0015. Um, welcome to the community meeting. Um, so we we're going to try to go through real quick. I'll I'll do a quick intro. Thanks for being here today. Um, we take the budget really serious. We talk about even to our principles, everything we try to do tries to be aligned to the mission. Uh and for us, the budget is our chance to be able to do that. Uh so I think you'll see that today. Just a couple comments I have about this budget. Um the last three years, uh we've seen uh a lot of work that we've that we've seen in major initiatives to try to align back to the four priorities. Uh and our four priorities are, as you know, I couldn't get through a meeting without saying them. Excellence and foundational skills,
002great educators in every uh building, uh career empowerment and preparation, and success for every student. And um I'm really proud of the folks who are sitting at these tables and all of our principles and teachers who have really aligned the work over the last three years to that. And I think that's why we've seen three consecutive years stacked of good data for kids. So we don't we don't do it for compliance. We do it because in the end we know that what our mission is as a organization is to raise the next generation. And we do that by making sure they're hitting the marks that they need to hit. Um while this year's budget does allow for some additional innovative ideas that I'm excited about. Uh some of those being our our middle school analysis
003that we'll go into next year. Our al our alternative schools and programs looking at kind of the effectiveness of those. You've kind of seen our uh how we do this now. We bring in an outside group to help do an analysis of what our baseline is. We build three to five year plans on how we can get better and improve in those. Uh we'll take that same philosophy to those two areas uh in this coming year. I'm excited about that. Uh but really what I'm most excited about in this budget is that this budget brings a lot of stability to the work uh that we've had and we've done over the last three years. You know, you can you can kind of lead change and you can kind of be part of that. We can
004see um how our educators and our and our students are thriving right now, but if you don't think forward to add stability and predictability to these models, they quickly go away, right? Um so we're trying to we're trying to build those in so a good budget year or a bad budget year doesn't change the work that we're doing. Um, and so I think kind of four things in this that that I want to point out that you'll see and hear more about from Miss Himgard and the team today. Uh, one is we've really worked to build our predictability um, in our staffing formulas. You'll see that these staffing formulas, we have a staffing committee that is composed of principles from every region uh, and every grade level who give us a lot of input into
005our business and talent team as we work through uh, what those ratios need to look like in a school. we've now been able to maintain those for two consecutive years and just slight tweaks from three consecutive years. So, uh, protecting that and protecting those classrooms is important to us. And we really think that, you know, taking some of the air out of that, uh, in in in the spring of what's our staffing formula going to look like? Well, it's going to look like it did last year, right? It's going to look like it did the year before that. There's some predictability to be able to get that done. Uh, I think you'll see in this budget, too, uh, last year with our the help of our board, um, we made a huge shift in how
006we look at salary advancements. Um, we had never been at market value. We were always trying to catch up, right? We were always Paul knows that we're always trying to catch up. We were always trying to get to there. Uh, great investments in in our last couple boards. We'll talk about that. But really last year to put the icing on the cake to get us to market value. The the conversation now changes as to market value and maintaining market value moving forward and making sure we have the structures and systems in place to do that. So, you'll hear about some of that uh tonight. Uh, our uniform process in Dr. Adams world about how we approach uh capital decisions and how we prod solutions. We've now seen that play out at Farragate in uh in
007Mechanicsville, Lonsdale and Bowmont. How we look at when we go into a community, we don't try to decide five years out we're going to build this school. We look at that is this is probably one touch we're going to make in that community based on the way budgets work for about 50 years. So when we go in there, we want to look at lots of things and we've learned a lot from that as well. And I say the fourth one is really on transparency uh and accuracy in reporting things. You're going to see again a budget item in here that that is really true ups to things like utilities, things like what true transportation cost is. Our hope in that uh is that we're going to have to do less line item transfers at the
008end of the year. No guarantee that we won't, but just trying to be as transparent as we can in this budget to what true cost of things are. So, um, again, some exciting things in this budget, but if I were going to say what's the message from this, it's a lot about stability and process, a lot about predictability and process that will allow us to focus on the work moving forward. Uh, and I'm really excited from the work of the team. Uh, so you're not going to see huge huge changes, but you're going to see a lot of things that are going to allow us to do this f this work in the future and continue to get outcomes from kids. So, with that, I'll turn it over to Miss Him, our assistant superintendent of
009business and talent. Good evening everyone. Jennifer Himmlgarn, assistant superintendent of business and talent. Excited to have you here with us tonight either uh in person um or tuning into the live stream. Excited to share with you like Dr. Risick said about this FY26 budget. Uh first we'll talk a little bit about the timeline that led us to today um going into April 29th with which is the special called meeting. So, we we typically start the budget process for the following year on once a budget's approved. Um the budget cycle never never truly stops. Um once one is approved, we're we're starting to work towards the next. So, in the fall, uh you may recall receiving community budget surveys. We we thank those of you in this room and listening in um that responded um that
010gave us insight in in how to prepare for this year's budget. Our KCS staffing committee made up of 10 principles, two from each region, one from each grade band in each region that Dr. Risewick mentioned, also restarts their work in the fall, take a a short break in the summer and restarts in the fall each year. Uh the real I would say meat um of the budget preparation does start late uh fall, so December through this semester. So that is division meetings um with department heads, specific departmental budget requests. Um we we had regional focus groups in January as well and and we'll talk about the both the uh community budget survey and the focus groups a little more in depth on the next slide. uh moving into February when we receive our projected revenue
