001call to order the meeting of the Board of Education scheduled for Tuesday November 18th 2025 held at 7 p.m. at Wyandotte City Hall 3200 Biddle Avenue roll call please member Bevin partial here member Kane here member Kinney here member low Cicero here member Martinez here member Weber here president circumvent here perfect attendance great please stand for the pledge 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 thank you reading of the minutes the proposed summary from the November 4th 2025 work session is included in your packet secretary low Cicero review the summary and found it to be in order and acceptable as presented by a motion I move approval of the proposed summary
002for the November 4th 2025 work session be approved as presented support any discussion seeing none you may touch the roll roll attached motion carried yes you missed the recitation thank you I do that sometimes that's why I just love the reading of the minutes so much all right secretary low Cicero will read the vision statement and treasurer Martinez will read the mission statement vision statement a diverse equitable and inclusive community that develops resilient innovative and engaged individuals in the mission statement collaborating and inspiring to educate engage and empower all thank you I apologize for that I appreciate the reminder all right special orders and reports on it all right yep I am going to invite up now our director of finance Brandi Nusser who is going to introduce our auditor and go into some more
003details good evening I think you all know by now this is my favorite presentation to give I love the audit it's kind of like our report card to show how we've done for the year it compares our budgeting with actual numbers lots of good data and I'm always proud of the audit when we can come you know with a clean opinion and be within budgets which we were this year just to explain a little bit about the process it starts in July we close out the year end for June June 30th we work on audit work papers reconciling accounts wrapping up our grants field work starts in September the audits come out the auditors come out and visit us they usually stay for a week we review the drafts usually mid October and then we
004have to submit everything to the state by November 1st the clean opinion that we received in our audit reflects a strong our strong processes internal controls in the teamwork not only within our department but our district as a whole I just want to take a moment to recognize the collaboration that has gone on with our cabinet dr. Anderson everyone has worked together to make sure that we're spending within our means that we're eliminating any unnecessary costs and we're constantly reevaluating what we're doing I also wanted to acknowledge our finance team I'm really proud of us all we have taken on some new challenges we've continued to strengthen our skills and continued to educate ourselves I just wanted to take a minute to say that I'm Sharina our accountants who's here she recently last year she
005earned her master's degree so she furthered her education and it's been very valuable in her role Diane our benefits administrator she tackled a brand new benefit system we just closed out our open enrollment with all of our employees enrolled in it I think it's gonna be fantastic Bridget ensures she does payroll she ensures it more than 800 of our staff and contracted staff are paid bi-weekly and Tressa our administrative assistant she is taking her MSPO classes to become certified in MSPO so their dedication is definitely a key to our success and with that Tim has a presentation from yo and yo to show results from our audit well thank you Brandy I really appreciate that I thought I was the only one that loved audit so so auditors are disruptive you know as Brandy said
006you know she gave you a little bit of a crash course and how the audit goes and the amount of time it takes just for us to work through it but she's got to do a lot ahead of time to get ready for it I am gonna go over some highlights of that the results of that mostly we did meet with the finance committee your workshop a couple of weeks ago and we went over the financial statements and the single report in the comment letter and a lot of detail a very conversational style and for the board's benefit and public's benefit we're gonna go over those highlights so sharing on the screen now is that PowerPoint presentation and I'm gonna start on the audit overview so what are we doing to get these audit results
007so we are assessing risks so we can't audit everything equally we have to consider significant risks and develops procedures specifically to address those examination of documents we request and we take samples of a lot of different transactions to make sure those are supported and appropriate we do a lot of analytics we look at their current year results first prior year results and compared to your budgets also unpredictability so if we keep doing the same thing in the same way the audit becomes less effective so we have to take different approaches so that management doesn't sense a lot of routine in our auditing procedures and then assets and liability approach so we take a look at all of those accounts that you have in your smart system your cash is it supported by bank reconciliations and
