April 13, 2026 Board Reorganization Meeting and Work Session

001Good evening, everyone. For the last time, I call this meeting to order. Roll call, please. Ms. Williams? Here. Ms. Miller? >> Here. Ms. Chesney? Here. Ms. Kearns? We're still trying to get her on Teams. Ms. Lanning? Here. Mr. Moore? Here. Mr. Richmond? Here. All stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please. 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. Approval of the agenda. Is there a motion? I'd like to strike item 3A from the agenda, uh since the MECA MEC is in the process of investigating. And so, I make a motion to accept the agenda as amended. I have a motion. Is there a second? I'll second that. I have a motion and

002a second. Any discussion? I have some discussion. Um I kind of thought that that would happen because we were we are a board that has really turned away from accountability and transparency. So, I was hoping that this item would stay on the agenda because we could have answered some of the questions that have been posed to us. Um I'll remind everyone that it was Ms. Miller that asked for this item to be on the agenda. Um so, I think it would have been only right for the public to hear her request. Um and to hear the answers that she was provided. Um if this item were to stay on the agenda, I would have asked um the question that was asked of me is why didn't I stop her from voting on the personnel report.

003Um and I would have been very clear. I don't talk to Kim Miller. Um so, my question would have gone to you all. You like Kim. Why didn't you stop her? Uh and that question would have been for the board and the administration. Um so, if if if this was still on the agenda, that's the question I would have asked. Um I would also ask, if this was still on the agenda, uh whether or not Ms. Miller plans on voting in the new board members, if she plans to vote for president and vice president, even though our legal counsel has specifically recommended that she resign and has explained that it puts us at legal risk if she votes on things. Um I would have asked that. Um I would have also, if this were to

004be on the agenda, I would have addressed concerns um about Ms. Miller not resigning because I had never resigned. Um and comments about repercussions for my actions. And I would remind everyone, if this was still on the agenda, that Ms. Miller voted um to support and retain the previous superintendent who had not one but two arrests for DUI. Um and then was able to keep his $260,000 salary while still on probation. >> interrupt. I sought the floor. That's Robert's Rules. You're going to want to know that if you get elected. You can't call the question while I still have the floor. Learn Learn Robert's Rules. I would have reminded them that I took responsibility. You can't interrupt someone who still has the floor. It's fine. I took responsibility and served my consequences. Uh but I

005would remind, if this was still on the agenda, that at no point did our legal counsel recommend I resign uh because the consequences for our mistakes are not the same. I would also have liked the opportunity to discuss how shameful it is that this board and administration, not so much you, uh consistently break policy, statute, and now constitutional law, and make excuses for their actions and change those policies later. I would, if this was still on the agenda, have mentioned that it is appalling to me the lack of transparency, the lack of accountability, and the fact that this board and administration have the audacity to hold staff members accountable for much smaller offenses. Um and when we break constitutional law, statute, when we don't complete federal funding requests for 2 years, those staff get promotions.

006That's what I would say if this was still ON THE AGENDA. >> [applause] >> ANY MORE DISCUSSION? YES, MA'AM. Um I I want to say that I have a totally uh different reason for for thinking it doesn't belong on the agenda. You know, um if you read Robert's Rules, it talks about when is it appropriate to rescind a previous action. And um it talks about you you do that when you feel that the board made the wrong decision when it adopted some motion and I don't think that's the case here. I don't think anybody thinks the board made the wrong decision by adopting that personnel report as a whole. And so my opinion is that the complaints have been filed. It's in the hands of the people whose job it is to manage it. Um

007everything I've been able to read says that I think we let that course run and in the meantime the the the board member that has a complaint against them is is is a full fledged board member with voting rights and so I don't I don't think it's um a bad thing that we don't have it on the agenda. Thank you. Any additional discussion? Okay, would you call the vote, please? Ms. Williams? Can you reread the question? It was motion to strike item 3A board business from the agenda. No. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Is Ms. Kearns on? Should be. She's connected. Call her last meeting. We'll have to repeat the question for Jennifer, are you there? Shows her connected. Can you hear me? Say something now. Okay, we can see Can you see There

008we are. There we are. Okay. Jennifer, we are at the approval of the agenda and there has been a motion to strike item 3A board business. Do you vote for or against? For. Ms. Landing? Your lack of accountability and transparency is shameful. No. Mr. Moore? Yes. Mr. Richmond? Yes. And the motion passes 4-3. Next on the agenda. Good evening. I am here to uh we have four scholarships. Um and the first one is the Hurst scholarship. So I'm requesting a motion to approve the Hurst scholarship as recommended by the committee. I'll make that motion. I'll second that. Sorry. >> [laughter] >> Got to get down there. I'm still on the last last corner. That was Rhonda. I have a motion and a second. Okay, thank you. And also for the record I would like to

009object of the participation of Ms. Miller and note that this will place our school board at risk at every vote. You can call the vote. Ms. Williams? Yes. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Kearns? Yes. Ms. Landing? Yes. Mr. Moore? Yes. Mr. Richmond? Yes. And the motion passes next. I request a motion to approve the Coleman scholarship as recommended by the committee. So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Would you call the vote, please? I'll second that. Okay, it's on. Okay, I'm sorry. Ms. Williams? Yes. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Kearns? Yes. Ms. Landing? Yes. Mr. Moore? Yes. Mr. Richmond? Yes. And the motion passes next. I would request a motion to approve the Knepper scholarship as recommended by the committee. Is there a motion? I'll make the

010motion. I have a motion. Is there a second? >> I'll second. Okay, would you call the vote, please? Ms. Williams? Yes. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Kearns? Yes. Ms. Landing? Yes. Mr. Moore? Yes. Mr. Richmond? Yes. And the motion passes. And I would request a motion to approve the Cooper scholarship as recommended by the committee. So moved. Second. >> [cough] >> Ms. Williams? Yes. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Kearns? Yes. Ms. Landing? Yes. Mr. Moore? Yes. Mr. Richmond? Yes. And the motion passes. Thank you. Okay, Dr. McGinnis? Yes. Mr. Richmond, this is Landing. On behalf of our school district we want to thank you for your service, your time and your commitment to our students, our families and our community. I know this hasn't been an easy year, but we do

011thank you for your service and we have a token of appreciation for you. Oh, thank you. >> [applause] [applause] [laughter] >> Hey hey thank you all and the community as I think it's all board members, uh staff and community as well. I appreciate you and your support and I appreciate our community. Thank you. THANKS, TOM. >> [applause] >> AT THIS TIME I NEED A MOTION TO ACCEPT THE results from the Buchanan County Clerk's office. I'll make that motion. Okay, I have a motion. Is there a second? I'll second it. Okay. Ms. Williams? Yes. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Kearns? Yes. Mr. Moore? Yes. And it passes by zero. Can I have Cassandra reel and Dr. Jacob McMillan join me up front? First of all, congratulations. Thank you. For running a well run campaign.

012I appreciate it. Okay, if you will both raise your right hand and repeat after me. I do solemnly swear I do solemnly swear that I will support that I will support the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of Missouri >> and the Constitution of the state of Missouri and that I will faithfully and I will faithfully faithfully and impartially and impartially discharge the duties discharge the duties of St. Joseph of school director of school director in and for in and for the St. Joseph School District >> the St. Joseph School District County of Buchanan County of Buchanan State of Missouri State of Missouri to the best of my ability to the best of my ability according to law. Very good. YOU ARE DULY INSTALLED.

013>> [applause] [applause] >> OKAY, AT THIS TIME I WILL TURN THE meeting over to Dr. McGinnis. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is the Board of Education reorganization. So I will serve as the temporary chair until the election of a board president and a vice president. As part of board officers you will appoint a board secretary and also a treasurer, but we will wait to do that at a later time once we have a replacement for Mrs. Baker. So we will start with board president and then the vice president. The floor is now open for nominations for board president. I I make a nomination for Mike Moore. >> [applause] >> Are there any additional nominations? Did you get mine? I'm sorry, you guys I nominate Rhonda Chesney. THANK YOU. >> [applause] >> ARE

014THERE ANY ADDITIONAL NOMINATIONS? NO, but at this at this time I would like to include an exception objection on the participation of Kim Miller due to the violations of the Missouri Constitution. I just that noted. Hearing no other nominations, [applause] is there a motion to elect Mr. Moore as president? We have to go through these in order as they were nominated. So, is there a motion to approve Mike Moore as board of president? I make the motion. Is there a second? Donna? Okay. Ms. Williams? Yes. Ms. Miller? No. Ms. Chesney? No. Ms. Kearns? Um no. Uh Mr. Moore? Yes. Mr. McMillan? No. Ms. Beal? Yes. And the motion fails. Is there a motion to accept Rhonda Chesney as board president? I'll make that motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Donna, roll call, please. Get

015this in here first. Ms. Williams? No. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Kearns? Yes. Mr. Moore? No. Mr. McMillan? Yes. Ms. Beal? No. The motion passes 4-3. Ms. Chesney will serve as our Board of Education president. At this time, I will now open the floor for nominations for Board of Education vice president. I nominate [clears throat] Jacob I'd like to make a nomination for Cassandra Beal. Okay, Kim, I heard yours first. For Jacob. And then LaTonya. Can I just ask a question to Cassandra really quick? I'm sorry. Who did you nominate? Cassandra. Thank you. It's normally like a minute >> Was I supposed to get my minute? We don't have to do that. And so I thought it would be best that we just continue with the process, but if the board would choose

016to do that I don't need to. Oh, you chose to do that? Okay. It was ran by legal. We will start with the >> of things are run by legal. We weren't here. We have a nomination for Jacob McMillan as vice president, Donna. Can we Do we have a motion to accept? Yes, I do. And a second? Okay, can you call the vote, please? I'm sorry. You motioned, who seconded? Jacob. Thank you. I didn't second the vice. No, no, no. I'll second. >> Donna, Rhonda did Okay, thank you. Okay, you are Ms. Williams? No, but I also Are we listening to legal or are we not listening to legal? Is my question. We need to decide that as a board really soon. And so, no. Ms. Miller? This is for Jacob. Yes, correct. Yes. Ms.

