself, but it helps contextualize the next few slides. So when we think about our budgeting philosophy, we've applied the same approach year over year. That's important to us from a consistency standpoint and from a predictability standpoint, but this philosophical approach was particularly important to us this year in that the slide Jennifer Ms. Himmelgarn covered just a moment ago reflecting those salary advancements. She shared that there's going to be some implications behind the cost of investing in those advancements compared to the revenue growth we're seeing this
028year. So while we're seeing and experiencing a $17 million increase to our revenue, investing in staff to the extent that we want to is going to cost us over $22 million. And so there's a discrepancy in those two numbers and that meant we needed to dig into our budget, we needed to to find a way to reallocate existing resources to make that investment in people and that was important to us, that was our core philosophy in going into this budgeting season. And so you'll see that reflected both in our commitment to protect the classroom and then also in our commitment to align every dollar back to our four core priorities as a district. So protecting the classroom really comes in two forms for us. We do this in two ways. The first is to maintain
029those school staffing ratios. Ms. Himmelgarn mentioned earlier and you heard this from Dr. Riswick as well, this is a commitment that we're making to our people and specifically to what our schools need. So this is again that reflection of the work of the KCS staffing committee and these ratios have been consistent for the past three years. You can see what they are on the screen. They're broken down by grade band and also by the at risk need of the school. What this does for us honestly is multifaceted, but one of the most important things it does for us is it ensures that we are mapping our dollars to our students. So, even in a year in which we're seeing a downturn in enrollment, we can tell our schools that we are staffing you predictably in
030a consistent manner. So, our principals are constantly looking at that enrollment number, their enrollment projections, so they can begin planning for next year, and they can do that because these staffing formulas have been consistent. I also want to draw your attention to the blue band at the bottom of this slide because it's giving a comparison that is worth noting. So, you can see in the upper boxes, those are our staffing ratios. You can see those staffing ratios as an average compared to the mandated student to teacher ratio by the state of Tennessee. And what you'll notice in looking at that bottom bar is that we are more richly staffing our classrooms than is required of us by the state. So, that is something that we are immensely proud of. That is something that we are
031committed to maintaining. Not only because we know our classrooms need it, but because it also gives our principals just a degree of freedom to experiment, to be creative, um and to exercise some autonomy with the resources that they have. So, we resource schools in the form of people or in the form of positions. When you are more richly staffed than the state requires, you've got some flexibility built in. If you have a classroom allocated position that you want to repurpose into, say, a behavior liaison, that's autonomy a principal has. And so, that's not always been the case. That's something the staffing Miss Himmelgarn and her team have been working closely with principals uh just to create space for that creativity, that flexibility, that intentionality. And we're excited to see where that work can continue to
032take us. So, again, it's important to note because these are people anytime we're making advancements to the salary schedule, it is going to take up a lion's share of our budget, and that's what we see this year. And so, just know that when we start talking about constraints and how we made some decisions, it was all to protect this slide. And that began really by looking at the district office. So, when we know we want to protect schools, the next place we have to look is our district office. You heard this from Dr. Riswick earlier today uh that over the past 2 years alone, we have reduced the district office footprint by 50 positions. That has netted us approximately $4 million to realign, to reinvest closer to our students. Those are hard decisions. They're not
033decisions that we take lightly, but in years with a limited budget, and this is a year with limited revenue growth, we have to make those decisions to be able to protect the classroom. And so, we are proud to be able to do that. The second of those two philosophies was really just aligning every dollar back to our four core priorities. You will see that reflected throughout the budget. Everything is color-coded at this point. So, if you're wondering, you know, what is this investment doing in the grand scheme of those four priorities, it's very transparently laid out in that way. I will say that the lion's share of our alignment to those four priorities comes in the form of great educators in every school. So, something that we are just immensely grateful to our board for,
034and I know Miss Fontleroy Ridley is here tonight with us as well from the board, is making this investment possible not just hopefully this year, but year over year. Since 2020 20 I'm sorry, since 2022, we have been able to invest more than $140 million in staff. We don't take that lightly. We are very proud of that, and it has been hard um to make that happen, but that's worthwhile work, and it's work that we are committed to continuing to do. This is where you can see that $22.6 million investment. That's what it's going to cost to deliver on the slide that Miss Himmelgarn went over earlier, the step advancements and those adjustments to the general and certified salary schedule. And so, in a year where we have to dig into the budget, and we
