001okay okay I think she was I think she was trying to put her slide back in you got it you're done then I can't reop the slide you are no because it won't once I have it ination mode update sorry we'll be there in just a second um maybe can you pass that down to Julian and um Carolyn to look at more in the year myre Shar is Julian did you see isn't awesome ready all right I think we're ready good evening and welcome to the Thursday October 5th 2023 scarber Board of Education business meeting uh Diane can we call the attendance please sure Mrs gamon here Mr kaher here miss Leong here Mrs Lindstrom here Mr May arino he's been exed miss tarpinian here Mr P Huff here miss Leisure here and Mr shamway
002um he's been excused I think he's going to join us shortly okay all right would everybody please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and Justice hey agenda item 4.0 or adjustments to the agenda are there any adjustments this evening uh no adjustments thank you agenda item 5.0 is public comment is there anybody wishing to make public comment this evening yeah there's a hand raised I think you have to vot yeah can you promoter to be able to speak I don't think I have the ability all right Hillary if you want to go ahead and unmute yourself um mran you can go ahead and speak hi can you guys hear me can you
003hear me uh we cannot hear you I'm unmuted on my computer maybe if she [Music] unut um I wonder Hillary if your volume on your computer is down by chance [Music] um I just turned my volume uping her promoting her to panelist see if that does it sorry we're just working through technical difficulties all right Hillary do you want to try unmuting yourself and trying one more time can you hear me now sorry I am unmuted have log out and come back in is it um I'm sorry Hillary do you want to try logging out and coming back into the meeting and we'll see if we can um if that will help we can't unfortunately we're not able to hear you right now sure can we double check it's not on our end so we'll
004just hang on a minute we give her an opportunity think hello um can you guys hear me Hillary I think what we're gonna have you do if you don't mind um can we if we could to have you [Music] call if you could call Diane's phone and then we'll um have you speak through the phone on speaker phone for everyone to hear I'm so sorry we are were thinking oh hold on okay yeah if you could just give dian's phone a a call um she will hold your phone up to the speaker for or turn it on speaker for us all to hear your public comment I'm so sorry to have to can you hear us I canar I can hear you can you hear me yes okay okay and your dog hear my dog
005hey um sorry that was so uh crazy I was unmuted on my computer and I could hear you guys but I don't know um what was going on um so I just wanted to make a comment tonight on do you want me to start yes abolutely um so I just wanted to make a comment tonight on um the art an article that was in this week's Town Newspaper the Scarboro leader um our state representative for Scaro Stacy brener wrote an article which contained inaccurate information and I just wanted to um publicly put it out there that that it is inaccurate and I um I was hoping you guys would also correct it um so I just wanted to say that there is no option as of now to build a fourth school or to renovate
006our existing primary schools um which is what she indicated she also in addition told voters that if they voted no on the Consolidated School that the fourth school would be built and again I just want to reiterate this is not true um any option other than the Consolidated School would take um further years a plan and would have to be put out for a referendum at a cost that is um significantly higher than what the bond is currently um I also just wanted to say um that you know this information is so publicly available and board members and community members um and the district leadership are so willing to talk about this that it's really disappointing um that it wasn't fact checked um so that we could get the the accurate information information the first
007time around um this is a state senator I have trusted in the past to be um truthful and and provide me with accurate information so I just am disappointed that um this has gotten out there and might be confusing to um some voters um in this day and age it's extra important that we have factual accurate and truthful information um so I hope you guys are going to um remedy that and let people know um you know what the accurate information is and hopefully the scarbo leader will be able to change that because I do think it's going to be confusing for a lot of Voters public comment we will close public comment for um agenda item 6.0 is the superintendent report so turn over to all right I've just got a couple of slides
008this evening um I know uh our at our last meeting in the workshop uh prior to that we went through and established um superintendent goals and so I just wanted to um review those quickly this evening um so the first slide uh just outlines and summarizes uh the three goals uh for this year uh the first goal is really to update and revise um our shared vision and comprehensive strategic plan document which uh we talked about is is conveniently uh hidden in an an obscure page on the website and a little challenging to find so uh as we uh revise and update this document also putting it uh on a place on the homepage where it's easily accessible um and and also treating it like a living and breathing uh document as we strategically plan
009um for you know Scarboro now and into the future so uh that goal number one is really about um updating and communicating and continuing to um plan strategically for our vision for Scarboro schools uh the second uh goal is really around what we're doing with kids K to 12 um and it embeds our work uh in Dei social emotional learning which is really um uh a professional development Focus for our entire faculty K to 12 um this year and and then also um mtss multi-tiered system of supports and individualized differentiated support for for students uh in in all content areas and crossgrade levels um and then as well as you know we're we're now in a position where we can um use mea results uh our state assessments through assessments also formative assessments locally so
010that we can Benchmark academic progress for our kids um so that goal number two is really built around um the AC academic development and well-being of our students as as we also try and create that culture of belonging and inclusion um and then the third goal is really around aligning um our needs facility needs and the K to8 strategic project um and and building needs with with other Town departments and needs and growth uh for the town and that um is really focused on collaborating with uh Town leadership as well as uh the board and Town Council so those are really the three goal areas I also put a link there um for folks uh each of those goals we've started to and um the board really you know we through the workshop is fleshing
011out each of those goals in terms of you know what does that mean what are the action steps um as we go through the year so that's really the superintendent's goals and then the um second slide is just out outlining uh a couple of key bullets more than a couple uh uh on on what we're going to be doing during our professional day for staff tomorrow um so again there's some similar themes as to you know what what are the districtwide um goals my goals as superintendent um as well as our leadership team so we're focusing on social emotional learning curriculum work uh some Safety and Security tabletop exercises teacher and staff professional growth goal setting um actually Diane and I are going to be doing um uh an updated presentation really and and Q&A
012session um multiple times at different phase levels for staff on the KDA K8 strategic project and where we are between um which is timely given how close we're getting to uh the the November referendum vote um and then also there's collaborative team time as well as teacher design Time by phase level um for that day as well and that's the superintendent report perfect thank you Jeff are there any questions for Jeff all right um agenda item 7.0 is the chair's report um before we go into the slides can we just come off um the slide deck momentarily um I want to address um the article in the that Hillary um durgen mentioned in her comment and her public comment um that went out last night um so the things that make the k through eight
