001always stand for the pledge of allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all sigma. Welcome to tonight's board of education meeting. We're glad that you have all joined us. We have a big crowd tonight. I know they're all watching. We are in July. That means we are wrapping up the 25 26 school year. Before you know, we will be back, but before you know it, we'll be back. All bond issue construction projects are on schedule and will be ready for staff and students in August. So, we're excited about that. We also had an awesome uh extended school year uh session, three-week session. It was awesome to have our students and staff back in the building
002in June. This past Tuesday, we facilitated our annual admin retreat at central office in this very room. Really excited about the upcoming year. Had a great day of uh sharing and learning with our and leadership training with our administrative team. And uh we are truly all in this year. That's the theme with our new CESIP. And uh we're ready to leave and serve once again this coming school year. And tonight, this is short and sweet for you all. Tonight, we have consent agenda items. We have a K6 social studies curriculum guide adoptions. That's going to be fantastic with some pizzazz, right? Yes. Senate Bill 3, we'll discuss that shortly and have some motions on that. Uh very important legislation. And then our district financial report. We hope that everybody enjoys the rest of their summer.
003We're really excited about 25 26. I mean, we've got really a lot of momentum going. And I know it's the middle of summer. We have PLC's again tonight today working staff members been in and out and just and administrators we just it really feels I mean we are all in and ready for this school year it's going to be excited can't wait to see everybody in August and uh re reunite August 19th I guess that's the date so thank you awesome thank you Dr. Seit we'll move on item 3.04 any board communications uh we have none okay item 3.05 5 audience comments. I don't believe we have any. Okay. Item 3.06 is the adoption or amending of the agenda. I move we adopt the agenda as presented. Is there a second? Second. He all those
004in favor? I opposed. That carries. Item 4.01. 1. Um, for efficiency, the school board utilizes a consent agenda. Items placed on the consent agenda are routine in nature or are among the many decisions that the board has already determined are in the domain of the administration. I make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? I. That carries. We will move on to item 6.01 which is the social studies curriculum guide adoptions. Well, good evening everybody. Um we are excited to present to you our K through six grade uh social studies curriculum. Before Dr. Rico gets started, I did just want to point out and thank all of our teachers who served on this committee. K through six social studies has has taken us a
005long time to write. We actually started this uh my first year in this role which was 2022 school year and that was the first year that we ended up moving to a two-year process. And so we got started with that group. And then um the state came out with the literacy law. And so that shifted our gears and we pressed pause on K through six social studies so that we can write ELA to um be able to be in compliance with the new law. And so you know we we adopted Witten Wisdom. And then this year was the first year that we rolled out Whiten Wisdom. So then we slowed down on social studies again at the start of this year. So the teams were finally able to get together and write their social studies
006curriculum. And so you have that with you today. So Dr. Erico is going to share what u the team has uh come up with. Okay, there we go. Thank you Dr. Draper. I appreciate that. And thank you all board members for um being here tonight and then also to listen to this midsummer curriculum adoption. So thank you so much for that. I do have to say this, although it has taken a while to get here, this has laid out beautifully with the adoption of um the curriculum for the ELA last year with K through six because as we see with the science of reading and I will be presenting more on that throughout our professional development coming up um you will see that content forward in ELA through um non-fiction pieces like social studies and
007science helps our students learn more and more effectively about those topics and it improves their reading skills. So this really flowed out beautifully for us. Okay. So there were two separate curriculum revisions and the reason is because K through 4 handles social studies a bit differently than the upper levels. So we separated out K through four and then five through six. And as Dr. Draper mentioned before, we did initiate this entire rewrite K through 12 back in 2022 with an entire K through2 committee and everybody came together in one room, this room as a matter of fact and they came up with a philosophy. This is our entire team just for K through six. So this was quite a big group of individuals which was fantastic. This is the philosophy that they collectively came up
008with. I'm going to read it to you because there's some important points I want to hit. Says, "As social studies learners, students of the City of St. Charles School District will think critically and deeply about the world around them using effective communication supported by evidence. They will consider multiple perspectives as responsible, curious, informed decision makers who take meaningful action. I've highlighted a couple segments of this. The segments I've highlighted are thinking critically and deeply about the world around them. Okay. So, for a student to do that, notice that doesn't say they're going to memorize all of the dates, all of the states, and all of the little details that have evolved throughout history. Simply because that is not how if you listen to the National Social Studies Association, that is not how our students learn
009social studies. They learn them through the skills and those skills align very closely with ELA skills as well. So taking those skills with that lens, putting that hat on is how they learn to think critically about these. They use effective communication again that word communication that goes handinhand with ELA. You're going to see more and more of this as we progress forward with all of our curriculum simply because in order for our students in order for us, each one of us to be able to communicate effectively about anything in our daily lives, whether it's with with the bank, with our if with with our jobs, anything along those lines, we are using ELA every single day. All right. So, this was our process. Um, we did it was the final piece of this as Dr.