035have to make some decisions to realign resources, we do that by asking ourselves not what do we need to add to what we had last year, but what worked, what didn't, what is priority aligned, maybe what is not now priority aligned. And that's how we're going to make those trade-off decisions to be able to reinvest the dollars that we need to reinvest to balance our budget while still investing in staff. So, I'm going to turn it back over to Miss Himmelgarn, and then she's going to kick it to the rest of the team just to talk about some of the highlights and what we're excited about in this year's budget. Thank you. So, this slide represents uh some new investments um in district in the district, and I'll do a a couple uh items of
036uh or a couple uh overviews before I toss it to the rest of the team. So, you'll see on here that the new investments total $41 million. Um that is more than you saw our revenue increase was a few slides ago of that 17.2. Um so, so how is that different? Why is that different? Um it's because like Miss Lautner said, um in the budgeting process, we're digging into every item in the budget um across all departments, making sure that we're aligned to priorities. Uh this year specifically, making sure that we're making room for that investment in our staff. So, that caused us to uh look at some things differently, think about things differently, and make some changes um that would save some money, but also still provide the same level of service to our
037schools and to our students. Um so, that's why you're seeing the difference in numbers here. Um the $41 million worth of new investments um that each of us will um share a few highlights from, um it's not all new dollars. We're still only that $17.2 million increase in revenue. Uh the big the largest one um at the top is great educators in every school. Uh roughly $22.6 million investment in salary and benefits for staff. Miss Lautner shared that on the previous slide. So, that is the largest portion of this increase. What this also includes is a $100,000 investment um into our reevaluation of market value. So, we are going to start that RFP process and the evaluation process next year um and giving ourselves plenty of time um to be able to receive recommendations um
038and incorporate any recommendations into the FY29 budget. So, um for paychecks beginning July 2028. Uh so, that's that's a highlight for great educators. I will toss it to Dr. Adams to talk about some exciting things in operations. Good evening. I will be brief seeing how I will be addressing the capital improvement plan and the school nutrition budget, uh but I do want to touch on an increase [clears throat] to our transportation budget of a million dollars. Uh last year, we did a one-time $400,000 stipend. We We have increased that uh by $600,000 for a total of a million dollars. So, uh we certainly want to ensure that we provide them with the necessary supports they need uh to continue to give the service that they the exceptional service that they do. Uh I also want
039to address the increase in electricity uh electricity, water, and gas continues to increase at a tune of $1.6 million. We've done a really good job of doing a true up accounting for those increased costs, projecting those increased costs, uh but again, as as we see it uh that the cost raise from annually year to year, uh we just want to capture that in this year's budget. So, with that, I will toss it over to Dr. Brown. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Adams. Uh so, I've got the success for every student uh items. Uh and in my world, when we look at budgeting, we try to provide the services that all students need. One of the things that we can't predict is once the school starts, those new students that move in from another district,
040from another state, and they may have requirements in their IEPs that we haven't accounted for. Uh we're still bound to provide those. So, this year uh we had about 22 new positions that we had to create as the school year went on. So, the first thing we do is we budget for those in the upcoming budget cycle. So, that's what you see there in the 22 new positions and that are school-based. Uh and secondly, as Miss Himmelgarn and Miss Lautner uh both alluded to, um not all this is new money. The other thing we do is try to take a look at the things we're doing and reevaluate. One of the things that we have seen a big shift in is some of our related services. So, each year, we have a line item where
041we have money set aside where we can contract services. Uh so, an example of some of these 19 new newly created positions uh for the upcoming school year, we are in our budget have proposed a full-time music therapist. That's a service that we continue to hear, and we're seeing more requests for evaluations and services with our students. And so, we have reallocated some things. We've pulled some from some other budgets to make sure we can create a new position. And so, those 19 positions, that's just one example of the types of things that we're trying to create to be flexible and be responsive to our student needs. And with that, I'm going to toss it to Dr. Wilson. Thank you, Dr. Brown. I get to talk about these last two priorities. Uh so, to begin
042with excellence in foundational skills and echo some of my colleagues who've already spoken. Uh again, what you see on the screen there that make up the 1.2 million that we want to sort of talk about in in those improvements do represent some new dollars, and they do also represent some uh shifting and some reorganization that we've decided to make to help support um the initiatives that we have under this priority. And so, to begin with, um you see the STEM and ELA instructional support uh and a dollar amount there that really represents some reorganization and realignment of positions, not necessarily new positions. We actually had a reduction of two positions specifically out of our out of our our core academic team. Um but in doing that, uh while we traditionally kind of structured our organization
