001that we um reconvene in open session and adopt certification of close session. >> Second. >> It's been moved and seconded that we reconvene in open session and adopt certification of close session. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Madam Secretary, >> whereas the Denwy County School Board has convened a close session on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. And whereas paragraph 2.2-3712 of the Code of Virginia requires a certification by this school board that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia law. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Denwy County School Board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge, only such business matters as were identified in the motion convening
002the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the school board. Dr. Elaine J. Pearson, District 1, >> I certify. >> Dwayne G. Walker, District 2, >> I certify. >> Barbara T. Pitman, District 3, >> I certify. >> Mary M. Benjamin, District 4, >> I certify. >> Jason L. Brown, I District 5. I certify. >> All have certified. Mr. Chairman. >> Thank you, Madam Secretary. If we could at this time uh stand for the pledge of allegiance and Danice is going to lead us. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Very good. >> At this time, we'll entertain a motion to uh >> Well, I guess I should ask, do
003we have any amendments to the agenda? >> There are no amendments to the agenda this evening. >> Okay, >> Mr. Chair, I move that we accept the agenda as presented. >> Second. >> Okay, it's been moved and seconded that we accept the agenda as it's been presented. All in favor say I. I. And >> any opposed? The motion carries. All right, it's time for our close session report. Uh, well, for us to approve that. >> We'll entertain a motion to >> Mr. Chair, I move that we accept the personnel list as presented. >> Second. >> Okay, it's been moved and seconded that we approve the personnel list as it was presented to us this evening. All in favor say I. I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. I believe Mr. Walters is coming at
004this time. Good evening. >> Good evening. Good evening. >> So, um I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to come and talk to you today. Um we have been battling, not really battling, but we've been uh trying to get our football field and our it's football/s soccer and practice field in shape and we're getting ready to hopefully add another uh playing type surface. It'll be used for practice, but it'll be a Bermuda grass field. And the the lawn mower we have right now is a rotary lawn mower. Um, it is used for Bermuda grass, but it's more used for grass that's 2 in or above. Um, so our Toro 3505D, I'm asking that we surplus that mower. Um, we have found someone who's interested in that mower, so we're going to surplus it and then
005do a even trade for a John Deere real mower. Um, I gave you copies of the uh the two mowers. Um, the John Deere is a uh 8000A, which is a uh Bermuda Bermuda mower that cuts down to a fourth of an inch, as you would see on like a golf course, uh maybe on a putting green or something. But this allows us to take our football field and any other field we have this Bermuda down to a half an inch, which makes it a more um appealing playing surface. It also keeps the Bermuda more healthy and helps our field to stay in shape longer. Um, we are doing this in conjunction with our uh current uh vendor who works on our field who's the expert on sportsman sports fields and he has checked both
006mowers and he finds that they're equal value. Ours is actually worth a little more but they're calling them equal value for the surplus trade. >> So I I just ask if any any questions I can answer. If not, then I just ask for for an approval to surplus this question. >> If there are no questions, we'll entertain a motion to approve the uh >> Mr. Chair, I move that we accept classifying the Toro350D as surplus. >> Second. >> It's been moved and seconded that we classify the Toro mower as surplus for the sake of this trade. >> That's correct. Okay. All in favor >> amen. >> Do we need to amend that motion? >> I think all all you are have to do is surplus. I think purchasing we can do which is essentially what
007we're doing is purchasing the other moment. >> All right. So the the motion is that we classify the Toro as surplus and that's already been made and seconded. So all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> The motion carries. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Walters. >> And uh is Dr. Clay coming for the BSBA policy? >> No. >> That's you Dr. Wesson. Thank you. >> So every school year is um we have to approve the contract so we can pay for those services >> $2500 which it has not gone up but this allow they give us the policies for the entire year and then we adjust them based on This is just you approving uh the cont for us to enter into a service agreement with the SBA in the amount of
008$2500 for policy services. >> Any questions? >> No question. >> Have any question? I think this is we do this yearly. >> It's an annual thing. >> Yes. instead of us having something on site that we would have to employ to do our policies. Um although we do we do specifically take them and adjust based on ours they do all the work with relative to Virginia code legal services and the >> we do have the budget. >> Mr. Chair, I move that we um approve the VSBA polic policy services agreement. >> Second. >> It's been moved and seconded that we approve the VSBA policy services agreement. Uh all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? The motion carries. Thank you. And Dr. Weston, I believe, has a budget presentation for us at this
009time. >> Okay, they just Oh, it is now on. I thought that what they it was on. Um so thank you so much. Um it's hard to believe that we have um been working on the 26 27 budget. Um I can't believe March is here next week. Um it's just this year's gone by very very quickly. But I'm here this evening to provide to you our first iteration of a balanced budget. Um and I say that because there's still a lot of uncertainty that's coming out of enrichment. Um we still have to work with our board of supervisors to determine um what's going to how you know we're going to work through some things with them. Um and then we we know that we're going to come back to you at some point with some
010revisions. But so this is the first version of our budget based on the governor's budget that was based um that was given to us back in December. I'd like to thank um Christy Fleming. She's here with us this evening as well, our chief finance officer. um and she's here to provide any specific information relative to the numbers. She is really the numbers brain behind all of this um that we put together. Um but I but but I would be aiss if I did not speak to all of the directors and the chief members of the cabinet um who really work diligently to make sure that we put together this um balanced budget for you this evening. Anytime that Oh. Hold on. >> I don't know. >> Now it is. Um, anytime you enter into spending
011of the public's money, you have to, you need to start, we should always start with a zerobased budget. And you start by say asking yourself, you know, what is it that we're trying to build here? What's our vision for the future? What do we want Denwy County Public Schools to be? What is it? How will we know that we've been successful? Um, and we spent a lot of time this past school year because we've been working on our comprehensive plan, uh, which I'm happy to say is, um, going to be rolled out, we believe, in April. Um, and this very much aligns with the work that you're going to see that has come out of that plan. Uh, we have a lot of community members, um, assist us in putting that plan together as well