010Draper mentioned and it was our first two-year adoption cycle and it was it was great and it was wonderful that we were able to do this because we were able to see what is going to work and what can we improve upon next time for future uh curriculum rewrites. You'll also notice in K through four when you go through the curriculum, it is primarily embedded within the ELA curriculum and it is completely aligned. Our our ELA curriculum is completely aligned with social studies standards. It's beautiful. So, what we did is if you look through the curriculum, it says K through 4, you're going to see a lot of different colors and everything else and where those are taught. You're going to see a lot of those standards being taught through the ELA resource. There's a
011reason for that. It's not because of the resource. It's because of the science of reading. And it's because when we are delivering content to our students through this vehicle, it makes it an equitable platform for all of our students to be able to access that information. So whether a child comes from a place where they've been exposed to multiple genre of art or artifacts or an environment, a socioeconomic environment, that won't matter because they're going to all have that front-loading of that content given to them. Then they can have those conversations on a more equal playing field and that is what we are trying to deliver to our students to make it very fair and equitable. Okay. in in grades five and six. While they're also um there's a lot of that covered in Whiten
012Wisdom or in our resource, we also have obviously separate courses for social studies as our students are progressing up into the grade levels. So, and those are specifically based in specific areas of social studies. Um and then obviously the curriculum document is linked to this. So, you are able to peruse that document. I'm sure many of you have already and that is what I have. But what I want to ask you is what questions you have because quite honestly I'm very excited about this. I'm excited about this for our students and I would like to answer any questions you may have. Can you go back to that? You said frontloading the information. Yes. Go back. Can you repeat that? I'm I might miss a little part of that. Absolutely. So in the science of reading
013what what they have found what the science is showing is that when students are let's say they're going to read an historical text okay before they read this historical text the teacher might give the students an opportunity to understand what was occurring when this historical text was written. They might teach the students or talk to the students about what were the different geographical factors that were occurring at the time. Was there is this an area that is by um water source? Is this an area that is more deserted? What was going on geopolitically at the time? So that is the frontloading before they go into that historical text. That's a very high level view of that because how that's done could be through a variety of ways. For instance, having student discussion or Socratic seminar,
014giving them a prompt to be able to discuss with that information to learn more deeply about it. That way, that information is not just given to them in wrote memorization. They're able to work with that information. They're able to discuss the information. And by doing so, just like when whenever we're giving something new, when we're able to play with it, when we're able to use it in context, we're going to give it more meaning and we're going to hold on to it more strongly and it is going to be embedded into our regular thinking. We're able to use it for more critical thinking processes as well. Does that make sense? Am I okay? Thank you. What other questions do you have? Um, I don't want to put you on the spot. No, please do. But
015um uh in the CIP it refers to a district-wide instructional framework. How does this curriculum fit in to the districtwide curriculum framework? So So I'm actually going to answer that. So the beauty about our CIP is that it's a five-year plan. That's a five-year plan. So our instructional framework we have not developed yet. So that's that's one of our action steps is to actually create an instructional framework that we can use across all content area but it's just not developed yet because we're just getting started with that. And will that this curriculum be a part of that? So when moving forward when writing curriculum it will be based on our instructional framework that we have created. Okay. And I wanted to ask uh another question about um okay the curriculum covers tier one instruction. Uh
016what about uh tier two and three is that up to the individual teacher the RTI specialist or it's so when it comes to social studies or curric or just curriculum in general in general. Yeah in general. So it we have for reading we have different tier programs for reading. So we have our title one reading programs or we have our uh remedial reading programs. Those are separate programs from witten wisdom. Uh for math it is based on what the students need at that time. So not every student so every student gets tier one instruction right and so as they progress through that unit teacher might feel like these four students really need some extra time with that. So, they're going to get some tier 2 intervention based on the content that they're learning. Tier three
