05/14/2025 Fiscal Committee Meeting

001The one thing I'm hoping is that I can Um, it houses all of the student information, food service that has a module, special education has a module. There's the financial aspect to it. Um there's some small ones in here like like the graduation requirements are tracked fee tracking. Um there's a lot of components to it, but the total amount for the invoice is $73,000. So that's why it's on the agenda tonight. Um for the student services, this district this district has been using Skyward for quite a long time. So there's a lot of data in there. Um there's a lot of history there. I don't know if anyone has any questions about this renewal. No, I mean if we if we were to say no to it, that would be a major issue. It would

002fall all operations. All right. You mind sharing your screen with Zoom? I tried to admit I don't It's not working. We can move, but let's do it in a different fashion. Say it's effectively sharing your screen. You just have nothing in the background behind the Zoom. But why is that? Because I had borax pulled up earlier. I'm having technical difficulties tonight. Um, so screen should be good enough, right? Um, switch to a Google. Sorry. I don't know why I won't share. It makes it really hard to follow the agenda, though. Um, but the second item on the purchases over $20,000 is the um library purchase using common school funds for these light wall um I think it's at three different elementary schools. And we have Jason Bull online and I think that he has a

003little bit more information about what this purchase entails. Um I don't know if I guess let me pause for a second and just say do would it be helpful if I talked about common school funds itself first because it's kind of a separate pot of money from the general operating fund. So, um, the school districts get a set amount of money per student each year that can only be used on library purchases and it's through a trust and those funds are distributed every year in May. So, it makes it a little bit challenging because we never know what the final amount is going to be until about May 1st and then we're supposed to have those all spent by the end of June. So that's why we'll see a lot of library purchases come through

004this time of year. And um this particular purchase, a single one is about $16,000. So when they're combined together, it's well over $20,000. That's why we have it on the agenda tonight. Um and so with that, I guess I'll see if Jason wants to add anything. Thank you, Sarah. Um I guess the only couple things that I would add is that this year uh earlier in the year the library team presented a uh 2024 to 2027 future ready library plan at ED services and then subsequently uh the board approved uh this plan. And one of the uh frameworks of the future ready plan is the use of space and time. And uh with that in mind, our library team really wrote two goals that they've been working diligently towards and will continue to do so.

005And one of those goals is that the library media specialist team will work to transform WUSD libraries into dynamic student centered hubs that enhance learning by providing safe, welcoming, and flexible spaces resulting in measurable increase of at least 15% in student usage and resource utilization over a three-year period. And so the the plan and that goal specifically led to conversations at the library media team level about things that they could do differently or better to engage and make those spaces uh exciting for students and staff and parents to be in. Last year the middle school and the high school purchased similar boards to what these are are being recommended here. These three are targeted for uh Douglas, Webster, and Shurers. Uh they're boards that um many students have used at both the middle school and

006high school. And as Sarah mentioned, certainly uh together they add up to more than 20,000, but individually they're under 20,000. The connective glue is the common school fund. And thank you Any questions? I I still kind of go back to like I I still don't understand the the particular educational value behind this particular purchase. And um I don't know do we do we normally as a course of uh process do we have some sort of a wish list for common funds identified well in advance of some of those items that we can use or that that we're interested in? And if if so, what's next on that list? I mean, because this just seems to be like a big ask. And I'm just kind of I just kind of concerned that we're not putting dollars

007to the best use possible for the educational benefit of our kids. I appreciate the question. Um what I what I would say is most definitely the the the library team has worked through the development of a list. I don't have that at the ready right now. Um but it's really a combination of things. First first and foremost it's governed by common school funds. And so for example furniture cannot be purchased. So that's unfortunate but it's just where we're at. And so there's a list and it's really uh I I see the list of two things. One is how do we draw and engage our learners and staff and parents into that library. I think this purchase falls into that category. And the second category is really adding to the inventory within that library and things

008certainly books are high on that list. Uh other resources that are are I would say more directly connected to learning are on that list. Uh but this one is certainly connected to drawing, engaging, and having our uh libraries really transform into epicenters of learning and places where people want to be, hang out, learn, chat, collaborate, and uh be be. And just for context, we got $294,633 this year to spend. And if we don't spend those funds on library, you have to put them in um like designated fund balance be used for the library in the future, which is okay. We already had 41,000 of carryover. And between the three buildings that's 45,000. Yeah, I think all in it was pretty close to 50. 50. Okay. I I feel the same way that you do, Craig,

009but with the way that funding works for public school programs, it's I don't really know what else to do with it. I mean, we could buy $250,000 worth of books. That's a lot of books, though. We might have to rebuild the library or build on a new addition to it. That's a heck of a lot of books. Or a few really valuable ones. But I don't know if we want to be holding on to Yeah. that should be in the museum. I I appreciate utilizing the funds like but I also look at it like um I it sure be nice to be a little bit I don't know it I'm struggling with this one. I really am. I'm not going to lie. Um, I just wish we we had other ways to spend money that's

010very very clear that it's going to be u a net benefit to the educational um well-being of our children. And this one just seems to be like a another um kind of media device that's going to be there just to entertain and not necessarily to educate. Can I ask Jason like how are those libraries looked? Are they well furnished with other resources and materials or are they lacking in some areas? I did see the plan and it goes through 2027. So I'm not implying that they don't intend to make further changes, but yeah, I would say that Go ahead. Sorry. I I was just going to say that I I would say that um in the last years u really really sparked by the the the team coming together around the future ready plan that