013strategic solution in the unified primary school project a comprehensive intentional strategic and long-term solution for Scarboro including things like years of research expert L educational design data driven planning are unfortunately the same things that make this project very confusing when you're trying to understand what's happening um we as a board up here um those of us all of us here that have talked about our goal setting really have valued transparency and being open with the public and so what that means is that there is a lot of information and sometimes it's hard to review it all and know where to start so what that means is that sometimes we have a lot of well-intentioned misinformation that goes out about the project so tonight I just want to provide a public statement in regard to one
014area of confusion and directly address what our community is voting on in November and what happens if that school is not voted on not voted forward so if we start at the beginning what are you voting on you're voting to approve $160 million 30-year bond to fund a holistic strategic solution for ourc to8 schools it is designed to solve facility inadequacies and inefficiencies by reorganizing grade levels renovating the middle school to better serve the student needs and building a new unified primary school that addresses educational Equity operational efficiency population growth flexibility safety security in 21st learn 21st Century Learning and teaching methods we have already exceeded the C capacity of our existing schools our infrastructure does not support our students basic educational needs we need a sustainable solution to house our current and growing population
015and we need it right now in 2027 our K through2 schools will completely run out of capacity and we will not have room for all of the enrolling students voters are not deciding between a funding a unified school or funding a four School setup they are voting to invest in a unified school in districtwide strategic plan or trigger the need for a tempor orary emergency Band-Aid until a permanent solution can be found so that leads me to the next question what happens if this project isn't approved by voters in November if this project does not pass in November of this year 2023 the town will need to use millions of taxpayer dollars to proceed with an emergency temporary solution to accommodate our growing enrollment instead of investing in a long-term solution those costs will be
016devoted to triage short-term fixes and a permanent long-term solution will still be needed this equates to time and money to design and construct a temporary solution and then time and money to design and construct a p a permanent solution based on the current rate of inflation every year that we delay construction costs are estimated to increase by 8% 8% we do move forward with the per solution this is approximately 10 million per year plus the cost to uh required for the short-term fixes no matter how you decide to vote it is important to have factual information at your fingertips and to understand the impact in both the short and the long term of a yes and a no vote I'm hoping that this public comment clears up any confusion around the article or questions about
017how what we are voting on but if not we are everyone sitting up here I feel confident speaking for we are happy to address any additional questions um we want every voter to be confident that they understand all the details around the project and what it means early loting last week on the 10th um so um as we've discussed several times over the past eight months and how as I just mentioned we have a very urgent need to build a new K through3 school and um complete the renovations at the middle school to accommodate the students that are coming to Scarboro um this is an urgent need I didn't say this in my comment but this is an urgent need because in 2027 we will have 250 new K through3 students coming 67 of them
018are are kindergarteners um so we just are out of room we have no room to put them so as a school board um it is our job to advocate for what is best for the students of Scarboro um we take that responsibility very seriously and with that in mind we are going I'm going to ask for your support we are going to ask for your support to fund the new K through3 school and the renovations at the middle school next I'm sorry we say one more the website at the bottom will give you more information um about getting an absentee ballot should should you be interested in voting early um the the link there will take take you to the website where which is one of the ways in which you can um apply for
019anente ballot you can also do it person at town hall or by calling but all of that information is available on that website there's also information about voting on um election day uh November 7 the cas your car in case you would prefer to vote in person this is the language that you will see on the ballot there will be more but this is the actual question that you you will be asked so the the question will read shall the order entitled order authorizing issuance of up to $160 million in general obligation bonds of the town of Scarboro to fund cost for a new unified K through3 school and renovations to the middle school be approved so once again um taking our responsibility in mind keeping our responsibility in mind um we are going to
020ask that we asked to support um the bond insurance um and then for the board one last reminder if you are interested in attending the msma annual fall conference please make sure you reach out to Cheryl so that she can register you um the dates are October 26 and 27th that's a Thursday and Friday and it is in austa the agenda um for the days are online you're able to to go and and kind of get a taste but it's a great opportunity for you to really like dig into your board What's um only what we do but also what other districts are it's really great that are there any questions for me or any comments could you also address the information that was printed about the extra classrooms that we have available which you
021know uh is is not accurate yeah so the extra classrooms and I'm going to look to Diana and this too um we are absolutely there's absolutely no extra classrooms at the at the K through two schools there's absolutely no extra classrooms at the middle school if there were extra classrooms we would not be using Portables the one thing that Scarboro um really has committed to is creating classrooms that are about the size of um 16 to 20 that's about the range where we stay so um if you anybody who has toured our um k through2 schools our primary schools you might notice that as you walk down the hall some of the classrooms have laundry baskets in the hallway that serves as storage for our kids because there's not room in the classroom to continually
022add um kids wedworth to my knowledge does not have any empty classrooms is is that accurate to say from a district standpoint yeah that's that's definitely accurate yeah um I think some of per maybe and correct me if I'm wrong I think some of the misperception is around um what classrooms are used for so there might be classrooms that were originally built as classrooms that are used for other activities such as special education needs such as therapeutic needs such as um special services needs so it's not that we can just take that classroom and reallocate it back to a classroom because then we're without the space for the other services that is utilizing the space yeah did you did I did you want to add any anything else did I miss anything I I mean
023I think um how you framed it too I mean we we haven't fit in school buildings uh since you know earlier than 2000 I mean uh portable classrooms have been in use we have an entire grade level in Portables as you as you noted for almost 20 years so I mean um you know the idea that that that you know I mean this this is a solution for now and 15 20 years ago I mean to be honest I mean it's we've we've been out you know requiring um we've been overcrowded in the actual school buildings for decades yeah yeah the Middle School um I know there's um thought that we can adjust it Wentworth we can change and and open up classrooms and like I said we can't do that but the middle school