011um from our different funding sources as well as getting those staffing allocations out to our individual schools. Finalizing district proposal March um and brings us to April. So in April we do individual meetings with board members um similar um similar information sharing to what we're sharing with you all tonight. Um and then we share with principles as well who will take that to their staffs. Um and that is leading up to the special called budget meeting April 29th. Uh and the bud the budget that the board approves will then be presented to the county and voted on by county commission um in either May or June. We anticipate May. So a little more about that stakeholder engagement. Uh we talked about staffing committee um 10 principles, regional directors as well as district personnel. Uh we're
012we're very grateful for those school leaders um who lend their time to the work of the district um in building staffing models and strategies that best serve the needs of unique student populations across the district. Uh this year the staffing allocate the the staffing committee spent over the last several years a lot of work on our staffing allocations. Those did not change this year um going into next year. Uh staffing committee did do uh a lot of work this year and I I'll highlight um two of the major recommendations they made. one, they they made a lot of other recommendations on just logistically how to streamline our hiring process or enhance the experience um of KCS employees in the district. Uh two specific recommendations that I'll highlight. Um as our preK population is growing, um
013they identified a need to include those preK students in our administrator allocations um to better serve the needs of those students in the entire student population. and we have taken that recommendation. A second recommendation uh one that that we're very excited about is flexible use of resources at the school level. So the district allocates resources in a very specific way and that is by number of FTEEs, full-time equivalent employees, whether that be teachers, uh educational assistants, school secretaries. uh and this this model will allow the school administrators to use those resources in the way that best fits the need of their student population. Um so you'll see on a slide um that Dr. Rise will cover um towards the end of the presentation what our staffing allocation formulas are. Um and you'll notice that those
014are richer than state required ratios in any in any given classroom or grade band. So, this flexible use of resources would allow a school principal to the autonomy to say, I I think that my class sizes could be a little bigger at X grade band. Um, and I will I will repurpose the the dollars that fund that other position um towards other initiatives in the school, whether that be a different type of staff member or whether that be additional funds um to to complete different type of work in the building. So excited about that opportunity for our schools. Uh some of our principles uh are already taking advantage of that opportunity and and have come up with some very creative ways to serve their students. Um and we're excited to see how that progresses and
015the results that they'll see in their schools. Uh I'll I'll I'll pass it to Corey in just a second to talk about our community budget survey, but like we discussed that was in the fall. Almost 2,000 uh respondents. Um you'll see the breakdown here of what those look like. Uh Corey will go over what specifically uh what information we got from that survey. Um but we use that survey to take into the regional focus groups to dialogue um about what we what we heard in the survey um and just further contextualize those results and give us more information um to to build this budget. So, Miss Lner, I'll turn it over to you and then we'll come back to this one real quick, too. Thank you. So, as you heard Miss Simgarn say, you know,
016we really are intentional in just engaging with the community and just like the budget development process, you know, that engagement begins early and it really carries us through the duration of the development process and really helps shape kind of, you know, what's going into the budget for this year and also what we're beginning to think about uh ahead for next year as well. And so, the question we're going to ask ourselves right now is what did we learn uh from that community budget survey? what did we ask our focus group participants to help us further contextualize and the results are on your screen. So I'll say a few things just about what you're looking at on the screen right now. The first is that um participants were asked to rate the importance of a variety
017of different funding opportunities, funding priorities and you can see the breakdown of the responses that were rated most favorably. So the percentages in the right hand column identify the percent of respondents who rated any one funding priority, any one funding opportunity as either very important or important. So you can see kind of just when you're looking at the budget in general and all of the different elements that go into a budget, at the end of the day, we're talking about students, we're talking about staff, and we know that it's all important. And so when we start working with finite resources and that charge to make the most of our resources to impact the greatest number of students possible, we use questions like these to help inform the how behind the resources um allocated within the
018budget. And we're really looking at those decisions in one of two ways. So, I'll get into the actual breakdown of results in just a moment, but we're looking at, you know, where are we going to sustain what's working in our budget? So, what is the community telling us that, you know, this is work we're already engaged in? It's working. It's important. Uh, and we need to continue to put our dollars there. And then also, when new funds, when new resources are available, where are we looking to expend those resources and expand or try something new, try something innovative? And so looking at the screen, you'll see uh that funding opportunities are aligned just like everything else that we do to our four priorities as a district. Something that wasn't surprising to see for us was
019that great educators uh in every school occupied the first two slots in that priority rating. That's been true for us for the past three years. And you'll see that commitment um and a reflection of that perspective resonate throughout the budget presentation that we're going to go through later this evening. Um, you'll also see that behavioral supports, high-quality instructional materials, uh, small groupoup instruction in classrooms, and also guaranteed work-based, uh, learning experiences, guaranteed experiences for students were all very highly rated funding priorities. Something that's just kind of exciting to note and one of the ways in which we use this survey is to note that in that bottom tier right there that college and career empowerment section um this time last year the highest rated kind of funding opportunity was just exposing students to college and