012as our internal stakeholders. But we we've put together what we believe is a budget that is going to be aligned with what our vision is for Denwitty County Public Schools. Interestingly enough, a couple of years ago, the county went through their comprehensive planning process and we assisted them and they had some key takeaways. And what I found to be interesting about their comprehensive plan is they identified several priorities in their comprehensive plan as it relates to what's important to this community and the people that live here. And they believe that the school system was one of the top three priorities and funding of the school system is one of the top three priorities um for the community when they have written their 20-year plan. Um they talked about broadband. You can see the other things
013there. They want this to be a safe place to raise a family or retire. Now, if you're going to raise a family, that means there's children. So, we want to have good uh schools because good schools do attract people to want to come here, right? There's a strong sense of community um which is also aligned with our school system. Um and they talked about the rural community, but but they talked about also about broadband and development concerns, but the school system is mentioned several several times in the Denwitty forward comprehensive plan. Now we started last um year working on our own strategic planning process which is going to be part of our comprehensive plan. Um we started by um doing the team that we hired to do our comprehensive plan did a lot of surveys
014with our internal stakeholders, our external stakeholders. They did a lot of community meetings and some of the themes that came from those types of surveys and those kinds of conversations were this. They what they wanted to be priorities for us was they wanted us to focus on student achievement. They want to make sure that we have exceptional teachers. They want to make sure that we're taking care of people specifically students and their mental health and well-being. And they want to make certain that we have updated facilities both for students and for staff to work in. We also did conduct a survey last fall in which we asked staff members, what is it that you would like to see in the budget this year and how would you like to see us spending the money? Um,
015and one of the number one things had to do with compensation of course and benefits were very important to staff as well as opportunities to continue to grow um and to take coursework um and to be licensed in their fields. So, interestingly enough, that as we think about moving forward, it really is a culmination of both what the community wants from its school system and what we believe are the priorities of the school system that you're going to see in this budget this evening. Now, how schools are funded, I know this is not new information for you, but basically we get local, state, and federal funds. Now, all of this is spelled out in the Virginia code. Um, how schools get money. Um, we get our state funds through um, various means and I'm gonna
016I'm gonna reference a document here. Um, we also receive our um, local funds. Uh, there is a formula that they use in order to determine how much a a community should be paying to support the locality. Um, and I'm going to show you that as well. And then we also receive federal funds. Most of our federal funds are based upon um our economically disadvantaged students and and that typically is the amount of money we receive based on so the higher the number of economically disadvantaged students um the higher amount of federal funds that we received in order to support them. I'd like to reference one of the documents that you have in your folder there. Um let's see. The first one that I'd like to reference is the one that says the um that talks
017about the revenue projections. Oh, I don't Oh, did I do that? Oh, you put it turn it. You go back to that page for me. Thank you so much. I'll try not to be um pushing the buttons over here. Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much. So, if you go to the one that at the top says revenue projections, what that's going to show you, it looks like this. Okay. This is just going to give you a sense of when the governor's budget came out in December. Um on the left hand side, this is the um excuse me, this is very very tiny. >> Um okay, on the left hand side, what you see there is the amount of the fiscal year 2026 budget. um that we see there on the left hand side on the
018purplish kind of lilac side on the right hand side that's the fiscal year 2027 that is the governor's proposed budget those are our numbers that they are recommending for Denwitty County Public Schools. Now what we did is we adjusted that a little further is that we took the number based on um a reduction of about 125 students. So the numbers there that you see on the right are what we built this budget based on. So this these are the state funds. So for example, you see our SOQ um programs. Um and in the governor's budget um it was 200 this is very very tiny. It was 200 and no excuse me >> pull it up. >> It could you don't have it on the screen there. Okay then I guess not. Um Which line are
019you looking at? >> I'm trying to figure Yeah. for So, for example, for the state funds under the SOQ programs and that amount of money is >> total state funds or >> Yes. Okay. I can see it here. I think >> we're just under SOP funds. >> Yes. >> 40 million 1999. >> Okay. Um and so, but Okay. So you're looking at the governor's the governor's right. All right. And then under that under that is we have incentive programs. For example, we get have the vpsa technology incentive compensation supplements. We receive a you know um well there's no bonus payment this year. Um we get at risk programming, Virginia preschool programming and the like. Um, and so these are the types of funds that we receive from the Virginia the revenue that we receive from
020state funds. Um, but we once again we reduced it. I have another screen that's going to show you all these numbers. So I'm going to not talk to this particular piece of paper because it's hard to look at. The local amount of money that we receive has to do with the local's ability to pay which is called the local composite index. And um so you can see there the three ways in which that fund is calculated. The local composite index for Dwidy County is 3186 and that is an increase of what it used to be. Um and that's a lo that is determined by the real value of real property that's weighted 50%. It's the adjust adjusted gross income which is weighted 40% and it's the taxable retail sales which is weighted 10%. And what
021that does is it gives an amount of money that says that your locality um should be paying to support public education. Now the more that the locality is able to pay, the less that typically the state is going to offer, right? So, as we continue to be a wealthier county, um it is beneficial for the county, but it also means that the county leans in to provide more um more in in an effort to support um our school system. Okay. And as far as federal funds, um we are not going to go into any of the grants today, but we do receive a little over $300,000 in federal funds, and we'll talk a little bit about that. Okay. All right. Just a some some numbers for you. We have about 4,100 students including preK and
022we have kids that attend regional and other kinds of placements. We have seven schools which are prek through 12. We have three regional programs that our students attend. Appamatics regional governor school, Maggie Walker and COD RVA. We have the career and technical center which is realy. Um 100% of our schools are accredited but I want to talk a little bit about performance because I think this is important. Um, you know, we went to a new performance measure um for this upcoming school year, a new way to gauge the um we have new performance metrics for this year. Sunnyside Elementary School out of a a point out of 100 came back at a 91.6 and they were um received the rating of distinguished. Midway came in at 86 and um Denwy High School came in at