017Chesney? Yes. Ms. Kearns? Yes. Mr. Moore? No. Mr. McMillan? Yes. Ms. Beal? No. And the motion passes 4-3. Jacob McMillan is our vice president. We will continue with the agenda. Madam President, if if it if it pleases the board, I would like to have my 60 seconds. We want to hear. Those were both illegal votes. Both of those votes were illegal on the basis of Miller nominating her and her whatever. I think that's fine if you want to proceed. Yes, I think that's fair. >> Yeah, look guys, I think the pre- predominant question, although it's a kind of a moot point, but the predominant question is what kind of leader does this board and this district need right now and and and for the next 12 months. And I want to say that you know,

018we obviously need a board member a board a leader who will work with all board members. Every one of them. 6 plus 1. We need a board member that wants nothing more than to see administration succeed, but not afraid to hold them accountable. And so, what we need is somebody that's really comfortable with conflict. Um Students and staff deserve a high functioning board and I just appreciate the chance to SAY THOSE COMMENTS. >> [applause] [applause] >> ANYONE ELSE LIKE THEIR MINUTE? I JUST WOULD like to say that I hope moving forward, Rhonda, that you are willing and open to communicate because historically when I've reached out to you, you have not responded to me. Um in order for us to work as a team and to do the best we can for the students and

019staff in this district as a whole, we have to be open and willing to communicate even when we don't like each other. Uh I am totally on board with that and I am more than willing to communicate with all members of the board on a regular basis. Congratulations to Ms. Chesney and Dr. McMillan and we will continue with school school board ethics, Donna. No one ever kicked you out, so we're fine. Yes, I'd like to switch places now. Let's do some musical chairs. She's got it. She's going to hand it to you. Yeah, I just want to make sure I don't get Yeah, yeah, you're fine. >> [clears throat] >> Okay, according to our policy, the school board member ethics policy BBF needs to be re-adopted every 2 years, but we have a new board

020this year, so we need to re-adopt it now. I have left a copy of it at each of your stations. If you could please take a few minutes and look over those I would appreciate it and then I would like to have a motion to accept it. Donna, do I have this? Um it should be attached to the agenda under board policy. You're welcome. >> [clears throat] >> If you've had enough time, do I have a motion to accept the policy as written? I make a motion. I'll second. Okay, Ms. Williams? Yes. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Kearns? Yes. Mr. Moore? Yes. Mr. McMillan? Yes. Ms. Beal? Yes. It's you now. >> Okay, I'm ready. All right, the next thing on our agenda under letter D is the appointment of MSBA delegates and

021alternate. Our district gets to have two delegates. In the past, it's been the president and the vice president. I would like to open this up to the board to see if you want to continue with it being the president or the vice president or if we would like to share one of the spots with a member of the board who has been on the board for at least 1 year. So, I'm open for some discussion about your feelings about that. I would I would like to be a delegate. Okay, what are some other thoughts? I have a schedule conflict, so I cannot serve this year. I cannot attend the summer summit this year. And you have to be on the board for a year, too, so As I mentioned [clears throat] earlier to a couple

022members of the board, I'm on the board of MSBA and I'm also on the advocacy committee, so it makes a lot more sense if I continue on as a delegate, but I'm at the will of the board. Okay. Any other comments? Okay. So, then will we be Would you like for me to continue as one of the delegates as well? Uh Do we want to have two people that are not even the board president and vice president as well? What do you think, Mike? Are we talking about we get two plus an alternate? Yes. Actually, we get two alternates as well. One alternate for each person. Got you. I probably make a good alternate. Okay. Okay. So, do we have Latonya and yourself as delegates? I'd like to be that. Oh, I'm sorry. Latonya and

023Kim. Okay. And then alternates, we have Mike. >> Mike. And I'm happy to be an alternate, too. >> Okay. Okay. All right. We have a motion for to appoint Latonya Williams and Kim Miller as delegates for MSBA. Do we have a second for that motion? I'll second. Okay. Will you call the vote, please, Donna? Yes. Sorry. Ms. Williams? Yes. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Burns? Yes. Mr. Moore? Yes. Mr. McMillan? Yes. Ms. Veal? Yes. Okay. Motion passes 7-0. And now we have a motion to appoint Mike Moore and Ronda Chesney as alternates for MSBA. Yes. Who makes that motion? I'll make that motion. I'll second it. >> [cough] >> I'll second it. Okay. Ms. Williams? Yes. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Burns? Yes. Mr. Moore? Yes. Mr. McMillan? Yes. Ms. Veal?

024Yes. Okay. Um at this point, I need a motion to adjourn to our work session. So moved. Can I have a second, please? I'll second. Thank you. Ms. Williams? Yes. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Burns? Yes. Mr. Moore? Yes. Mr. McMillan? Yes. Ms. Veal? Yes. All right. At this time, I'd like to call our work session to order. Would you do the roll call, please, Donna? Casey, are you by yourself? Okay. Ms. Williams? Here. Ms. Miller? Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Burns? Yes. Mr. Moore? Here. Mr. McMillan? Here. Ms. Veal? Here. Okay. Um I'd like a motion for the approval of the agenda, and we do have something we would like to strike from this agenda as well. And that will be Oh, G. Okay. G. If we could remove G, and I make

025a motion that we approve the amended agenda. Removing G? Yes. I'll second that motion. There's a motion and a second. Is there a reason why we're removing this? We want to have additional conversation with head counsel. Okay. Thank you. Would you call the roll, please? Ms. Williams? No. Ms. Miller? Yes. Ms. Chesney? Yes. Ms. Burns? Yes. Mr. Moore? Yes. Mr. McMillan? Yes. Ms. Veal? Yes. Okay. We are ready for items under discussion. Dr. Hedgecorth, would you start with our finance workshop and forecast, please? Absolutely. Thank you. So, typically in April, I like to give the board an update on some things going on in the state legislature as well as um how we're trending fiscally within our own district. And just to give an overview and a background of some of the major things that

026we look at within our district and those major categories of revenue and expenses. And just uh you know, give those new board members background as well as current board members refresher cuz every board, no matter how many members are are new or continuing on, uh is a different dynamic. And so, I always like to do this workshop in April. Uh it leads up to our preliminary budget that we ask for approval in June. And then also that final budget amendment that we do in June for this fiscal year, too. So, I find this time of the year kind of that great time to uh give that update. So, if we can go to the next slide, um you know, I would like to talk about the major categories we have for revenue, expenses, and then

027also talk a little bit through our budget forecasting tool we have for the next 5 years. All right. So, if we go to the uh the next slide, please. So, the major sources of revenue that we have uh for our district is we have local, county, state, federal, non-current, and amounts received from other LEAs. So, the last two are typically anomalies that are small amounts. So, your major categories are the first four. Uh local uh is your local property taxes, your Prop C, uh tuition, earnings and investment, and any food service programs. Uh the first two are your major sources of revenue. Uh makes up over 50% of what we receive uh for our revenue. So, they have a major impact on our budget. Uh county resources, we we don't have a lot. Um about

0282 or 3% of our budget is county resources. Those are mainly railroad utility taxes that we receive from the county. So, it is a source, but not a major funding source. Then our second major source we have in our district is our state. Uh the foundation formula pays um per weighted average daily attendance uh based on a state adequacy target, and it's a formula that our current um funding is through. Of course, the state is going through the process right now uh reimagining what that funding formula looks like, but we know we'll have the current one in place for at least uh the next 2 years until they bring that to the Governor Kehoe in December of 2026. Uh federal sources, your Title 1, Title 2, 3, and 4, uh IDEA, Medicaid, and CARES. Uh

029this has fluctuated. You know, back in 2021-22, we received a lot more federal revenue. That has since waned off in the recent years. And then non-current revenue, if we sell like our GO bond we did in 2024, you get that one-time money from the sale of that bond that goes in 5600. And then 5800 is your tuition from other LEAs, which is small. Uh if we can go to the next slide. All right. So, um our assessed valuation, what makes a big part of our property tax and what we get locally, um the assessed valuation of that property depends on what type of property it is. So, uh if you had um appraised personal property of $10,000, then your assessed property for that value would be $3,330 or 33.3%. Commercial property is assessed at 32%,

030residential 19%, and agricultural 12%. So, depending on the class of properties you have is how each one is assessed based on its appraised value. Next slide, please. All right. So, for example, a home in St. Joe that's worth $250,000, uh that home generates uh a little over $2,000 in property taxes. How do we get to that? Um if that appraised value of that home is $250,000, of course, remember residential is assessed at 19%. That gives you a $47,500 value. You're going to divide that by 100 and multiply by our tax rate, which is currently 4.9163 to give you that value for what that home pays. Just to give you an example, um it costs about a little over $13,000 to educate a student here in St. Joe based on FY25 numbers. And so, a lot

031of times, you know, there's an assumption made that, "Hey, my property taxes [clears throat] are covering the education of my students." Um they're actually covering less than a fifth of that if you um only have one kid. If you have three kids, you can see how that cost is near $40,000 um for that home. So, um although, you know, we do value residential property, there's no doubt about that. Um you know, your commercial property in your district is really your revenue generator for your taxes. So, we appreciate all of our businesses and everything they bring to uh St. Joe in the community and their support for for education. All right. Next slide, please. Okay. So, our assessed valuation, so that, you know, as described earlier, that's a major driver of the revenue that we have

032um within our district. Um if you look at the values that we've had for the last 5 or 6 years, um if you see an R after the year, that means that was a reassessed year. In Missouri, uh they do a reassessment every other year. And so, what's odd about St. Joe is at times we've had higher property tax or sorry, assessed value increases in non-reassessment years. That's not the case. Typically, if you look at like Platte County, Clay County, other areas, in your reassessment years, you'll see 8, 9, 10% growth. Then your non-reassessment years, it might be 2 to 3%. And so, this really doesn't follow a typical pattern. And I can tell you our neighbors around us have had a lot higher assessed valuation increases in the last 5 to 6 years that

033we have. And so, that has somewhat held back some of our revenues. But you can see in the last year we had a 7.86% increase in that assessed valuation. And so, just to note, of course, with the Hancock amendment, anything you see above new construction is also rolled back through your operating tax levy. So, just want to mention that. Our forecast for next year and all the forecasts I have, we're going to forecast 2% for non-reassessment years and 3% for reassessment years. And so, that's typically what I do for our 5-year forecast. I just wanted to to let you know that that is based off, you know, past results. So, Kevin, go ahead. Okay. So, our tax levy. We have four funds. We have our operating fund and our our special teachers fund. Typically, when

034we talk about operating, it's fund one and two. So, when we talk about our operating funds, we're talking about fund one and two. And the reason for that is fund three is restricted funds. Anything in our debt service fund or fund three is restricted, can only be used to pay our general obligation debt or our bonding debt. So, that's the only thing it can go for. Can't be used for anything else. Your fund four is your capital improvements fund. And so, there are some districts that have a levy in their fund four, we don't. DESE at the end of year lets you transfer some dollars over from fund one to fund four. They have an equation for what that amount can be. For us, it's typically around a little over $7 million a year that

035we can, doesn't mean we do that amount every year, but you can. So, and there are some districts that have levies in their fund two, we don't. A lot of folks put most of it in fund one and then have your of course you have to have your fund three levy if you have any type of debt you're trying to service. And with fund four, a lot of times you see districts transfer over from fund one to fund four to pay any capital improvement. So, what you're seeing here with only levy in fund one and fund three is typical of most districts in the state of Missouri. But you do get that anomalies once in a while where someone might have 15 or 20 cents in fund four. Looking at our tax levy, you can

036see where we were in the year 2020-2021. And then of course, the community voted that Prop C rolled back for the district, which helped add 2750 to the salary schedule for all of our staff members. You can see that our levy has remained flat from the previous year at 4.9163. And of course, just want to thank the community again for that Prop C roll back and helping our district move forward with salaries and benefits for our staff. All right, next slide, please. Okay. So, state funding. How do how do we figure how we get paid from the state? So, it's a somewhat complex formula. So, starting this year, instead of just using weighted ADA, they let us use 90% weighted ADA and 10% weighted average membership. That's what that WAM stands for. So, for St.