011they have uh elevated the uh desire to to transform those spaces into really places that are exciting and welcoming. And not that they weren't prior, but it's a it's a new found focus. And um you know every every element or every building is different and every library is different. Um and and I I share the trepidation that common I wish common school funds were more wide open. So I I I can share and appreciate that. But I would also say that the library team and and the staff of these buildings are uh are really working hard to have those libraries become places where kids want to go. Not that they haven't in the past, but you know, there's there's multiple facets to want having children want to go to the library and and books and

012resources and activities are certainly one thing, but also what are the things that draw and excite them and that's where I see this fitting into that. So, basically, it's like a giant white. Yes, that's exactly what it is. Craig. Yeah. It's like a tactile play object. And you know they they come with pattern books and everything else just like a lightbrite did when you were a kid. That's exactly what it is. And I believe these there's different varieties. I believe these have pegs so students can put them in and out. So there's some tactileness to this. And and uh again it's it's part of the plan to really transform those places into uh spots where for with adults and students want to be and come and collaborate and learn and explore. And I I will

013tell you that uh when I'm in the library at the middle school, when I'm in the library at the high school, there are kids using them all the time because we have one at the high school and one at the middle school already. But are they learning? Is do we do we want to be spending your time playing or learning? I mean that Oh, I guess you do want some downtime for children in school, right Craig? Sure. And you'd rather it potentially maybe be working together to do the PES than I don't. Yeah. Like staring blindly at the aisles in the library, I suppose. Like I get the sentiment that you're saying and I I was feeling a little leerary about this before walking in, but I was unaware that it was a common fund

014where it had to be sent spent on library materials, which necessarily does change the dynamic of those funds. I I would be completely against it if if Jason would say, "Hey, I want to use my building funds for what?" Well, no. If Jason were to say the library material that is available right now is subpar and we just want this new technology. But if he's saying that they're largely up to snuff, you would say, right, Jason? Yeah. Uh, you know, if you walk into our public library now that there are places where students can learn uh and and read and explore and and that's kind of the model, right? like public libraries across the nation have really transformed their spaces into really welcoming of all ages, places where uh people can sit and learn quietly,

015but also spaces where they can explore and collaborate and and and work together. And that and that's kind of the vision. And so that this really again matches that vision the uh that the library team has crafted and and I think it's it's great work that they're doing. So, one, the one in the high school library is outside my office, and I don't know why it can't be fun and learning at the same time. What I see with it is the creativity. We have groups of students who are showing off their creativity, trying to come up with different designs, trying to figure out the math that it is because it is a math board to figure out a design, how many pixels will fit in that to come up with a design. And I'm wondering

016if I'm just wondering if this was in an art classroom as a way to show your creative designs within an article $50,000. It's just the fact that it's in a public space like the library. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's only 25% less than 25% of the funds given to the district this year for library use. Okay. Right. Right. So mostly carried and it's going to cover three of the elementary schools and the funds can't be sanctioned to cover any other part of necessities in the district. That is that is very accurate. Really really governed or uh connected directly to the library and govern it up. I don't want to I don't want to hold it up. I just uh I'm just hoping that we're going to I really be curious to know what

017that list looks like going forward in the future so we can try to plan um for for those kind of funds in the future so that we we can use the best make the use the best use of those dollars um and not on not on stuff like this. I mean yeah I get it. I get it. Let's get these kids in the libraries, get them get them get their interest peaked in in in being in the library. But the purpose of a library or media center is to learn, is to is to read, is to, you know, find those types of resources, not to go in there to be baby sad. So yeah, um I to follow up on what you're saying, Craig, I agree. It's not something that I would want to hold

018things hold this up about. However, I do think it's important to note that bringing someone into a space for a reason that is not related to the function of that space does not make it more likely that that space will be used for its intended function. You know, um they have a saying for this in uh they have a saying for this in the in the Christian world. They call them secret sensitive churches and they build playlands and coffee shops and they have light shows and music festivals for people. It doesn't really make people integrate into the community. It'll bring a lot of people in, but the reality is that the core of the community, what the building and what that group is intended for isn't really being utilized. And the more that we deemphasize

019the actual purpose of a library, whether it's a public library or a private library or a public school library I should say, the more we deemphasize the actual purpose of it, which is to gain wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, the worse our overall societal capacity for wisdom, knowledge, and understanding is going to get. So that is definitely something that I agree with Craig on that we should look into this uh much more thoroughly and we should be making careful decisions to move forward with that. Um that being said, I mean what are you going to do? It's almost entirely being paid for by things that were brought by funds that were brought over from the previous year. So there's a couple of different factors going on there. Any more, Craig? No, that's it. Anybody else move

020to resolution at the board? Well, doesn't the whole board have to approve that? Yeah. Yes. Right. She's asking if we want to move it to a resolution for the board. Yes, definitely. Okay. So, the third um purchase then over $20,000 is some hardscapes projects around the district. And I think Kevin Suko can speak to that. Uh so we're bringing a rehab of the Douglas Upper Playground area uh forward for reconstruction. Um just the quick hitters here. Last time uh we brought some seal coat projects to the board. Seal coating is the asphalt's in really good condition. The top coat's okay. The base is okay. We're doing a preventative maintenance to try to prolong that as long as possible. this situation, the asphalt is not in a condition that a seal coat is going to allow

021us to uh continue to provide that preventative maintenance services. There's some 4-in cracks. Um we're getting a lot of water infiltration through the top surface. Um so when that happens, uh we're the best course is to rehab it. Uh there's two different ways that we looked at this project. Uh the first one is to mill off the finish course which is about inch and 3/4 to 2 in and then relay a new finish course on top of the existing base that's underneath there. The hard part about this one is we don't know what that base looks like underneath. Right. Uh so we're taking the um we're kind of taking a bet on that what is there is going to be serviceable or with some cut and fill and some light patching we'll be able to