017intervention is for those students who really need individualized help at that level. And so, it is more individualized and we don't necessarily have a program for that. It's it's still based on the Missouri learning standards for that grade level. Does that make sense? Okay. And if I can just also address this. Yes. While we are developing this instructional framework, you can look at this in two different vacuums. So you have the instructional framework which is how we deliver anything in the classroom and making sure we have the protocols there to make sure that all of our students at every level at every tier are getting the direct instruction or excuse me the instruction that they need depending on their unique needs. When it comes to the core areas, we base everything on the Missouri learning
018standards and also the sciences that are um delivering what we can see as the best practices to get this information to the students. In this case, we know that delivering this type of content to students through the science of reading is going to provide them the best opportunity to be able to use that information. So as we go forward this the learning will not change because it's based in best practices and the science in that core content area but we will also marry that with our instructional framework that we are developing. Okay. Any other questions that you have? I will one of the things I did want to point out is that uh believe it or not the state of Missouri does not require no longer requires social studies be taught at the elementary level.
019So we do teach social studies in city of St. Charles school district but uh the latest guidelines is that um social studies uh has to be taught by seventh grade. So, but we do K through six teach social studies in our district. And I will say that the way that we're teaching it is the way that is evidence is showing is the way to teach it. So, I'm excited for our students. I'm excited for this the future of what is to come. Any further questions or comments? Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you guys so very much. I appreciate it. We just leave this up here. I make a motion to approve the K through6 social studies curriculum guide adoptions as presented. Is there a second? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? That
020passes. Under new business, item 7.01 is Senate Bill three. Do you want me to read this or you can go ahead? Do you want me to read what we want or No. Yeah, you can. Can I I was just going to say obviously we have sent documentation how we've been discussing Senate Bill 3 now since the U open or the special session and uh obviously very harmful legislation that we think is unconstitutional at this point and uh there's two motions um in front of you to uh be voted on tonight to be approved just to be ready for any type of litigation moving forward. Talked about a coalition that is coming together from St. Charles County from fire districts uh to to um library districts to all the school school districts of looking at how
021harmful this bill actually can be if it gets to a vote in April for um for the public and it's on tax cuts. That's just quick synopsis. I'm pretty sure it has. Oh, it's the 23rd. You're right. I'm sorry. It hasn't. It's the 23rd. has not signed it yet. It's the 23rd. Any other questions or comments? So, Jeremy, can you give us like a a layman's version of like Okay, so the direct effects to districts and then I know what what are they asking from us in that? What does that look like? Yeah, we were fortunate that we were able to get all the districts together in one room today just so we could hear some of that impact and and a lot about what we're speaking about as far as numbers go are all
022somewhat speculative based on uh data that we have. There's a lot that we don't have uh regarding uh residences and which is a rental property because it's owner occupy properties that would uh be a part of this 0%. So uh taking 10 years worth of our residential data and then uh developing a trend on how that rate has increased over those 10 years from year to year um in a nonassessed year which would be next year when when this hits our fiscal 27 I just said okay 1% growth which is a very conservative estimate u for growth compare that to the 2024 which is that's what zeros out it's not this year's assessment the 2024 nonassessed uh or assessed piece uh that we'd be looking at right now. If I did that for a 100%
023of the residential properties, it'd be a one-year first year tax law or revenue loss of slightly over 2.6 million uh which was devastating uh for us as a district. And those are tentative numbers. Those are tentative. That's 100%. That's a best guess that I can provide because the numbers are over are kind of all over a little bit for the other districts too. So that's kind of a guesstimation at this point. Yeah. I'm sorry. It was 100% would be about 29. If I take we heard today from the assessor, it's about 18% is what is not owner occupied. So if we try to take that assessed valuation away best we can, um that drops it down to around that 2.6. uh revenue loss. And again, just quick synopsis, the reason why that would be a