037Joe School District, that was a little over 11,000. The state adequacy target for last year, FY25, our last year that was audited, was 6750. The dollar value modifier is a basically a rate that the state uses for cost of living. So, if you're in a spot with a little bit higher cost of living, that might be higher. If you're in a place with lower cost of living, that's maybe closer to the value of one. And then local effort is subtracted out. So, whatever your local effort was from your fiscal year 2005 is subtracted out from your equation. And for St. Joe School District, that was close to 34 million at 33.75 million. So, once you take that equation and multiply that out, for FY25, our state payment was a little over 44 million. So, something

038I do want you to remember, Senate Bill 727, which was passed last year, stated that the state adequacy target would be increased to 7145 starting in this fiscal year and and beyond. And so, that's with all the budgets that we have developed, that is the SAT value that we used to develop all of our preliminary or budget amendments going forward. So, Kevin. Okay, enrollment in St. Joe. Starting with the 2010-2011 school year, the reason why this is important is that weighted average daily attendance and weighted average membership is based on your enrollment attendance. So, your membership is the value of your membership and how many days your students go to school, where your weighted average daily attendance is your attendance rate times that membership. So, you can see that over the years in St. Joe

039that we've had enrollment fall. You can see during the years where 2020-2021, during COVID years, a lot of districts saw a decline in enrollment. And then started to recover a little bit years after, but you can see this is not uncommon with a lot of districts in the state of Missouri. Birth rates are down, so you have a graduating class of let's say 780 students, but then you only have 680 students coming in as kindergarten. So, you have a span of 100 right there that you have to recover, that you're filling that gap. And that's that has been common of a lot of districts in the state of Missouri. So, not any different from here in St. Joe, but you can see the grade spans K through 6 of where we've set recently for our

040student enrollment. And we dropped below 10,000 for the first time in the 2024-2025 school year. All right, Kevin. Okay, so how does our revenue break out by source? I talked a little bit earlier about local being our biggest source of revenue. So, you can see this, so that's over 50% of our revenue here in St. Joe, which is important because that's not necessarily case in every district. We rely a lot on our local community to help support our district. In other states, the state percentage is a lot higher than what you see in a lot of districts states. Missouri ranks around 40th or 49th in percentage funding from the state compared to local sources. And so, there is a lot of burden put locally on communities here, whether it's you know, your commercial or your

041residential property taxes that that fund your local education. Of course, our next highest is our state. We talked a little bit earlier about that foundation formula and how we get funded from the state and what goes to that equation. With that weighted ADA and that WAM being a big number where we sit, and especially that SAT value, whatever the state sets for that foundation formula. And then federal is 9%, county is 2.7, and then other is only 0.3%. And again, those big categories you see are those first four up there, local, county, state, federal. That's why I didn't talk much about the 5600 or 5100 cuz those those amounts are typically pretty small and ancillary revenue that you see from time to time. All right, next slide, please. Okay, so expenditure sources. What are major

042categories for that? So, number one is salaries. That's going to make up all our full full and part-time employees. Then you have our benefits. Not only your retirement but in your insurance, but your Medicare, social security, workers comp, unemployment insurance all make up 6200. Purchased services, for example, transportation we outsource here in St. Joe. So, anything that has to do with transportation is a purchased service here in St. Joseph School District, as well as any other insurance for employee benefits, communication, professional and technical services fall under that category. And then supplies and materials, these are your textbooks, technology related items, whether they're Chromebooks, laptops, water, electric, natural gas, all those different things fall under supplies and materials. And then capital outlay. So, when we had our general obligation bond passed back in 2024, we had

043all of our expenses that had to do with construction of those facilities spent out of capital outlay expenses. And so, sometimes that can be related to a general obligation bond that passed or can just be out of fund four capital improvements. Depends on what is going on at the time. And then long and short-term debt. So, that's your GO debt or your COP debt. GO meaning general obligation bond. And COP debt is a term for lease purchase that we have. We pay about 1.2 million on a COP debt here in St. Joe. So, not not much debt in that that category. All right, Kevin, next slide. So, expenditures. So, if you look at all of our expenditures, you can see that salary and benefits is the greatest percentage of what that makes up. And some

044of you might look at that and do quick math and say, "Well, that's about 60%." And you're like, "Well, Robert, you've always told us that salary and benefits is 75%." It is. It's 75% of our operating budget. So, our operating budget is going to subtract out our debt payments, especially our general obligation bond, cuz that's fund three. That money is restricted only to pay GO debt. So, that's not included in your operating budget or your capital outlay related to general obligation bond, cuz any type of expenses you have to do with construction, you can only spend on construction. You can't spend it on salaries, can't spend it on supplies or anything else. So, when you're looking at this fiscal year, this fiscal year is FY25. It had a lot of construction expenditures in there. Typically,

045capital outlay is not 14.4% of our expenditures. In years going forward, it's going to be more around 3 to 4%. This was a year where we spent most of money on construction for HVAC and our fields at Lafayette, Benton, and Central. So, when you take out those restricted funds for debt service and capital outlay, our salary and benefits are 75% of our operating budget of what can be spent. All right, Kevin, if you can go to the next slide. Okay, so with all that said, with showing you our enrollment and showing you what our expenses look like, this takes a look at our expenditures from FY21 through FY26, then also takes a look at our enrollment. So, on the left-hand side, you will see a legend for our expenditures. Now, on the right-hand side, it

046shows the values for our enrollment. So, you can see the black line is our enrollment and where we were in FY21 versus today. And then you can see the blue bar graph and referencing the left-hand side is our expenditures during that time. So, you can see as our enrollment has gone down, expenditures has gone up. Well, what has driven up that expenditures? Our insurance, you know, from year to year, our health insurance has gone up, you know, 10, 12, 15% depending on the year. Our property insurance, liability insurance has sometimes gone up 20%. Um, the average I would say probably 14 to 16% is what it's been over the last three or four years. So, you have salary and benefits, and then if you increase your FTE, so if you if your total staffing that

047you have has increased over the years, that's also going to drive up your expenses. So, we've we've fallen in enrollment over the years, but our expenditures has gone up. So, some of that is under our control, some of it isn't depending on the environment, inflation, and things like that, but here nor there, it that is what the numbers have shown over the last five year five, six years. All right, Kevin, next slide if you don't mind. All right. I am going to show you the projection tool, but I would like to show you the personnel resource first, Kevin. So, if you can bring up that personnel resource document that I have in your board agenda. Of course, earlier I talked about salary and benefits and what percentage that makes up of our budget, which is

04875% of our operating budget. And so, this is a breakdown of all of our staffing in the categories from 2016-17 all the way to this year. And so, what this does is it tells a story. So, you can see back in 2017-18, we started reducing staff over time because our reserve ratio had fallen down to % below board policy. And so, you can see if there's a negative value on the difference, that's a change from year over year. And then the subtotal is what's been in that category. So, if you look at certified staff in 2017-18, I'm using my own copy here. In 2017-18, we had 1,032 certified staff in the district. Then in 2018, we dropped to 941. So, the reason that happened is because they had to reduce expenditures, so they did that

049through, you know, rolling off staff through attrition. And so, as you continue to look down at the bottom, you can see the certified staff is listed as well with each category. And then a grand total at the bottom where we've been over the years. So, back in in 2017-18, I'll start with that year, we had 1,853 staff members. And the next year, you can see we reduced 157. The next year reduced 103. In 2020-21, reduced 38. And then in 21-22, we reduced down to 11. So, we only have 1,544 staff members in the 2021-2022 school year. And then over the next few years, you can see we really increased. We increased 36 in 22-23. We increased 112 in 23-24. And we increased 79 staff members in 24-25 and then 25 staff members into this year.

050And so, that ramping up of FTE has of course increased our expenses. And with some of the revenue shortfalls that we've seen at the state level, that we see at the federal level, um, we are where we are today where we're currently set. So, if I can bring your attention, I have put two different budget forecasts in your packets. Hey, Robert. Yes, sir. So, I took the personnel report and I went back to just overlaid it with the five years of the enrollment going down and expenses going up. And since enrollment started going down in 2020, we've added 241 full-time jobs. And so, it kind of justifies what you were saying that if 75% of our costs are personnel, adding 241 jobs while declining 700 students, it's working against us in terms of financial stability.

051So, I just wanted to share that in the last five years, it does line up. Our expenses are up because we've hired more jobs. Our income is down because we've lost more students. So, I appreciate those two numbers being overlaid together. >> Yeah, yeah, that is the the story I was trying to tell with that, absolutely. And so, you know, if the SAT had kept going up like some of the legislation had planned, you know, you can continue to rise with that, but unfortunately, I'm going to show when it doesn't and we fall short of that, what's what we're going to look like here. Absolutely. So, any other questions before I jump into the forecasting tool? Okay. All right. I just want to point something out. Of course, yeah. Speaking to what you said, cuz

052I also looked at that the positions that we added were like our big growth areas. So, it was like early childhood development, interventionists, English as a second language, our classified staff, our paras, social workers, family support roles. So, we were shifting some of that resource towards support services and like specialized roles and also trying to account for the increase in behavioral issues, the decline in attendance, and the mental health needs of our current staff. So, I think it's it's hard >> hard. It is hard. to balance that like doing what's best for students, but also being fiscally responsible. So, I think when you look at that number and you're like, oh my gosh, they added all these, you know, new jobs. Yeah, but it was in an attempt to do what was best for kids.