022make sure that that base is okay. And then we're laying a new course on top that will bring the surface plain and flush. The one that we did not bring forward, but all companies or the the folks did look at was a full depth reclamation. That's where they go down and they actually mill out all of the asphalt that's currently on the playground, the upper layer and the base course, get us back to rock, and then we would lay two courses of asphalt on top of that. Because this is a playground and not a parking lot or an area that sees a lot of vehicle traffic, I feel more I feel comfortable going with the mill and repave. Um the hazard or the the what could happen by doing this is if uh the the

023base course has some cracks in it or has water infiltration happening that could more quickly come back up through the top course and we could see it in future years. Um, a good indic or example of this would be the staff lot at the high school. They did a mill and pave project about three years ago and you can already see some cracking in that asphalt. Um, so, you know, if it was a parking lot, I'd probably be a lot more um I'd be coming here trying to say, "Hey, I think the more expensive option is the way to go." Um, because it's a playground. Again, I still feel that full depth reclamation would give us the longest lasting product, but um to fit our budgetary needs, I feel that a mill and pave project

024would get us to the final goal of having a playground that's smooth, free of cracks, of major cracks, and something that we can maintain for the next 10 to 15 years to provide a good play surface. The other part of this project was um I don't know if you've seen or you know been out at the playgrounds of the schools but we have seen of asphalt um just about every playground at Shurers and Shers and Douglas for sure are huge asphalt areas that are sensed in the request from staff came to say hey we got kids that want to play football they want to do some things that are a little bit more aggressive than like what you can do on an asphalt surface without getting knees bruised up and cut and things like that.

025So, there was a request to take some of the asphalt out and return it to grass so that there would be a soft play surface that also plays really well into storm water collection and some issues, you know, like the city is looking for any help we can get with storm water. Um, so by taking out about 5,000 square feet of asphalt and returning that to grass, we're kind of helping with storm water retention as well as giving that soft area. And then what we do is move the current fencing uh a little bit closer to the parking lot to harness more of the grass area, give give some more soft areas to play. And then uh a real final part to this project is um at the entrance to Douglas uh where the sidewalk

026that was built as part of the building meets the sidewalk that's coming up to the building that was done as part of like the site improvements. Uh there's some settling that's occurring. So we do have about a 3/4 in lip which is outside the ADA requirements. So the company's also going to grind that down so that we have a smooth transition between the two slabs as well. So um there is an allowance uh requested that all companies carry a 10% allowance. What this would be for is um we're milling off the layer and we find there is a 2-in crack that goes from one corner of the parking lot to the other. In order to do it correctly, what we want to do is mill that crack out and then repave it in flat so

027that there's no chance for water infiltration to come back up. Um, again, this is a best guess based on what we're seeing from the top of the surface, not being able to see the bottom. Um, I figured that uh 10% coming in around $7,000, which would be an allowance, not money that's given to the contractor. They have to come to us and say, "Hey, we peeled it off. This is what we're seeing. we want to spend this money here to cut and fill this or patch this area. Um, that would buy me about 2,000 square feet, I think it was, of patching and paving, which is 10% of the area that we're looking at. You know, I'm I'm really optimistic when we mill it off, it's going to be perfect and that's going to be

028more money than we need. Um, but you know, it would put us in a place where we have some funds to take care of some of the issues in case we see them because what can't happen is we mill the parking lot off in July and then I need to come back to the school board to request more money in August and hope that we have it paid uh for school. So, so in function I still think and I mentioned this last time. I still think that when you um when you basically say we like to ask for another 10% on allowance in an open meeting. That's probably a a problem where it's almost like you're negotiating with the vendor because if they're paying attention to the meeting, they can say, "Well, you know, you

029actually have some wiggle room in here, so I can I can cut into that a little bit." And I I just think that I think it's a that's a close session topic in general. I just think it just just makes more more sense to have that discussion in close session if we're I don't know what the mechanism is that we need to utilize to make sure that we keep some of that stuff closer to the chest when with those cards. But um uh you know so um I think just for clarity you're you're looking at in the future if we have bids for construction or whatever that area contingency because all of them do. You'd like to have that in close session as to the amount of the contingency. I think that's a good idea

030from from Yeah. I mean because what I'm hearing is the administration asking for an additional contingency and No, no, I don't think that's what it was. No, in this case, this is something that I am telling that that I'm asking the contractors to carry and say we're the bid documents to carry that amount. So, this was part of the bid that they carried 10% of their of their loan. I'm not asking for a contingency because of the conversation we had last time that didn't feel like it was really supported. So, this is a way that we have money built into the project for the unseen without having to come back and ask for that money once we pull it open and see it. So, I'm making a educated guess that we're going to have some

031damage below the surface. So, basically what you're saying is you're baking it into people should be able to Look guys, I hate to break it to you, but you can't people. And it's because there's a boy out there right now who want to say, "Man, I the out that form the words." And you got out there with some fat asses. Make a good wife, but they can't form the words. And since they can't speak, I speak for them. Now listen, we have to pay attention retards in communities, then we should be able to them. Just imagine how good sex would be. You got the twitchy ass hand going on. Sorry. Not very fast. I've never seen it before. No, me neither. We've had it happen at a couple different meetings come in and they may

032just public meetings. Yep. Um, so anyway, sorry. So, you're saying it's kind of baked baked into the situation and And is there any scenario where if if that full amount is not used then it gets turned back over. That's the that's the understanding with the way that it was put out that any allowance that's used has to be approved by the district before it's used but we're holding it in their contract or in the agreement that they would be able to spend up to that amount. So, so basically we're we're telling them, yeah, you can you can go above a little bit if you need to, just because it's just like when you do work on your home, like if you get into a wall, you're almost certainly going to find something you didn't expect.