008bank statements are your prepaid was supported by schedules your fixed assets supported by schedules and then peer review so every three years another CPA firm comes out and they audit our work papers to make sure that what is happening in our documentation is the results that you're seeing reflected in these types of presentations and as I mentioned the three reports we end up with every year is the financial statements the expenditures of federal awards or the single order report in the management comment letter so on the next slide is the financial statement opinion so as Brandi mentioned you have an unmodified or unqualified opinion on your financial statements and that is a fantastic thing to have attached your report every year you can see the paraphrase right there in we believe the financial statements are
009appropriately presented in accordance with US gap and down at the bottom free from material misstatement so that is routine out here and great to see attached to your audit report on the single audit side we have to look at two things we look at internal control over financial reporting in compliance with state laws and then the other side of that is we have to test federal dollars and there is a reporting section there on compliance with those spending of the federal dollars so there is one material weakness this year as a government in the state of Michigan you have to adopt a budget every year and the law requires you spend within that budget you have to do that for general fund and all of your special revenue funds so you are within budget for
010general fund as you'll see in some slides upcoming on the special education fund you had some material budget overages for that and that is reflected in the single order report just once one second we can move the slide forward one there we go thank you thank you and then on the compliance side of the federal dollars that we test there were no findings or material weaknesses or significant deficiencies so I'm going to go over some highlights on the next slide this is your balance sheet at June 30 2025 and most of my presentation most of my notes are going to reflect general fund which is here on the far left and that's because it's the only fund that can have unassigned fund balance so all the other funds you see here off to the right
011special education fund debt fund your non-major funds which include cafeteria capital project funds and student school activities those are all money you've collected for a purpose so your special education dollars have to be spent on special education your debt fund has to be used to pay principal and interest and so general fund is the one where you can have increases and decreases in fund balance each year that you're able to use as needed throughout the school district so your assets ended at 24.5 million that's going to include your your cash your receivables which is primarily your state aid receivable for July and August that will also include some receivables for your federal dollars like IDEA and title one it also includes some prepaid expenses money you've already paid out for expenses you'll incur in the
012future and then includes your liabilities of 11.6 million which includes your normal payables for your your routine bills for supplies and utilities it also includes your payroll accruals for especially that the teachers contract accrual for time earned in July and August but already a liability at June 30 or I'm sorry they earned it at June 30 but it's gonna be paid out in July and August I said it backwards and then you've got your assets less liabilities less some deferred inflows gives you a total fund balance of 12 million six hundred and one thousand down on the bottom left-hand corner so you do have some different things going on down at the bottom and the fund balance you have some nonspendable dollars like the prepaid expenses or nonspendable you've already paid that cash out you
013have some assigned fund balance so that is two things that is one of that is money that you've already paid out for special education you're covering those costs until you can collect on that receivable in the future and you also have a deficit budgeted for fiscal year 26 and that is assigned in that also in that 3.6 million so that leaves you an unassigned fund balance of seven million seven hundred fifteen thousand I have some other slides on the fund balance coming up on the next slide is your income statement your revenue and expenses and changes in fund balance so you ended fiscal year 2025 in general fund with 66 million dollars in revenue that is up from about sixty four point one million last year and then you've got expenses and transfers out of
014sixty four point four million and that's up a little bit from last year from sixty three point eight million so revenue less expense gives you an increase net income if you will of in general fund of one million six hundred and eighty four thousand dollars which brings you to that twelve million six hundred one thousand fund balance I mentioned on the previous slide so next is your your budget to actual for general fund and as I mentioned in the state of Michigan you got a as a government adopt a budget and spend within that MD does not worry too much about revenue so you've got actual revenue of sixty six million one hundred fifty nine thousand where you budgeted sixty three the one they hold you to is expenses so in general fund you are