053>> you made a great point. And in that window where we added those, you know, we we really expanded early learning childhood and our early learning center. So, that was a reason our our ELD student population has definitely gone up. And then we've increased in our paraprofessionals, which a lot of times work with our specialists. So, it tells a story, not necessarily a good or bad story, you know, tells that story. So, yeah. One thing I did want to mention, if you look at administration this current year, you'll see the 2025-26 school year. With our district reorganization, you we will have reduced a secondary principal, an elementary principal, a coordinator, an activities coordinator. So, right now going into next year, we sit at 69 in that category for administration. So, and then in other areas

054like you know, Mark has a handout within your packet here. He also breaks out some of the other categories, whether it's, you know, teachers, nurses, and some other things through attrition and through the reorganization process that are in there as well. So, I just wanted to point that out as you as we start to look for next year, look at that personnel resource. All right. So, the first document I want to look at is I'm going to call it a worst-case scenario document, and it is the document if you look in the upper right-hand corner under assumptions, that assumptions is the 6740 SAT or the state adequacy target. If any of you happen to watch Linda Quinley and her update that she sent out the other day, she talks about where the state will be

055probably next year or what's been recommended that will be the SAT 6740 for next year. So, all assumptions in the past is that we'd be a 7145. And that's what we budgeted off of because that's what was passed in Senate Bill 727. Well, our state revenue has not come in like we've expected. Classroom Trust Fund, which is funded through casino riverboats and gambling, and we have a cigarette tax, and all those different things, has fallen short. Everybody can give theories about why those has fallen short, but those have fallen short. And so, with that, you know, those appropriations not there, they've had to adjust that SAT down because the state has not had the funding available to fully fund that state adequacy target. So, this year, they believe it's going to be about the 6950,

056but next year, they believe it's going to be 6740. So, I am basing this five-year projection tool off that 6740. And then Prop C is your state sales tax. And so, currently, you have a lot of districts that are having a higher weighted ADA and weighted average membership because they are at least staying flat or or growing a little bit. And the reason I say they're growing, well, Robert, you just said their enrollment's down. Their enrollment is down, but that water wham is based off of membership versus attendance. So, if you're a district that has 80% attendance versus counting your formula payment off your membership, [clears throat] it's a big deal because that membership, let's say your student goes full-time, it's counted as 1.0. If that student only shows up 80% of the time, that's

057a 0.8. And so, calculating the formula off the membership really helps a lot of districts. Well, because we continue to lose students at a higher rate than others, ours is staying pretty flat. So, we're not seeing that water wham number go up, but that SAT number is coming down. And so, with the Prop C number going to be at 1418, that was predicted to be at 1465. So, that's about a half million dollar hit. The SAT going to 6740 versus being at 7145 is about a 4.2 million dollar hit for us. So, we're talking about 4.7 million less expected for next year than we thought sitting here last fall. Based off projections coming from the state legislature. So, how does that affect us? Well, if you look at where we should end this year, I

058still believe we'll end this year about 9.99% on our reserve ratio. If you go across the bottom, you can see what our beginning fund balances at the very that that last group at the bottom of the page, Um, what our projected surpluses for funds one and two. And remember funds one and two is our operating budget and what we budget off of. We've excluded everything from fund three cuz that's restricted for debt service, so that's not in any of these calculations. And then you look at what our ending fund balance will be for fund one and two. So, um, we will end this year predictably just above 16 million um, for this year, but then with the reduction in the SAT, reduction in Prop C next year, you can see that right now uh, we're

059predicted to be at a budget deficit of six or just over six million dollars. And so, of course, that is including the savings we have in reorganization. If we did not have those reorganization savings, we'd be around a negative eight or nine million dollars. And so, this this problem that we're showing here is a revenue problem. We are not getting the revenue that we expected to see from the state, um, but I will say that it's not over. The session's not over. We have a lot of great people fighting for us down in Jeff City, um, and I'm hoping that that SAT can get a little bit increased. And so, I'll go to the next sheet which I I hope I would not say that this is the high end. I'm going to say that

060this is um, where I think it might end up being. I'm I'm probably a hopeful person, but I think you're going to see some hopefully improvement um, and some negotiations done at the state level to get that SAT up higher to what was promised at that 7145. So, I don't think it's going to hit 7145, but I do think it I'm hoping it'll hit 6900. I also hope that the state legislature release the surplus in the Prop C fund, um, that we'll get that Prop C up to 1465. And so, with that same scenario, you can see that um, next year instead of over six million dollar debt budget deficit, uh, we're just over 4.2 million dollar deficit. Um, and so, that of course, you know, continues to put us on a downward trend. Um,

061the one thing I will say is other districts in the state, um, that are sitting at 24, 25% reserve ratio, they have the luxury of to kind of wait this out a little bit for a year or two. Um, unfortunately, we're not at that same luxury. We ended last year at 10.02%. So, um, we are continuing to evaluate our budget. We are continuing to look to reduce our expenses as we go into next year. So, as you look at what the projected expenses are there, um, I hope that we can continue to whittle that down. The process is not over yet. We're still continuing to um, look at those numbers, but the numbers I have here is what I would have if I had to bring you a budget for next year right now. I

062don't have to bring that budget to you until June because we want to wait as long as we can. We want to wait till the state legislature's complete uh, with their work and where we really feel like we know where some numbers will be before I bring that budget to you. And that's why we bring it to you in June because we know the most information. And so, I know um, this forecast is probably not what you wanted to see today, uh, but we will continue to keep you updated. Um, Dr. McGinnis and myself listen to um, our advocacy uh, expert every Monday and he talks about all the different bills and how they're progressing. And as we get updated information, we will continue to update you on what this looks like for the next

063coming years. But, um, I will say whether you're going with a pessimistic scenario or a a optimist scenario, um, either way state funding is not going to be at that 7145 SAT level um, that we hoped it would be and what was in Senate Bill 727. And so, uh, you're going to have a lot of schools across the state that are are going to receive less revenue than they had anticipated and look to have some strategies. So, um, be happy to answer any questions I can on these two forecasts and how some of these numbers um, might have been calculated if you were wondering what went into those formulas. So, I guess my question is if you were advising us as the board purely from a financial standpoint, >> [clears throat] >> what are the

064top like two to three priorities that you think we need to work on over the next year? >> Yeah. So, this is just my opinion and I I believe it is opinion of a lot of people. One, look at your strategic plan. Um, anything you have in your strategic plan is what you are committed to from your financial standpoint. Um, and most of those things in our strategic plan are your students in the classroom. So, if you're evaluating an expense, how much does it impact the classroom? And so, if you're looking to trim different expenditures, you want to look at the things that are furthest from the classroom and save the things that are closest to the classroom. Um, and so, a lot of things a lot of times our strategic plan aligns with that.

065Um, sometimes we get caught up on adult things um, instead of, you know, looking at the kid things and the focus needs to be on the students and and not on things we we like as adults. And sometimes it's hard to to, you know, turn that off, but you really do have to say, "Okay, how much does this affect the classroom? And is this something that we should look at?" Um, you know, I know 4.2 million sound like a lot, um, but if you look at our fund one and two expenses, which again I'll go back, when I say fund one and two I'm talking about our operating expenses, we have a 160 million dollar budget. Um, and so, you know, 10% of that budget, you know, is going to be 16 million. Um, so

0664 million is 2.5% of our budget that we needed to work on to get a balanced budget. So, when you say we got 2.5% to go, it doesn't sound quite as bad as 4.2 2 million. Um, so I'm trying to look at the positive aspect of that, um, but we still got some work to do. Um, so cuz we don't have the luxury of a higher reserve ratio to just wait out a couple years. We need to continue to make sure that we're getting as close to a balanced budget we can and trying to to build a little bit so we don't have to take out a tax anticipation note every fall just to cover expenses until we get our property taxes in January. Yeah, that's a great question. I agree. And my other question

067is, sorry, I told you I had a lot for you. No, that's good. You're good. [laughter] Um, looking over what you provided us, the purchase services have increased over time and so have contracts. So, can we break down like what's included in that category and maybe identify areas where we have a little more flexibility? Sure. So, our purchase service, um, a lot of that is transportation. About eight million of that is transportation. Um, now we do get some of that back through our state payment. Um, that was another thing that is looking to continue flat was they are going to revert transportation payments back to the FY25 level. And so, we will probably see about a two to three hundred dollar reduction in transportation payments than what we anticipated. So, looking at that value, you

068know, for next year we have it about 24 million. Um, you know, a third of that is transportation. Um, you have a lot of special services uh, providers like if we have uh, speech language pathologists that maybe we need to outsource because we don't have somebody in house that's certified for that. Um, you know, that is a purchase service. Um, depends on the software, uh, but some of those can be looked at a purchase service like software as a service um, instead of supply just depends on what you're purchasing. Um, you can look at some curriculum pieces. Sometimes it can be supply, sometimes purchase service depending on what it is. Um, and so, those are some of your magic major categories that you look at um, that falls under purchase service. Thank you. Sure. Do

069you have any other questions? Okay. Thank you, Dr. Hedgecorth. I appreciate how complicated that is, but how you explain it and make it very easy to understand. I appreciate that. >> Thank you. I feel smarter every time you talk. >> [laughter] >> All right. So, next up we have Mrs. DeBall. Thank you. Well, we're just going to continue on the same conversation where it comes to finances um, a little bit. So, thank you guys for having me um, come and kind of answer some of those questions you had earlier when we had visited. Um, you guys had quite a few questions and then even though I had come to you with what the early childhood department and the principals who are here today and our instructional um, coach what they had shared with me as

070a team had come together, we didn't have the actual staff fill out in a survey. And so, we wanted we'd had conversations, but not a survey. So, I really um, after we had talked, that was important to bring to you so that you guys could see the numbers um, for everyone's, you know, to get your own opinion. But before I started on that, which is the attachment, I just want to go back and think a little bit about the growth of our early childhood program. So, that is one of the things cuz Anna I appreciate you bringing that up because the whole time I'm thinking we do we did have an increase in staff um, at for early childhood and that was because of our early childhood growth. And due to um, we had a

071lot of ESSER money if you remember at that time and so, the district had made a decision cuz that was part of our Vision Forward our long range plan to invest in the growth of our early childhood program. So, I did bring a few numbers. They're not in your packet, but I do want you just to be aware so you kind of know where we're at and where we're ending up this school year. So, in um, 21-22, that was when we combined um, Keatley and Oak Grove when we opened up Lake. Um, we had 378 students at that time. 22-23, we got up to 466. 23-24, which was when we Mark Twain opened, um, 544. 24-25, 632. 25-26, as of today, 639 students. have an IEP. 130 of those students with an IEP will be

072going on to kindergarten. We still have close to 60 students in process for an IEP as we speak currently with our four process consultants. I checked in with them on Friday. So, one of the things in order to grow and we have to provide we as a district we have an obligation for child find which I've talked about a lot. And child find is when when a child is in need of services, particularly special education services, it is our obligation to find those students. And so through that we were able to access um some extra funds to kind of grow our preschool and it helped us with child find. So, um ADA funds was one funding option. Another later was the MLQBK grant. And so those were two opportunities through the state um that has

073helped us grow. However, those funding opportunities aren't as stable as our two other funding sources and that's title funding which is still a federal program that can fluctuate some, but it is an amount that when when we say this is for this we can count on once we've received that money. And then early childhood special education which when I've come to you and talked to you before, um you know that that is a 100% reimbursement, but it is for the next year. Okay? So, we do everything we can get through our FER, we get 100% of that money back the next year. So, some of our numbers are kind of they fluctuate. Where when we go back to that SAT number and I'll have Robert kind of explain. I say it in general terms, gross

074>> [laughter] >> or net. And so that SAT number is the gross, the amount that we try to think we're going to get, but what we actually receive after everything is quite a bit less. Did I say that right, Robert? >> [laughter] >> So, those ADA funds and those MLQBK, that's the net. So, that's costing us a lot more money. So, just kind of putting that out there. But, getting to your questions. So, you guys have an attachment and the public does too. So, those are the questions and hopefully I didn't forget any. We went through to make sure. Um the early childhood program on the very front and you're welcome to pull that up if you want, Kevin. It is an attachment if the our community wants to see it. Um that was our