02389.2. So they barely missed the distinguished rating. Both of them came back on track. Denwitty Elementary School came came in at 80.5. Denwitty Middle School at 74.4. Um, but both of those they showed tremendous growth even though the state is saying they're off track. Both of the schools are making a lot of growth. As a matter of fact, Denwy Middle School had been federally identified and is no longer federally identified, which is a tremendous celebration. Southside Elementary School came in at 74.4. Southerntherland Elementary School at 73.1. Both of those schools do need intensive support, but both of them also did see growth in the areas of reading and mathematics. Um, as a matter of fact, Southside Elementary School was named as one of the schools in the Commonwealth as far as the growth scene with
024English learners. So, we are seeing growth in our schools. So, I just want to be clear that the schools are moving in the right direction as far as the performance metrics go. All right, here's some other numbers to note. Um we are the fourth largest employer in Denwitty County. We have about 668 employees and you can see there um how that um that plays out. Um it speaks to the um SOQ funded. Those are the standards of quality. The state says here are the positions that you should have in a school system and and says here are the positions we're going to fund. Um and so um they fund about 340 of our position of our 668 positions. But I as I always often give you this example um you know we feel very strongly
025about having small class sizes and especially in our um early learning programs kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms and in order to do that and they believe class sizes can be relatively larger. Um so we like to keep those numbers below 20 if we can do that which means that we put additional teachers in schools so that we can keep those class sizes small. They also believe that um when you look at the Virginia code, the Virginia code says that a fifth grade classroom can go up to 35. Well, the last time to put 35 fifth graders in a classroom, that's a lot of big bodies in a classroom. So, we also like to keep those class sizes very small. So in an effort to do that, we have over, you know, we have other
026positions that we we have in our budget because we want to keep the class sizes small and manageable for teachers so they can do the work that we need them to do. Our buses travel close to 2 million miles every year. Um we serve about 750,000 meals each year. You know, all of our students receive breakfast and lunch. um about 12 languages are being spoken in our schools and that continues to grow as our English language language learners continue to that population continues to increase here. Um there's about 10,000 devices um used for onetoone instruction in our school system. Um and um our maintenance team is currently taking care of almost a million square feet um keeping it clean and keeping it maintained um as we saw most recently with the snow. And I put
027this information over to the right because I think this is very important to know. Um the these are the percentage of students that have been identified as economically disadvantaged by school. The reason why this is important is because if you think about needs of young people, you've got to be able to meet these basic needs before you can sometimes get to the other stuff. And as these needs continue to grow, we got to make sure kids are being fed and taken care of before we can get to the rest of the stuff. So you see there, Denwy Elementary School, 67% of their students um are identified as economically disadvantaged. Midway is 50% of students, Southside 76%, Sunnyside 75, Southerntherland 73, Denwy Middle 66, and Denwitty High School 61%. Those are large percentages and we are
028seeing those numbers continue to escalate. I will also say that about 13% of our students are all identified of students with disabilities and that number also continues to grow as well. And those are just numbers you have to remember when you think about programming in your schools because those SOQ funded positions don't always match what we need in our classrooms and in our schools. Okay. Um we do offer a number of um personalized learning options for our young people. And once again, some of this is funded, some of this is not funded, some of this is, you know, what we offer is very specific to Denwitty County. We call it the Denwitty difference. Um we offer a RISE program which is an evening school for our students. Sometimes they're long-term suspended. We want them to
029have an option, a place where they can go and continue their learning. So these young people go to school Monday through Thursday from 3:00 to 6:00 in the evening. Uh we have teachers there and an administrator there so they can continue their learning. Uh we have early learning. We started with one or two preschool classrooms and now I'm proud to say we have preschool in every school. And we've done a great job partnering with our community um agencies as well to make sure that every student that's age four and five, excuse me, three and four um has the opportunity to learn from an early learning pro program because we believe and we know to be true that when students have those quality early learning opportunities, they do better when they get to us in kindergarten.
030We do offer a number of opportunities for college credit courses. Um and we've had a great success in that and you know that um maybe I think it was like eight years ago or seven years ago um we had our first student with the graduate with the associates degree and last year we had 17 students graduate with an associate degree and right now we have 72 students over there that are working um on their associates degree. So that that number continues to grow. Um and so we continue to provide that um opportunity for young people both at um Breitpoint and at Richard Bland. We do have virtual learning for young people so that you know who prefer to learn in a more um self-paced environment and um we also provide private day treatment for some
031of our students. Um we partner with Rivermont. We have Encompass Learning Center and that's not for behavior. That's more for students that need a an environment where uh maybe we need to accelerate them. Maybe they were retained in elementary school and we want them to have the opportunity to catch up and get back with their cohort. Um so they learned over at Historic Southside and we have several teachers over there and they work um self-paced and but they work with instructors over there and it's very personalized. Um, we partner with Chesterfield Recovery Academy for any students that are now doing um, for example, are in some type of a recovery program for um, any type of an addiction. They can be a part of that and still graduate on time. Um, we have GED for
032students and adults. Our our student GED program is very successful and we've had more graduate from there this past year than we've ever had. We have a lot of accelerated opportunities. We have middle school students now that are taking high school courses. A lot of eighth graders now go over to the high school to be part of our ROC, our mathematics classrooms. Um, lots of electives and the like so they can start earning credit. Um, and Keys Academy is for students that we know we've tried a lot of options here and maybe they need a much more structured environment and we can we send um we have the opportunity to send three students to work there. So, we have a lot of personalized learning opportunities um that we fund through the local budget here. Um