020career opportunities. This year that result shifted uh to some more meaningful more engaging work in really holding ourselves accountable for making those work-based learning experiences accessible to students. That tells us two things. one, um, the work behind the 865mmies is kind of taking on, folks are understanding the intent behind that work a little bit more. Um, and two, that the community wants to hold us accountable to making sure that students are getting those experiences. And you'll see that uh, commitment reflected in our budget proposal today along with um, you know, commitments in every single one of these areas. So, keep your eye out for that. That's part of where those commitments are coming from when you see them. And I will turn that back over to Miss Simorn. So, thank you all for your participation
021in that uh community engagement in that information gathering. All all of that leads us up to here today when we get the opportunity to share with you a little bit about the budget we've built um using that feedback. So, for FY26, what makes this year unique? Uh there's a few things that make this year unique. One is a declining student enrollment. And we'll we'll see on the next slide what what those numbers look like. When we say declining student enrollment, it's not a huge shift in student enrollment. It's about 500 students, which is a small percentage of our total students, but 500 students does require us to shift resources to where those students are. Year one implementation of our new salary schedules. uh teacher paycheck protection act which as you may know is the requirement
022across the state of Tennessee to reach a minimum teacher salary of 50,000 by FY27 so not next year but the following year and then a normalizing growth in revenue we've had a few anomalous years um for several different reasons and believe we are settling into what we believe is normal and predictable year-over-year revenue growth. So, our student enrollment, um you'll see that like we discussed the FY25 going into 26, it's a difference of about 500 students. Uh we did see a decline in 2022 and have rebounded um since then and and expect about uh 58,000 students next year. Uh what makes this year unique? Uh numbers two and three. Um so settling into our salary schedules um and also the teacher paycheck protection act. Um as you all know um as we appreciate our board
023in made a major investment last year over $40 million into our into new salary schedules. Um we moved from salary schedules um that we had navigated through for decades um to a new salary schedule system. Um we're very grateful to the board for their support of that. Um and to our employees um who are were with us last year, with us this year. Um as we look forward to what what it looks like in the future, um we knew that we were going to have to make some changes. It's a it's a completely different salary schedule. So the way that we navigate through that uh looks different as well in this year. Um so FY25 we achieved market value which is something that the district had been chasing for years um by incremental percentage increases
024over the years made a large investment um to reach market value to meet a reach a competitive salary um to our peer districts and also comparison districts outside the state as well. So our plan going forward um for the certified scale and the general scale with one caveat that uh that we'll talk about in a minute is to navigate through those schedules. So advance through those schedules by way of steps. Um the step advancement will be the salary advancement and we're going ahead and naming now that 2028 is when we will reassess market value. Uh and that will be our plan going forward is to assess market value, adjust the scales um however necessary, however that assessment tells us to navigate through those scales and then readjust. We may learn some things in 2028 that
025tell us um how to how to navigate between those assessments differently. That 2028 may may tell us that we need to invest a little um to maintain market value that we need to ma invest a lot. If it tells us we need to invest a lot, then there may be uh annual increments that we that we implement post 2028. But we're excited to go ahead and name to staff that we are taking Evergreen's recommendation and 2028 will be the year that we reassess uh which is within Evergreen's recommendation of that three to five years. We're going on the shorter end since it's our first reassessment. Uh so the the small caveat is the Teacher Paycheck Protection Act. um because of the the requirement there will be adjustments to the cert one and 2 scales over
026the next two years to reach that minimum of 50,000 on C one. Um so step zero cert one will need to be 50,000 by FY27. Um so there will be upward adjustment to all steps on C one and C 2 for the next two years which means that the employees that are on those scales and I think that that you may have one pagers that give you a a brief overview of who is on which scale. Um but those those scales each step will be adjusted and the employees will will advance a step um from year to year. So, uh, looking forward to to navigating, um, through these schedules. Um, excited about the investment that our our district and our board has made over the last several years. As you'll see on this slide, it's
027a nearly $120 million investment since 2022 in staff salary and benefits. And that would be new dollars. So, a total of new dollars invested um each year since 2022. So, so looking forward um to to continuing on these new schedules and then our normalizing growth in revenue, you'll see on the left column um a five-year history of our increases in revenue each year. So, that's not total revenue, that's year-over-year increase in our revenue. And then the bar graph just gives you a little bit uh bigger picture of how how those numbers are made up. Um, so you'll see FY26, our increase in revenue is $21.2 million. You'll see on a later slide that Dr. Risewick covers that our sta increase in staff and salary and benefit investments um in FY26 is $19.7 million. So nearly
028all of that new revenue um is going back into our staff um which which we believe is the appropriate place for it to be. and you all have told us um through the community responses that that you believe that that's the appropriate place um for those dollars to be as well. So this next slide is a is a different look at the revenue. So total revenue um for FY26 is projected to be 700.5 million and you'll see that that's that's nearly a 5050 split between state and local dollars. So those TISA dollars at the state level and then sales tax and property tax at the local level. uh other sources make up about 1%. Um I will call out um at the bottom you see that that's not all revenue that comes to the district.