024was undersized the day it was open right so um Portables came online there literally the very next year so that to Jeff's Point all of our schools K through three or K2 and our Middle School have been grossly UND sized Wentworth was built more in mind like how we're approaching this school where there was room added and but that room is now used for for like I said special services other things that um the district needs so um unfortunately we do not have empty space um when you're again looking at capacity when we talk about the um the new school um the school is designed if I say 16 to 20 is our Aver is what we are shooting for for class sizes the designer the architech designed the classrooms for 18 students so what
025that actually gives us is an extra layer of um capacity should we need it in the future so if we needed to load the classrooms up to 20 kids we could do so because that falls within our guidelines and our parameters and there's capacity for it at the new school so it's an extra layer of um added capacity there yeah thanks for asking are there any other questions or comments so with that we will move on to committee reports start with the finance committee Ken well gonna say we've got a nice slide here but Kate has better slid slides coming up with a lot more detail uh so but we uh so it's unfortunate that we're doubling up but um very very high level we met on the 25th and Kate walked us through the
026uh fiscal year 2023 financial statements we ended the year with a surplus of about 2.2 million Kate correct me where anywhere I'm wrong we had uh savings um from Debt Service savings we had uh that was about half a million we had about 900,000 savings and salaries and benefits and another almost $200,000 in Savings in electricity from a new contracted rate um that we were able to enter into um our available fund balance uh before we do any movements and adjustments which we're going to be voting on a little bit later is just shy of $3 million um in the committee we agreed to set aside about 8 00 we agreed to set aside 800,000 which we will also vote on shortly um of the available fund balance move to capital reserve and that's going
027to fund future buses I didn't I wanted to find but I didn't take the time you oh that's why you wore your yellow thank you um the audit of the school is GNA start on the 16th so very shortly it'll wrap up pretty quickly by the 20th um and Kate's presenting financials so um our next meeting is on the 23rd of October at 4:00 we' be delighted for anybody to join us who wants to um any questions or anything to add did I miss anything FR Jenna long range planning John yeah we uh met on the 13th um when um Todd discussed the Capital Improvements uh preventative maintenance and uh deep cleaning uh' done at each school over the summer uh eight Corners got a new roof uh updated chimney for uh new boilers which
028are backlogged and we don't know when we'll get them but we'll be ready when we do uh they replaced uh HVAC controls um Pleasant Hill and blueo only had uh preventative maintenance and deep cleaning done uh except for one thing at Pleasant Hill which I'll get to uh on the next slide uh the middle school had um 12 of 24 heat pumps replaced the gym roof was replaced uh due to uh leaks replaced flooring in the entrance Lobby and stairs uh new tables and chairs uh in the lunchroom were uh brought in painted exterior doors Library classrooms and Halls oh I should I guess I should change my slide too since I'm reading from it uh at the high school they did painting they new tables and chairs in the library and uh they replaced
029uh an AC unit um from 1988 which is funny which uh to tell you how long they got that thing to last I graduated high school here in Scaro in 1987 so that's um a few years ago and I already had my 35th high school high school reunion so so they got some mileage out of that um all schools had their parking lots uh Lots painted um it seal coed uh the high school Lots um the a quiet room was built at the Pleasant Hill for Behavioral uh challenge students that is uh the one new thing that they did over there um there's some upcoming work uh on masonry uh upgrading Lighting in the middle school and uh painting where needed uh and we'll be having our next meeting after the election are there any
030questions for John do you know I I have question do you know um at eight Corners um the new roof in the upgraded chimney do did he did you talk about cost earning I'm just curious we're spending on our building yeah we didn't we just talked about what was done we didn't uh but I imagine these things probably were in because they budget Forum so he would be able to give you that information I bet try to make my slide more interesting with colors um our last meeting was on September 11th uh we spent uh virtually the entire meeting discussing the staff conduct with students which is a really big and very important policy um we're going to continue that at our next meeting uh we aren't voting on policies you all have a reprieve
031don't get used to it um our next meeting is on October 16th uh we're going to continue staff conduct with students I um hope we can get through that because we have a bunch of required policies that are leap frogging into our agenda um and that has to do with computer internet use for staff and students that's for policies and then physical restraints and seclusion um all new laws go to effect much of those are emergency or not but they they're in effect right now or they will be by the time we have our next meeting so uh we need to get our policies up to date because that's one place where it's very important we get it right but yeah any questions about policy and I think you'll keep going with diversity equity and
032inclusion yes uh last meeting uh was September 12th we uh introduced our new chairs and we talked uh governance rules uh we just went over some B basic fundamentals of how to conduct uh committee business and then worked on a mission statement uh we're going to finish that work at the next meeting and I'm optimistic that we can bring that to this board to vote on uh we also are going to be uh bringing some new members forward for the board to vote on uh any have a Community member and the student shairs uh will be elected so I'll be able to tell you who that will be too shortly they I think they voted on it maybe today so yeah so we should we should have that information there any questions um I have
033um Brian cannot be with us this evening I do have his curriculum update he said that there's not a huge update because their next their meeting is um next Wednesday at six o'clock so he'll have a a more robust update the next me um and then uh liaison reports before we we move over to Grace um his liaison report for the DMT um liaison role is that their first meeting meeting is November 1st if you um have any information you want to share with him or questions you want to ask um they will be meeting November 1st and they did schedule their meetings out for the entirety of the school year are there any other Le on reports uh for the uh the ad hoc Community uh Center advisory committee um so they had uh
034you know the first meeting basic Bally they just went over the the what the where and the how much or how we're going to get to that so we want to know what the program is going to be where are we going to have it and uh how much we're trying to figure out how much it's going to cost so they've uh they had uh some tasks four tasks um that we're going to use to to try to figure all that information out doing um going to research uh analysis and programming review uh previous reports um look at current Regional uh program availability understand operational impacts of uh program elements all sorts of stuff um then we're gonna you know the second phase is going to be getting Community input on programming in the site
035uh then going into conceptual uh layout and uh design studies and then finally coming up with a uh a final report cost estimate and uh economic forecasting um they figure that each of the phases will take you know between one and a half to two months give or take so it could be more could be less um they we also discussed um went through going over past reports uh and the information and uh looking at discussion of uh the financial challenges and the impact that it'll have on taxpayers uh and then we'll be meeting next meeting meeting is next Thursday and actually every two Thursdays going through the the end of the year so we'll have lots more updates is there any questions for John agenda item 9.0 is the student representative report so we'll
