001oh yeah it makes sense and i will get there i pledge the republic allegiance which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all one motion i will prove today uh mr stoddard is absent so we will need to appoint an acting secretary so i do move to appoint lisa prescott as acting secretary for tonight's meeting thank you any discussion all those in favor support agenda is a presentation for our annual audit presentation by clinton the llc we would welcome tiffany thank you okay all right thank you for having me tonight um the 2022 audit was a great audit as always i think this is the first board presentation that we are doing um for our school season and i think dewitt's financial statements were the first set of financial statements
002we issued as a firm so i do want to thank rob and his team for being able being responsive being able to close the book so quickly i'm really not aware of another district that can pull that off so quickly especially with all the federal funding that's going around right now um that's a big undertaking so thank you rob so the board packet that you receive has four documents and it has the audited financial statements it has the federal awards the single audit it has a letter to the board which is the result of the audit and then it has this graph presentation so i'm going to focus on the graph presentation but i did want to show just one thing in the federal awards audit the very last page of the financial statements in
003the federal awards is kind of a good summary of the results of the audit and it includes the basic financial statement results which say that we have encountered no findings and there are no internal control deficiencies identified and then the same thing for the federal awards audit it also lists what federal program we tested as part of the single audit which was the child nutrition cluster and then it also includes a section that asks about a low-risk audit status and you will see that dewitt is marked no in this section and the only reason that dewitt is a no as a low-risk auditee is a low-risk oddity requires two years history of a single audit and this is only the second time in about 10 years i think that dewitt has had a single audit
004and it's really that covet funding that pushed um do it over the threshold last year so after this year so next year's single audit you will have two years under your ballot saying about it and you will have that low risk on a t status really the primary difference when you have that designation is the coverage requirement for single audits so if you're not a low risk on a team we have to test at least 40 percent of the federal expenditures if you are a low-risk audit we test 20 so that is the biggest difference there so the rest of the presentation will focus on this board presentation graph presentation and this really does a good job of summarizing all those documents that are included in your packets so this slide here actually the next
005few slides talk about the required communications under au260 so this would be a summary of the information included in that letter to the board we are here to report that we are issuing an unmodified or clean opinion on the financial statements of the district which is the highest level of assurance that we can give as auditors on a set of financial statements we did complete our audit in accordance with the planned timing and scope letter that you received on july 28th and our report date was august 19 2022. the significant accounting policies of the district are included in note 2 to the financial statements there is a new accounting policy this year it's called gassy 87. it was it requires leases to be included on the full approval statements essentially so there's not a huge
006impact on the fund level financial statements that you see most often in these board meetings just a classification of expenditure difference there but on the full accrual statements any lease assets and the related present value of those lease payments have to be reported as an asset and of course signing liability so essentially it's grossing off the balance sheet a little bit so that would be the bus leases and the copier leases of the district the financial statements also include significant estimates as it relates to the pension and other post-employment benefits under the um mipster's pension and open plans similar to prior years both have been included in the financial statements the next few slides you're going to hear 11 no's no's are a good thing here there were no difficulties encountered in performing the audit
007there were no audit adjustments identified by us there were no uncorrected audit adjustments there were no disagreements with management and no internal control deficiencies noted no significant findings or issues no fraud or illegal acts identified and no consultations with any other accountants that we are aware of and as i mentioned before though the management representation letter was received at august 19th and that is the date of the financial statements the um we are issuing an unmodified opinion as i mentioned before the financial statements are still the responsibility of management plant moran is responsible for rendering that opinion on the financial statements um so before i get into the details of the finances are there any questions on those slides that are more qualitative than in the future so this slide presents the general fund assets
008and liabilities as of june 30 2022. so assets of the district were about 11 million as of june 30. and they primarily consist of two primary categories the receivables category which is 5.6 million at your end and that's primarily made up of july and august state aid payments that are received after the district's year end and then cash and investments pretty self-explanatory but that's the next day it's february at 5.3 million assets are down from last year about 1.5 million and the reason for that decrease is in the cash and investments category and it's because the liabilities are also down so anytime you pay off a liability you obviously have a decrease in cash or if you use deferred revenue that's a use of cash so we'll see that on the other side of this