029This is all revenue that's in the general purpose budget. So there are still additional funds through IDEIDA um which uh Dr. Brown oversees through Perkins um and then our title dollars as well um for our schools that qualify. So with that I will turn it back over to Dr. Rwick. Thank you, Miss Himlgarn. Um, just want to talk a little bit about our budgeting philosophy. This was a budget that we I mean a philosophy we really started applying a couple years ago. And I want to say kudos to the folks at these tables. Again, uh this this is this is a process every year. Um and these guys have led the work with our finance team as we get projections. But these are the two things that we keep in mind when we start the
030budget. Uh you know, really we kind of get hot and heavy into that kind of December as we're looking forward. Uh, our first is protect the classroom. We'll talk some about that. And then our second is fund what works. And I know we should, that's kind of common sense. You should be funding what works. But it's it's easy sometimes in an organization to kind of have this legacy stuff. Uh, and when it's not yielding results, we need to look at that annually to kind of see what we're doing and make sure we're funding the right things. Um, this first protecting the classroom. This is what we mean by that. So, um, you see these ratios uh that are on here. These are the ratios for elementary, middle, and high schools. Uh, and we talked a
031little bit in the beginning about the staffing committee that works with the business and talent team of principles that go through these. Um, these when we talk about that and I said in the onset of this conversation, trying to stabilize things so that it's predictable and people can move forward. These are the exact same ratios we had last year. Okay? If you've talked to people in school, some people say, "Well, how come I'm losing a position or how come I'm gaining a position?" Right? Um, so that means we we true these up based on where students are are moving, right? We try to put our resources where kids are. So a school may have dropped in enrollment and another school may have gained an enrollment. And this has not always been our practice to true
032those up year in year out, but it's the best thing to do as far as fiscal responsibility. If you don't do that, you end up with kind of these legacy situations, which we've been part of in the past that are, you know, these hold harmless and and we've had schools that have had like plus seven or eight of what they've earned. Meanwhile, we've had to cap schools that, you know, needed to gain three and we go, well, you can't have more than two, right? So, uh, what you want to do is try, and this allowed us to do this last year when we freed this up. It allows us to move our our our teachers and our educators to the schools where the students are as they adjust yeartoear. Uh, before we started doing this
033a couple years ago, we were willing to really look to see how accurate are projections because the last thing we want to do is move a teacher and then comes August and you need that teacher back at that school, right? Um, and so we looked at three-year trends in that. We have always benefited with like a plus 20 by uh school plus minus 20. We've given that advantage. We've always over projected so that than what's actually shown up in the door, right? Shown up to the door. So really the benefit falls back to the schools in that situation. Um so you see here again what these ratios are. Uh and let me tell a quick story on this because we we talked to board members about this too. I'll take the high school one. If
034you look at the staffing ratio of high school, the 0ero to 14%. And that that at risk is really based on poverty rates um at those schools. Um so take that one in in West High School is a great example. And I go out to schools weekly and have have conversations and get to meet with groups of teachers and also tour classrooms. I was at West High School. So they're a school that would fall into that range. Uh they're 26.5 to one and they're teachers. So you know, Dr. Speeda, she does a great job there. U and this is a great example of what we ask principles to do. We might get a call from a parent that says, "Well, my student is one has 33 kids in that classroom." Right? That's true. This is
035how we this is how we all a lot the staff 1 to 26. How the principal chooses to use that staff is up to them. And I'm going to give you a great example. When I was at West, so Ashley took me to one of her her senior IB classes, right? So, if you're not familiar with IB, that's an international balorate, which is a high um advanced academic course that they have there. She took me in that classroom and showed me there were 33 students in that class. And she said, "Here's what I know about those students. They're high achievers. They have been high achievers for a long time. Self-motivated teachers excellent. They can handle 1 to 33. These kids have A's and B's in this class." She took me five doors down and we
036went into an an EnglishL an English language learner class that was being co-taught with an English teacher and ELLL teacher. It was 1 to 15. She goes, "That was by design from me. I knew those kids could handle the 1 to 33, but if I wanted to success for these kids here, they had to be 1 to5 ratio. So again, she's staffed at that 1 to 26.5. That's an excellent example of how our principles make those strategic decisions. We might see that in elementary school based on how they might go. I could have an extra second grade or a fourth grade. Well, we know we have, you know, maybe the data is showing the fourth grade is kind of behind where they are in grade level. I'm going to choose to move that up and
037have a have a smaller class size in fourth grade and my second graders are fine. Right? Those are decisions we ask principles to make. Uh and to tell you, I've seen it in the field, they're doing it. So, u sometimes when they go, well, there's one class has this many kids. That's why that's how we staff it, but then principles have the ability to put those in, uh to the different class sizes. I think that's an important piece. Um you see at the bottom, I think Miss Himgarn spoke to that, too. U you know, these are the state minimum ratios, too. So, you see where we're at in Knox County, those are averages across the board. When you look at elementary, 18.6 to1 is our ratio. In K2, they're allowed at 1 to 20 or
0381 to 25. So, we're still in every one of these uh schools, matter what ratio you fall in, we're still below those capsu by far. Uh and again, that's important for us, too, to make sure that continues to be there. Um and so, we have prioritized that. So, protecting the classroom comes at a cost. Um and that's important. Again, we always talk about the the the school district is the classroom, right? The school district is the is the school. uh tell that to principles and teachers when we go out every day. You're the the car line who returns the emails, who puts the homework in the backpacks, right? Though, that is the school system. So, for us, that's important for us to protect that. Um what we're trying to do is keep that going no