043for uh supervision of those areas under supervisors for math and science and ELA and social studies, uh we've actually uh condensed and and created two different departments, one for STEM, which will manage our math and science uh curriculum work and support for teachers, and then an ELA and social studies uh department, creating two directors, one for STEM, one for ELA and social studies uh to provide that support. >> [snorts] >> It's allowed us to do some shifting around in terms of numbers of people on those teams. So, our our science team will actually grow back to the number five, which we've had regional support through different versions of that over the last several years. Adopted a new curriculum across the board K through 12 with new standards in science this past year and felt that
044a little bit with a smaller team in terms of implementation and support at the school level. So, excited to be able to bring that team back to five as a part of this shift. And the other thing I'm particularly excited about is just the opportunity to really think about STEM itself and to start to work over the next couple of years to really articulate a better vision for where we want to go in the STEM spaces. Again, we've always taught and always will science and math and all those things, but really to think about that from K through 12, you know, what computer science looks like and fitting into that. We have lots of competitive robotics programs, things like that, but to really think about that as one unit as part of our work. And
045so, excited about that part. For the preschool instructional support, that does represent a new investment of dollars and actually was just looking at that before I got up here. As we talked about like you know, sort of student numbers and we talk about the changes in that and funding from the state, funding for pre-K for pre-K students is a little bit different, largely grant funded. But we do have a local match component that we have to provide to make sure that we're able to provide the services the way we want. We have 1800 students in our pre-K programs in Knox County, which is pretty substantial. And that $700,000 I think Dr. Adams used that term true up sort of represents a true up in our budget. We've we've seen over time our services change and
046and cost a bit more. And we've also seen grant dollars from the state maybe not be as lucrative as they once were. And so, this is really just us catching up in and labeling in the budget that this is a greater cost and we want to be transparent and and looking forward to make sure that we're covering that in the budget dollars that we're setting aside for pre-K. Another priority that falls within my area is college and career empowerment. We are entering our fourth year with the 865 Academies, which is which has been a pretty substantial shift for how we think about high school and its role in the future readiness of our students. And so, the again, the first item doesn't represent new money. It represents some reorganizational decisions that we made to make
047sure that as we think about how we uh really move the needle in terms of college and career readiness that our primary initiative in that is at the high school level with the 865 Academies. And so, it's really some restructuring within that to think about how that work looks through the regional structure a little more defined with directors of Academies that can work across multiple regions, some support folks that really work with our Academy coaches, which have been huge for the partnership, the the courting and and and maintaining relationships with our business and industry partners, which are hugely important to this work and to those exposure opportunities for students. And then also our counseling and advising when we think about how we're preparing students to really make good decisions as they think about their college
048plans and their future plans. And then lastly, our CTE programming, which is at the core of many of our pathways so that our college and career specialists are our CTE specialists that work with our programs and our buildings are also parts of those teams. But again, just a reorganization to really kind of house all of that both regionally and within the work of the 865 Academies. And then last as another part of what we do in the Academies, we provide our students with guaranteed experiences. That's everything from in the freshman year sort of an industry field trip, if you will, guest speakers in the sophomore year, a post-secondary campus visit where they learn about college pathways and how those extend from high school into into post-secondary education and careers. And then in the junior year,
049an opportunity to do some job shadowing within aligned experience in their pathway. Those things require kids to go off campus quite often. And so, there is transportation costs with that. We also have additionally about $30,000 in in an account there for substitutes to cover our teachers who chaperone these events. But our our partners at Knox Education Foundation were one of the groups that really worked with us in the initial phases of the development of the 865 Academies. And they have been great to to support that work and to make sure that we had funds set aside for that over the last several years. Now that we are reaching that first senior class and continuing to expand, we want to note that in our own budget and make sure that we're um sustaining and maintaining those