024hit is because this bill that came out of a special session, again, just so everybody remembers, it's originated for the chiefs and the royals across the state to try to keep them to stay. Our our senators in our county voted no for the bill because they did they didn't want to go with that. However, each senator, each senator in each county got to pick if you wanted to be a 0% cap, 5% cap, or non-exemptive. They just got to do arbitrarily get to pick that. They picked the 0% cap for us. Meaning, again, off of the 24 uh evaluation, we will be frozen. If this go and this goes in effect, this has to go to a vote to the to the public in April. If it passes, will be frozen. basically we will have
025no new revenue coming into the district with property taxes unless we go for a tax increase and that's why so and then there's uh our our attorneys have told us so there's two motions on the floor tonight for you all basically stating to approve being a plaintiff or otherwise participating in sharing the cost and fees to of a lawsuit to challenge the validity of the property tax credit provisions for SP3 and to retain two with Keiny Cooper Moan and Jackstab PC to prepare file pursue such a lawsuit. We would not be the only ones in the lawsuit. There would be other school districts and then other entities would come in as well and one big uh litigation would happen. Now saying that again they believe uh most uh most entities and our um legal team
026believe that it's unconstitutional for many reasons. I don't have to get into all of it, but um and they have a list of it, but really they say it's a special law that distinguishes between c among counties without a rational basis. It violates the constitution requirements for uniform taxation, equal protection. Goes on to say it creates a homestead credit program without providing required restitution to the districts, losing funds, and it imposes an unfunded mandate on counties to pay for an election. We're not doing just because we vote tonight doesn't mean we're doing anything right now. It's a little wait and see game. The governor has to still sign it and then there still has to be some things that take place, but we just want to be ready for it. Um, I have a question
027about sharing the cost. How would the districts share the cost? Because we're smaller than uh than Wentzville, so we should uh pay a a smaller share, right? Yeah. I I can't answer that because I didn't I didn't get clarity on how they're going to divide that. Where are those stated? They they they what they say to us is what I did have heard is that they think it will be minimum because there'll be a lot of people involved. But I I don't have those numbers and I don't know how it's going to be divided up. Until we know how many are are willing, we won't have an answer. And where is that going to come from? Is that like through general funds or what does that look like? Uh it would be for any of
028our operating so it' be fund one, fund two and fund four would be hit. Debt service does not get hit. Um because they cannot take away from the debt that was we're already obligated to pay. Or Brian, are you asking where would the money to pay for the legal fees come from? I'm sorry. And then it'd be general fund. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was asking. Where the fees where the fees going to come from? And then like I don't know. I'm just I'm comfortable as as a board is that the right move for a board to do or to make. I mean, we're getting politically involved then and we always talk about how we're not political and is this the right move because there's going to be a lot of people, you know, I'll
029be honest with you, I would love to not have to pay more taxes, right? You know, and we we mentioned that before, you know, that'd be that'd be great. Yeah. Because I'm getting taxed out the yingyang. So, um, and and I see it from the other side, you know, I see where the where it's going to fall on this and we've talked about other litigation that we say we don't want to get involved in because we want the legislators to take care of that. So, but now we are getting involved in those things. So, I'm understand you know, we get involved in some things and don't get involved in other things or do we just keep it a standard where we don't get involved in those things and allow our representatives and others to do
030their job. what they need to do. So, well, I I see us as representing the best interest of our district, and the best interest of our district is not to eliminate increases in property tax. Unfortunately, many counties like St. Louis County opted out of this. And I don't see it as a political move. I see it as a u we're representing our school district in the best way we can. And let me ask you this. If we like we're gonna contribute into this lawsuit um to fight this and hope it doesn't even get on the ballot. But if it gets on the ballot, then if we have to, you know, will that be a separate thing kind of like the bond issue would have to be where we'd have to raise funds separately to battle
031that. Is that correct? Yeah, I think we would just take it one step at a time and what that looks like. I think right now we had a coalition the day that we met. Again, we to talk talked about all the entities in the room. Mickey in the back of the room here, our PR person or communications is taking lead on getting information from all the all the districts, not even the school districts, but the fire districts and getting information together to get it out so we can so people can know what's happening. So, that's the first thing. So, we're not putting any money towards any kind of campaigning or anything like that. It's more right now, we might down the road see you about that, but right now just about the litigation. I think