039matter what the budget is. Good budget year, bad budget year. This wasn't necessarily an extremely good budget year. We saw some what we didn't think we necessarily get, Miss Hong pointed out, 21.2 million in new growth. I mean in new dollars that we came uh we kind of had expectations there might be a little more than that but it wasn't but again so then you go back to your priorities and protect the classroom this year in order for us to protect the classroom we had to make some moves at the district office so you see a reduction in positions uh last year we saw a reduction as well but a lot of that ended up being dollar amounts this year we're at a place where it had to be a reduction in position so um
040by each of our divisions and again these leaders are before you um having really tough conversations about what do we need to preserve curve so that we could support the schools and what could we let go of. Um I'll give you an example of one of those. I know in Dr. Wilson's world in academics um our regional structure has been successful. Principles talk about the additional supports and touches that they're getting. Um the way that structured we had five regions. So we had a take math we had a math person for every region and then we had our math supervisor who wasn't over a region who just orchestrated that. Dr. Wilson went back and said it is important for us to preserve the regions but we can make a cut of one position in each
041of those. So math, social studies, science, English all gave up one of those positions and now that supervisor has a region that they're over. So we're still able to maintain the regional structure and have those supports but we're doing it with less people. So that's just one example. There's an example of every one of these folks that have done the same. Um those are conversations we've had with those folks. Those are folks that you know the central office positions are not tenured positions. Um, so they will apply for school positions and other positions. Um, and and you know, we're hopeful that they'll be able to find those positions, but at the same point, we can't have two priorities if we're going to prioritize the classroom and prioritize those ratios that we need to make sure
042that we're willing to do that. So, uh, that's what we've done. I'll draw your attention to the pink boxes, too. Sometimes people ask, what does a district office do? And we've shared all this with our principles as well. And just so you know this, too, it was really good for us last year to have this budget talk. We did it individually with our or did it with a group with our principles and then we actually worked on a toolkit for them to share this with their staff. I think that was a missing internal piece that the folks like teachers and custodians and secretaries they never get this budget talk if we don't do we well you can watch it online. So last year we started after we did these and we did this with principles
043we started putting this toolkit together and asking them to go over that in a staff meeting. So all of our principles will go over this with their staff uh before I think we have May 1stish is is kind of the dead sometime right right in that that window. Uh so they'll go over this as well. So uh they'll be talking about these things too. So we talked about this the district office does have a function uh and so we like what we look at that for us one is we support schools you know we just talked about the regional structure the the curriculum the the textbook selection IT transportation facilities you know principles don't want to be over mowing the lawn right so like all those kinds of things that we have to do there
044is a function for the district office for that uh another would be supporting staff and you know people don't think about the size of our organization payroll benefits um again IT assistance professional development Those are all pieces of that. And then the third function really is the support for the families and community. Uh and I want to give kudos. A lot of that falls in our strategy department. Now, when you think about our data, you think about our communications, you think about um all the things that we're doing to to try to be more transparent. Um our annual report that we put out, all those kinds of things are really trying to help folks understand what the school system is about. uh was really pleased that when uh working on a strategic plan uh that
045the initial group that came through and Milan right that's I always forget their name Milan came in one of the reports that they had was one of our three strengths was communication that has been a long time as an organization since we've had that wasn't by chance that was by folks Carly Corey their team working hard to try to make the data make sense try to make the dollars make sense uh and so that's a big part of what we do too so as we talked to principles they all agreed we don't want anything to do with those three things we need you guys doing that, let us do school. So, uh just just kind of laying out what our job is in that as well. So, our budget philosophy on funding what works. Um
046I think the red box is one way that sometimes uh organizations go at it. There's that assumption we have what we have and so we go into the next year and we go, "Yeah, but I got this one other idea addition to what I have, right?" Um I would say as an organization that's where we were probably about three years ago. We've really changed that. Again, kudos to Ron and Joe and the finance team. They do a good job of bringing those numbers, but now we've asked the assistant superintendents to own those conversations, start back and go, um, what's worked. You know, we've been trying these certain things. We've been trying these certain structures. We've been trying these functions. We ask I've asked all these guys and they do a great job of that and
047I do as well. We pulse the system. We go to schools. We walk with principles. We go in classrooms. Um, I know I've got a group of teachers when I meet with them every week. When I go in, I'll ask a specific question around special education, what's working, what's not, you know, what about this, what about that, and they give me some great feedback, and I can come back and share it with the team. I know all of these guys have been out doing the same thing. So, that's the only way we know is to get on the ground, walk in the halls, have the conversations, um, and and that's how we're finding it out. Priority alignment, I think Corey said this a minute ago, everything we do now, and kudos to the finance team,
048every the line items are tied back to one of the four priorities, and we try to tie them tightly to that. And if they're not tied tightly, these guys have had a conversation with their departments to go, I'm not seeing it like like where is this? Where is this going to drive to an outcome? That's important. It's taxpayer dollars that we have and it's important that we can report out that way. Uh and then we ask also what's needed if we see gaps in the data and what is it that we need to look at from there. So, uh everything for us though is intentional, student focused and results driven. And again, kudos to our teachers, to our leaders in the schools, and to our team. Uh that's why I think we've been able to