033And I think that's what we're thinking. If you if we start to take some of this off, we're going to find something unexpected. I know. I know. But is that really is that really a good strategy to try to keep the uh keep vendor within their uh within their bid? That was a good person. It was. Yeah. Yeah. The first one that Yeah. Well, I think when you're doing any repairs, Craig, you should put aside money for incidentals. And we do. We do. But you just don't want the the person putting the bid in to be aware of that essentially. Right. Right. Okay, that seems a little Yeah. Can I ask a few questions about the proposals? Yep. Okay. So, your ch your recommendation is um the base proposal, right? Not yet. Correct. Uh there

034was I apologize. There was one alternate alternate two is paving from there's a path that winds down from the upper playground down to the lower playground or asking to include that milling and paving is done as well. um in the capital maintenance plan for for the next 10 years, you'll see that the lower playground is also um up to be done. I want to say in three or four years, really in the same condition. Okay. Um and that was kind of an alternate on here because I wasn't sure which project we would include it in. Um so really what I did was throwing it out for pricing and when I threw it out for pricing, it came back within the amount that we would that we budgeted for the proper project. So I think this

035way I'm paying it now as opposed to having to do it when we redo a lower plate. Okay. So the the difference in the price well it's a lot it's not a lot right. So let's say things don't go as expected when they started to pull it up with proposal one and we still follow through, right? Because that's what was approved. When are we going to have to consider repaving in the future? What what would the time frame be? Now, I understand at the high school it would be uh substantially more escalated because the cars are done. But in the like this were just a playground, at what point if this choice repair does not work as anticipated, would we have to have this discussion again in the board that we need a repaving or

036a full and depth milling? Like, you know what I'm saying? Yep. Yep. usually uh what I mean the the goal is to return the base layer to as good a condition as possible. So that I mean I mean in the perfect world scenario case this is going to be the same outcome as if we pulled everything up and repaved it. We're just being smart and saving because we're using West. Okay. Um in the not perfect world I mean if it's absolutely trashed we pull it up and there's no asphalt underneath there. They only pave two inches and the rest is rock. I know that's not true because we dug down. But if that was the case, okay, I would not pull forward with a project that's going to go to be junk in 5 years.

037We would pause. We would come back and say, "Okay, we need to look at it." Um, with a milling repave with some defects in the bottom, usually what they say is it's 10 to 15 years. Uh, with a milling repave and with a full depth reclamation and pave usually within like 20 to 30 years. that again plans on having preventative maintenance done every three to five years with a seal of coatin and and that kind of stuff done. Okay. I got a question in reference to the open area. You said 5,000 ft square feet. Yep. Uh are you going to saw it or are you going to seed it? Seed. You're going to seat it. Yep. That's And you're going to do it you're going to do that yourself. The school district's going to do

038that. Nope. That's part of the contract is to have the contractor when they pull out the asphalt and the base, they will put dirt in. When they put the dirt in, they will seat it and they will do the initial watering. Then we take over the maintenance after that. Okay. You haven't got any gentlemen that know how to do that otherwise? Well, we definitely could do it, but we're going to have to bring in a landscaper to do part of the reclamation for where they pull out around the base and where they like around the edges anyway. So to me, I'm trying to harness the the equipment and the labor already on site to to do the rest of the job. Okay. And that gives me somebody to go back on if it grows in

039weedy or doesn't grow in right. We can go back and say I understand that point. I will um I will clarify my concern from earlier. Um, I'd much rather have a discussion about, hey, let's give the administration a 10% leeway to make that discretionary um, uh, you know, decision then to just bake it in and, you know, telegraph them. I guess that I think that would be more fiscally responsible in my opinion. Yeah, I think I agree. Would that be something where we would just do like if we're going to be talking about bids, we have close session or we have a close session segment where Yeah. any that we think we would need to carry over a contingency for. There are some bids that you know you don't really need to do that. But

040if you did the full depth milling, would you stay within your budget for this year or would that exceed your budget to limit? So the the budget is for next year. It's in our is proposed. I mean, we haven't approved it or anything like that yet. Um, I would have been over by about $2,000, including alternate one, alternate two, and the allowance for alternate one. I like where you're going. I'm not going to lie. I'm just saying if we're thinking about money and long term, right, you should run a school district like it's never going to close. So, it would we would get more bang for our buck and inflation is going to show in 10 to 15 years, we're not going to get a uh option one for $76,000. This is just what I'm

041thinking. If we're thinking fiscally responsibly, even though it costs more upfront, it might be better for the district to have the security for up to 30 years instead of 10 to 15 years. That's just my opinion on the matter. anything else. Greg, well, so it it would be preferred to have alternate number one by the staff. Yes, I I can say that. But it but it I think what I heard Tammy say is that um the the the the base the number one proposal base proposal more or less is would you feel it would be a little bit more financially? I think alternate one would be financially wiser for the district because you have a longer life on that and one would assume that costs are going to go up within the next 20 to

04230 years. So we're not going to get a repaving for 96. I'm assuming at that point 10 to 15 years from now there will not be an option when available at D at Douglas, right? The base proposal that that will be a non option. Yeah. So, we're probably looking at something well over $100,000 to get a hold within 10 to 15 years. It's going I I don't see costs going down. I see. I see. But what we don't what we don't see in Oh, never mind. Yeah, you're right. I'm kind of I'm kind of leading towards that. I mean, if it was double, I would be like, "Okay, let's just" But it the numbers are close enough where it might be more fiscally responsible to just replace it now before we have more financial worries