036turn it over to Grace let should I do col too yeah would you mind taking care of col is for us thank you okay so for the high school and the middle school um the girls soccer team the high school girl soccer team uh won their game against Bonnie Eagle um 3 to zero and last week the high school had class elections and now every seat for class officers has been filled I that's all for that slide oh there should be more pictures um I'll make sure it's up on website yeah there are a couple other pictures but the primary school started their curriculum mindup um they're learning about their brains and how they work and they're learning to take Brain Breaks to get themselves ready to learn wwth and the primary schools had their
037open house on September 27th which was a huge huge success blueo had their first community meeting where they discussed what their prize would be for filling up a a coin jar coins are earned for being safe kind and focused and the first prize was an outdoor concert with Mr Martell and everyone sang along and had lots of fun is there any are there any questions for Grace okay thank you agenda item 10.0 is FY 23 yearend financial report get to invite Kate Bolton up looks like lots of information thank you so much Shannon um I do have paper these are also sorry get around here these are also linked in to the presentation and they're on the board website so if you're not quite as paper focused as I am you can feel free to
038leave them behind and I'll take them with me put them in my office with all the rest of the paper there is nothing wrong with paper paper is our friend danan can you switch us forward one thank you so much so as as I mentioned um we have a couple of supporting documents on um online so for all the folks who are going to be watching this recording and um tuning in for this you can go and find the supporting documents and and follow along with them I will be referring to the financial statement which is the um kind of stripey one with a with a story on the front uh so that's what I'm going to be using as my base document for this conversation tonight um so for those of you who are
039not in the finance fan club I want to get real simple and just say that tonight's presentation is an overview of the financial reports for the 2022 23 fiscal year which we call FY 23 this represents the accounting period from July 1 2022 through June 30 2023 so this is basically a look back to last school year um so uh for those people who aren't going to watch this riveting presentation there is a narrative that I put in the front of every financial statement that we do all of our quarterly reports are also posted online and the narrative that that's printed there with the with the financial statement is is basically the kind of information that I'm giving you verbally tonight so it should be possible to just read that and and get the gist
040of what we're what we're delivering tonight um you'll see a couple of things on the financial statement it at the top it says pending off it and so until the Auditors go through all of our materials for a fiscal year and close the books for us um there is a chance that there could be adjustments made so that's why we put that label on there tonight we don't really anticipate any major changes but you never know what might turn up and there might be some adjustments so we want to make sure that folks know that we're not absolutely done as Carolyn said um in her presentation um we do have the Auditors coming in to do fieldwork the Auditors work for the town of Scarboro but they also do a uh separate um audit for
041the school department that's focused on some things that department of Ed wants to see and um they're going to be with us in house the week of the 16th um they then will go away and ask us to send us send them um things for a few more weeks maybe a couple of months um but I don't know if you remember remember last year we waited for the audit for such a long time because of the disruption in Personnel in the town finance office um there was uh there was no audit completed until June this year we're anticipating that the audit will go on a more normal schedule um we had a meeting with them today everything's looking good and um an online meeting um so they are expected to issue the FY 23 audit
042by the end of December or before so that's good that's good news next slide please thank you uh so let's just dive right into the financial statement we're talking now about the top of page four the first three pages are the storytelling um the actual financial statement chart begins at the top of page four um and as we've seen in the past few years FY 23 ended with a significant Surplus in the general fund general fund is the K12 operating budget that the voters vote on and it's the majority of what we're doing financially um as Carolyn pointed out our expenditures came in under budget by 2.75 million uh which represents about 3.8% of the FY 23 budget so it's a big number um it would be a l larger percentage of my household budget
043uh but it it is really kind of a small percentage of the overall School uh operating budget uh so understandably this first slide talks about Personnel costs with personal costs representing 80% of our budget um which is pretty typical year-over-year most Surplus was generated in these areas of impact um in wages and benefits as Carolyn pointed out so these are some of the big numbers um with the continuing tight labor market we had multiple positions acoss Ross the district that went unfilled for at least some part of the year and as you see here the most significant ones were in special services at Tex um particularly custodians um bus drivers and then um this business office position is a little bit of an anomaly we had a our HR specialist position um we had our
044uh employee leave um halfway through the year and um partway through um not a choice and partway through a choice we decided not to fill that position um we didn't have great candidates and then as we knew that there were going to be some changes in central office one of them is my colleague sitting over here uh we thought it would be a great opportunity to reorganize and and make sure that we were doing hiring for the right reasons for the right position redoing work uh job descriptions and so forth um so long story short we left that position sitting open um for the better part of the year and as a result we garnered some savings uh over what we had budgeted um and the last bullet is typical turnover savings and so each
045year we budget for the people we know about as we're building the budget by the time we actually get to the time that we're spending that money and all the way to the end of that next year it's 18 months later and so we typically do generate some turnover savings um and that can be be um contributed to both by salaries and also by benefit changes benefit election changes um bottom of the page you see there's a total surplus of about 74 excuse me $748,000 attributable to those factors um then we talk about non-personnel costs um and I've pulled out some of the most significant big numbers so that we can talk about some areas of savings here as well um in the curriculum Department uh we had some Savings in um supplies and services
046and the reason behind that was to do with deciding on different subscriptions that we were going to continue some that we were going to discontinue some price negotiations some changes there um and also we were able to use quite a few Grant funds um a lot of the Esser grants um that are related to the the coid funding that came from the feds um we're specifically around some curriculum development some Services um seal programming so they they fit in really nicely with some of the work that we were already doing um so in some cases we were able to tap into grant funds in instructional technology again looking at turnover and changes of different kinds of um services and subscriptions internet services we were able to shave a bit because we were getting away from
047providing um remote learning option for folks and we're able to pair that down quite a bit more than we expected um in Special Services tuition costs you'll hear me talk at budget time about how volatile that is and when I talk about tuition for special services I'm talking about students who go outside of our district for uh for programs that they can't receive here and so we're paying tuition to a private school for those students um and that can change significantly in a day a week week um it certainly can change a lot in 18 months from the time you build your budget you're building your budget based on what you think is going to be happening with students in that coming year and uh that students needs may change students may come they may