049see improvements for students over three straight years in a row. I think Keith and our tag team this one, right? All right. So, uh funding what works in this budget. Um the upper my upper left I guess it's your upper I don't know the 19.7 million. I won't try to get turned around. So the 19.7 million I think um Miss Himgarn just said this 21.2 new million of new dollars are coming. We're investing 19.7 million of that back into priority 2, great educators, benefits, salaries, steps, salary advancements. So almost all of our new money is going right back into that, which aligns again to the survey aligns again to our priority, right? That 19.1 million invested in staff. That's why we can change this conversation. We are at market value and our goal is to
050try to maintain that. It's a very different conversation than we've had in my 20 plus years in the district. Um, two other places are, um, I'm doing green and red, right? Okay. Thank you. Green and gray. Thank you. All right. Uh, is our A65mmies. Uh, Corey talked a little bit about that being, it's really been neat to see CEO champions come around that and see the business community this year make that switch to go, wait, we thought you were asking us for something, but we need this. This is our future workforce. These are our future jobs. They've really taken ownership to so much to the point that in our high schools, we had our CEOs ask if they could come to a staff meeting and explain why it was so important for them that their
051kids that their kids from their school came out to to um to their places of business and let them come guest speak. So, it's been really neat ownership from that side. Uh we talk about three E. We're all about a plan for the future for every single kid. And so, for us, that's enroll and a post-secary. We want that to happen if that's where you and if you are, we want to make sure you've done some dual enrollment and some things before you leave. Prove that you can do it while you got all these caring adults around you because you're getting ready to go do it on your own, right? Our second one has been employee and we want you to get those industry certifications. Our our career tech ed team is working to make
052sure they're not just mindless career uh uh industry certifications. They're aligned to what apprentichip programs are looking for. They're aligned to what business is looking for. And our 30 is Enlist. And when we talk about enlist, we started realizing, you know, all the opportunities that are available for kids, all the opportunities to to learn uh skills without taking on debt, the GI bill that comes with that for them to get master's degree. I'm an army brat. My dad took the GI bill, got a master's degree, changed the trajectory of my family, right? So, how important that is. Um, so worked with the mayor. He's agreed to pilot a position for us for two years, and the county is going to pay for it on the enlist side. And so what that position will do for
053us next year is still work in our college and career readiness space, but it will work to make sure things like test, which is a test the military use, is aligned and being used well. Making sure we have a presence of guest speakers who have had the military be part of their professional development, who can come into those freshmanies and have conversations. Um, there's a lot of recruitment around thosemies for all the branches of the military. Um, I don't know if you guys know that, but there are surrogates in the community, but trying to get them all on the same page and all on that same process working with our counselors and to promote our veterans. We do ceremonies about the veterans that work for us as Knox County employees. And then this year, for
054the first time, we'll do a celebrating service in May where all of our seniors who are going on to serve uh, we'll have a lunchon for them with a great guest speaker coming in to do that. So, it is a very viable option for us. We need to build that out and we're thankful that the mayor has agreed uh to pay into that. And then the last one I'm going to hit is this 3.4 million. I talked about this a little bit on the onset. Um kudos to to Dr. Adams and our finance team. Utilities go up, gas goes up for transportation, all those things. No one thinks about that cost. Um in the past, we've kind of left that number static and then toward the end of the year, we've kind of had to
055find other dollars to fill that. Uh just trying to be super transparent. So there's a $3.4 4 million increase for utilities and for for transportation. And kudos to Ryan Dillingham who runs our transportation. A brilliant young man who runs a small logistics company every day trying to get 32,000 of our kids uh back and forth, picked up every nook and cranny from all across Knox County in traffic and all these kinds of things. So, uh great job they do there. And we do that with a bunch of contractors who who love kids uh and contract with us to do that. So, that investment is really a true up for that. I'm gonna have Dr. Wilson speak to two of the other ones. Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. So, the investing in preschool, obviously, if
056you've you've listened to us for the last couple years, we've talked about really just how much importance we place on our preschool programming and our desire to continue to expand that work because we know that the interventions are best when they when they come as early as possible, right? And setting as many students up to be prepared for kindergarten, to walk in the door as ready to learn as possible. Uh, preschool gives us a a great leg up to do that. Um, and I'll lean back into something that um, Miss Himgard mentioned just from the staffing conversations and one of the things coming out of that was to recognize uh, that when we have preschool classrooms and pre-K students in our elementary schools, um, there is a a lift on the part of the school
057to to provide additional administrative supports. Again, when you're when you're really targeting in on um those gaps you're trying to fill, this early identification of student needs, a lot of that comes with administrative responsibilities, right? a lot of things that have to happen to to make sure that those plans are set, monitored, and are carrying forward. And so she she spi spoke into that. An additional piece uh in that same vein is that we have four standalone prek campuses. And they've been operating uh the last uh several years with just a single administrator. Uh and some of those standalone prek campuses are as large as some of our smaller elementary schools. Uh and those schools benefit from having um instructional coaches and additional support staff that those those campuses do not have. And so, uh,