032what you're saying is fair. It's fair game. We need to have that conversation. That's why because you get to vote on it. I can tell you every school district in the county is going to have the same conversations. I can't tell you for sure they're all going to go for it, but I know the superintendents are planning having those conversations. I think it is a fine line. I really do. I think in my personal opinion and what our legal team is telling us is if we don't stand up for public education at this point in terms of what it looks like, because here's the deal. I I I think if it gets to a vote, to be honest with you, it's going to pass and it's and it's going to us. It's going to our
033services. It's going to our school district. It's going to our services. Now, that's not political. That's just that's just that's just u facts. But we're in a tough situation because two things. One, who wants to campaign against a tax cut? You want We all want tax cuts. I get it. I pay my tax. I'm just saying. I mean, there's a lot of us that want a tax cut. The other thing is is we're asking you, let's let's put it out there. We're asking you to to it's okay for us to spend money for a litigation against our government. That's not a great place to be either. But I think we would not bring this to you if we didn't firmly believe in it and that our legal team didn't firmly believe that we might have
034to go down this path to make sure that we're we're protecting what we have in this district and our services. Now that I mean that's not political. That's just where we're at. But it's a fair conversation. It's a it's it we're not in a good situation. We're not in a good situation in terms of what we what and it just kind of comes down to like our bond issues and stuff. It's education. We have to educate. We have to get the message out of what this looks like. It's fair enough conversation. Yeah. I mean, I I agree with paying taxes. You know, the Bible says, you know, give Caesar what Caesar and God what is God's, but you know, at some point working people there there's like a limit, you know, and I'm I'm not
035trying to speak politically, but I I agree. We pay our taxes and we do what we should, but there there's a limit. And it seems like there is no cap to, you know, we all work here. We all pay our taxes, but it's every year it's just something more, something more, some more. And then I just look at it, you know, from perspectively, we look at, you know, we just got a $90 million bond issue that just came through and is is it like we're asking more and more and more. I don't want to I don't I'm not I'm not downplaying it at all. I'm not downplaying the severity of it, but I'm just looking at perspectively what that also looks like. Um, so I think that's a perfect example. So we and this is
036not a rebuttal, but that's what education comes into because the $90 million is only on construction. It's only on improvements when we're talking about freezes and we're talking about C tax cuts and we're talking about freeze debt evaluation at at 2024 and we don't move forward at all unless we go ask for more money to the district. We'll we'll lose out on staff. We'll lose out on attaining staff because we won't be able to pay anybody. I mean, we're talking like really cutting cutting funds from our staff basically is what we would be doing. And that and the thing is this the the community doesn't know that. They don't know the difference between the $90 million for a bond issue versus what we're talking about perspective. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's, you know, from
037my seat, and I'm just speaking from my seat here, not as a citizen. Uh, but uh, you know, when the Great Recession occurred, that was a $200 billion dollar uh, loss and assessed valuation, which hit every school district in the county significantly to the point that we were borrowing money to to uh, at least one year to pay uh, salaries and benefits. There is no protection for schools during that. Now we've reversed course and one of the uh state auditors uh was on record of saying this is a market correction that needed to happen from the great recession that happened what was that 12 13 14 years ago that we're coming off of that. Um but it's all being felt at once right now. So now that recouping of that money is getting the market
038it in a sense is having a market correction. The other thing I think it's important again in the seat for me to try to recognize is we've not hit that recession that's supposed to come every decade. Uh why did that happen? I mean, we could sit here and probably talk at length, but all the reasons in the in the economy is why we haven't had that that recession either. So, uh we're just in we're in some very um uh some times that are very very difficult to operate and there's a lot of people feeling the inflation uh that has occurred. There's a lot of and that's all in the market and we're seeing it with our home our properties of our houses. So I think you bring up great points. I absolutely do. Um, but