048go from the district so um we did Garner a little bit of savings in that area um in athletics and activities we're showing a little bit of savings as well um reduced offerings that that little bullet is uh generic but what I what I was trying to point to as I was looking at exactly why we had money left over we had uh quite a bit left over at the middle school because um there were programs that we couldn't run it was very difficult to get coaches it still is difficult to get coaches and it's partic particularly difficult at the middle school level um for whatever reason I mean middle schoolers are my favorite but I think because it's less high-profile and we tend to have um lower stip ends and so forth um the
049other place where athletic Athletics and activity saved some money is in off-site transportation some of that's attributable to the delayed deferred schedule on the track and turf um because we had anticipated doing the entire track replace Turf replacement plus track repair at the same time and as it ended up happening in FY 23 we we split the too and so we didn't have students going off campus to other facilities for sports as much as we thought they might um so a total of about 260,000 there and again I'm going kind of round numbers but just kind of showing you a snapshot of where where the big buckets are so the single largest factor in this year's Surplus was Debt Service um you can see a nice round number of $500,000 there um and that has
050again a little bit to do with the um I'll call it upheaval I guess in the town finance office um where one of my colleagues retired after many many years and that position went unfilled for a little bit of time and um as a result of that turnover and concentrating on some other things uh the town never actually did a new bond issue last year in FY 23 and that $500,000 represents the amount of money that we estimate that new bond issue would cost us um so between um the the uh actual costs of Prior debt that had been issued which we knew about and then not having any new debt issued with any um payments due in FY 23 we we retained basically exactly $500,000 which is you know that's that's quarter of of
051the um Surplus that we're talking about today um in facilities i u carollyn alluded to this as well a little bit we had uh a savings of actually about 188,000 due to our new electricity contract rate um which was terrific now that was offset a little bit gasoline was over budget um surprise I'm sure nobody's noticed that um but on a as a whole energy cost and that includes natural gas oil propane um ALC call throw in vehicle fuel and um uh electricity we were able to attain a surplus of 161,000 and in some ways that the natural gas costs were the ones that we were most worried about um very volatile and uh we got good advice from our consultants and we were able to budget appropriately for those so even though there was
052an increase we were ready for for it so that was cool um and the last little bullet on this page is system administration which is basically central office operations I'm hoping my voice doesn't go on me excuse me um unemployment has been uh not so much of a problem lately I don't know if you've noticed that either There's jobs available and anybody who has l the district and was collecting unemployment um those numbers have dropped extraordinarily and so we did um achieve a little bit of savings there and for Legal Services um we do have legal services for lots of different reasons but I noticed in this particular year because we didn't have a lot of collective bargaining agreements up for renewal in FY 23 um that that's one of the the areas where we
053do use a lot of legal support so I'm I'm attributing some savings to that as as well uh total of $713,000 on this page so you can see we're kind of creeping towards that 2 million um these are the major factors that we're talking about and the remainder comes from Little incremental balances across all of the other expenditure accounts in the budget you know I I complain about the fact that there's 700 accounts out there and you know if you have $5 do here and 100 there it adds up but those are the big ones uh so this slide tells you that the school board has a policy that says that any individual line item account in the budget that is overspent by $10,000 or more must be um fixed for lack of a better
054word with a budget transfer at the year end and that has to be done by the board to make sure that um I mean I think that the the reason behind the policy is that we we want the board to be aware and and and to call out some of the issues that might be out there so that when you go into the next budget development process you're kind of thinking about those things um this year we have 12 accounts that are overspent by $110,000 or more and that is the sort of candy colored stripey page that you have there um what that strapy page does for you is it gives you the deficit accounts in the sort of Pinky color what color is that salmon okay pick pick a color um and then it
055gives you in the green it gives you an account in that same budget category that has a surplus that you can use to to cover the deficit so this voting process tells you I've got an overage in this line I've overspent my budget but it also tells you I have money available in another are area that I save that I can use to to close that deficit um there is a sort of a legend on that worksheet that if there is a um a surplus available not in the same voter approved budget category that would show up in yellow where you just don't have any surplus in that budget category and you need to reach out to another category to do your transfer that's not the case this year um it has been the case
056occasionally from one year to the next um but in this case all of our budget um all of our deficits are easily covered within the same budget category every budget category this year has at least a small Surplus and if you flip over to the back of that page you'll see that um we have no transfers between budget categories and that is important only because um there's a statute that says that you cannot transfer more than 5% from any budget C category into another one after the voters have said this is where it goes and that's why when the voters go to the polls they're looking at well maybe they are they they're provided with a uh chart that shows those different budget categories and and where we've placed those funds for use so if
057I were to say you know this is how much money we have for um student and staff support but I'd really rather spend it on facilities I'm constrained in that because the voters have told me that you know yeah you you've picked a number for facilities you kind of need to stick with it and the 5% is our wiggle room but again this year we don't have a need to make any transfers outside of of those voter categories it's all within all right so let's talk for just a second about Revenue um that's at the bottom of page four on the financial statement and revenues were very close to budgeted projections in FY um we'll have a little bit of an offset uh shortfall in general fund revenues obviously the large expenditure Surplus is going
058to save us there um the shortfall is about $33,000 and um the areas that were under budgeted projections in that category were state agency client reimbursements I'll come back to that in a second and activity and rental fees um and those were really still um kind of rebounding after coid we really hadn't ramped up our normal level of facility rentals um Student Activity F fees were still building back but then when you have um the inability to run some programs you then you lose the fees from those as well um quick note on state agency clients a state agency client is a student um who is what in the ancient times we used to call Ward of the state um supported by state funds and so if you have a student like that in your
059District you can actually ask the state to give you money for the um for the services that you provide to that child this is completely dependent on the individual child's eligibility and so if children are coming and going through Scarboro and through our programs and um through our grades um we don't always know exactly who are going to be our eligible students um so predicting the amount of Revenue that we're going to get is notoriously difficult in that area um but the shortfall is not you know significant in terms of the big picture right so the next slide this one is is the um big picture transition from the beginning to the end of the fiscal year in the general fund so at the top of the chart you start with the beginning of the