033and I spoke to some of these um the bottom line is we're not preparing our young people for the future that we're we want for them. We're preparing them for what their future's going to look like. So, right here, our graduation rate is about 92%. Um 47% of the enrollment at Rwani is Denwitty Denwitty um county public schools. I spoke to the 17 students that were the class of last year that graduated with both an associates degree as well as advanced diploma. Don't know how they did that. That was quite remarkable. But you know imagine starting you come out of high school and you either go right into the workforce or you go into your third year of college and now we have 72 kids over there. And then you can see the credentials that
034were earned by our senior class. Our post-secary enrollment's at 52%. Although I will say that I don't believe that every young person needs to go into college anymore. Um you know some of our young people go right into um the world of work and um do quite well because of the opportunities that we're providing for them now in in high school. and college credits. So, you can see they're earned 101 and 100% of our kids have a um career and academic plan which starts in the middle school level. Okay, this should be very familiar to you. our current uh vision and mission. The bottom line is, you know, our parents want what we want for our young people and that is we want to make certain that our young people and so whether you have
035kids in high school right now or you had kids at one time, you wanted them to graduate on time and you wanted them to graduate with a plan so that they could be successful for everybody. And and we truly believe that if we partner with the community and we partner with the county that we can make sure that that happens. Now, this is going to be hot off the press. since nobody else has seen this just yet, but we've had a team that's been working on our enhanced version of our vision and mission. So, we felt it important to include that in this presentation because it is driving a lot of our work currently. But this is why we get up every morning. So, um our mission as we um our mission statement is going
036to be and we'll be bringing this to you in April. Uh bottom line is this rooted in community, grounded in care, and committed to every child's growth. Uh we um Dweny County Public Schools cultivates learners to become confident, compassionate, and prepared to reach great heights in life beyond graduation. So two things really jump out there as I'm thinking about this budget. It's about every child and making sure that they're reaching greater heights beyond graduation. We often say here, and we say this every day, the most important day for our young people is the day beyond graduation. Do they have a plan? Do they know where they're going? Do they know what they're doing? And is it a viable plan that will take care of them for the rest of their lives? Right? And as parents,
037I know that's what I want for my children. I want that for the students here. And there you can see our vision statement there as well that's now driving our work. But we truly believe there's no limit to how high our young people can soar. Okay. All right. So once you start to to do the budgeting process, everything's built on enrollment. Well, let's start with the priorities. Um, we first started with the priorities and I spoke to you previously about um, we surveyed our staff. We surveyed the community. We looked to the strategic plan. We looked to the county's uh, strategic plan. We said, "What are going to be the priorities for this year's budget? What should we be focused on? What do we need to do? what's the data telling us that we need
038to do differently to be more successful to engage our young people but also to uh accelerate them. Um and really three things can really rose to the top students, staff and operations. The bottom line is this. When you build the budget, it's got to be the priority has got to be based on your needs and it's got to be on the very things that are going to enhance and accelerate student learning. And I believe that this budget is going to do just that. When we start to talk about um f the financial part of it, everything is driven by enrollment. That's how we receive the numbers that we um get back from the governor's budget. Um, and as you can see there, we, you know, we went through a enrollment study couple of years ago.
039I believe Christie was the last one. We did an enrollment study a couple years ago because we really wanted to get a good understanding of where we were going, where we are as far as enrollment. Of course, they told us they felt like our enrollment would stay relatively stable. You can see there that we've we still are continuing to lose about a not lose, I don't want to say the word lose, but we are seeing a decline of about a hundred students. um our October membership was 38.85. So when we built this budget, we are trying to um maintain some stability. So we're building the budget based on 38.50. Um and you can see last year it was uh 3960 and you can see all the years prior, but we are seeing a little bit
040of decline. What the research says across the Commonwealth because the Commonwealth has seen about a decline of 10,000 students in public education um in the last five years. And so what they're saying is this. First of all, um, young people are not having as many children right now as they were having prior to COVID, which we don't typically talk about, but they're not having as many children now. So, um, you don't see the younger children coming in. Also, there are virtual options that did not um weren't necessarily available to families prior to this. So parents do like to opt for having virtual options which they can accelerate their children and they can work at a self-pace. We and here in Dewity County we have seen an increase in homeschooling um probably about a hundred students
041over the last couple of years. We are seeing a lot more religious exemptions um in our community than we ever have previously as well. Um we don't see a lot going to private sectors. more it's more teaching from home and teaching um from um in the religious exemption as well but we do need to keep that in mind. So this these are the numbers from that very small piece of paper that um I referenced earlier. Um so you can see where the increases were the SOQ programs that I referenced before. Um and that has to do with um the things that the they say that they will fund. here's what we're going to give you and we'll fund these. That's $2.6 million. The incentive programs was um a decline of $2.6 million and there was
042a small decline in categorical programs. The lottery funding was 1.5 increase. Other state funds a small decline of $49,000. But we do anticipate based on an enrollment of 3850 an increase of $1.4 $4 million for this budget. Now, once again, this is the beginning of it and this is under the previous governor, so we don't know what's going to happen. We do know that the um House and the Senate both just released their versions recently. Um and they're a little bit apart. Um so, it'll be interesting to see what when they come together um what ends up what it ends up being for us, but we do anticipate there being uh at least this increase of $1.4 4 million. And so let's break that down and show you what that looks like. The state over
043time over the last since fiscal year 21 um this is based on the number of students on the right hand side and these are the increases we've seen from the state. So last year we saw a just a slight increase. Um but we received um $44 million from the state. Um and this year what we're looking at is about about a 3% increase which is about $45 million. Um you're going to see a lot of that is in compensation the compensation line for staff. Okay. Now, now with the SOQ funded, I told you before, remember they fund some positions but not all positions. Sometimes they fund threequarters of a position or they'll they'll fund half of an assistant principal or they won't fund all the principles. Well, I think they fund all the principles now.