039then there there's a part of me that too that wants to protect what we have here in this district. And the gains that we we are seeing the revenue gains are typically put back into those salaries and benefits to offset those and and I'm serious when I say this, 2% to 3% increases uh for our teaching staff, which has not kept up with the inflation um period. Uh, and our teachers know that and our teachers will tell us that. Uh, and that's not something that I can change from the seat that I'm in or Dr. Seafford or the board. You got you you can't change that. Um, but we u So that's my fear is I I I recognize that and I see that and then we get this type of legislation that comes out
040and I'm I don't have a I don't have a a response uh that I would go out and say to the teachers right now that oh, I think we'll be just fine. Senate Bill 190. Yeah. We said we don't want to get entangled in that because we certainly didn't want to create generational warfare, you know, give that perception that it was the the senior citizens versus the youth and and all of that. We were going to absorb that and we do. We absorb the tax incentivized properties here in in our city because we see value in growth. We see value in business. Um, so there are things we we certainly uh want to support and we don't this is probably one of those unique situations uh where we're saying this does this does not feel
041good for us in the seats that we're seats that we're in right now. This just isn't a school district issue either. This is a community issue. We are going to lose they're defunding police with this. defunding public libraries, community colleges, and fire departments, just just to name a few. They were all there today. Yeah. So, as a board member, I'm not just here to protect our school district and what it is. I'm here to protect our entire community, every voter. I don't have children in the district. I don't you know there are a lot of people my age who don't but we also need those other services to continue as they are are maybe better. We really need an improved. Yeah I think it's a fair point too. I think most of the other resolution
042stuff we've had for it has been like letters that we send a position for we don't support this. This is the first time I think since I've been on the board that we're taking a I'll call it stronger position of potential litigation. I would say like as a school board we ourselves are a legal entity that have rights and remedies for harm of which this technically falls under because of the funding aspect for it. So I feel somewhat okay from that stance but it's true on a a broader piece we have duly elected officials in our state legislature. This would go to a vote and part of it is wouldn't you just trust the voters to do the right thing somewhat. Um, and so I'm mixed on it from that aspect compared to think in
043the context of things and with this being bundled with other activities, right? This isn't just going to be a vote for the freezing of taxes. It's also going to be for keeping sports in the state of Missouri and uh another thing and this thing. So, it's like three things bundled in together that I think we often see when you do that and you make confusing language, voters aren't actually able to be fully informed and understand what they're voting for. Um, so in a normal instance and stance, I would always want to trust the election process and would in this case too if it is to go to a ballot in April. But with everything else that we've said here and the other perspectives, I think the most important thing is realizing it in the context
044of it is beyond just schools and it is freezing it with potential impacts in one year, but that is just one year and the compounding impact that we would have over time is pretty large and it would affect our district not just from an education of our of our students and kids standpoint, but for what we're able to offer the working professionals within the district and the money we be able to offer and itself I mean Missouri isn't always the highest funded and paid uh state for education and I don't think that's ever lost on me and probably shouldn't be lost on anybody else either and um it's just it's a a challenge with it that you could see from a prolonged period of time that it just makes education even more uh in a
045bad position than it could be today. Um and let's not also the fact that we're talking about property taxes here, but there's there's if there was a plan or some type of idea or concept of how we wouldn't be losing all of that money in revenue and how we could continue to move forward, I think I'd be all for it, but we just heard we're going to have to come up with it other ways. And so, yeah, we're not going to have property taxes, but everybody's going to just turn around and raise all of our other taxes. Um, and that's the conversation we had today. Other otherwise, so now you're going to have every single different department coming and asking every single year, hey, can I, you know, raise my taxes or can I raise