009graph the liabilities were about 4.9 million at year end and they consist of primarily the accrued liabilities category which would be july and august accrual for teacher contracts that are paid out after the district's year end and also the state aid anticipation note which is the short term borrowing used to bridge state aid that one year borrowing that's due in august of every year very low interest rate the balance at june 30 2022 is less than it was at 2021 because it was less borrowing last year the other decrease in liabilities it's hard to see on this graph it's in that other category which is the gold category that's 111 000 at june 30 2022 that balance was 1.3 million last year because it included deferred revenue related to the state equalization funds that were
010received by the district that weren't spent as of last june but were spent this year so they were deferred revenue in cash last year this year they were spent on eligible expenditures and reduced the cash balance reduce the deferred revenue the next slide shows general fund revenue and this includes prior year for comparison so you'll see that revenue increased about point two point nine million or about nine percent from prior year the federal sources are included in gold in the graph um the federal sources in the general fund are primarily the esf grants so those would be your esser dollars and year dollars things like that the remaining federal revenue that was received by the district is in the child nutrition um program which is in the food service fund which isn't shown at this
011graph but that was about 1.2 million and as i mentioned before that's the program we tested as part of the single audit and there were no compliance findings the state sources is in teal that's the largest category of revenue and that's really impacted by two primary things the foundation allowance which increased significantly from prior year from eight thousand one hundred and eleven dollars per pupil to eight thousand seven hundred dollars per people in 2022. the other thing that impacts the state sources would be the pupil count there was a change in how the state determines the people count in 2022 it went back to the traditional formula of ninety percent of the fall count and ten per ten percent the previous spring last year it was a super blend formula as a result of coven
012to try to smooth the effects of cobin so there was a change in the count this year which led to a decrease in group account of 58 students but when you get those two factors together you still saw an increase in state sources the next two slides present general fund expenditures so this one presents the expenditures by function as expected with an increase in revenue the expenses are also up 2.7 million or about 8.7 percent this graph breaks them out by type so 67 was instruction 27 was support and six percent to others all of these are pretty consistent with prior year the one thing i wanted to point out that you'll notice is when i mentioned the district adopted against the 87 it changed the classification of both these payments for the copiers and
013buses so they were previously included in support services and now they are in debt service expenditures so you'll see a little bit of a flip in that support and other category this also presents expenditures same same expenditure categories um just by uh object code on this slide versus function code on the previous slide again very consistent with prior year salaries and fringes make up about 87 of total expenditures this year versus 85 in the previous year and then that shift for the lease payments that i mentioned earlier in this slide you'll see it between supplies and other which is where it was last year and then debt service where those lease payments are reported this year any any questions on those before i get into category this slide here looks at dewitt versus other schools
014in the area and the amount of money spent on operating expenses versus instruction so this information is on a one year leg so this is as of june 30 2021 because the data for 2022 is not yet available for the other schools um but dwight is clearly a leader in this category always has been on this graph as long as i can remember for every dollar the district spends 71 or 71 cents of that dollar goes directly to instructional or classroom type expenditures you can see some of the other districts along the bottom and then the state average is 62 so you're above that state average with that 71 this graph takes a closer look at fund balance as a percentage of total expenditures and then it compares it to the state average the state
015average is that line above the bar graph over the past five years you will see dewitt has been trending upward the state average has also been trending upward state average as of last year was nineteen point three percent do it was at fifteen point five percent last year up to 17.9 percent this year and we do expect that state average to follow a similar trend and take off when we break apart the 17.9 percent for 2022 0.5 of the fund balance is in a non-spendable form which would mean it's prepaid costs or inventory costs two percent would be assigned so that would be budgeted use of fund balance in the next fiscal year based on the adopted budget or carryover projects for next year and then the remaining balance of 15.4 is unassigned this last
016slide compares the fund balance which is on the modified accrual basis of accounting to the statement of net position um which is on the volatile basis of accounting so you can see a big discrepancy between the fund level total so this is all funds not just general fund so this is 14.5 million at june 30 and then the net position for the district is negative 39.7 billion as of june 30 2022 and the biggest difference between those two numbers is the addition of that pension and opec liability that i have mentioned before all districts are required to report their share of that liability i can give you the numbers for 2022 the pension liability was 43.6 million and the oppeb liability was 2.8 million so those are what's kind of shifting that that fund level