044They now fund all the principles. They they used to not fund all the principles. Um so it just varies from um position to positions. Um so you can see there the state SOQ the governor in December um proposed a 2% increase for SOQ funded positions. So that means anybody on that list that they provide us they're going to give us the funding that 2% funding for those individuals. But those 300 other individuals they provide us no funding for. So in an effort we have to come up with the additional 2% to fund those other 300 positions that are in our that that work here. Okay. Now we are recommending tonight I'm recommending to you for teacher raises to be between 5% increase and 8.65%. I'm recommending that um we do that in an effort to
045be competitive across the region because you're going to see here in just a moment how everyone is really focused hyperfocused on teacher raises and we want the money to go to where the um it impacts students the most and that is with teachers. Now, so if the if the governor's budget does not change and it stays at 2%, we've got to come up with the other 2% for that's not funded. But we also have to if we go with the 5% to the 8.65%, we've got to come up with all of that as well. Okay. Now, we cannot generate revenue. So, that's where we have to go to the county and say, "Here's where we need your support in order to fund um these raises for teachers." Um, I will say that um I appreciate
046um Emily and Christie uh worked on it. we've heard over and over again from our teachers is when you look at the teacher um scale, we were having some challenges, especially with teachers that had been here for some period of time and some of them were not making you we were raising the base of the teach the new teacher scale. But what was happening is if you'd been here 10 years, 15 years, um we needed to release some of the compression that was happening there. And that's why some of it's bigger than just the 5% because we're releasing some of that compression in the scale. You have a copy inside of your folder of the teacher scale that we've proposed. So you can see what that looks like. So the beginning teacher salary would now
047be $58,500. Oh, I should put it on this before anybody else. Yes. Before you're right before it becomes public document. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> I didn't think about that. >> Yeah. >> It's Yeah, we'll put that on there. >> Oh, it says proposal 10. It says proposal in the first column. Thank you. Um, so you can see there is the the first column, but you you just want to make sure I guess we stamp it everywhere before. Yeah. Um, and so you can see there this goes up to 35 years plus. Um, and you can see the difference and where the um, increases are. So at 23 years is 20 not 23 years it is 23 years experience. So at the 23 step is 8.65 increase. That's where that happens. So then it shows
048you a 10 and a half month teacher, 11 month teacher, and a 12-month teacher. What the difference in pay would be. And believe it or not, we do have people that are on the scale that are over 50 years. They're way off the That's great, though. All right. Questions about the teacher scale before we move forward. This is only teachers. Yep. This is all teachers right now. Yes, ma'am. This is just for teachers. Okay. So, this just shows you where we are in comparison to other districts across region one. We are proposing that new that teach the new teachers move up to 585. That's an increase of $3,900 for a first year teacher. But the bigger the the um the greater increase really has to do with the teachers that have been here some time
049and you know um that have been very loyal to Doma County that have a lot of experience. But you can see here now I want to bring to your attention that the other numbers that you're seeing here are last year's numbers. So um they have not published this year's and all of them are projecting increases in their teachers especially I know that Prince George will um I know that Richmond will uh Henriiko definitely will Colonial Heights Chesterfield Chesterfield is proposing 5% increase so that number will go up 5% Prince George I think was at 3% two or 3% Um, Sussex is working on theirs right now. So, all of those numbers will move up. Um, but that's not all of region one, but I felt like that those were the ones that we're the most
050competitive with as far as finding teachers. Richmond is kind of Richmond, Petersburg, they're kind of in categories all by themselves because they have different funding, different kinds of funding that we have than we have. Comes from lots of different places. They get a lot different funding from the state than we get. Okay. All right. So, this is what the local transfer has looked like since for the same time period. So, you can see back in fiscal year 21 the 15 it was $15 million that um the county provided us to support the budget. Remember, it's based on the local composite index. Um and they have it has been increased this year. Um and you can see that increase there at the bottom. This does not include any small or large capital improvement funding that they
051also helped to support. Um back in 21 there was a 0% increase there usually. Then there was 500,000 the next year. Um 300,200 and then in fiscal year 25 there was once again a 0% increase. Uh last year there was a $500,000 um local transfer that was to pay for teacher raises. Um and this year what I'm proposing is $88 um,000 increase and that is also to support teacher raises because I'm going to show you what it's going to cost us to do this with the teachers. Okay. Some other revenue that we do receive aside from the state and the local um new story is basically Rivermont. We receive they pay us rent to be in historic Southside which is $240,000. Um our driver education fees are $5,000. Uh we get Chromebook insurance money. Basically
052that goes right back into helping us with the Chromebooks for $40,000. And we have a vision grant for $11,000 and that works with our young people to check their eyes and also um to do vision checks and also get glasses for our young people and that's $11,000. So those are some other revenue sources that we received. Here are some required increases currently. Um we have some tuition increases. I talked to you about Maggie Walker. I talked to you about um ARS. talk to you about um Rowanti and Code RVA. Every single regional program has increased their tuition this year um which has become which is great, you know, but it becomes a problem for us. The most significant increase is um Rowanti right now is over $100,000. They're wanting um an additional $100,000 from us.
053We're one of three districts that are partners in that school. Um, we are bringing on board an engineering and manufacturing program this year. Um, in order to do that, it is going to cost more money. We did get a $600,000 grant um to bring the program in. That was mainly used for equipment and to get the classroom set up. Um, but we need the money to he needs the money in order to bring the the instructor there and the books and things like that. So, that's about $100,000 there. and Maggie Walker in ARS and could RVA. It's just they want like a cost of living increase um to be comparable to what we've received per per pupil. They want theirs to be um us to forward that money to them. Um employee compensation um you
054know we do receive funding for this although it's not enough because it doesn't cover the funding for all of our employees. Um, but we are do need to do the required inkeep of the 2% or we just say we don't want the money and send the money back. But I think you've got to pay people and you got to give them an increase. Um, there are some academic supplements that the um supplement committee did approve um that we want to that we need to fund for the upcoming school year. Our contracted services have increased. Our custodial have gone up about 3%. Uh we paid them already um over a million dollars to do custodial work in our schools. Um building maintenance has gone up and there's a a lot of um contracted services there that