075year had finished, so I was able to go and get those numbers those actual numbers for you all. So, basically just what our expenses are, so our total expenditures for the 24-25 school year, that's for things we're coded this way, it was over 7 million just in total expenditures. And then when you add in food services, the salaries, the expenses, and the transportation cost, um you'll see our total expenditures was eight over 8,600,000. Now, we do get revenue like I shared. So, our pre-K title funds. Now, title funds, that's money that we take as a district off the top before it goes to the rest of the fee um district. So, it's 821,000. Um then we had our early childhood federal adjustments, you'll see those amounts. Our FER, which that's the big one I was

076talking about. Um and then here's our ADA payment and our MLQBK payment. Food service reimbursement and our total reimbursement. So, in 24-25, the program um cost the district not including those reimbursements around 2.4 million dollars. So, we still got a lot of um good stuff happening for that cost of 2.4 million. Um but like I said the first time that I came and talked to you guys, I know that following Robert and you guys know that we are trying to look at things and look at things to see is there a way that we can do it, tap into funding, um and and how can we make it better? Um so, our staff, we had talked a lot about food services. So, Lake um Early Learning Center is a CEP school. So, as we know

077next year though all of our CEP status goes away. So, every student at Lake free even if they they didn't have valid form basically. And we don't have to keep track and they would all eat. Mark Twain, we had opted to do that same thing at Mark Twain. We did not ask families to pay for breakfast or lunch. However, they are not a CP school and all the students do not qualify qualify. So, the remainder of the cost the district does absorb that. Um so, you'll see the total cost for food services was 374,000. Um you guys asked for that number. Another question you guys had, if you want to go to the next page, Kevin, was you asked about the readiness score on the PKOF. So, we do have nine full day rooms and

078remember full day is 7:45 to 2:50. Um and then our half day rooms are 3 hours. So, combined, um the whole the average school readiness score is 74%, but the full day rooms had 41% growth and the half day was 38%. That is not really much different and I do want to um if those of you that have been here have heard me talk about this how you get to come to our preschool. So, um you do have to be at high risk. Um you have you know, there's a lot of there's form, there's the screening that we do, free and reduced lunch um options. And then we do have some peers. However, to be in a full day classroom, you're not going to have probably as many needs as the half day students. So,

079just keeping that in mind also they naturally would probably um score a little different. Um current [clears throat] 25-26 school year information. So, that is the for this year. ELC transportation breakdown. Another question that you guys asked was how many bus riders do we have? So, we saw that our cost was over a million dollars. Lake has 215 bus riders, 155 [clears throat] are reg ed and 60 are early childhood special ed. We do receive reimbursement for the special education students. We do not for the regular education. Mark Twain, 172 bus riders, 106 are reg ed 66 early childhood special ed. We are fortunate that we do have our um parents that work in our district that have students. They do have an opportunity to come to our preschool. That opportunity will not go away.

080That is still something that we um hope to continue to to offer as kind of a perk and they're good it's a good thing for them and for us. Lake Early Learning Center has full day four, half day four, total of eight students of our staff, three of which attend before and after school care. Mark Twain, full day obviously 11, 13 attend before and after, half day 11, total 22, 20 attend before and after, so 30 students between both sites, 23 attend before and after through the Y. Um full day programming. Some people I we want to make sure and put this on here. I don't know that you specifically asked, but we do have um some students in those full day classrooms. 24% of our students attend full day. Um 150 five students, but

081I want to you to note 100 of those students are funded through the MLQBK grant. As of right now, the MLQBK grant is not listed on the office of childhood as an option. I'm not saying it's not coming, it's not there now for us to apply for next school year. Go to the next one. Um and these are the results from the teachers. So, we have 30 responses. Um do you currently teach in early childhood special ed or reg ed classrooms? We had 50/50 um filled this out. The next question, do you have adequate collaborative plan time to fulfill district initiatives such as PLC, the EL curriculum, MTSS, and letters. >> [cough] >> 76.7% [clears throat] said no. 23.3% said yes. So, some of you might ask why is that? Um we do not have

082specials at the Early Learning Center like a elementary school would have, so breaks. We do hire staff um extra staff to come in and get some plan time, but it's all scattered. It's not at the same time, so as far as like being able to plan together and things like that, that is a challenge for our regular education classrooms. Our early childhood special education classrooms do only go 4 days a week, so they do have that time on Friday. Um the next one, if you have the next page, you feel that full day preschool is developmentally appropriate for the majority of the students. 66.7% said no, 33.3% said yes. And the last one, do you prefer to have the cafe serve meals or provide snacks that align with our themes curriculum connected to learning? 46.7

083said snacks, 20% said either they didn't care either way, and 33.3 said meals. I do want to also note that Becky's team does a wonderful job with our nutrition services. They provide meals that are um they according to their rules and the dietary rules that they have to follow, but I do want to give you an example in why we're even suggesting snacks again, um especially if we're in a half day program. Remember those students are there for 3 hours a day. Um some of the things that we hear and we see um is the serving size cuz you imagine they're 3 to 5 year olds is smaller. Okay, so an example would be chicken nuggets, a serving size is three chicken nuggets. A half a hot dog, two meatballs, that's the entree. So what

084comes with that is you're going to get a vegetable of some sort, peppers some days. Um some other things that maybe they're not used to eating, but it's good for them to try. Um and a fruit, kiwi with the skin still, you know, the hair green skin on it or things other times apple. I mean, they get other things too. This was just this last week. So I they ask for more. What what they're asking for more of is the meatball, the hot dog, the chicken nuggets, you know, things like that because that's what they're used to eating at home and that's what they like. We want to expose kids to those other things, but they're not eating them. So we do have a lot of food waste, which is also heartbreaking to see go

085in the trash. Um so with that, we do believe that um with snacks, we could and being 3 hours a day, um we could provide a snack that would go along with a theme. Could also provide some I mean, one of the favorite things when I was a preschool teacher was getting to do some cooking activities and make some things. Well, then you incorporate that with the snack and things. So just keeping that in mind, that's where a lot of this is coming from. It's not just money. Yes. I have a question. Okay, so what if the kids are asking, you know, to get more chicken nuggets and the meatballs and the hot dogs and such and we're not going to give them any of that now? Um we would not if we do not

086have that, but they don't get more. Like they get served that amount. Yeah, but now they're not going to get any. Yeah. Um they would not. They would get a snack instead. Could you give us I was looking at the information and I may have missed it. Okay, so what's the what's the monetary Yeah, let me get there. What are we paying for the meal and the snack? Oh, I couldn't tell you. Oh, yes, I can tell you that. I'm sorry. I can tell you that the snacks and then some of the other things, I apologize. No problem. Um so we have budgeted $40,000 total, so 20,000 at each school. For the snacks? For the snacks. And what's the cost of that? >> is $334,912. So right now that's what the program is costing us

087um after reimbursements and next year we believe it will be less um due to the fact that we won't have CEP. I guess my concern is that like we're not giving obviously like if the kids, you know, like are asking for more of like a main they need it and they're hungry. And so like is my concern, you know, that we're cutting that down and only giving them a snack. And I know call me crazy, you know, but I I do think that schools need, you know, to feed kids. And so it just kind of makes me concerned, you know, that we're kind of moving away from that. >> So I will tell you that a lot of our teachers are purchasing snacks and they're or having I know and I asked them not to

088or having other families come in and donate and things like that or we we purchase some because sometimes they don't eat the food at all. So and they and we want kids to be full. I mean, we know that that is a foundation. They need to have food in their tummy. Um but if they're with us for 3 hours and we provide a snack, we do it's not like they're going all day and not eating. So um that that's kind of where that's coming from. Um so getting back then to what I talked to you about early on, um we do currently have an opportunity to look at our numbers. So like I said before, I gave you the numbers of 639 students. We would like to keep as many spots as we can. Our

089community needs those spots. Those spots may look a little different next year um because if we need to look at different funding sources or increasing different funding sources, it's going to look different. So what I've brought to talk to you about today would be what we talked about before. And so that would be 15 classrooms at each site. We were adding those classrooms, the ABA classrooms and the MLQPK as we were hoping to get to a third site. You can take that part down. Um to get to a third site. We now know that that's not going to happen in the near future. So now we need to from my understanding is hold tight. We're here at 639. We know there are needs in the community. We want to keep meeting those needs, but if

090we need to we don't want to I don't want to give up those spots. And I believe that I would say that the people that are here with me and and our district administration doesn't want to give up those spots either. We want to keep those spots. So spots are what we have been seeing through child find is an increase in special education. So how it works with special education classrooms, like I said earlier, we do get 100% reimbursement. There are different types of classrooms. Our classrooms are integrated classrooms. The goal is to be 50% special education, 50% regular education peers. So our students will see what typically developing students should be able to do and bring everybody up. What we have in quite a few of our classes and it is causing some frustration

091with our staff also is that as we're seeing needs and we've put those kids in because that's where they're they're there's an opening and and as a monitor at the beginning of the year, they're all qualifying for special education. So some of our classrooms where it should be 50/50, it's more like 80 to 100%. Now they've almost become self-contained classrooms and we don't want that. So we have an opportunity by researching and looking at our current classroom set up, we know that we can expand three to four early childhood special education classrooms from our numbers. So we've been tracking our numbers. So with that being said, that would take the place of four of those ABA classrooms. Um on top of already we have title classrooms. So with that being said, um Mark Twain the

092proposal is 15 classrooms. Um one low incidence, which is our mentally fragile, four self-contained, seven integrated and three title classrooms, which totals 15. They would all be half day Monday through Thursday an AM and a PM session. That's how you get the numbers is because you have to have an AM and a PM to serve more kids. If we serve full day, you're going to have less students. Lake um early childhood special ed self-contained four classrooms, integrated eight, regular title three for 15 classrooms. That would give us a total of 630 student spots, 270 early childhood special education spots. Um of course, we would have to have now started placing kids yet. Um those get tweaked according to student need. So that's the what the plan is moving forward. So this year we had 37

093teachers. With this model, we would have 32 teachers. 60 paras, which is the same because those early childhood special education classrooms require a minimum of two paras. Any questions on that? Is this information listed on the board dogs? No, that is not. Are we able to get a copy of that? >> Sure. I have a question. So since there was responses, how many teachers do we have? Cuz I know it was 60, closer to 70. Am I right? Um we have 37 teachers. You have 37? Mhm. You're thinking of paraprofessionals. Oh, what if is that the number of teachers? Okay, I was just curious what percentage of the teachers Well, and I'm saying those are classroom teachers. Okay. >> Yeah, we have other certified staff. But we sent this to the classroom teachers. I would

094be curious to know what the like kindergarten teachers are seeing with the full day students versus the half day students. I know it's not something we surveyed, but um it is different. I mean, full day pre-K versus half day. And then also I did notice that it was like 15 staff members are utilizing our preschool services. Um actually more than that. Maybe it was 15 full day and half day. So um we had a total of Well, I was going off students, so some could have more than one. Eight at Lake and 22 at Mark Twain, so 30 between both sites. And do we know what percentage of those children are full day versus half day? Um yes, so full day at Mark Twain there was 11 and half day there's 11, so about half.