015under budget so you budget is sixty five point six million and spent sixty four point four million and I also want to point out how close you are to budget so you're one point eight percent off of budget on expenses so that's really really good budgeting and the general fund so you're off 1.8 percent on sixty five point six million is really really fantastic budgeting there in general fund so next is a look at where the money is coming from in general fund so on the pie chart here you've got federal dollars make up about five percent of your revenue and that's pretty consistent with last year's six percent you have inter-district sources so that's the county they pay you some projects you also have the enhancement millage in that five point seven million that's
016about nine percent of your revenue up a little bit from seven percent last year and then you have your local sources so that would be primarily property tax levy in general fund is about nine percent of your revenue and it was about nine percent last year and you have some other sources or transfers in of about four percent and then what all those sources can't cover your state aid is going to cover so you have 73 percent of your revenue is made up of state aid at 48.7 million dollars the next slide is where the money is going so your general fund expenditures are comprised of about five or six different types of expenses so I'm going to start on the top left so you have some capital outlay that would be improvements repairs throughout
017the district of about 1.1 million that's about two percent of your spending which is really close to last year's three percent purchase services so that would be things like edgy staff people cost are commonly in purchase services around twelve percent that was down a little bit from thirteen percent last year there's some other expenses supplies and materials about three percent of your spending for fiscal year 25 and it's up a little bit from two percent last year and your biggest expenses are your employee expenses you've got salaries is about forty nine percent of your spending and then employee benefits which are composed of payroll taxes health insurance and retirement costs is 33 percent so if you add those two together employee costs make up 82 percent of your spending and as I mentioned purchase services
018has things like subs edgy staff would be in there so you do have some more people costs captured in that that part of the pie also the next slide is just some trends of what's going on so I mentioned you had increase in fund balance this year in general fund which is fantastic but you've also had some a little bit smaller increases in fund balances the past two years so that's three years in a row you've added to your general fund balance and then you could see looking back fiscal year 22 you did have a loss and going back to 2021 you had income so four out of five years you've been able to maintain or add to that general fund balance overall so that's a that's a really great thing where you're maintaining that
019ability to you know support the the needs of the district and you know have have some money there available for future use all right the next slide is I had mentioned we've got some information on the fund balance so fiscal year 24 25 you've got nineteen point five eight percent in total fund balance so that is your total fund balance in general fund divided by expenditures which is a pretty common way of measuring fund balance but you do have some other things going on here so you have a board policy to stay above ten percent of the prior year expenses so based on that that's twenty point one six percent expenses and then you also have some money as I mentioned that's nonspendable so money like prepaid that's already been paid out and so if
020you're based on available fund balance you have fourteen point one four percent available so that twenty point one six percent it's different from that nineteen point five eight because it's based on prior year expenses so you're over your ten percent requirement at twenty percent and then again that nineteen point five eight percent is based on the current year expenses so for comparison purposes the best data we have for the state as a whole is last year's numbers so in the top left hand corner you've got fiscal year twenty four for your peer group which is about four thousand to five thousand students they're at twenty point six percent and then the state as a whole is about twenty five percent so lots of information there any questions so far is that one or two slides
021left when we're looking at available fund balance that that is the number that as a board we keep an eye on in terms of maintaining our ten percent policy correct the the other policy the other where you said above at twenty point one six that's not necessarily all available is that correct that would include all the fund balances so money that's assigned money that's nonspendable so that fourteen point four percent is just based on what you expect to have for future spending that's not our unassigned okay clear on that board member okay thank you for that clarification that always is one that I want to make sure I clarify for my own self even I don't love him you know we have on the sign money at my own house too and that means I
022can't spend it and that's a super bummer all right the last slide foundation allowance so this is a really important number for you it's driven by you know what the state is able to pay out but state aid makes up as you saw in a previous pie chart the vast majority of your revenue and it's you know more students you have the more foundation allowance you get so you could see the trend here over the past ten years so you've had some you know variations and inflation over the year you had a lot of inflation going back in 2122 the state has for the most part increased the foundation allowance so going back to 2022 they had about a seven percent increase there to eighty seven hundred dollars you had a couple years where they