055we have to pay. Um and then landscaping services have increased and then we have contracted health services. I know one is aiology which is about $70,000. So once we have to contract with outside services, they typically charge more than if we were to have that person working in inside. But we do a lot of exceptional education contracted services. Sometime it's for o um it's for occupational therapy, sometimes it's for vision. Um I know it's for aiology. It just depends on what we need the service for because we don't have the personnel in house. It is cheaper than hiring the person, but it does cost us a lot of money to provide the service. Um utilities have also gone up. I don't know if you've seen your electric bill, but um our mine at my house
056has gone up pretty large, pretty big. Um and so we're seeing that also in our schools. So we want to make sure that we can budget for the um the rise in utility costs. Now what I want to say to is this that um our health insurance came back at a 12 a.5% increase a 12 and a half% increase which is an additional $755,000. Currently that's not in this budget. Now, there are some requirements that we have with our health care that we have to fund some of it. Um, you as a board already fund $6 million of health care costs for employees. Um, and so we will maybe have to move some of this into the operating budget. Um, but this is we just got this number. I think we got it yesterday. Yeah,
057Friday. And so this is currently not in the budget, but it will need to be in the budget somehow. So last year, remember, we were able to push most the cost out to the employee, but if you start pushing a 12% increase out to an employee, they didn't get a raise. So you have to think about that. But we have a lot of employees that are going through a lot of life right now. And so that that's how it came back at 12 and a half%. So we have to think about that and we've got to figure out how to make that work. But health care is uh just out of control right now. Okay. So the first priority is around students. I want to tell you what's in the budget relative to students. I
058talked to you about the regional programs and the tuition that we're paying for our kids that's in the budget for all four of our different regional programs. In addition to that, we send students to Breitpoint. Um this year I met Mr. Masking and I met with the president of Breitpoint. Um they need a $1,200 match with the tobacco grant to for our students that would attend there. So that is going to be an increase that will be in our budget for the upcoming school year. Uh we have some new positions in the budget. All of these are positions that work inside of the school. We've added a kindergarten and a first grade teacher. Once again, that's to make sure we keep those class sizes small enough and manageable enough for teachers. Um, we've also keep
059expanding our autism classes. We need to keep that lower than eight students. Um, and so we know that we're going to be adding another an additional classroom for this upcoming school year. We also continue to expand our early learning opportunities. So, that's also going to be an opportunity for this upcoming school year. And our student support specialist for attendance um was paid for out of a grant. and we're moving that position over to the operating budget because he's done a lot of great work with our schools and we want to continue his work in work and um working with our students that are chronically absent. Um also we want to take four positions um and reclassify these are positions that are currently in the budget but we want to reclassify them from a 10-month to
060a 10 and a half month position. And these are going to be um I think I spoke to you previously about the four the three schools that are federally identified for special education. These four positions right here will be based in schools and they will serve as instructional specialists for special education. They will be 10 and a half month positions and they will work right in the school and work right with teachers and right with students in the schools. So the positions will be school-based and not based here. and then the academic stipens that were approved by the stipen committee. The second priority was um the compensation and this is what it actually costs to do a 5% increase for all employees is it costs $2.1 million to do just the teachers for that would
061be that 5% to 8.65 cost $1.6 million. So that's why we're asking the county to help support the teachers by doing the other half of the instructional. Now the transportation, one of the things this board talked about was how can we invest in our bus drivers. So we are recommending that we start the full-time bus drivers. We raise their starting salary to $25 an hour. Okay? So that's going to mean for the bus drivers anywhere from a 5% increase to a 32.5% increase. I think that'll attract some bus drivers. What do you I think it might as well. But when you're talk but you see it's only $337,000 because when you're talking about salaries that been have been relatively low, I mean it's much needed. But I do think it will, you know, make them
062feel valued and appreciated, but also will attract people and want to stay here as bus drivers. Although Mr. Walters and um Mr. Tucker have done a great job um minimizing our late buses um and and the bus drivers have appreciated them so very much. Um, and then that other salary scale, and this is the one you were asking about, where everybody else's position is on, it cost um to do that scale, and that's every other position in the county except for transportation and teachers. Everybody else is on the upper. The first position starts at 1371 an hour. If everybody were to receive a 5% increase to 5.15% that cost $622,000. Okay. Questions about staff compensation as it's there. >> So that is not until not yet. Yeah, the county is already moving to $15 an
063hour, which is, you know, it puts a little bit of pressure on us to do that because they they've moved theirs to 15. We just can't we can't do it yet. >> It was going to be more than the teachers to do that. >> Yes. To to start it there >> in that in that category. If you take the drivers out and the teachers out and whatever out. So, we're basically talking about cafeteria and >> they're all in there. They're on the upp scale. Okay. They're all in there. Everybody else is in that one. Everybody from pair of professionals from cafeteria to everybody's there. You remember a few a couple years ago we moved pair professionals up you a couple of levels so they would receive more compensation >> and we're going through a compensation
064study right now. Um you know the county finished theirs and you're supposed to do it every five to seven years. So, we're going through a study right now to see where our, you know, where all of our um positions should be and as far as um competitive. Yes, >> it's still out there the $15, but it's not going to make it. >> Oh, they're still talking about it. >> Yeah. >> There's no way we can afford it unless somebody comes in to help us do >> understand the law would take effect >> if they pass. >> Yeah. Well, what she's saying is the county is going to do theirs also. >> Well, the problem is that they create they've already done it. So, what they do, they're already doing it. >> Yeah. So, what it
065does is it it puts a little pressure on us because you can do the same work there even though it's, you know, >> dollar 30 more. >> Um, >> and we have the same health insurance. >> So, >> it just makes us compete for the same people, you know. So, it'd be great if we could do it. The problem is we have more employees. Yeah. They have 200 and some employees and we have 600. Yeah. >> Yeah. Were you going to ask something, Mr. Walker? >> You had your >> I just know she had her hand up. So I understand all of will increase your percent. All of this determines that rate. >> Well, that's already done it. >> I got a new property. >> Well, the pro my assessment I did get a larger
066>> assessment. Yes. >> But I'm talking about the rate at which the tax is determined for your new assessment. >> Even though your house went up 245,000 because the $100 rate >> went down from 83 to 64. >> That's right. >> It was an even wash for most of us. >> And mine went up $245,000. So, but all the monies, keep in mind you're saying we're worried about our employees because if we have to pay offset or they have to pay the insurance costs out of their pocket, then it negates their raise. Well, if I increase from 64 back to 84, their raise is falling anyway. So, keep that in mind. >> Yeah. >> Well, Yeah, that's for the people that live here, >> right? >> You know, the ones that live in Chesterfield and