095And then it's about half at Lake also. So we do have a four and after school child care um through the Y. Um this would give an opportunity. I don't know that it would be available this next school year. I have not been told I can move forward yet with talking to um the Y. Um if we did have a classroom open there, we have have been in before about potentially having a classroom there for the other half of the day for child care. I just worry that we've made such big strides with our early childhood education and we've seen the benefits of that in our APR growth and now we're like kind of dismantling that a bit and then on top of that this being a benefit for our staff and then most likely

096our staff isn't going to be able to use this as a child care alternative. Um with it being a half day cuz they don't have anybody in the middle of the I know if I was a teacher I wouldn't have anybody in the middle of the day to come get >> Yeah, that's currently yes, about half of them do utilize that. Um and but then we have quite a few even of the half day that used before or after. Um so I guess my thing has been in talking to our team, we want to make sure we don't lose any spots. The spots may look a little different. If we do go to to those title classrooms being full day or one or two of them, um then just know that that cuts down on

097the number of spots we would have. So we currently I did check with our administrators um tonight because we have had, you know, resignations and um even to do this model we would need to hire three and a half teachers cuz we have part-time teacher. That was going to be a question. What is our retention rates with uh teachers that do full day compared to half day? I don't know if we can pull that up, but Um I don't know if I can I can figure it out, I'm sure through HR. I don't know that I have unless you guys know off the top of your head. About what? And the whole program has only been around a year. >> Yeah, it's only been around a couple years. Yeah. And you have one retiring me.

098Jaelo, can you describe for us um so a half day program those children get everything in the morning and the next group that comes gets that same learning. Would you describe what it looks like in the afternoon of a full day program as opposed to the afternoon of a half day program? >> Yeah, so the full day does um they're still obviously learning cuz they're learning through play, but there is a rest time that is during that time and then I believe correct me if I'm wrong a second um gross motor recess. Um so part of that time the majority I would say they have by the time they have their meal and they have a rest time which we're really struggling to get them to rest at this point. >> [laughter] >> Um and

099then another recess. There is not as much of the curriculum as there would be like in the morning. There's some, but you know, not as much because we have those other things in there and it's just for more hours. Well, and I think it's interesting when you look at those PKOF scores it's not a huge difference between a full day school child that's been there full day and a child that's only been there half day for it for the amount of money that it costs. I mean if I had my way we'd everybody go full day. Well, I >> [laughter] >> had my way it'd be preschool for everyone, yeah, all day long. Um but we don't have them and I guess that's the part that is so hard. Um and so is that we

100do have to make our decisions and um so this is a decision that as we're all looking at our budget, um how do we move forward, but keep the integrity of the program? And I will say um that I do believe that this does keep the integrity. I do hate that we wouldn't offer some full day. Um however, with the way we are moving, this is something that we can keep as many spots with our current situation um that we have. Now, if we had a lot of money, and hopefully we will again someday soon, I'd be the first one saying let's get more spots. Um we planned for between 700 >> [laughter] >> He's shaking his head. Let's get um but between 700 and 750 students per cohort. I mean the goal was to

101try to get to that. At least it wouldn't be a full cohort, but it would be even if it was half a cohort, you know, for both years um to get to 750 students. I guess also sorry Latonya. One more thing I'd like to mention, I worry going to half day that it'll affect our highest risk children or most at need children because there's going to be further disparaged. Their parents also are not likely to be able to leave in the middle of the day um to come get them and a lot of them probably don't drive. I mean And don't forget this plan does keep transportation. Yes, all bussing is covered. So the total um which was on that on the board on the highlights, um so we're hoping we believe from preliminary numbers

102it would be close to 1.1 million dollars that that we could save with this. Um of course those numbers that were used were averages. So I didn't have exact people's salaries like so it's what an average teacher and average you know, salary and with benefits would cost. Um Our transportation will probably come in higher this year honestly um just because of some transportation issues that we have had and um part of it was our own, you know, with going how we had them going all over town. Um we do know that by going to four days a week we would save money cuz we'd have that one day a week we would not be bussing students. Um which right now a lot of our students aren't coming, but some are. So the ADA and the

103MOKPK um students are coming five days a week. So Head Start runs a four-day model we would be going back to and which works when we do our um we have done some professional development together with them. If you give us a copy of the new model, can you also give us a copy of the old model as a comparison? >> Yeah, we can look at it. I appreciate that. Thank you. Would you guys like that in an email? Yes, please. Okay. Yeah, I can do that. Any other questions? Okay. Okay, thank you very much for that information. All right. We are looking at the ADA digital accessibility. Thank you, Mrs. Dunn. Thank you. So I put a lot of detail in the board agenda so you can look at that information, but what we

104want to talk about tonight as we're continuing our district's efforts to be compliant with the new ADA digital accessibility guidelines, we're looking at our current practice of live streaming and uh what those expectations will be with these new guidelines. So with the new web content accessibility guidelines, uh there are more rigorous expectations for captions and accuracy. Uh live captions must be included and while the specific guidelines don't give a percentage of accuracy, the industry standard is 99% and so looking at some kind of intervention to make sure that those captions are more accurate. The captions that we have through YouTube right now are not that accurate. Um Ms. Real, it said that your last name was Real. Fun. Uh so it would it would it would require some intervention to improve them. Uh there's also

105a requirement for describing anything that's visually displayed uh that has no audio going along with it. Uh so a lot of the content that we've displayed um would need to have some narration uh to be compliant. Now we might be able in a board meeting setting like this um to not have to provide as much because the speaker is walking through that data, but if this were a different type of video that had just a shot of a room and something was happening in that room, but the voiceover didn't describe it, we would have to interrupt the video and describe it. Uh and then all of our recorded videos that we post have to have those high standard of captions. So after a meeting is over, we would have to go in and edit the

106captions and spell Real correctly. Uh also then adding in some of those um important [clears throat] visual details. So our current board policy permits live streaming and recording, but it does not require it. And we're trying to evaluate this practice um along with these requirements that we need to meet. Um the added cost of working with a vendor to improve the quality and then also the workload that's added to edit captions on the back end. Uh board meetings are not the only things that we live stream. Uh we have a sports marketing program uh that live streams athletic events and this is a great uh hands-on learning opportunity for our students. Um so far this year they've live streamed about 70 hours worth of athletic events and they've got about 20 more hours left to

107go. We have some other special school events that we live stream and then also our graduation ceremonies. Um so all of that would be impacted um by these requirements um specifically those captions. That's really um that tricky part. In your um in the board item, I have some uh statistics from YouTube so you can have some idea of how many views we have. Um so live streaming it's hard to capture the exact number because people might start watching and then leave or come in the middle and so it's not like you can say this is who watched like the whole time. And so what YouTube does track is the average concurrent views. That's like the average number of people watching a live stream at any given moment and then also the peak concurrent views, the

108highest number of people watching your live stream at the same time at any single moment. And then it gives you the average views uh which includes those live views and those who watched the recording. So, you see all of those totals there. So, this table that is displaying right now is showing you numbers from three school years, July to March, so that we had equal comparison. And you have the average concurrent, the peak, the views, and then also the average meeting length. So, the meeting length matters because some of the vendors um well, all of the vendors charge on a some sort of rate uh based on minutes or hours, and so looking at how long our meetings uh last is a factor in that. Um we've, you know, looked also at a broader picture

109to see what is happening around the state. Uh and so uh the Missouri School Public Relations Association uh polled members. I received 42 responses. Obviously, that's not every single district in the state responding. But of those that responded, 25 do not live stream their meetings and 17 do live stream their meetings. Um those who do live stream, some of them are just going to stick with YouTube and see how it goes. Uh some have some other services that they are paying for that they use. Uh so, it's uh there's some varied responses and approaches uh to live streaming. So, with these guidelines, the interpretation varies. And so, uh it's hard to say if um what YouTube currently offers will be sufficient uh if challenged um and we're a little uncomfortable proceeding without certainty about that.

110So, we have some options to consider what I would like you to think about tonight. Um we could maintain the status quo and continue to live stream using uh YouTube and and Facebook as we do for some of those other events um without the knowledge or certainty if they will be compliant um once those guidelines come into play. Our deadline uh for compliance is April 24th. Another option is that we could stop live streaming. Uh we could record our meetings and then edit those captions, which we would have to do anyway, and post the recordings. Uh for sports marketing, they could go live to tape uh and for graduations, you know, we could record those and post them later. Again, it would take some time and it will take some time no matter what to

111edit those captions and to make sure that they are as accurate as possible. And we know that a complete uh elimination of live streaming would diminish the student experience. And so, very very aware of that. And then another option is to pay a vendor to improve the accuracy of the captions so that we could continue to live stream um and have some degree of of security that our captions are accurate and then would be compliant uh with those guidelines. There's one more thing at play, and that is a review at the federal level of the rule. Uh the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has completed their review and it is possible that a change might come. Unsure what that could be. It could be an extension of the compliance deadline. It could be a

112change to the requirements. Um many districts and large cities are looking at the April 24th deadline. Uh that is for cities where the population is 50,000 or more. Uh and for populations under 50,000, they have until April of 2027. So, if a change comes, I think it would come before April 24th of this year um because that's when the first deadline hits. And certainly, we want to wait and see, you know, if the rule has any modifications. But also, wanted to bring this to you for discussion and input. I feel like I'm talking a lot, but I have concerns that if we don't live stream our meetings, that that's going to further worsen the transparency that we are trying so hard to achieve. Um and I think that's a hot button word that we all

113have used a lot of times and that um recording and then later on putting edited meetings out uh will worsen the public trust. And I think we're going to need their trust, especially here in a couple years when we need to vote for new bonds and levies and taxes. So, I think whatever we can do to rebuild that trust with the public, including live streaming our meetings, we need to we need to find a way to make it work. Yes, I completely agree with that. Originally, when I came on the board, I was the board member that pushed and argued to live stream meetings. And so, you know, to think, you know, to go back, I mean, we're already kind of going backwards in a lot of ways. We need to get away, you know,

114to mitigate that as much as we can. Even if it's just leaving things as is and taking a risk, I mean, we take lots of risk anyway, you know, with compliance. And so, I know we're worried about the cost of things, you know, but just eliminating live stream right now, I think would be a big mistake. Thank you. It may be too early, but do we have is there any indication of like consequences, right? So, let's say we just keep doing what we're doing, which is I think at some level effective and good. If we kept doing that, are is there threats that okay, if you're not ADA compliant, somebody's going to jail? What I mean, what what happens? So, uh so, a complaint could be filed with the Office of Civil Rights or a