046your taxes so I can keep operating? And at what point is that become an unsustainable model? And we don't have any of our social infrastructure anymore. So it's none of this is a good position. Um, this isn't something I ever thought I would be voting on when I first ran for um the board of education, but and looking at it from, hey, how do we usually stand on things and what would be nice to have as that consistent approach would be, hey, we don't fully support this, but understand that we aren't state legislature. But in this context, I do think more than that one for a president, we have to do what we believe right for our community and for our students and kids and families and even parents and grandparents and people that don't
047have kids in the district because it is more than just us. And you you made a very good point at the very beginning of your discussion there when you said why this is even existing. the sports teams, the that and that's why it's unconstitutional. It's an unfair way of handling this problem that combines things that really shouldn't be combined. I'm not a fan too of getting to pick what you wanted for your area. That seems a little That is that was completely absurd. And the idea that certain counties could opt out, we're probably gonna see this in court. I think that's the key though. Do we believe do we believe at this point that this Senate bill the way it sits now is it unconstitutional for whatever reason and somebody has to step up and
048be able to go against it because if it gets to the voters, no offense, I you Brian, you bring up great points. I mean it I I get it. And we won't and I'll I'll just say this sent Bill 190 and we say, "Hey, we didn't go for that. We didn't go after that for different reasons. We we obviously understand that and now we have this." I can tell you this this won't be the only one. It's going to keep coming. And I'm not saying it's good or bad. It just we're going to have continual conversations about what budgeting, what legislation looks like for public education. that that's that's what that's that's where we're in right now and every year we're going to have something that you'll probably have to vote on and if we're
049going to stand for it or not because it's not going to stop. It's it's a fair point though how we vote for something or for something like this that would give relief for to people and often times when these things happen you know it seems like there's always this element like you mentioned fear like there is a fear and that is struck people because the fear is that yeah the schools are not going to be funded but then you know and we throw all these things on there and wrap all this other crap in there it doesn't make sense and I don't want to make a rash decision on because I'm fearful of something you know I I've lived long enough to know and I'm not a political person But everything always seems worse than
050it always is. And I don't want to make a rash decision because, oh yeah, this is saying it's going to do this and this is going to do this, it's going to do this. I I get we have to we have to work through those rationals and stuff like that. But, you know, I've always learned that it it never is fully what it is, especially when you're now dealing with politicians and stuff of that sort. So, I I just I I just caution, you know, I'm not I'm not negating what anybody has said here, you know. I'm just I'm not comfortable with it. Um not comfortable with the whole bill anyway. I think it's a healthy conversation. It really is. I mean, it's we have to have these conversations. We have to be able to
051um and and and I don't think, you know, I certainly I think we're on the same page with a lot of it. I just I don't think we have a good I mean, I just don't we don't have a good way out right now. Still a lot and it's still a lot of unknowns. I can tell you too with who we deal with with Tooth with Keiny where the other districts will sit to. I know this seems like because I'm asking for that. We're asking for this now in July. We're not you're we're not going to do anything tomorrow. This is just to get ready if we get to that point. So, and we there's a lot of parts to this. So, we just I just don't want all of a sudden, oh my gosh,
052we want to do something. We're not ready. I want to make sure we're ready to go if that's the case. So, and and and and I don't think we have a law a law firm or legal team that's going to act on something that's just on the whim or because we're fear. I mean, that they believe it's unconstitutional what's happening. And if somebody doesn't stop it now, it will go to the voters in April 26 and we won't have a shot. It will pass. It's going to pass. And that's fine. I mean again to but it will greatly affect and I don't think that's we're reading exactly what's going to happen. I mean it's that there will be a there will be a freeze in our revenue unless we do a not our tax increase.
053Correct. And Jeremy, didn't you give us the most conservative estimate on how it could affect us? I mean it's hard. Well, I for the assessed valuation growth was conservative for our revenue. It's hard to say if that's conservative or progressive number because we truly don't know all of the information we know we need to know to put put together a uh an impact on revenue. I can say when we sat in that meeting today the the school districts that spoke out was between usually between 1.5 to a little over a $3 million loss. So um and that's in that year one. That's what they were all stating. Uh again, we're all kind of probably using something a little bit different and how we get our calculations, but that's where we that's what we're hearing today.