067>> they're already paying. >> Yeah, they're already doing it. Henriiko, you know, places like that. Um, other questions, comments, thoughts. Okay. And this Miss Typton, by the way, I should have introduced you. She she's been very in this past year spent some time with us talking about budget and things like that. We met her last year during the budget process. So >> we appreciate her. >> One of the things that's puzzling to me is the um the composite index, ours keeps changing and it looks like we're wealthier and wealthier if that's the right terminology. And yet our poverty rates in our schools are increasing. So I don't understand how that happens. The deposit index is based on data from four years ago. >> Four years ago. >> Okay. >> So, what we're getting ready to
068see is based on data from four years ago. So, it's going to look at property taxes um uh income taxes, all of those things from um 22. >> Yep. >> Okay. So, and it will it'll start to slide the other way, we assume, since we Well, is is >> it also compares how well you're doing as it relates to the other localities in the state. So if you're looking at and we say Fairfax County owns the the composite index because one little slight change at Fairfax if theirs goes down >> affects the entire state because there's >> the composite index is looking at four years ago. Is the poverty rate looking at four years ago? >> Yeah. the whole the no those poverty rates >> the economic that's that's most recent >> it's just this
069formula >> for the state funding is based on data from four years >> four years ago I see >> that's why the funding formula needs to be >> yeah but not overall income >> that is correct >> you can't buy a house on an acre land for $350 That is correct. >> That is very correct. >> All right. So, let me um so that's staff compensation. Um to give you a a sense of as you know we're categorically funded and so just to give you a sense of the expenses of this budget. So 44 million of the budget would go into instruction. And that's the largest percentage you can see there. It's almost 70% of our budget goes to instruction. Everything about it touches kids, touches instruction, teachers, and the like. The next largest percentage,
070almost 8 million of our budget is maintenance, and that's 12.6% of our budget um is maintenance. The next largest is transportation, 4.3 million. Okay. And then you see um technology is the next at uh $2.9 million for technology. That's 4.6% of our budget. Administrative is $2.2 million of the budget which comes in um it's I thought it was like a couple percent. I don't see it on this chart for some reason. Um it's around two. It's a little it's more than the 2.6%. 6% but it's right right just above the attendance and health and attendance and health is $1.6 million of the budget. What are the things that would be in attendance and health? Christie can you talk speak to >> nurses PT OT psychologist >> and then attendance the attendance portion are we have
071an attendance clerk at the high school in the middle school >> middle school >> that's it. So personnel typically. >> Yes. >> So those are the six categories that the budget is in. So, um, and you can see that I will say as far as maintenance go, we are seeing an increase in maintenance and Matt's done a phenomenal job as he came onto his new position and really spent a lot of time, um, going through every facet of the maintenance, all of our facilities to determine what has immediate needs need to be taken care of, how to take care of our aging facilities, um, what repairs need to happen, how can we um, stay on like taking care of um, replacements and the like. So, he's done a very good job with that, but all
072of that costs money as well. Okay. And here's the state monies once again. Um, $45.5 million we um expect overall from the state. We're requesting the local transfer of $17.4 million. There's $339,000 in federal monies and then there's 285,000 and other monies that I spoke to earlier about the other revenue that we expect. So overall it's $63.7 million and we do expect to spend the entire $63.7 million. Um we do sometimes end up at the end of the year with some monies that you know we never want to get right down to the $63 million. What typically happens in those moments would be that um for example, if we ended up with $600,000 at the end of the year, we go back to the county and ask them to return the money to us so
073that we can take care of some of our capital projects that would be on their capital plan. Um so we can take those off. So right now we're working on things like the tennis courts and and projects like that that have taken some time for us to get to um because that's part of the responsibility as well. The last priority here is fund the other fund which is um our operations budget. Um we're asking the county to maintain the $300,000 that they're giving us for small capital. Now once again this does not include the large capital projects that are things that are over $100,000 that we work with that committee over there to fund. We're part of a larger one for the entire county. Um what the these funds take care of is helping us
074with fleet mana management. Um Jeff has a long list of small capital projects. Uh for example, sometimes there are things that we plan for and sometimes there are things we don't plan for. For example, uh this past year, um we have new we had some new students joining us. Um and so we needed a larger special ed classroom for a a for the middle school. Um, however, it was not outfitted and ready for it to receive the student that happened to be in the wheelchair who also needed help with changing and things of that nature. Um, and so we needed to move them to a different classroom, but also outfit that classroom, redoing the floors, put some water kinds of things in there for them to change him and the like. So, um, that was
075money that Jeff had to use small capital money in order to take care of. Um, so sometimes they're projects that we can plan for, but most of the time it's things that we we're not ready um to handle, but that's what that money's for. He does have a painting schedule and a furniture replacement for all of our our schools. Um, and so the painting schedule does is just more touch-up paint. It's not to paint the whole school, but it's more to go in and pick places that need touch-up paint. Furniture is about replacing um student furniture typically. Um there is some in this budget for the to to do a sidewalk repair. Those are for safety uh reasons and some screening of all the gym floors to keep those um taken care of in all
076of our schools. Okay. So the total county when you add the $300,000 in addition to the $88 for fund 205 and you add the 300,000 for 302 is $1.1 million. Once again, this does not include anything for the large capital. Okay. Um, as I stated at the beginning of the presentation, we got to make sure that the budget reflects the values and priorities of the community and its people. Um, thank you, Miss Typton, for your input. But what we heard from people is that we need to be focused on kids, on our staff, and on operations. And I do believe that this budget does just that. But we also do need to think about, as Miss Typton said, what are the unintended consequences of making some decisions um when you start moving things around? Um
077we do have some next steps. Uh the general assembly, we've got to get a final budget at some point from Richmond. Um we don't foresee that happening before probably May, do you think? We don't know. Um we do have a 2 by two meeting with Mr. Walker and Miss Pitman um with the county on Monday. Uh the county will do their considerations for our first version of the budget. Uh the school board will need to approve a balanced budget. Um and then the county would also need to approve their budget as well. And that's where we are with everything. We're happy to answer any questions that you have or any things you want us to think about as we go back to the table. >> Um Dr. Weston, I don't have a question. I just