043we need to deal with in the future. It also eliminates a little bit more of the unknown variable because we're not relying on a base course that we can't see. And you said uh it would only take you over by about two grand, right? Yep. uh we in the 10-year plan we estimated uh 110,000 for this project. I believe if um we do accept the alternate one and alternate two the total came to about 113 with PL on this any other discussion we'll take that to the board too which which decision are we making? Yeah, you guys have to decide, Carl. You and Craig have to decide which one's going to the board. And I believe Charity's on. Okay. Yes. And Charity. Oh, she's on, I believe. So, okay. Charity, can you hear me? I

044can, friend. Okay. What do you think? I I agree with Tammy. I think doing it long term and doing it right the first time is going to be more advantageous in the long run. Appreciate your input. I think Greg uh I think that's number one would be the idea way to go. Yeah. So is it um if I'm understanding what what I'm reading here it's um the decision is for the base proposal right and then so alternate two or alternate one. What my recommendation that brought forth was the base proposal and alternate two. the base proposal, the allowance for the base proposal and alternate two and that was the 80 89,000. Okay, I see if we went with alternate one, alternate one allowance and alternate two. I actually created a report with this one as

045well. And Tammy and Charity are suggesting alternate one, alternate one allowance and alternate two. Is that correct him? Yes. And charity. sold the 113,000. Yeah, it would be 3,000 over the budget, but it would not. I mean, it would be better for the district in the long run. Craig, what happens if it doesn't work as planned with base proposal and within the next three to five years, we have to have this conversation about putting an alternate one because we have no other options available to us. go in that deep. I will also share that uh none of our long range uh fiscal planning has us um leaving the Douglas anytime soon. Okay, I appreciate that. All right. Yeah, I'll I'll support that. So the the exact cost for alternate one, alternate two, and the allowance

046for alternate one would be $111,990. So I would move to accept the recommendation to not exceed the 1119 $111,990. that. Okay. Very good. Okay. We'll take that to the board. All right. Next thing. Next thing is uh last month this committee took a look at a food service survey for parents and that went out um last week and Friday is the last day for submission. And now tonight we're looking at two different surveys for students. One for grades 3 to 5 and one for grades 6 to 12. And we have Sheila Price here tonight to answer any questions that you may have about the survey surveys. I love your surveys. I I I think they're spot on. Anything else? I think that I think um it's it's important to gather um gather feedback from the

047students. Um you know, you're probably not going to always hear what you want to hear, but I mean, if at least you have an a feeling of what where they're at, I mean, maybe that can inform some decisions going forward in the future. And I never want to assume to know what right you know what the consensus is out there. I have my own thoughts but it may not translate into what the students and the parents expect. So Sheila it's charity. I just have a quick question. Um, after the surveys for the parents and the students are done, is there any kind of campaign that goes out in communication to say, "We've heard you and here are some of the considerations that we have going forward just to close a loop with each of those

048communities. Any conversation um around that at this point, but I think that's a great idea. Um, I can work with Sarah and um, Melissa Lampy um, to come up with a a plan to do that. Thanks, friend. I just I know that in my in my prior life having worked in contracted food service that we heard you aspect is incredibly important to our community. So, thank you. I would second that. I mean, I know that um I know I think a lot of times when uh we talk about survey fatigue within our school district, sometimes uh you don't really want people to get this impression that I I mean, why am I doing this? Nothing seems to change. But, you know, uh at least we've heard you. that sort of thing um is important. Anything

049else on that? That doesn't have to go to resolution, but we will um then work on getting that sent out and we're working with building leaders to see if maybe we can find a little time for some of the kids to do it as well. Um, the next thing on the agenda is student fees and meal prices for next school year. We look at these every year. Um, and so I have a draft in the agenda and you can see the only thing that we're proposing changing. There's a couple changes on here. They're just scroll. Um, the first one is the yearbook fee at the high school. So, they've been running at a little bit of a loss the last couple of years and so they're just proposing a $5 increase to cover costs um

050so that they're not running at a deficit. And then the other increases are all relating to food service. Um and there is a 15 or 15 cent increase to all student meals and then a little bit of a larger increase for adult meals. Um I don't know if we have questions. Oh, and also milk is supposed to go up five. And I mean I think part of that is we just are seeing costs go up every year. Food prices keep going up. I don't know if you have anything to add to that. Yeah. Um that 15 cent uh increase was based on uh kind of prediction of about a 3 and a half% food cost increase. We do have the option. I'll just mention um like the memo stated um because we do have a

051fund balance. Okay. In food service, we're not required to increase meals. Um we have the option to be to exempt out of raising prices, but that's not typically been um what the board prefers to do. And I I can say I probably agree with that in the sense that once you kind of will down that fund balance, you don't want to create sticker shock with all of a sudden you're having to raise by 50 cents, 75 cents, which can be really really problematic for families to afford potentially. Are you digging into the fund balance currently periodically or is it um we're working we have to because um we're carrying more than the three months uh operating expenses. So we're working on um spendown plan for um equipment purchases, things of that nature. Okay. Um is

052part of that. Okay. Y major equipment repairs too. Yeah. like the fridge we talked about. I I'm generally supportive of um you know making price adjustments as you need to and on a gradual basis that people can people can understand with given rate of inflation um and you know yet you still have a a bit of a cushion in case something happens. Is there any concern about um the NSLP reimbursement whether it be at the current rate or the higher rate for next year? Not so far. I don't I have not heard any chatter about potential decreases stagnation. Um having said that, we'll know fairly soon. those those new guidelines come out every year um on on or around July 1st. Thank you. [Music] the the only other question, the only other comment I would

053make about the fees in general. Um I I don't want to assume uh because we know nothing good happens there. But uh when it comes to extracurricular uh activities for like the middle school and the high school, it says a a family maximum is 105 at the uh middle school and a family maximum at the high school is 225. But what if you happen to have a family that happens to share um they have has students at both? You know, um could we maybe give them a bit of a break and say, you know, we would offer both middle school and a family maximum and set that at like I don't know, I'm just pulling a number out of my head, but like 275, you know, or maybe make a family maximum no matter where