060fiscal year um starting with July 1 at the end of last fiscal year when I was standing here a year ago um we had fund balance of 3.8 million and we had already devoted 1.5 million of that to the FY 23 budget so we had what's called undesignated balance fund balance is what's left over what what do you have that you haven't allocated towards something you don't have a plan for it um the center part of the chart is the um the events of FY 23 and this is just a summary of what we've just been talking about so you have the surplus of 2.75 million in um what is labeled Appropriations that's expenditures the revenue balance was a little bit of a shortfall um the FY 23 year end adjustments this is the $800,000
061that we're um recommending to be voted to be put into the capital reserve fund and I'll have a a little slide about that later on that we'll talk about um so that would leave the the fund balance that we generate rated just during FY 23 at 1.3 million um then you go down to the bottom you add the 7122 undesignated to what we generated in FY 23 get a total and then remember that we've used 1.5 million as Revenue in our FY 24 budget so the fiscal year that we've already started into were already designated some of that money as revenue for this current year that leaves that bottom line of undesignated fund balance as of June 30 2023 at 2156 million um so use of fund balance in Maine is also governed by Statute
062and for public schools right so if you're a business and you have fund balance you can decide how you want to invest that or what you're going to do with it if you're a school department and you have fund balance at the end of the school year you're a public school um the State tells you that you cannot hold more than 3% of the previous year's budget um without then applying it to an ensuing year and relieving uh the pressure on your taxpayers because you've collected those as taxes for the most part um in F in uh 2021 the legislature changed that amount because there was so much money coming into school districts um in the way of federal funds coid was turning things upside down there were a lot of surpluses being generated that
063were much bigger in school districts than they would normally have been so the state legislature changed that law and they said that now you can carry up to 5% and this is 5% of your operating budget right so that's why I was talking about earlier that that Surplus represented about 3.8% for us um there's even higher exemptions allowed from fy22 fy22 through fy2 25 so they're recognizing that School departments are just like flush with money right now and so instead of saying that you know you have to put all of that back into the next year into your budget they're recognizing that School departments like us are trying to kind of Step that down and to retain that money to be able to give tax relief not just in one year but in maybe two
064or three or four years as we move forward um and so the Bo knows use of fund balances non- tax revenue has been a really critical tool that we've used to try to reduce our tax ask um especially over the past three budget years um we were talking in finance about the surpluses that we would normally see back in the olden days um say fy20 we use $350,000 of fund balances Revenue 350 um in fy21 it was 750 um in fy22 it was 1.5 sorry it was 1 million and it's been 1.5 million for the for last year and this year so um it is my expectation that we are going to back off on that I would love to see us have large surpluses forever because I think it gives us a really great
065standing um financially but I I do recognize that you know that growth in our in our fund balance at year end is really attributable to the crazy economic conditions that we've been in for the past few years um but this amount that we have at the end of FY 23 is about what we're carrying um from fy22 so it's going to keep us in a good place um so now we have uh this is in the middle of page five of the financial statement we start into the smaller School funds um that are labeled here um we'll start with adult education and uh that's at the bottom of page five um in adulted um similar to last year we have a budget Savings in personnel and supplies due to a kind of a slow return
066to full programming they've been ramping up ramping up um but they did still um come in under our budget projections based on what they were able to offer for programs we have seen a shift away from Health Care programs um pre-co our healthc care programs were one of our most were some of our most popular offerings for adults and when I say healthare I mean like CNA um uh medical reporting what is it called medical coding those those things yeah and PSS there's a there was a couple of um Workforce related Health Services programs that were just staggeringly popular everybody wanted to take them because it's you know it's it's um great jobs right um not so much great jobs when you're faced with a global pandemic I guess so that has ped off quite
067a bit for us however we have had um a big boom continued boom in our um population of English language Learners and one of the things that uh adul head has tried to do is to marry um literacy programs so actually learning language with works course programs they've had some really cool Partnerships this past year um they had a partnership with Abbott Labs they had a partnership with the scarbo library um the adulted director is continually pursuing Federal and local grants to support that kind of work um because there's a lot out there and so really uh a lot of our new maners have benefited enormously from those programs and been able to not just find a job but find the language skills that allow them to thrive in their new job um so the
068the year-end fund balance in adulted is um something that we keep an eye on because just like we do with the general fund even though it's not 1.5 million we do use a little bit each year as ta as non- tax revenue so we're not asking for that much tax support um the year end of Delta education fund balance rate now is 47,4 $1 and that's after we set aside $30,000 as non-t tax revenue for fy4 so they're in a good place oh Diane if you go ahead I'm sorry there's a there's individual ones for these guys gotcha that was that was just the table of contents I take that one out um at the top of page six on the financial statement you're going to find school nutrition um and boy are they surfing
069hard they are navigating the waves of change rolling in from the state and the FEDS uh over the past few years so in in fy22 you may remember that we started to deliver Universal free meals all students regardless of income eligibility and the numbers of breakfast and lunch breakfasts and lunches that we serve just started to multiply um in FY 23 the federal government reverted to back to their prior funding levels and so they we lost that Revenue that we were getting in fy22 however the state passed legislation legislation and funding support to keep free meals for all students and so what's interesting when you look at the financial statements if you look at the revenues you can see that we have a huge shortfall in federal what we thought we were getting from the
070feds but it's all made up with what we were getting from the state for the most part um the other thing that uh that we were a little surprised by was the revenue for food sales because food sale Revenue had basically plummeted when we started giving free mails and we weren't able to offer some of the alicart options that we did for kids during coid because it wasn't safe in terms of you know salad bar lunch uh Sandwich Bar um some of the things that would require ire a little bit less packaging and a little bit more Hands-On um all of those things came back at the high school and middle school um in FY 23 and so you see we got a little bit more Revenue than we predicted in that area as well
071um so again in f23 the program ends with a small Surplus uh almost 59,000 and that's added to the really gigantic amount that was generated in fy22 um so those folks have a really pushy fund balance and um if you've been in my fan club for a long time I've every year I've given a speech about how important it is for us to have a robust and um service oriented School Nutrition department regardless of the fact that I was always asking you for more money to fund it because we were always in a deficit and I just love standing here and not asking for more money and still telling you how great our food service program is so this is very exciting for me and our food service director who all smiles today when we