078wish to make a couple comments. >> Sure. >> I really appreciate the manner in which you presented this budget proposal to us. >> By telling us what it was that the county said the priorities were, what it was that our citizens said the priorities are and then trying to match that up with how you set up the budget. I like the way you presented it. >> Now I just need to go look at the numbers and make the comparison. Thank you so much. >> It's going to take time. I mean, you need to match it up with the the detail that Christy has provided you there and and then we can answer any specific questions you might have about um requests. >> Is the um is the uh health care cost or the health care
079cost is that a final number or we still in negotiation? >> That is final. >> That's a final one. >> That's fine. Last time they came back, you know, we started with a big number and they came back with a onedigit number and this year they came back with 12 and a half%. >> They gave us 15. >> Yeah, started with 15. >> I think other I I had asked some of the other superintendents and we were all seeing the same kinds of things, but we had we've had some relatively big claims this year, >> which is, you know, it happens. I mean that's people have a lot of life going on. >> I just want to comment for the record. >> Um you and I think I'm I'm simple-minded and so to me when
080I think of budgets I think of okay you fix what's not working. You know the squeaky wheel gets the grease. >> And so for my entire tenure here the loudest squeaks are coming from transportation >> and the need for teachers. Yeah. And so I appreciate that you guys address that very directly and >> with some in this budget proposal. And so I don't think anyone can say we're not trying at this point to uh address those things. So I appreciate I appreciate that. >> I just want to be clear too that there's never going to be any amount of money that we're going to be able to pay people for their value. I mean they it it's because the work they do there's no there's no amount that we could pay teachers and bus drivers
081and school nutrition and pair professionals there's never going to be enough but I do feel like if we can do the 5% for them I do feel like with other divisions not going there I think that would be a great um good faith effort for us take but you know it does come with unintended consequences >> it does but >> our job on this end is to look out for the students and the teachers and the well-being of the school system. We know that it is connected into a big picture. >> We all live here too. >> Yes. >> So, it's a balance. >> It is. is unheard of. >> Well, we have to compete to try to to try to keep our teachers and and lately that it's been a >> it's been a
082it's been a teacher market. They can they can they can leave here and go somewhere else and make more money and and Yeah. >> Well, >> we got to try to keep him here. >> We can get some broaders from outside. >> Yeah, sure. >> Yeah, it's tough. I will say that um we did see when we were looking I haven't looked at the entire Senate and House, but um the Senate Senate the Senate is recommending a 3% increase. So if that happens at least there'd be more money that comes out of Richmond, >> right? >> But then we also have to come up with a 3% but that would be benefit help us as well. But >> it wouldn't have to have the county >> the county wouldn't have to do as much to
083support. >> Do we know what the county is offering its employees? >> I don't know that we haven't heard that yet. I was but maybe we could ask that Monday night when we meet for them at the the 2 by two. I think that's a great question because that is something our employees do compare >> their meetings their budget meetings start next week. >> Yeah, you'll be there >> Wednesday. >> Maybe you could tell us. >> Yeah, I'll be in. >> So there um but yeah, I mean I think it's important because we all live in this community, right? And we have a lot of job alikes. So one of the things I am planning to prepare is to show the job alikes and to show there are some discrepancies between job alikes in both
084the county and the school system and there should that shouldn't be. So if you you have for example I have a we have a human resources person human resources shouldn't they look the same? They should, but if they don't, I have questions about that. >> Yeah. Where the discrepancies are. >> And in our in our case, we're supervising a lot more people. >> And we do. We supervise. Yes. >> Yes. A lot lot more people. >> Yeah. >> So, it's just, you know, and I do understand it because we all should be the champion and carry the banner for our team, but we're all teamwitty. >> Yeah. We are. And that's the piece that I want us to like come together and like what do we want here as a community? What do we want
085at the end of the day? What are we leaving behind for the pe for our young people and like do we want this to be a community a community where people come and raise their children or do is this really what's this going to be for people and what kind of schools will attract people to want to come here to live? You know, and this is the first year we've ever had challenges trying to get teachers in classrooms. We've never had the problems we've had this year, qualified teachers, and that scares me. So, we that keeps me up at night. So, we've got to do whatever we can do to keep the very best and brightest in the class and really retain the ones we have. We have some great teachers. >> Yes, we do.
086>> You know, and I want them to stop retiring. Think they have to retire. Keep them. >> Dr. Wesson, I think you have laid this out. um uh very well it's it's very well explainable you know I can understand it and I think what you've asked for I think is it's not unreasonable but >> you have asked and I I don't think it's unreasonable I haven't heard anything about the about our budget coming from the other side not yet anyway >> so um I you've done a great job >> I think once you're able to take a look at the numbers that back it like you have the detail detailed information. I think that's going to help you as well because it's broken down by every department. So you can see the departments so you
087see where the money is. You can see where there have been significant decreases in administrative types of places so we can move the money over to instruction. So I think that'll help you as well. >> And then coming from the community, they can see that >> yes, >> you haven't left anybody out. Yeah. you know as um uh chair said talked about our bus drivers you know we always talk about when you give them more they they'll stay or they will come to us and you have touched every area of um of our system and I think that's that's a good thing >> just have to pay them >> I I do have one question on the um the line item budgets the one that's homebound it's >> looks like it's drastically reduced are we
088saving money by using online courses If you look a little bit down um right under that >> it's it's there's a we've got a new a new division between homebound and homebased because there are two different um definitions and so we originally had everything launched in homebound and so we've set it up as there's a home base and a homebound. >> Okay. >> And they mean different things. So if you look at one it's minus and then right couple lines down it's plus. >> Okay. Homebound is about the doctor saying home for students for a while. >> Yeah. >> But yeah, because even if they're suspended, they still need to their special ed, they still have to get instructional services. Okay. And if you have questions after you looked at all the information, um, that
089goes for you too, Miss We'll get all that information for you. If you have any question, just let us know. We're happy to get you any back any other information you have, but you should you have the detailed report as well. >> Okay. >> Madam Secretary, do we have any citizens signed up for comment? >> No one has signed up to speak tonight. >> Okay. Thank you. Any uh board members have comments that they'd like to make at this time? Anybody? >> Mr. Chair, >> I move that we adjourn. >> It's been moved. >> Seconded. >> All in favor? >> We're ajourned. Thank you. Yeah, these are these are