054you're taking. Yeah, that's a good idea, actually. Um, would you want me to change that and add this here? I mean, you know, if you got a family that's in in both activities, you're they're already getting hammered with expenses. I mean, I I'd rather I'd rather have them part, you know, uh comfortable participating and not have to write ink on it cuz, you know, when they go to away games, they're going to be nailed with a bunch of these. Also, I support like a district mass maximum, but it doesn't matter what where your child goes to school if you reach this, right? I don't know. What do you think, Jared? I'm here to respond to you guys's need. I mean, you know, our families. Um I I've seen it done all sorts of ways. So,

055if if that's what you think is good, then do that. Some some school districts just flat out don't charge fees. I mean, except for lunch fees, right? So, I mean, you guys can decide to do whatever you want to do. Um fees definitely help make up uh you know some revenue for us but um they can also uh you know catch us in other ways on the on the back end when we collect the fee. Um and so like I I really leave it up to you guys and Sarah more as to say how do you want to handle that? I'd be almost tempted to say if you have a high schooler and you still have middle uh middle schoolers in sports that to encourage them to continue to to play, you know, just charge

056the $225 maximum and allow that to to carry over to a middle school. I don't know how many kids that would affect and what kind of revenue impact that would make, right? So, you're you're saying like a one-time family fee, not an annual fee? Like a um no um an annual fee, but at leave it at the 225 maximum for both high school. Yeah. For that family for both high school and middle school. Okay. But the if they just have a child in middle school, it would go back to the $105 or are we now increasing the Well, here here's my question. because the activity fee is only $35. Let's say I have two middle schoolers, right? The 225 family maximum is still well above that for a $35 fee, right? Uh and that's why

057we give a break on the family fee at the middle school. Um because the student fee itself is so much lower. Um, you know, but I can see like if you have, you know, a high schooler, a middle schooler, and you're trying to say, where's the difference in between? And yeah, not that you have this off the top of your head, but like what percentage of our revenue is connected connected to extracurricular activity fees? It's very small overall. Percentage wise, it's very small. Okay. Enlighten me. Are we talking that kids that go out for sports have to pay money to go out? Yeah, they have to pay a fee and that fee is for um basically equipment that you know gets utilized and uh can't be re I completely understand and at our meeting we'll

058talk more about this. Yeah. Very good. I mean that's that's why I said some school districts don't Yeah, I understand. They think it's a regressive tax on the family and that kind of stuff. So maybe are you thinking add something like no family should exceed $225 total or something like that? Yeah, something like that. But I don't know. I'd really like to know what the revenue impact would be if we could at all figure that out. Yeah, we could. And if we actually in a document later I have the revenue percentage is a pie chart. Um and I apologize for not bringing that and that's okay. I don't have that piece of it broken out, but like everything, all student fees, all of everything we collect, fines, fees, refunds, miscellaneous revenue, all of that is

059a little bit less than $2 million a year. So, I mean, percentage wise, it's small. No, for the for the whole district. Yeah. But yet it can still make a pretty big significant impact in the sense that like hey families can can come here and participate in more more sports and they get they get the family um we're not going to nail you because you have a big family type of deal. I don't know. Take it to the board. Okay. How about that? Board with a discussion point on Right. Exactly. Extracurricular fees. Right. The board to say, right? And what would the board want for a family maximum? Right. All right. Next up, we have Chromebook purchase um for next year. This was originally on our planning calendar for June. Um, because of the tariffs

060and what we think probably are price increases coming, we moved this up just a a month. Um, and so Dave is here to talk a little bit more about Chromebooks. And I think we still have Jason online as well. So yeah, I think Jason's going to start. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Um, I always like to start with gratitude. So I want to thank the members of the board for your uh continued support of of this work. I also want to thank Dave Lockstein and the entire tech team. They've worked hard to develop systems uh that support teaching and learning and certainly integral the technology and and the Chromebook rotation that really leads us here today is just one of the systems that they have developed. So, thank you. Um, just important to note here that

061uh I think we're in year like two and a half, maybe closer to three of a Chromebook rotational plan that has been developed again with Dave Lockstein's leadership and the entire uh tech team. And this plan has really been executed in a way that supports teaching, supports learning and uh fiscal good fiscal stewardship. And for the last two years, uh this plan has been shared really through two committees. We've uh shared this at ed services to ensure that they have an understanding of the impact of the Chromebooks and where they fit into our our strategic plan and and our our work as a technology team to support teaching and learning. And then subsequently we bring it to fiscal to finalize um the the purchase before we move forward. And so this year is no different.

062uh this this idea and plan and ro this Chromebook rotation has been presented at ED services uh earlier this school year and now we're in a spot where we have uh secured uh three quotes and looking uh for conversations around uh the purchase of these Chromebooks for staff and students. Uh Dave has uh put together why, what and how. I always want to be grounded in our why, what, and how. And I' I'd like to turn it over to Dave to to uh briefly cover that why, what, and how. And then we'll open up to any questions, please. Thank you, Jason. Um, again, thank you for having me. Um, as Jason said, this is uh my third fiscal um third year in a row of uh coming to you at the fiscal committee to talk

063about this plan and to and our goal is to supply the students with what they need uh while being fiscally responsible. And my goal, and I've been doing this for 20 years, my goal has always been to be able to come to the board every year with a very similar number to know that this is how much we're going to spend every year. Um, in past, we've we've um do a lot of roller coaster where you're buying a lot one year and then not so much the next couple years and then you have to find the money to be able to buy a lot again. And really wanted to move away from that. Um, so that's why we're coming to you with uh the plan to supply three grade levels with Chromebooks plus approximately 15