115lawsuit if someone found that our content was not accessible to them or Have there been any districts in Missouri sued over this yet? So, uh pri- prior to this, um Nixa School District um had an Office of Civil Rights com- complaints. And so, they've had to undergo a lot of work to make their information accessible dealing with the nature of the specific complaint and then other things beyond that. Um but these um requirements, so the uh the rule was adjusted in 2024 with a phased-in deadline approach. So, this is the first year that the deadline is really coming. So, there's a lot of uncertainty about what happens when the deadline comes. Um how how people will respond to that. And smaller districts are watching the larger districts to see what decisions we make and how

116we handle it. So, again, the interpretations are varied. Um I think it will take, you know, a a case uh to provide better clarity over exactly what it needs to be. And there were some dollar figures I think you shared in there for how much services would charge to improve our our our translation. Yeah, so I did include a bid sheet with three vendors and and they vary greatly. Most of them are all using an an advanced AI tool. Uh and then you can also pay extra for human review. I mean, if you really want to be top of the line, it's human review, right? I mean, that's how you make sure it's correct. Um I included one particular vendor because they were more straightforward in their pricing. The other two have um some scales,

117and so it's hard to know exactly what the number would be. And I would want to be very conservative uh about moving forward, but also I'm looking at averages, you know, 2 hours and 11 minutes um is our average meeting length. We're not doing that tonight, but We won't, will we? Um so, and I want to also, you know, have flexibility, right? Like let's say we are able to do more sports marketing um because with with two schools, we can cover more games. Let's do that. Well, this is an expense we're going to have to invest in anyways to be able to maintain our sports marketing classes so that they can live stream games. So, if if we did not invest in this, um they could go live to tape. So, they would do everything

118they're doing, but it wouldn't stream live. It would be a recording you could watch later. Or as Ms. Williams mentioned, we just see what happens if we don't have more accurate captions and allow them to continue to live stream. I think live streaming is nice. That way, um athletes who have family that live in other places can watch the game while it's happening rather than after the fact. And so, I'm I'm looking at this 15,000. Is that something we would spend every single year? Yes, that would be an annual cost. Because I feel like we're also going to have an an in-house cost if we're going to have to go back in and fix everything anyway, we're still going to have some cost internally. We will. And and even if we go with the service,

119you know, it we won't have our recorded meetings posted immediately um as as soon as they possibly can because we'll have to go through and review and edit those captions. So, it's going to slow down our recording uh speed of posting recording things. Even even with a service, right? Like we're >> with the service? Yeah, we're it's it's not going to be foolproof. And if you look at the table, like you're looking at the numbers and everything, I I mean it's obvious that people are watching. I mean it's over 200 people watching right now. It's obvious you know that it's much needed. And it it certainly does have, you know, dips and valleys or those and valleys. So I've got averages for you there and you know, looking back at individual meetings. I mean we've

120had some meetings where we've had you know, three people watch. And but we've also had some meetings where we had 1,100 people watch. I'm talking about those live numbers. So my I appreciate this feedback. What we will do is see what happens leading up to the deadline of April 24th and then potentially on April 27th have a contract for approval if we decide to move forward with a vendor that goes over the threshold of $10,000. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, Mr. Krell, you're up. All right, within assembly, you can see the nutrition services collective bargaining agreement. So every year we meet with nutrition services and their professional organization to negotiate salaries. Dr. Hedgecoth and I met with them three or four times to discuss. It's very professional and great collaboration. Attached are

121the salary schedules and the collective bargaining agreement. We decided that an agreement on the nutrition services employees will receive the same increase in wages as all of our other staff, which is all non-frozen employees will receive a step. They are not receiving a increase to the base and it's the same for all of our staff. Any questions? Be more than happy to try and answer those. So the 1.17% increase is just the step increase? Correct. Okay. And that's the same for teachers, administrators, everybody across the board that that 1.17. Any other questions? All right, Mr. Krell, you're up again. >> [panting] >> All right, next is an MOU from Missouri Western to allow practicums Excuse me, allow their students to conduct practicums within our schools. This is a renewal. It expires in June. We are

122asking at our next meeting that you would approve this MOU for another three-year extension. This is no cost to the district. It's actually a recruiting tool to get these individuals in our schools and hopefully they stay. All right, Mr. Krell, you're up again with the individual work calendars. All right, I will not take the credit on this. My colleague Heather Adams does a lot of work on the individual work calendars for our staff. These are really designed Different classifications of staff work a certain amount of days throughout the school year. For example, teachers work 181. Some of our special education and nurses work 182. Most of our administrators in the buildings work 211. So they're able to refer back to these calendars based on their number of days worked so they can identify what days

123they are supposed to be there, when their start date is, when their end date is. If they need to For example, administrators at the district office they work on a 260-day calendar. When teachers and most staff are on spring break, it identifies that we don't get that entire spring break. We get a couple days, but then we report back. So it's really a tool for them to know when they're supposed to be at work. I will say that there was collaboration. This year was a little more challenging on these because of the way Memorial Day fell since it's late. There was collaboration with coordinators and directors to ensure that we had individuals starting early enough to get their tasks done and finishing late enough so they could finish up school years. Any questions? Okay, thank

124you. Dr. McGuinness. Yeah, so I mentioned our agreement that we have with the county in February and this was a cooperative agreement that we established in 20,024, I believe, with Buchanan County. It was a joint effort to try and improve attendance. And I do have some data pieces in there where you can kind of see where we've landed. At the end of 2023, we were at 79.1%. At the end of 2024, we were at 77.8. So we saw a little bit of a dip. We jumped to 81.2 in 2025. So the reason we are wanting to cancel this partnership is because we [clears throat] haven't seen the data to produce results with this partnership. And so we've had a very open, honest dialogue with the county and they are very supportive of our of our

125district and willing to partner with us in other ways if we have those ideas. And so what we are recommending is that we end this partnership. It would be about a $27,000 cost savings to our district. Are there any questions? I have one. Sure. So when our SROs pick up any of that? No, prior to attendance interventionists and the diversion officer, attendance really fell on the buildings, the individual buildings. And so I was at Lafayette. That was the administrators who would call. Teachers would call home. And so we're just going to go back to that process. Typically, we've had a great response from those individuals who know our families best. Our AIs are phenomenal, but we just haven't seen the results for attendance outcomes to continue this partnership with the county for a position. Any

126other questions? >> Yeah, so a couple. What what would you attribute Dr. McGuinness the the lack of impact? I mean did we not attack it with enough people or in a fervent enough manner? I mean I mean at one time we felt pretty good about this. We were seeing some gains. I think there's a lot of different variables. At the end of the day, we need our community to value education and there's a lot of different variables, a lot of barriers to getting kids there every day. But with this position, he runs on referrals. He does home visits, but it's one person trying to do all of that work. So we're going to try to take that on internally to spread those efforts out. Yeah, because we know that we're not where we want to

127be from an attendance standpoint, right? And so yeah, what what's the next step to get some more ideas? Well, we've taken that back to our administrators actually looking at ideas for incentives. So a lot of our incentives right now are based on the entire year. We had a great idea from an administrator at one of our meetings about doing pop-up incentives. So a three-week period and there'd be an incentive for a kid that way if we have those students with medical conditions as well, that they would be eligible to participate in some of those opportunities. So I think I think there's a lot of different things that we can do. Research shows home visits, things of that nature where we're connecting with our families, inviting them into our schools and that is meaningful rather than

128letters mailed home or even phone calls home. We need to get personal and connect with our families. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, Mrs. Studer, it's your turn. I think this one's me. Yes, you. Okay. So this is a job description as we continue to evaluate roles and try to explore opportunities to save dollars within our district due to our financial reality, we are recommending a combined role of board secretary and the superintendent's office secretary. Donna also serves as our custodian of records. And so we'd be combining those two positions into one position. I do believe at one time the superintendent's office had four secretaries. So we have two right now, board secretary and then another secretary. We would be combining this into one position. So this is a job description that combines the board

129secretary's responsibilities with an administrative assistant responsibilities. And and and with that two positions now one, does that need to be hired still? >> Yes, so we would open that up. We'd post that and have a fair process for anybody who may be interested in that position. Okay. And that would be a cost savings of about 60,000 to reduce one position. Is the position a change on the pay scale then? No, it'd be the same. It's a range eight. >> [clears throat] >> What is the combining of two jobs that we're going to just going to keep it the same? As far as the salary? Yeah. Yes, it'd be a range eight. And it would depend on how many years of experience that individual had coming into that role. Any further questions? Hey, Dr. Anderson. No.

130No, that was me. Now it's you, sorry. I'm Chesney, thank you. And I'm here to share a proposed revision to the director of school improvement. Like Mr. Deval shared, she's retiring and so our academic service team looked at her scope and Dr. Anderson feels very confident that she can lead the early childhood and special education and the work there. And then we studied districts down south where most districts are set up in a pre-K six system where the director of elementary serves as a function of pre-K to six. In the scope of looking at the director of school improvement, we saw that we need some support and thinking around our federal programs. We really want to attack that from an academic lens. Are we seeing the results that we need to be seeing and the

131positions that we you know, create, we have in the work of federal programs. And so it would be a a look at the director of school program yeah, this director of school improvement seeing that continuous in school improvement model. Our academic team has really thought really hard about how do we share those personal and commitments our team to ensure that we're maximizing the academic infrastructure for St. Joe. Are there any questions? Thank you. Okay. Now we're ready for you, Dr. Anderson. Thank you. So first up you have the huddle up contract. This is a renewal. So as you know, we have struggled to provide in-person speech language pathologists to provide services for our students for their IEPs for the past several years. So the contract is for six FTEs for virtual speech language pathologists. It's

132what we currently are utilizing and we get a discount if we go ahead and renew that in April. So that's why I'm bringing it to you now. Do you have any questions? Okay, if not I'll go on to the next. So the next is also a renewal of contract for a provider that we've had on staff for several years that provides orientation and mobility services for our students that are visually impaired. That means they take them out into the community and help them learn to navigate navigate their school buildings as they transition those types of things. And again, this is on an as needed basis per student IEP. So we don't pay if the services are used. Any questions? Thank you. All right, nutrition services, Ms. Chesney. Good evening. In February we put out to

133bid for our food vendors. So that's broken down between grocery, dairy, produce, and chips. We received one bid each for our grocery, chip, and dairy. Those are Martin Brothers who we already use for grocery, Highland Dairy for our dairy products which we currently use, and then Acme Vending for our chips which is who we also currently use. We received two bids for produce. One of those was from Leopolds which is local here in town that we currently use. And then C&C Produce which is based out of Kansas City. Both of those bids were pretty comparable. So we ultimately chose to go with Leopolds to continue our relationship with them and we've been using them for several years at this point. Any questions? I love to see the Chiefs at home. Yeah. Yes, thank you very

134much. Okay, MOU with the St. Joe Fire Department, Dr. Noldy. This is just a renewal this renewal of the five-year MOU with the fire department St. Joe's fire department. It provides services for Bessie Ellison which is in the county, it's not in the city. It's so we have a special agreement with the fire department to provide emergency services, fire response services for Bessie Ellison. So there's really no changes in it. The only change noticeable is they had to change location of district office from Felix Street to noise 26, excuse me. Okay, if there are no questions there, the next one is mine as well. This is the 26-27 YMCA before and after school care reference tonight a little bit. Really this is similar agreement. The one thing that is reflected in there is the change

135from having Pershing and Field sites to Robidoux site. And that site will be they've already looked at it and planned. I know they planned with Tammy Killen and has met with our maintenance and planned for them to make sure that Robidoux has the right fire codes and things necessary to run there cuz they have to do that for for their certification purposes. So that's really the biggest change in that agreement. Okay. All right, thank you, Dr. Noldy. >> [clears throat] >> All right, the next one is May 11th work session and scholar athlete coach of the year community service awards. I received an invitation for the board to attend the scholar athlete coach of the year awards and it happened to fall on May 11th which is our work session for May. It's at the

136same time even. So I wanted to bring it to the board to see if you guys wanted that May work session to be moved in order for any of you that would like to attend that cuz I know that in the past a lot of you have attended. So Move it to the 12th. We we can do that. I guess that's up for tough discussion. >> Yeah, yeah. I just wanted you guys to discuss it and come to a consensus tonight if you can and then I can go ahead and move it. I would love to go. Yeah, I would love to go. That's the best part. I like Mike's idea of moving it to the 12th. Does that work for everybody? If everybody can look at their schedules and see. All right. Yep. Yep.