054And if this happens, my understanding is then we have to have tax levies to generate correct a tax increase. Tax increase. So you Yeah. And that's for every And then that might be like an annual That's for every entity. Yes. For the police, for the fire, for everybody who's going to be have a um unfunding of their services. any other questions, comments? What? Got a great solution. What's that? And we just tax all the alcohol, cigarettes, the weed factories. Let's just tax all that. That'll give us plenty of revenue. Yeah, we're supposed to get the online vetting uh stuff now too, right? Yeah. So, this is two separate motions. Um, so if there's no further discussion or questions, I move to approve being a plaintiff or otherwise participating in and sharing the cost and fees
055of a lawsuit to challenge the validity of the property tax credit procisions provisions of SB3 as presented. Is there a second? All those in favor? I opposed. That carries. And the second motion I move to retain Tooth Kenny Cooper Mohan Jackstat PC to prepare, file, and pursue such a lawsuit to final judgment, including any appeals as presented. Is there a second? All those in favor? I opposed. That passes. Item 8.01 is our district financial report. So excited to give a district financial report after that conversation. Well, we we are in July, so that means June 30th fiscal year is over. So, we have some uh very preliminary numbers as far as where as far as where we're landing. They're not very preliminary. They're very very close uh to what we'd look at. So, if you
056pull up the June 25 board report and go to the last page, please uh you'll see that fund one number there of 24 million 233. Remember that money has to carry us to pay for salaries and benefits through uh the tax uh when the tax start rolling in in December. Uh of course, we get a little bit of revenue here and there. uh it's not flatlined right now, but it's pretty close to being in comparison to what we get in December, January. So, uh that's that's what we're looking at. So, if you combine the total expenditures under fund one and fund two, that would give you our total amount of expenditures per year. And it could be quite shocking because that $104 million. But in that expenditure, if you look right above that uh for
057the transfer outs of 10 million, that's where we cover that special uh the fund two the money because we can't put enough money in there to pay all of the certified staff that's in that fund one that we transfer out. So that actually gets subtracted from that total expenditure count. So instead of 104, you take that 105 out, that puts us at 93,776, $484.32 as a total expenditure for the year. Um, so outside of that, we also take out we have two endowments that were we've had now for nearly 90 year. Uh, one of them we've had for nearly actually 70 years um that we still we still have on the books. And then there's another one as well that they total 338,000. That's not included uh in that total fund balance or in that
058expenditure either. So we separate that out and then we're at 23,894 um or we subtract that out of the ending fund balance. I'm sorry. So true ending fund balance is 23894 uh divided by that 93 million and some and some dollars will give us a fund balance of about 25%. Uh which is uh really good. Uh it's it's safe. Um and it's where we want to be and we want to continue to grow that. I well let me say that I would like to continue to grow that a little bit. Uh because in our ratings call for that bond issue uh I asked the question where they would like to see us. One of the questions they asked of me and it was about an hour and a half interview uh was um does the
059board take a position on a fund balance? And I gave them the general language we we typically use. We like to fall between 20 and 25%, you know, it's typically what we we've spoke about, but we don't have anything written in as language to that. So I kind of flipped it and said, where would you like us to be? the standards and poor and they said for your size of school district with the staff that you have, we'd like for you to be at 30%. Um, which yeah, that's uh that's that's a bit of a surprise. And you start looking at some of the other area schools and school districts and you'll see that they have a much higher balance. We've just always tried to give as much as we can to stay within that
0602025. So, we'll have another one of those ratings calls in 27. So, I just highlight that and say that because that's what I experienced uh with an outside entity and uh that gives us our rating, our our double A ratings. So, long story short, um in a in a in a good place right now financially and we're not hurting uh but money is allocated for raises every year, right? So, we've entered another one of a two and a half basically two and a half to 3% uh depending on the on the group and the amount of people that they have coming back. So that does not equate into the benefits uh potential benefit increases um property insurance increases which is almost doubled. Uh so all of those factors are uh have to be taken into
061into effect in into account. So good. We're sitting in a good place but we never can take it for granted. Every year is different. Every year presents its challenges. So we're happy where we landed on June 30th. We celebrated that that number. Our staff did a really good job of making sure that they were spending wisely um in those last month and a half, which is we're really asking them, hey, only spend if it's on this year's need. Do not spend for next year's need right now because we want to be as tight as we can to help that end ending fund balance. And and they got the message. They did a really nice job with that. So, we appreciated that. So, um, that's the report that we have and, uh, I'm glad it's it's
062showing that trend of about 25%, right? Or that showing that line of about 25%. Any questions, comments? If not, I make a motion to approve the district financial report as presented. Is there a second? Second. He all those in favor? I opposed. That passes item 9.01. I move to adjourn the meeting. Is there a second? All those in favor? I opposed. Great meeting.