064to 20% to accommodate new students, transferins, and so on. Um, and then um I have it right. Um, and then 100 uh staff computers, which with that rotation, we stepped that up a little bit this year. one because our our quote or our our um projected quote was lower than what we had last year with what we spent last year as well. We have some Dells that we purchased in uh during CO uh that the staff are using that are starting to die and we don't think they're going to make it another year. So, we want would like to purchase a few more staff devices this year. We expect that staff devices are going to last 5 years. Um and and actually a great example is all the board have the exact same staff device

065that the staff have. So um so um we are retiring 400 devices this year. As I said, we're trying we've been with this three-year plan. We're working on getting to where we know how many we're purchasing every year based on enrollment. Um the year that I started, our budget was already essentially gone. So we did not purchase any Chromebooks in 2022. and two years prior we spent we bought over a thousand Chromebooks. So the reason why we're doing the three um grade levels and why we're only retiring 400 Chromebooks is because that's all we purchased that are now coming end of life. Um in two years we're going to have a thousand Chromebooks that are going to come end of life. But thankfully we're doing the three grade levels. We can we are able to

066absorb that loss of that many devices and still continue with our plan. So if that makes sense. What do you do with the retired devices? So that is that is um so we are an ASUS warranty shop. So that's why the quote is ASUS. Um that's why you all have ASUS to make it one the so we can repair our own devices. Um but the so elementary the devices are in the students hands five years. Now we understand kindergarten they use them much less than fourth grade, right? And then the and then the curriculum is generally built to where it increases slowly as they get older, right? And a lot of curriculums are starting to really look at that data and and focus on that screen time. So those devices we feel are comfortable 5

067years um and then four years with middle school, four years with high school. Then the best Chromebooks we take out of rotation and we we set those up as classroom loaners. So we put a couple of Chromebooks in every single classroom for the students that take them home. So middle school, high school. So when a student comes in, forgot to charge their Chromebook, forgot it at home or whatever, there's at least a Chromebook so that they can follow along and at least be able to do their work in the classroom without having to go down to my office or the library to get a loaner. Um, it's been a great while. It's been working working fabulous for us. So 5-year-old Chromebooks are essentially in the classrooms as loaners. Okay. Six years, six years they're getting

068pretty well done. I mean, even though Google says we can go much longer with the licensing, they are they're pretty pretty ragged. Um, so we take those apart. We have student help desk students as well as our team and we take all those apart and we re so that we have screens, we have keyboards, we have parts. So when a student breaks a Chromebook, accidentally breaks a screen or whatever, we don't charge the family for an accident because they can come in and we have parts from older Chromebooks that we retired to replace those screens, keeping our parts cost significantly lower than most school districts. So our parts cost for for this year was about $5,000. And the only reason why that is is because we switched to ASUS about three years ago. Um or

069this will be the third year, so two years ago. Um, we had a lot of Dows, Lenovos, and HPs prior to that. So, and those monitors, those screens don't fit the ASUS. Okay. But in two more years when we start recycling or we start ending these ASUS ones, then we we're going to have, you know, 750 screens to essentially be able to pull out, which we have nowhere near that breakage. We're at less than 5%, which honestly is awesome for a school district. I have school districts similar to ours that are complaining about 10, 15, 25% breakage. So, we've been really blessed with that. Um, but then because we have our own parts, um, it really keeps our costs low. So, that's it. So, it's in the students hands for four years. Five for elementary,

070fifth year in this classroom as loaners, six year becomes a parts machine, and and then we recycle whatever is left after we take our parts. Okay. So you don't have like a a room full of old Chromebooks just full of arts. Yep. Exactly. Okay. Yep. This is Charity. I just have a question. Can you help me understand? I noticed the difference between the two was that 250 of them are the the flip hinge and 500 are not. what's what's the the rationale or advantage to that given the cost differential? Sure. So, um for the for the ones that we uh proposed to go into kindergarten, and that's what we did last year is we started with kindergarten. Um they're touch screens. So, instead of just standard regular screens. So, that adds just a um let's

071see, that adds approximately um let's see on that quote um almost $100. But the feedback from the teaching staff um is that at the younger grades because the managing the keyboard um the trans starting with a touchcreen um and one of our schools we have iPads that we're we're transitioning out and and soon to be recycling um the touchcreens they feel that the student gets a much better experience. Bless you. Um, and because we're buying three grade levels, buying the touchscreen for the kindergarten and having that follow up through fourth grade, we have had examples or we've had teachers even in the higher grades, second and third grade, request the touchcreens for certain kids that are um struggling with the keyboard. So, for us, this just feels like it's going to be a natural move

072to be able to have essentially all elementary students once we get fully through. So another two years we will essentially have all touchscreens for K through four and and and then it the motor skills and all that will be will will be accessible for all students at that level. Makes sense Ron. Thank you very much for the clarification. Any other discussion? I have no objection to moving forward with the Chromebook Chromebook purchase uh recommendation as written. So my recommendation is for insight. Uh that quote is good until I think the June 10th somewhere along that. So that's why that's why we have to bring it to the board. Again, it's availability. um they are worried that we if we don't jump on it, we're in line with all the other school districts in the nation

073that are trying to buy Chromebooks right now. So, we don't jump on it. We of course go to the back of the line and we might get tariff Chromebooks, we might not get them depend on how that national stuff works. What they said with this quote is I guarantee you the amount that we want after that date. We no longer guarantee it. So, I appreciate that. Thank you. So, we move it to uh the board, right? Um Thank you. And the next item on the agenda is the operational referendum debrief. We had this on the agenda last month and we ran out of time. So I put the same documents in again um for this month so we can discuss those. The first thing that I was going to talk about a little bit is