017fund balance to a negative net position on the fund level side um the only thing i wanted to point out because we talked about the general fund already which is the 6.1 million um the 6.9 million is in the 2022 capital projects fund so that's where the bond proceeds of the 2022 bonds are sitting to be used on the 2022 bond project since subsequent years any questions questions mine is about balance compared to i mean we're below the state average but compared to other districts are we kind of okay you're seeing we're seeing similar trends a lot of the districts that i see are just below that state average amount but all ticking upward what is the recommended um it really varies there's no set percentage it really varies district by district a lot of
018districts will use 10 to 15 percent fund balance number but you know getting to that state average is a goal of a lot of districts as well so just for some historical conflicts you've grown forward using my experience has always been varied so i just want to thank um rob again for being so prepared with audit um it's nice to get it done on everyone's plate and it is nice to get this board meeting out of the way before i go on maternity so this is probably the only one this year so if you have any questions in the meantime um my contact information is here jamie smacker is the partner on the audit you can also reach out to her if needed thank you for your time thank you thank you and thank you
019rob and your staff too for getting this all together so quickly to be the first one that brings us to public communication for items found on the agenda is the practice of the board of education to permit persons of the audience concerning agenda items at this time please complete a public comment form and return to the more desk if you wish to speak or prefer to express the written comment all the comments will be limited to three minutes no produces may speak more than once we'll move to the consent agenda is the recommendation by superintendent sean spicker the board of education approved items for immediate implementation appropriate action as presented approval of minutes and regular meetings on august 8 2022 work session august 22nd 2022 treasurer's report and bills for payment the month of august
02022 that have been reviewed by the treasurer items for annual approval including including the 21-22 audit report prepared by plant moran pllc professional hiring of wendy smith is a twit middle school science teacher and an out-of-state overnight field trip for whit high school marching band competition in toledo ohio do i have a motion moved and supported any discussion i have one question on so there were a couple of things i did ask mike norman to put on there where parents could sponsor another student so we have had some sponsorships or scholarships coming in and i did tell him to let me know if there were students who were unable to go and want to make sure we found some resources so thank you can i respond to that um so mr norman did give an
021update today on the number of sponsorships that we have for kids who couldn't go not only this trip but also our future potential indianapolis trip which is 175 so we are getting apparent supporting contributions to sponsor the kids thank you yes can you tell us a little bit about yourself um yeah i was a teacher and i retired from colgate and things like that and it opened up the opportunity to come back to teaching and i wasn't ready to retire it was a very short decision and a short decision coming back too so i'm really excited to be back it's been a great couple of weeks i'm glad to be back in question again well we're happy to have you welcome thank you all right all those in paper you say hi host action items
022it is the recommendation by superintendent john speaker that the board of education approved the generous donations 600 from kingsley insurance group for the welding back staff meetings thank you letter will be sent from the board so thank you to kingsley for taking care of that for all of our staff okay it's been supported any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye stay posed motion carries okay on to public communications for any topic including items outline on the agenda is the practice board of education to permit persons in the audience to make statements concerning items not listed on the agenda at this time you and uh congratulations it's always good to successfully survive an hog and it's good for the taxpayers 72 cents of every dollar goes to an achievement thank you i
023was talking last time ran out of time okay concerning the radicalization of the teaching and calling into question the convention that the nea had in chicago in july and some of the initiatives that they were sponsoring and i have not seen the results of the voting i'm not a member honestly and but i do think the board the superintendent should be aware of some of these if you're not already so i'm just highlighting the interesting more interesting ones uh new business item 41 the nea will take all measures and steps to defeat overturn the don't say gay law in florida there is no such thing in addition why is a union doing that the union why is that why are they spending money to do that okay by keeping in mind the mea is an
024affiliate and those of you i i do have 30 years of labor-industrial relations both union non-union international national organization so i fully aware of the relationship between an affiliate and the international nbi 35 30 53 creative policy task force to develop strategies for placing intersectionality that's a cit term of climate justice environmental racism crt term why in the world is a labor union that teaches students interested in passing this how is it going to work in new business item 63 and he able to inform states and locals the following sample language that may be put in contract parental leave instead of maturity parent instead of mother or father birthing parent instead of mother non-birthing parent instead of father and it's interesting because they're using this language so they don't alert board of education or solicitors