072were talking um special Revenue funds so special Revenue funds that's at the bottom of page six Federal grant funds um this includes local and state grants trusts and special revenues um in FY 23 we were closing out the last of the coid grant related coid related Grant funds um we have in past years shared a lot more information about what was paid for with those grants and I didn't really include that here because there's so much documentation out on our website um if you look at the um board's budget page um on the district website there's a ton of information um particularly on Esser 3 which is the the big one that we had left we used up the balance of Esser 2 um for supplemental teaching staff at w went withth and middle school
073and then we switched over to the last Grant which is sr3 um and there's a big description of all the different things that we were able to do with that Grant um all of these grants are done as of September 30th so you will not be listening to me talk about this much longer I can't say I'm really sorry I love the money but the work is hard um Diane I will put have you put that back for just one sec um the one place where we do not have all of our reimbursements in I've I've said this before I think that federal grants are are given to you on a reimbursement basis so you have to spend the money and then you put in your invoice to the state the state is the agent
074for those those funds and the state sends you the reimbursement um if you look at the financial statement the one where we're really out of whack expenditures to revenues is is Esser 3 ARP Esser um that um invoicing process has been um I think a kind word is painful very slow um the state has not been super effective in how they've been managing that particular Grant in my opinion um so we don't have all of our money yet um but we have the process we have the approval we know the funds are you know allocated to us for the reason that we've spent them and so I have great confidence that I'm going to get all that money in the next few weeks um the other grants that are on the that same chart are
075the I guess you'd call them regular grants that we have all the time Title One title two uh title four and local entitlement and um under the the smaller local grants and the special funds I guess the there's a couple things I would point out there one is that after spending down the pretty much the whole balance in the tech tech maintenance Fund in fy22 we've started to rebuild that um you'll remember that we designated a small Universal fee for all students starting FY 23 of $15 so you can see that account starting to build up again and ultimately that money can be used to offset the cost of future tech device Replacements um so that essentially the the um families are putting money into a pool to help support the ongoing replacement and repair
076of those devices the other one would be similar to last year school nutrition special programs fund shows a little fund deficit at year end um however we received a $10,000 Grant over the summer so that put us back in the black and we continue to get regular donations um for the backpack program which is really the bulk of what comes out of that account that fund all right so Capital Improvements I heard uh John's report and he has a lot of cool stuff in his report so he he knows some some things that happened that I didn't have on my list but um most of our Capital um accounts these are going to be on page seven the last page of the financial statement most of these accounts are multi-year ongoing areas of investment um
077so when like when John was talking about Roofing that's something that we do every year according to a replacement cycle um well what we call movable equipment Furnishings um worn out Furnishings are replaced on a cycle so we're always looking for a a chunk of money in each year that's going to the same thing but to different areas of the district um as John noted HVAC repairs go on at Middle School um and at K2 the um question about funding um expensive repairs at the K2 schools in our current situation the the one thing that we're working on there in HVAC is the boilers um there's two boilers in each school and they are ancient um and they have been put together with the grace of God and Todd jebson to keep going um but
078we what we decided to do was to try to replace one at each school so they they could have at least one new functioning boiler and then the other could be there as the backup that's basically where that's going to um we also have uh couple of big items let's see I didn't put this on the list on the bullets but we did add a walk-in freezer at Wentworth because we had such a huge increase in food supplies for meal prep because again the you meals are um meal numbers are up so high um we bought our usual three replacement buses and oh we had a a very interesting Innovation and transportation with our new software that was a cool investment and um I don't know if anybody's ridden a bus yet but you get
079to log in with your iPad it's really super cool um other things that I was excited about adding a wheelchair Mobility Mobility accessible play area to the Wentworth playground which you got to check out if you haven't because there's really cool new um play structures there um and a surface that's easy to navigate instead of the wood chips so that's that's exciting um we finished the turf replacement portion of the Athletics um field upgrade um athletics department upgrade and um if anyone has missed this so far tonight we have the building project and we did start in FY 23 was the first big investment um that's um reflected in the longrange planning CIP account if you're looking at the chart I linked in um the uh the link to the website so one more plug
080for the building project um from the financial side that was one of the major Investments that we made in um FY 23 and that was the beginnings of that design and Engineering work um the planning work that Herman's been doing for us all right I want FR to see this slide because it has a bus on it I was asked for a bus yes we got it we got the bus um so as I as I mentioned earlier and so did Carolyn one of the two action items we have for tonight will be to move some of that year- end Surplus into our capital reserve fund this slide has some notes about the origins of the fund um and its current status um and you've heard some comments from from my colleagues and finance committee
081as well this explains that we started with $600,000 but we've really kind of spent it all down um we used some in f23 and we used uh we committed more in FY 24 for for buses and so the finance committee felt really strongly that we need to you know not just have this be a oneshot deal because we had extra Revenue in one year this is something that we really need to sustain um so that we can continue to have funds available to support Capital expenditures um as the years go on um as shanon mentioned um the TR the track and turf there is an area there where um it was evident that there wasn't effective strategic savings done for un known replacement that would happen um because it's long term and it's hard to
082think that way right but this is going to give us this this is going to give us a vehicle to continually add and continually sustain that balance and and give us um a way to avoid asking for tax dollars or bonding and borrowing money and paying interest it's just a really great tool for us right and I think um these are the Motions that are going to come up tonight under new business um pretty sure that's it for me so any questions clear clear I sometimes think that when I'm looking at the accounts and until I hear you remind me again and again um the the fund balance is not a savings account per se can you explain it so that um for those that aren't familiar with a fund balance what that means sure
083yeah so so the fund balance again it's it's really um it's really covered under statute it what it what it represents is the money that was raised for the school's budget um it's as we try to budget for as close as possible to what we think our expenditures are going to be right so the problem with a school budget is that unlike a business we can't go over budget we are um required to stay within the spending parameters that are given to us by the town by the by the voters of the town of Scarboro so the Town Council says you can have this much money voters of scarb say you can have this much money and if we have an unexpected need then that means that that money needs to come from within that