050experiences cuz we believe they are important. And so, that's an additional item that we're pulling into our general purpose budget for this year. As Ms. Lautner and both Dr. Rowswick shared earlier, we are making three recommendations to the board next week at the special called board meeting. We are proposing approval of a recommended balanced general purpose budget, a five-year capital improvement plan, and a balanced school nutrition budget. So, what we've been talking about up until now is all general purpose budget. So, now we're going to shift and let Dr. Adams tell us a little bit about the capital improvement plan and the school nutrition budget. As a reminder with our capital improvement plan, it is a five-year plan. So, each each year we look five years out, but what we're approving on an annual basis
051or what we're committing dollars to on an annual basis is just one year at a time. So, Dr. Adams is going to highlight some of the items for FY27 in the capital plan. Thank you, Ms. Helmegarn. >> [clears throat] >> So, as Ms. Helmegarn alluded to, our facilities upgrades, we continue to make a hefty investment in our facilities upgrades of $12.6 million. I'm really excited about our security and technology. We've increased our budget by a million dollars and that that's to account for vestibules. Also, we are looking at technology, increased technology for security measures. Of course, I don't want to get into great detail. Just do know that we've made a hefty investment not only in vestibules, but also technology. Our expansion planning, as you are aware, the new K-8 school, very excited about that
052that was approved by the board for $64.7 million. And I also want to touch base on our contingency planning. As you can see, the Title IX addition at the bottom, we've made a hefty investment in ensuring that we don't have any Title IX issues across the district. As we've had multiple projects over the last two years, that's just basically some money that's set aside in case we encounter any needs that that rise to our attention that would be a Title IX finding. I also do want to add that we do have a Title IX committee and we meet monthly and we address any needs. We look at the district as a whole. We have conversations with our athletic director and our law department to ensure that we're providing those schools with the necessary supports that
053they need. Expansion planning, very excited about the Farragut area Farragut area elementary school opening in fall of 2027. I visit that site frequently because I'm very excited about the direction it's going. Also, currently we are on track for that to open on time. Also, the Region 5 K-8 school will be opening in fall of 2029. The South Knox solution will be opening in fall of 2031. So, as you can see, we have some major projects coming aboard as far as new construction. The facilities upgrade, about a couple years ago, we did a facilities assessment. We worked extremely hard to capture that information and and and have it in a SLAM software where we can update that information not only annually, but as as any asset comes online or comes off of line or any renovations
054that we need to do to facilities, that is all incorporated within the SLAM software. And a couple of the projects that they identified in conjunction with the assessment of our maintenance department would be the Farragut Intermediate and Middle School. That rose to the top of the list as far as a full roof replacement. And also, South-Doyle High School, we're looking at a partial roof replacement. So again, very excited about being very intentional using data-driven decisions and that SLAM software and the facilities assessment has awarded us the opportunity to do so. So, our school nutrition budget, this is pretty cut and dry. Ms. Foster does a really good job of ensuring that that budget is balanced. But her total budget is $33.9 million. And what you see is in federal dollars, it's approximately $27.4 million. And
055that's commodity entitlement and meal reimbursement. Local dollars at $5.5 million, that's student meals, adult meals, and a la carte meals. We did have a slight increase in student meals last year. We are not increasing meal prices this year. And other resources, basically what you're looking at there is we have an interest-bearing account. It yields roughly $100,000 a year. And then we also have community action committee or summer feeding program. And so, they provide us approximately $700,000 in reimbursement. And then we have a local match and that's roughly $200,000. So, when you see the other for a million dollars, that's what you're looking at. All right, I'm going to pass this on over to Ms. Lautner. Thank you. All right. And I will wrap us up just by saying that's been a lot of information. And
056I hope that just as you walk away from this evening and reflect on the budget, I would invite you to reflect on it the way we've reflected on it, which is that we know we've landed on strategies that work for students. Dr. Rowswick opened the meeting by talking about those four years of stacked gains in math, ELA, science, social studies. That's unprecedented for the district. And so, our priority in building this budget really was to make sure that we're continuing to put our dollars behind what works for kids. And that is predominantly our people. So, we've left no stone unturned in finding a way to make that happen, and we are proud of the three budget proposals that we'll be able to make to the board next week. And so, those next steps are reflected
057on the screen. The special called voting meeting is next Thursday evening, and that is where we will be proposing the budget to the board. They will be making a decision on that proposal. And then at that point, the approved, hopefully approved, budgets will progress to county commission for approval in May and June. Once that budget is approved, then this entire process begins again, and we'll start thinking about FY 20.