025as far as maternity leave and so it'd be a more inclusive term they're bypassing traditional values okay in addition there are other things that they are sponsoring young people's right to learn about and develop their own sexual orientation and gender identity what in the world are teachers involved in and a union get involved in of this sort in addition this is an interesting one they want to spend 140 000 on researching the largest 25 organizations that are actively working to diminish a student's right to honesty and education freedom of sexual and individual autonomy thank you lisa one question is this a union that you support as members of this board if it is you better understand what they do thank you guys um i think i came before you last december advocating for the archery
026program about the team at the club are the people involved with the kids in general or why i was here i would love to help better educate the entire community on mass nast is the founding program on which directory program runs its national archery in the school program and the way that it runs is the school's adopter program they get teachers certified they teach it in the classroom they put it in curriculum so all kids have an opportunity to learn archery and until that really happens here the entire program does stand still so last year i signed a letter with the principal at the middle school other coaches signed letters with the principal of the high school nothing really transpired because of the confusion a lot of it probably had to do with polar related
027issues but in general for this program to be successful here in david we need to ensure that children that they have an opportunity to learn this as a curriculum whether it's in gym math history whatever it can be taught at as long as the teacher's certified and then the schools have so many hours of 10 hours minimum per year for school for these kids to have an opportunity to do this and without that the whole program is really again at a standstill we can go back and forth between the clubs between the parents between whatever we have in community but ultimately it's up to you guys to adopt this into a curriculum get teachers certified and these kids have an opportunity to learn an amazing technique lifelong adventure with archer on the other issue the
028club i'd like to maybe address that next meeting but right now at least put this into a program i would love to invite the state director and miss kathy garland have her come here with her team she is the state director for the dnr i personally got certified through her in detroit at her class love to have her come here and really educate you guys on how this benefits not only the kids but the community also the township so this evening i want to talk about how actions speak louder than words if this school board truly values the community the parents the taxpayers the voters then the right thing to do is to reinstate the time duration for public comments historically as we're all aware public comments were given five minutes per person on agenda-related
029topics and then five minutes for non-agenda related ties the current school board reduced and restricted public comments to three minutes per person per topic and this policy change was voted on last november so i'm using my measly three minutes to ask the current school board to have their actions speak louder than their words and place value back into the community by extending our public comment time to five minutes which is also in alignment with how other local boards affect their business thank you melanie thank you for the opportunity to address you my husband and i have lived in dewitt township for the past 24 years we came as empty nesters our daughter having graduated from lansing schools when we lived in the city we've always been and remain enthusiastic supporters of public education we've supported
030every school millage since we've lived in the township we hosted a foreign exchange student several years ago and our experience with the whit schools was unequivocally positive i come tonight as a concerned community member there's an election coming up on november 8th and three candidates will be selected to serve on this board why am i concerned you might ask i'm troubled because i've recently become aware of an effort across several local school districts to polarize board meetings in board races when i heard that something similar might be happening in dewitt i took the time to go online and view some of your archived meetings i was frankly dismayed by some of what i saw i heard public comment and all the hot button issues i've read about that are creating havoc at local schools across
031michigan and across the nation critical races anti-masking parental freedom and enhancing transparency to name a few frankly i was quite alarmed that these issues figured so prominently in public comment i was prompted to look more carefully into what seems to be driving this trend i learned that moms for liberty a controversial national organization created to support parental rights in public schools has a chapter in clinton county perhaps you know the group they are the force behind those signs that read we don't co-parent with the government i read about how monster liberty has sold division among parents and made it harder for schools to educate students while keeping them safe and i know this group is in our community because i've seen the science in my own subdivision so that's what brings me to talk with
032you tonight the upcoming election in november is vitally important for many reasons not the least for the consequences that it may hold for the school district it's far too difficult to find out information about candidates for the school board the flyers they put out sound innocuous but what does enhancing transparency really mean what i'm asking is that every effort being made to have a community forum where we can hear all of the candidates talk about their platforms and where we can ask questions let's do that to ensure that dewitt can live up to its vision of equipping students to build a better tomorrow thank you so much basically i'm just asking for some additional notification or reach out to parents when we have transportation delays my daughter's a first grader at shapy and on first