058again, our investment in that is to give some additional administrative support, a couple of shared positions that can act as, um, additional administrative support for those schools, uh, and give the principles there some more opportunity to, um, to distribute, you know, some of those responsibilities they have. Our our teachers in those schools, uh, you know, preK is not what it was 20 years ago. Um, the curriculum is very well defined. It is very aligned to what we are preparing kids to do when they enter kindergarten. And so, uh, we have our teachers in our our pre-K, uh, classrooms and in our preschools involved in our professional learning communities and in planning and in doing all of that. And so, all of that is a big lift. And so, giving them some additional administrative support and
059investing some new dollars there to make that happen was uh, was really kind of what's short up in that item. And then the last one I'm going to talk about is enhancing the alternative program. So again, as we went through the budget process and tried to look for places where um maybe we could improve our work, maybe we could save some money, uh one of the ways that we have been serving through the alternative program uh for the last several years and because of the number that we've had to serve is through uh what we've called the night alternative program. And so once once we reach capacity uh with our regular day programs in alternative settings, these are students who have uh who have had an incident that's resulted in a longer term suspension quite
060often a zero tolerance suspension. Um we're still offering education for those students. And so how do we do that and do it well? The night alternative program has been how we've served quite a number of those students, but that's required us to uh maintain some campuses at night, paying teachers to run those, paying administrators to run those. Um, and has been quite expensive and it actually comes comes back sort of as an unbudgeted request because we've not had a budget line item for that. And that was about $650,000 this year is what that the dollar item on that was. And so a couple of years ago, our virtual uh well, the the state law changed allowing for our virtual schools to become a way that we can serve students that are in alternative placements or
061that are are serving a suspension. And so we asked uh a team internally that was kind of made up of uh some folks in my department. Tommy Watson, one of our regional supervisors for region 3, uh was very instrumental in that. He had done work with Dr. Karen Ly out of our special ed uh uh department. and then uh partnering with the principal of our virtual school, Jennifer Garrett, uh to look at what would be some ways we could think about really utilizing that to uh maybe answer some of the problem that we've been trying to deal with. And they've come up with a really great model that we actually think is going to serve students better. Um the students who are serving are ser serving a suspension that's not quite zero tolerance are still
062going to be served through their base school through an extended base school model. And so our high schools are going to pay some stipens to some teachers to um provide sort of like case management and tutoring and and and work with those students who will stay on the school roster, stay connected to the classrooms and the teachers that they work with currently. So that transition back to the school is much easier for that student. Uh and then for those students who do have a zero tolerance offense, we have the the main campuses, but instead of that not alternative for that overflow, we can actually enroll those students full-time into into coursework at the virtual school. And so they'll continue on with a live instructor every day uh getting the in the instruction from the student
063or from the teachers and again we believe uh providing them with the best leg up for at the point that they do transition back to um their base school. So that's going to be a new model for us. Um but again as I mentioned starting out at about 650,000 we were able to do this new model uh that we're going to put into place next year for about 200,000. So that was a a significant savings for us there as we looked at a shift in programming to to do that. All right. Okay. So this is a a different look at our new investments. Um investing uh investments by priority area. Uh the district has four priorities. Uh our spending should reflect support of those four priorities. Um, so one thing that each division does is
064categorize line items of spending uh based on which priority they support. Uh, so this is a a different look at our new investments that you've heard about. And you'll see the 30.1 million in new investments here. That looks different than that 21.2 number of new dollars um that we talked about previously. Uh, this means that some of our funds that were that we that we had this year going into next year um are being redirected to new initiatives. Um so 71% um the majority of our new investments are going um into great educators. Uh of that 21.3 total number of new investments um like we discussed on the last slide 19.7 of that um is going into salary and benefits for our current employees. So the steps um as well as the adjustment to those
065C one and C two scales 17% which looks like a pretty big number um reflects m the majority of what Dr. Risewick talked about on the previous slide those trueups uh mainly in transportation and our utilities. Um and I am going to toss it to Dr. Brown um to talk about the remaining three. Thank you Miss Himmler. Uh as Dr. Dr. Wilson just mentioned um you know one of the big items in success for every student is uh is our obviously our investment in the um new alternative schools model. We also as we try to meet the needs of every student in student support positions we've added 10 and a half new positions there. A lot of those are due to needs from IEPs and other things that students require. Uh and also we've had
066to reallocate some funds. We previously paid for some required materials for our ELLL students through our ESSER funds. Those dollars went away last year. we were able to acquire some fund balance. This year, we're rolling that into our general purpose budget. So, that's what you see there in middle school ELELLL materials. Uh, and excellence and foundational skills. Again, Dr. Wilson already touched on the preschool instructional supports. Uh, but we're also they're investing some more into our textbooks. I think those are um for a lot of our consumables. You know, new textbooks now come with workbooks that have to be replaced. Uh, so we're having to replace some of those things. And then finally, the college and career empowerment space. Dr. Riswick again mentioned the enhancing enlistment pathways um with our new u focus on on
067that enlistment um and also touched on the partnerships and our experiences through the 865 academy. So that's about $460,000. So I am going to turn it over to Dr. Adams I believe. Nope, you first. Oh, sorry. Let me go back. Yes. Uh so so you'll see um that not not each uh not each priority has the same number of new dollars being invested. This is not a ranking um of importance of our priorities. Uh obviously the most is going into great educators because we know without our people we can't carry out the rest of of these priorities. Um so this is this is not a ranking. This is just a reflection of new dollars into each priority. There are existing dollars um in the budget that were supporting these priorities as well as those other