137Works for me. Okay, Jennifer, are you still on? Yeah, I'm on. Are you okay for moving the work session to the 12th of May? Yes. Okay. All right, I think we have a consensus. Thank you. Okay. Dr. McGinnis. Yes, so we have just a few items for our district reorganization update. We're going to start with Mr. Correll for a staffing update. So in your in your packet at your workstations, there's a chart that looks like this. Dr. Edgeworth, I apologize for the for the cover. This has been updated as of today. Most of the categories remain the same except for as Dr. Edgeworth and I discussed today, we added one to building administrators. So that would be three that we have reduced through attrition. One for district administration. And then about a month ago when

138I presented this earlier, we had reduced 25 staff members excuse me, 25 teachers through attrition. I had told you that those numbers did not include special education, ELD even though they had made some some reductions. I wanted to make sure it was apples to apples compared to what we introduced in October. I have updated those to include numbers with special education, ELD and then we've had a few other resignations that we have not planned on refilling. So that total is up to 41. So our current number based on estimates with salary and benefits is now 3.825 million is what we are projecting to save next school year. As a comparison to what we proposed is down the bottom left. We proposed in year one we would save 2.155 and then after year two the 2027-2028

139school year, we were proposing to save 3.831. So, we're right on We're actually ahead of ahead of pace when it comes to year two savings with our staff. Any questions for Mr. Correll? Okay, seeing none, we will move to Mrs. Stuternight to give a brief update on the staffing committee and then also our student advisory committee. Both of those committees came up with an idea from both the kids and the staff that we do something to honor and recognize our buildings that are retiring, as well as our buildings that are transitioning. So, Eugene Field, Pershing, and then Robidoux, and Lafayette. So, we have planned what we're calling a farewell for May 14th at 4:30 to 6:00. I can send you all of this. Um >> [snorts] >> So, that we can invite the community in,

140have yearbooks out, allow a bit of an open house and a tour, have cake and punch, and just try to preserve some of those memories and honor those buildings and all the the years that they've been in existence. And then, we also talked about having an open house. So, a lot of our students are wanting to see the buildings before back to school night in August. And so, we want all of our buildings to have an open house, all of them K-12, I should say. And so, we're planning for that to be on May 19th. We're also planning for a time for staff to be able to go to those new buildings and take a tour around where they're going to be for next year, just so they can meet some fellow staff, and also

141get a little bit of a awareness of their surroundings and and a tour of the building. And so, those are two events that came out of those meetings. Am I missing anything, Mrs. Stuternight? No, Dr. McGinnis did a good job there. And, you know, one of the key things was that they wanted to be part of the process, the staffing and the students wanted to be part of this process, but they wanted to be able to communicate the dates early enough that people would be would be able to put these on their calendars. So, we did send that out to staff and families today. We can put that on your calendars as well if you'd like to go to the new buildings during those special events. Um so, that is all on that. And then,

142Dr. Hedgecorth We had a discussion with MoDOT about Robidoux and the pick-up and drop-off there. So, I'll let you take it away. >> Sure. Absolutely. So, Dr. Milton, Dr. McGinnis, myself, and I went with Joe Turner from MoDOT, and we pulled up Google Maps and looked at Robidoux, and looked at the ingress and egress from that property and and ways that traffic flow would work. Um and so, we talked about, you know, obviously you have your speed limit signs that flash during certain school hours as to slow people down. Um you have traffic from the north where Cook intercepts from the east, and the possibility of maybe having a stoplight there future. He informed us a stoplight is around $120,000, but of course, there's different partnerships with MoDOT. So, that that would not fall on

143the district. Um he talked about different ranges of MoDOT, you know, it might be 50/50 split, it might be 75/25, being 75 MoDOT. It just depends on the situation and what the numbers look like for a possible stoplight up north, which would slow people down as they're coming from the north and coming down St. Joseph Avenue. Um some other things we talked about was um some of the areas where you're turning left into Robidoux, and then dropping off, and and how they allow that traffic flow if maybe there was a right-hand only out of there, and then in future having like a J-turn, which you see in some areas. Um we also talked about Maxwell, and um you know, in the last bonding project, we put sidewalks in front of a lot of our schools.

144Um Robidoux was one of them. And so, right in front of Robidoux, you have a a sidewalk that runs along St. Joseph and up to the school for us to have a crosswalk there on Maxwell uh because there is a neighborhood there to the south of Maxwell. Anything on the west side would be all transported. You know, even though if if you're in a house on the other side of St. Joseph, you can sit there and look at Robidoux, you would have a bus stop. We don't want any kids crossing St. Joseph Avenue at all. All of them have bus stops, they'll all be bused. Um and so, but we're talking about the neighborhood on the same side as Robidoux, crossing that Maxwell Street. Of course, Maxwell is uh city, uh not controlled by MoDOT

145at all. So, we would work with the city on Maxwell. But, some ideas that we have with MoDOT really just to start that relationship and start brainstorming some ideas. Um you know, obviously we want to pull in more people, but it was just that initial kickoff meeting um with them to get get us talking with them on on things to do with that area. So, it was a good meeting, and um feel like we had some good ideas. Any questions about Sorry, any questions about district reorganization? And our next item kind of goes along with that as well, but we discuss that separately because we will need a vote on that. Sure. Yeah, and we'll ask for a vote on this at the April board meeting. Um but we have it separately on this agenda,

146so when we move it over, it's seamless. So, the bids came in for the bitten classroom remodel project. Of course, in the fall, um we had some estimates about $450,000. Uh the bids came in at $377,000 with a guaranteed maximum price, which is great. You can see that um pretty much all of those vendors that bid on there are local vendors. Um But, looking back, if you look at the um CMR contract that is with um Napp currently. Um you know, I was not here when that contract was done, but that is a CMR contract. So, to use a CMR, you have to be over $3 million, and we're not over $3 million with this project. So, uh I do need to talk to legal about how this is written up. I don't believe we

147can write this up as a guaranteed maximum uh project. We'll need to write this up and look at uh adjusting this to be construction manager as advisor, and not construction manager at risk. And so, construction manager advisor has been around uh for a long time as a legal way to run construction projects in the state of Missouri. CMR is more recent, I think it came in 2016. Don't quote me on that. Uh but um revised statute 67.5050 talks about when a CM CM AR can be used. Um and so, it's got to be on a civil project, it can be more than $2 million, and on a building improvements project it's more than three. And so, this isn't more than three. We had talked a lot of scenarios um in the fall about some projects

148that might be more than three. Um Lafayette was up to five, and so uh you know, obviously we landed on this project, but this one isn't over three. So, uh an oversight on my part with that original contract being CM AR. Of course, I wasn't here when we signed that contract with uh Napp, but um should have done more homework on that. But, um I will continue to investigate and see what we need to do with this. Um just so you know, I have in the past contacted the state auditor's office and asked about contracts with whether it's your architect, whether it's your construction manager, and they recommend five years on that. So, every five years um you would do a RFP and a proposal for that. That's typical with like your depository. Um on

149auditors, it's recommended for three years. Our policy is three years on auditor, which we actually have that RFP out now. So, um you don't do a RFP for a construction manager on every single project. You are getting no consistency. Um you are getting um someone that has to reinvent the wheel every time you have a new project. When you have an architect for five years and the same construction manager for five years, they can really start to work together and hone in on your needs, uh look at your uh master facilities plan, and and go and drive that direction. So, when people say you need to rebid this every single project, I disagree. Um that end up costing more in hourly charges for the district when you do that. But, I do think that five-year

150period is is a good recommendation from the state auditor uh that basically says, "Okay, you have had your your time to continue to go through a couple projects, it's five years now, it's time to rebid." So, but I need to look at the contract for exactly the verbage on that CM AR contract in 2024 when Napp won that, and see what we need to do with this. So, take any questions. Is this in relation to the email that we received earlier? >> Okay. >> Yeah, it sure is. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Hedgecorth. That's a lot of response for my question earlier. Sure. >> I appreciate it. >> Yeah, and it needed to be addressed. Um Yeah. So, you can blame this one on me. I should have I should have caught that,

151and I didn't. So, you know, construction manager advisor uh can do any type of limits of construction projects, but a CM AR as revised statute 67.5050 states, for building improvements it's got to be more than $3 million, and this one's not. So, Thank you. Yeah. So, we did put out a RFP though? Back in 2024 we did for construction management at risk. We did. And chose >> this myself. I'm like, what the heck? I'm like, what the heck? Yeah. I'm like, what the heck? Why are we using somebody local? Yeah, and we chose Napp. Um So, I don't have access to her district email yet. I don't. Cuz I uh I don't believe I have one yet. Forwarded email about the concern about this. All the other members of the board received it earlier. Did

152you hear that? If I would have known, I would have given I would have given it a different way. My bad. It's okay. Can't help what you don't know. Okay, thank you, Dr. Hedgecorth, for that. And thank you, staff. Dr. McGinnis. All right, the next meeting of the Board of Education will be held Monday, April 27th. And so, I need a motion to adjourn to executive session. >> I move to adjourn to executive session pursuant to 610.021, closed meetings and closed records for legal, hiring, firing, disciplining, or promoting of particular employees, and individually identifiable personnel records. Good job. We need a second to that, please. You're good to go. Thank you. Thank you. And would you Cassandra Who did? Cassandra Newton. Okay, thank you. And if you would please call the vote, Donna. Yes, Ms.

153Williams. Yes. Ms. Miller. Yes. Ms. Chesney. Yes. Ms. Kerns. Yes. Mr. Moore. Yes. Mr. McMillan. Yes. >> Ms. Beal. Yes. I looked at the proposal on the NC State's website. It is. It is. And I thought, well, mine already has one. Yeah, I just like to read it. Yes. It's basically Yes. Do you remember?