023increased at five percent from 23 to 24 and it's been flat for fiscal year 24 to 25 okay so you know considering that you've still added to your fund balance so even in an environment where the state didn't pay you more maybe than the inflation that you were facing in the environment you still added to your fund balance and one thing I want to point out over the past ten years if you take that 20 25 foundation allowance less than 2016 it's about a 30 percent increase over ten years and foundation allowance so I fielded one question during the presentation is there any other questions for me on these the presentation or the financial results questions or comments for Tim board members no I found this presentation very clear easy to understand so I appreciate
024that thank you it's a lot of information in a short amount of time right for the public's just knowledge we spent a good chunk of our time at our work session earlier this month with Tim and Brandi and the cabinet and we spent a good amount of time investigating it digging it in to the numbers we had a longer presentation we have a very healthy amount of homework that they sent us home with to look at and then we we've had those numbers for two weeks so any questions that board members had they were able to reach back out to dr. Anderson or Brandi if they needed so this was a good presentation to let the community know but we have we have already spent a fair amount of time on this and I thought
025the presentation earlier this month was exceedingly helpful it was clear for us and it was well organized and I just want to thank not only Tim but Brandi and your whole office please take our thanks from the board back to everyone because it the way that it was presented I thought was very user-friendly for us it was it was really nice to see you and Sharina when he said 1.8% was good budgeting you both had this great smile on your face we really appreciate everything you guys do thank you and you Tim Brandi makes us a smooth process so she knows debits and credits and you know she's ready for us and she's very attentive when we're on site you've you've got a lot going on here and I know she's got a lot of
026day-to-day things and as we're auditors we're interrupting her we're trying to get the audit done and she's trying to you know keep the lights on too so we appreciate how much of the time she cars out how much extra she her and her team works to get this done too any other questions report comments we good all right thank you so much thank you all right we'll continue with the regular order of our meeting now is the time of the hearing of the public wind up public schools Board of Education welcomes public discourse that was the portion of the meeting where the public may address the board those who wish to speak should approach the podium state their name and address the board comments will be limited to three minutes per person members of the
027board and district employees will not answer questions during public commentary sorry we're wishing to address the board at this time seeing none we'll move to the committee of the whole discussion agenda all right number one is revision to our policy 1000.01 organization and functioning of the board on November 4th at a board work session the board made proposed revisions to 1000.01 policy organization and function of the board as a result of this review we recommend the following changes attached discussion can be held at this time so board members you can refer back to the discussion we had regarding our change in policy this can you want to speak on this a little bit this was kind of one that you brought yeah sure this this has to do with the election of officers to the
028board and in conversing through email with Brad Banasic he gave us some direction on this and suggested he let us know that it was within our authority as a board to do this and said that whatever is in the policy should also be reflected in the code of ethics and so do you want me to read what's being added well we know we have well we have we don't we haven't read we're not reading in the action agenda so you can you can read it now if you want okay just to make that clear right now we're only on we have number two for a code of ethics so right now we're only on the policy right right does any would anybody like it or are you all good with it all right any other
029discussion on this policy we talked about this at our work session as well all right then let's move on to number two for discussion revision to the windup board of education code of ethics on November 4th at the board work session the board made proposed revisions to the windup board of education code of ethics we recommend that changes will be attached so we're having discussion at this time so you want to just summarize what that is a little bit too far yes basically what we just discussed about the policy will be added to the board of ethics so that what whatever stated in the policy is also stated in the board and the code of ethics okay okay and the gist of our policy and our code of ethics just stating that we support education