068funding sources that we talked about earlier. Um our Perkins dollars, our IDEIDA funds um and our title funds as well. And I am going to turn it over to Dr. Adams now. Um there are actually three items that will be on the special called uh budget meeting on April 29th. One is the general purpose budget which is what we have spent the the entire uh presentation up until now talking about. The two other items are the capital plan and the school nutrition budget. So Dr. Adams is going to go into a little more detail about both of those. Good afternoon and welcome. Thank you all for taking the time to meet with us this afternoon. I do want to cover just a few things with you all today. Uh first I want to start with
069our facility upgrades. Uh again, that's a hefty investment of 18.5 million. Uh the the board invested a couple years ago in a facilities assessment and we want to really be intentional on our deferred maintenance and so we have now have a slam software where we'll be able to accurately uh depict how we uh move forward and and that will live for Knox with Knox County Schools for several years in advance. our security and technology. Uh there's a heavy investment in our security of course that is our number one asset which is our officers in buildings and between our uh our new chief geneo our deputy chief our captains our lieutenants and our sergeants and our officers in buildings they have a total of 950 years of experience in safety and security. So uh very excited
070about the work that they are doing and and the investment that our board and our superintendent Dr. Wiswick has made in safety. As far as technology, of course, we are a onetoone district and so there's always an investment in technology and new softwares that come out uh that enhance student learning and really uh gives teachers the tools they need within their building. our expansion uh plan uh we talk about the Mechanicsville uh Lonsdale and Bulmont solution uh that next the FY26 will be the phase one of that and so you're looking at the uh the the geotech and you're looking at the uh the fire marshall inspections and those are things that you have to do in a year in advance to get ready uh for the actual construction piece and so the following year
071the construction piece will come uh the contingency plan this is something that we look at when we talk about uh anything from environment mental testing to foundational stabilization and student accessibility. So, uh I can give you a prime example. Anytime we have any foundation issues, those turns into emergency issues and and we immediately take take um immediately uh send a team out to go ahead and take care of that. We also have people on contract for anything that our environmental team cannot do. So, the expansion uh very excited about uh what's up and coming as far as our solutions. We have the Farragate solution. We have the Mechanicsville Lawnsville Bowmont solution. And then up and coming, we have the South Knox solution. Uh now keep in mind this is a new approach to how we
072do uh our solutions. We have community meetings, we get community input, we get administrator input. Uh it's it's really like a a whole community approach. And then we look at several different options. Not only do we look at elementary, middle, and high school, but we look at do we need to do an addition on a school? Do we need a new facility? and and and what do we need in our in our other schools in that area? So, uh 2027 is Farragut uh mechanics deals down Bulmont. The opening will be in 2029 and in 2031 we're looking at the Southnox solution. Uh the facilities upgrades, I think it's very important for us to reflect on the work that we are currently doing and the work that we've already done. Uh Harden Valley Academy will be
073getting a new addition for a freshman academy. I was fortunate to go out and meet with the principal, Dr. Renegger a couple weeks ago and very excited about the work there. Uh it is a massive project uh with a couple of stories and and and again uh just a great investment in that community. Uh especially with with the growing capacity that they have within their school. Uh Stury Elementary again I had an opportunity to meet with Mr. Ran and so we had several conversations last year of what that looks like. Again, this is another example of how uh we looked at a whole community solution and we were able to bring uh a portion of the the special education population back to that building uh that was not there. So, uh again, that's looking at
074a whole community approach. Uh the halls middle renovation, again, that's another adjustment we made to that plan when we originally were looking at that. We were looking at additional classrooms and a gym. And then we happened to look at the cafeteria as we did a walkthrough with the principal and really and really recognized that we needed more space in the cafeteria. Uh for those of you who are educators, you know that the cafeteria can be a scheduling nightmare if you don't have adequate space. So uh that was something we were able to increase the capacity in that room as well. Uh Gibbs High, uh we're looking at a partial roof replacement and the PAL elementary. Uh we're really trying to get away from investing in in portables, but as I went out and made several
075visits to Powell Elementary School with Miss Frost, what we realized is one of the portals that portables that they had uh it just was not conducive for learning. uh not to where we want it to be as far as standard. And so we looked at uh purchasing a portable. Uh at the time portables were anywhere from 800,000 to a million dollars. So again uh not the most cost effective way of identifying capacity. However, with the new uh Mil Creek, we were able to pull uh two uh fairly new portables from Harden Valley Elementary School. And so those portables will will be relocated to Pal Elementary School. And then we will do a demo to the existing portable uh that we that we're removing. Last but not least, uh uh school nutrition. There has been a
076slight increase in prices. I will say this is very comparable when you look around look around surrounding areas and food cost, right? So food costs have went up significantly. And so we we normally look at this every 3 to 5 years. We revisit uh how you know what school prices are. And so again, when you look at schools in the area, it is very comparable to to schools in our surrounding area. So that's all I have and I will punt it back to Miss Himgard. Okay. And that that brings us to the end uh next steps after this uh the special called budget meeting on April 29th where the board will vote on the proposed general purpose budget, proposed capital plan, and proposed school nutrition budget. Uh the district then submits um the approved budgets
077to c the county uh and county commission will vote um by the end of June. Um we're thinking that will be uh at the May meeting, but either May or June. So for those of you tuning in um we have set up an Do you want this one? For those of you uh tuning in, we have set up an email address um for any questions. And then I believe uh Miss Lner will facilitate any questions that we have tonight. Uh for those of you that are in person