033day of school they were 40 minutes delayed um and we found out by asking some of the other drivers who had gotten on the radio eventually calling it was there wasn't a clear communication out to parents we had another day since where it's been 20 minutes late and it's beginning school i get it um there's going to be you know equipment breakdowns there's going to be all sorts of things but i would just ask if we could leverage the existing texting system or some other system to be able to communicate out to parents if buses are running let's say more than 10 15 minutes late thank you thank you so okay hearing no more public communications we will close public communications for this evening we'll move on to the superintendent's report so i know the
034district doesn't sponsor a particular but i believe i just want to address the concern about forum i think tomorrow night and wednesday night there are interviews that the ea is doing is that correct yes we've already had one and then we have two more coming up okay and so those are tuesday and wednesday are those public or those are not but you have them i asked them to go to their publishing oh i'm sorry oh sheriff's right here sorry wow we have a question and i don't i don't necessarily have all the information so we are not we are not hosting a public forum for all the candidates oh you got to pass the pca before so you're doing more for for a screening of recommendations okay um but there are public organizations who've done
035that in the past um but as a hopeful or not okay so i think they'll they're going to put out recommendations but not it's down i don't i don't know anybody could particularly on the pta so um at the elementary you probably know who the president of that is if she wanted to reach out no that right up here but i did send a guideline to angela i haven't replied back to her because i think she was willing to consider putting it together i just have replayed it thank you um and then also because i have a long update i just wanted to comment on the nas so the middle school and high school are committed to making sure that we do our 10 hours so our students can participate in those events so back
036to school students and staff are getting into the routines it's been a great start students are doing really well and we had a successful community our first community night and i just wanted to make sure that i thank my athletic director again for his vision and making that happen i have some strategic plan updates for you all so it has as far as communication is concerned we have had great efforts in our public relations social media outreach building and department websites and communication i am so very grateful and impressed with our social media liaisons and hopefully you've seen updates and all the great things that are happening around the district we are working on interest for an appointment of student or student liaisons that will be working with the high school principal as well as
037the high school liaison so we are still working on that aspect as well safety and operations we shared out our training plan with staff at opening week for safety training for this year the safety task force has met and has reviewed our action plans for the year the cabinet did agreement reunification training scenario and we will be sending out communication to parents on if there is a reunification or alternative location or any incidents that happen on campus i met with both the chiefs so chief ferguson and also the new chief moroni who is of the township to finalize our training for the 16th so this friday we are having safety training for all staff and then we've also worked through the logistics of our active shooter training drill practice on october 21st so the buildings
038will be closed to the community members during those and i will send that communication on which buildings and what time so we'll be closed for those trainings to take place we have stock our to-go bags and have ordered tourniquets so this is something that um we're very lucky that both chief um ferguson and chief maroney are adi trained and then also chief maroney actually comes trained with a lot of fbi training and uh mentioned that touring hits would be a good thing for us to include in our to go back so we have secured the resources to make sure that all of our go bags are stocked with those and the last thing under building operations is our building substitutes have been secured by each of the buildings to help keep some consistency there for
039our students when staff are out the student board rep the application and process we're seeking interest this week so hopefully by the next meeting we'll have an actual student representative on here it's a little bit different of a process as far as kind of expressing interest and then kind of meeting with the candidates to make sure that this is something that they're so happy about that yeah thank you that's great so the student or students that we bring to you will be kind of well versed in what the expectations are and their role um so our enrollment preliminary numbers are 3116 which is one down from the blended count from last year we have included in that count 38 school of choice students and 27 tuition students at the high school updates for the benchmark
040goals so we have the same requirements as last year as far as establishing benchmark goals for k-8 students in both ela and math and then report out on those benchmark data at both in february at midmark in june so we have um we are keeping the same goals from last year to this year and those will be reviewed at the curriculum meeting this wednesday with the target of 80 proficiency in ela and math in the next two years and that document will be posted on our transparency page for tomorrow we also included that in the board packet that should look very similar to last year's goals except for the date changes as far as bond updates the buying committee went through page turns for herpes and woods in the transportation building this last week we've
041updated our communication and added hvac information and a timeline on our bond website and we should have a new dashboard coming out this week that we will be able to post as well and then at october's presentation will be a bond presentation and they'll be able to update you basically from the last presentation to this presentation the work that we've been doing and what's projected to come to return any of those