084amount right so generally speaking we don't budget to the penny um we make sure that we have sufficient funds and we've had some conversations about this sufficient funds for example to fill all of our positions and there have been conversations about well should we Budget on the assumption that we're not going to fill all our positions um if we do that then we are able to fill all of our positions well we can't because we don't have the authority to spend that money so we try to budget for what we need if we are unable to spend that money however it belongs to the taxpayers of Scar bro it belongs to the school district first and it belongs to the taxpayer second so we have to use that money for school operations School expenditures and
085the mechanism by which we do that that is we adopt our year-end fund balance we we not it we know what it is and then we plan to use it in the ensuing years as non-t tax revenue in those following years budgets so I think Shannon was saying earlier you you can't raise money just to save it you have to raise it for a reason there's no point in me going to the taxpayers of Scarboro and saying geez I'd really like an extra $500,000 I have to have a reason that I think I'm going to spend that money but the fact is that at the end of the year I'm probably going to have some money left over and whether it be $350,000 like it was an fy20 or whether it be a million and
086a half dollars like it is today it's still money that's going to go back to the taxpayers in the form of non-t tax revenue and ensuing budget years now the capital reserve fund is another kind of mechanism where you can set that money aside for specific purposes but again you're relieving pressure on the taxpayers by having that money to use for your buses for example instead of going out to the bond market paying interest or instead of appropriating tax dollars to make that expense happen um I I wandered a bit but am I getting to what you're what you thinking yeah because I think um sometimes we're we're asked um why aren't we saving money for things or why why aren't we saving an advance when we know we have an expenditure why are we
087bonding and and so I frequently find myself saying explaining what you just did that we cannot raise taxes to then save it just put them aside right that's not that's not something that's in our capabilities but this capital reserve fund does allow us it's kind of I almost in my mind think of it as like a a back end when we know we have revenues a backend savings and mechanism for us to um to save for things we know are coming we know the track and turf comes every 10 years we know we replace three school buses a year and so this year we were able to buy a school bus from our capital reserve fund without without bonding or appropriating tax money so exctly um I just think every year it's worth another another
088ask for you to explain I think it's important to hear yeah yeah and it's odd because you think about your household budget or your business budget and it just doesn't work that way right um but in in a public entity like the school department those funds are treated as the property of the district and the taxpayers at the same time and you're really just you know you you can't um I can't say hey I'm going to raise more taxes because I want to put it over here and think about it later but I can save the money that I did generate during the course of the year that Surplus that I did generate and put it to good use in that way later yeah thank you are there any further questions for thank you so
089much you're welcome thank you for listening late at night to numbers all right agenda item uh 11.0 is new business 11.1 is a motion um I'm actually I'm gonna turn this over to Carolyn let her yes I have a motion to make um move to uh move the approval to authorize budget transfer for accounts overspent by more than $110,000 as presented by the school board presented to the school board by the business office thank you do we have a motion still moved second is there any discussion all in favor it's unanimous thank you all right my last one is the move to approve to transfer year-end fund balance to the school capital reserve fund funds allocated are $800,000 of general fund Surplus created in FY 23 as recommended by the business office and the Schoolboard
090finance committee thank you Carolyn do I have a motion so moved second is there any discussion all in favor oh do you have a discussion or were you voting I'm sorry I apologize okay um I just want to say I did wear schoolb today for a reason I'm going to call this the John kuchy slide and I'm going to send a text a picture of it um I I just want to say that the finance committee for the town really pushed the finance committee for the school board last budget cycle um and what they push us on specifically was this capital reserve fund and making sure that when we had the ability to through the fund balance to fund the capital reserve that they really push us to do that that money represents almost three
091school buses and that is exactly what they asked us to do so I think it's important to to note that we are planning for the future but the specific request was to make sure that we are bonding buses right now if we move the buses over to to from bonding we are reducing the ask it's not a huge Bond request compared to the school building a school bus is not a lot of money but it's a small set that this board can take right now to reduce the current amount of bonding that we're going to be asking for and the future bonding in at least the next few years that we'll be asking for and I think that's really important because we did we did tell the town coun the town finance committee particularly Donn
092clut that we would try and I think it's really important that we're delivering today oh thank you for that I think that is very important is there any further questions or discussion all right all in favor and we are unanimous thank you agenda item 11.3 is a motion to approve the superintendent and Schoolboard goals so these are the ones um the goals that jefff um went over earlier with us so do I have a motion to approve the goals as presented so moved second is there any discussion all in favor perfect it's unanimous thank you agenda item 11.4 are appointments 11.4.1 is a Wentworth social worker all right so Jennifer fin has been selected to fill this one-year position due to a maternity leave uh Miss fin received her Bachelor's of Arts degree in social
093work from University of New Hampshire and received her master's degree from University of New England she has 21 years of direct clinical experience working with Children and Families it's been in private practice since 2005 and during that time has also worked with K to5 schools in Bonnie Eagle all right do I have a motion to approve the Wentworth social worker as presented so moov second is there any discussion all in favor perfect it's unanimous thank you 11.4.2 are the Wentworth co-curriculars please see attached list do I have a motion to approve the Wentworth co-curriculars as presented so moved second is there any discussion all in favor perfect thank you it's unanimous agenda item 11.4.3 or the high school co-curriculars I'll also refer you to the um rather lengthy spreadsheet do I have a motion to
094approve the high school co-curriculars as presented so move second is there any discussion all in favor perfect thank you it's unanimous um 114.4 is the Middle School curriculars do I have a motion to approve them as presented oh well no let me go here first I apologize the middle school club activity advisors are wedged in between like the middle school always is Wentworth and the high school do I have a motion to approve the middle school co-curriculars as presented so moved second is there any discussion I just want to say it's very cool that there's a Lego robotics co-curriculars class at the middle school and I feel like that's probably an incredibly popular yeah I feel like that's an incredibly popular Club all right um all in favor it's unanimous thank you I'm going to
095AB bundle 11.5 and 11.6 which are the M meeting minutes of August 17 2023 and the meeting minutes of September 7th 2023 do I have a motion to approve them as presented all mov second is there any discussion all in favor perfect it's unanimous thank you agenda item 12.0 is adjournment do I have a motion to adjourn second is there any discussion all in favor perfect it's unanimous thank you have a good