030of our own selves and so we're putting some guidelines in for officers to have yes educational preparation so that when they are working on behalf of the district then they are bringing that expertise with them all right any other discussion points are we good on that just a question so yes we will will we resign that code of ethics yes spirit is prepared to do that yes so we'll resign and then it'll be current all right let's move to the action agenda number one and dr. Anderson a review of the audit reports was presented at a work session on November 4th 2025 and reviewed earlier this evening by Tim Croson of yo and yo and our director of finance brandy Nusser the director of finance and I recommend acceptance of the independent and federal programs
031audit reports as presented for the year ending to June 30th 2025 I move acceptance of the independent and federal programs audit reports as presented for the year ending June 30th 2025 support any discussion roll call please member Bevin partial yes member Kane yes member Kinney yes member low Cicero yes member Martinez yes member Weber yes president circuit yes motion carries all right number two is the revision to the policy one thousand point zero one this is what we just discussed about the revisions to policy may have a motion please I move approval of the proposed revisions to the one thousand point oh one policy organization and functioning of the board effective immediately support any discussion roll call please member Kane yes member Kinney yes member low Cicero yes member Martinez yes member Weber yes member
032Bevin partial yes president Sarkovich yes motion carries all right next is the revision to the book board of education code of ethics we'll at the board work session on November 4th we made proposed revisions to the board code of ethics and we'll be recommending the following changes may have a motion please I move approval of the proposed revisions to the wind up board of education code of ethics effective immediately support any discussion about this roll call please member Kinney yes member low Cicero yes member Martinez yes member Weber yes member Bevin partial yes member Kane yes president yes motion carries all right we have a teacher hire we need to hire a teacher at Jefferson Elementary after following appropriate personal protocol and completing team interviews the director of human resources and I recommend a probationary
033teaching contract be awarded to Alexandria Hodges I move approval of the probationary teaching teaching contract to be awarded to Alexandria Hodges effective for the 2025-2026 school year support any discussion in your packet roll call please member low Cicero yes member Martinez yes member Weber yes member Bevin partial yes member Kane yes member Kenny and president Sarkovich yes motion carries congratulations to miss Hodges welcome home all right we're gonna move to the consent agenda because items on the consent agenda are routine and there's little need for discussion one motion can complete this part of the agenda if anyone is interested in copies of reports recommendations or information please contact the superintendent's office at seven five nine six zero zero two I move approval of bills and vouchers in the amount of seven million seven hundred and
034thirty one thousand four hundred and thirty four dollars and fifty seven cents support any discussion say oh please remember member Martinez yes member Weber yes member Bevin partial yes member Kane yes member Kenny yes member low Cicero yes president Sarkovich yes motion cares all right community of the whole discussion agenda the next meeting will be the work session on December 2nd 2025 630 p.m. at the Board of Education all right announcements dr. Anderson just a quick couple we are now into winter sports and clubs and so congratulations and we're wishing the best for all those who represent our schools every day and their their activities and love to see every involved in as many extracurriculars as possible and also thank you to everyone who purchased bike lights for our students and so we have a
035sizable inventory we're getting them out to students I know it's some kids are not riding bikes right now so we'll have more in the spring as well and so thank you for all those who have chipped in to help with that we're hopeful that increased visibility will make everyone safer thank you all right board members announcements yes Friday night is the tree lighting the Academy Youth Choir and all of mr. well the high school students that learn under mr. Hymer will be there entertaining and the trees supposed to be lit right at 6 o'clock the kids start singing about 520 and then the next day is the parade which some of the school board members will be in and a lot of our students will be in thank you any other announcements all right get
036over to the book fair at Garfield I was there today oh yeah I spent too much money there but you can always choose your next read aloud for March's reading month you can start shopping now all right we will be entering a closed session for the purpose of processing the superintendent's evaluation so this is gonna we're gonna finish we're gonna take a motion for that and then that will close this portion of the meeting when we come back then we will not be continuing to video we'll just finish out this part of the meeting now so let me take a motion to move into closed session I move the Board of Education convene in closed session under section 8h of the open meetings act for the purpose of performing the superintendent's annual evaluation support any
037discussion okay we need a roll call to go into closed session member Weber yes member Bevin partial yes member Kane yes member Kinney yes member Martinez yes member Lowe Cicero yes president circumvent yes thank you all right we're gonna convene reconvene in closed session