074the one that's says referendum buyer. This was provided to us by Baird which is the um financial group that helps uh they help us do a lot of different things including like whoever to get bonds and then they help us price out referendum costs. So they follow these referendums very carefully. This just gives us a breakdown of the last election and what passed and what failed. The overall passage rate for referendums in April was 56%. Um, you can see for recurring referendums, there were only five on the ballot and of those five, only one passed. So, those had the the lowest passage rates of all of them. And the other thing that's interesting, I think, is that of all the referendums that were on the ballot, 40% of them were retries. So, they were even

075either the second or the third time through. Um, that was 36 of 94 of the questions. And then if we look down a little bit farther, it gives the history of referendums passing and failing going all the way back to 2021. So I think it's just it's helpful to see um kind of where we are. I think that for a while the passage rate was really high. It's still over 50% but it has been getting smaller. Um so that seems to be the trend right now. Any questions or comments about that? How many that were retries? Where was that number? Um I just found that myself. It's not on here, but um there was 94 questions and 36 of them were retries. 36 of them were retries. And how many of those were successful? I

076don't know for sure. I was wondering that myself. I can probably find out, but I don't know off the top of my head. I know a couple that have. I know a couple of districts even kind of close to us have tried operational referendums now. two and three times and not passed. Okay. So then the other two documents in here kind of go together. The document that's labeled budget notes explains what all goes into the projections that are loaded into the agenda under the administrative section. Um, so for people who have been on the committee before, we've gone through this document multiple times, but um, for for everybody who's new, the document gives all the assumptions that are built into the projections. So for this next school year, we're waiting for the state to pass

077their budget to really know for sure what's going to be in there. So we're making a lot of educated guesses. Um, so for these projections, we're keeping the per pupil categorical aid at $742 a student. We're keeping equalization aid at the same rate as $24.25. We're adding in that increase on the revenue limit per pupil of $325 a student or FTE, not a student. Um, we're keeping the special education reimbursement rate at 33%. which really because that's like a set pot of money, we really see somewhere between 26 and 28. We haven't seen the full 33. Um, we're assuming that enrollment will continue to decline. We're still using that cohort survival method to project student enrollment for the purposes of the forecasting. Summer school, we just kept it the same number of FTEES and we

078kept open enrollment about the same, too. private school tuition vouchers. We know that the um overall amount of vouchers will go up by 1% again and so I'm increasing that by 10%. Overall property values I just increased by 1% overall which is probably a conservative estimate but they have been increasing rapidly over the last three years especially last year was close to 18% in the district overall. Um, we have budgeted the full CPI wage increase of 2.95%. We have not bargained yet. And then we're estimating health insurance to go up by 10% and dental insurance to go up by 3%. We'll be getting those numbers, the actuals here in the upcoming probably next three months or so. So, we will know those numbers for sure. Um, we are projecting a deficit again for 2025-26 and

079we're projecting that we will need to use fund balance to balance the budget. We have been talking about for months that we were going to reduce the budget by $1.5 million over the next three years whether a referendum passed or not. When the referendum did not pass, we really started digging in and we were able to find more reductions. So, at the time of me writing this, it was 88,000. But by the time by the time the budget is going to be ready to present, it will be closer to a million dollars in reductions that we've found for um 202526. So those are all the assumptions in the forecast when we look at it as we're planning next year's budget. I kind of have already touched on this, but there's a lot at the state

080level we still don't know. We're waiting on there's been lots of things proposed and it's hard to say what will really happen there. Um and then at the federal level there has also been quite a bit like lots of people thinking one thing would be removed and one thing would not. We still have some uncertainty there but it does seem right now like it seems like title one is going to remain seems like IDA is going to remain and those are our two largest um federal revenues aside from food service. So that's good. The other titles are less certain. Um, we are also for next year anticipating a onetime revenue from the closure of TID 4 and that's about $1.2 million which will help. And then as we're building the budget, like I said before,

081we know that we will have some cost increases that are just natural. So employee wages, whatever raise um the board gives, employee benefits will go up, transportation will go up, vouchers will go up, utilities will go up. Um, but we are planning on making those reductions. And so in summary, for next year, we're proposing continuing to develop this budget with that nearly $1 million in reductions. And then in the years after that, we're going to start planning and this committee, are we looking at going to referendum again? And to what level are we reducing the budget in future years? Right now when we look at it, we're thinking that what we would need to do is in 2026 27 make a reduction of about $4.5 million and then make that same amount of reduction the

082following year to balance the budget. So that's what we're looking at right now. Um and then if you look at the projection itself, I think it kind of um supports what we're talking about. So the top there's two projections. The top projection shows all of those assumptions we talked about without reductions and the bottom one shows all of those assumptions and then the $4.5 million reduction in 2627 and again in 2728. And what I always like to say, people probably get sick of me saying this, but the forecast is like the weather forecast like in next year it's pretty clear as it goes out farther gets a little bit harder to really say because so many things change. So when we still are seeing red, that isn't necessarily like a scary thing here. Other things

083will change and depending on where reductions are made, it impacts years after as well. So staffing reductions definitely change years after more than just that dollar amount and it compounds. I said a lot. I don't know if they're that's one thing that I heard um from the department and from AASA which is the school alliance uh for our federal level um is that uh Wisconsin's poverty rate is not increasing at the rate of a number of other states and because title dollars are funded by need um we probably will see a downward trend in the amount of dollars coming into the state which means a downward trend is what we're seeing. They don't have yet for us anything modeled for what might happen but we should start thinking about revising our numbers downward even in

084the title that we expect and we only really expect title one and and possibly some title three funds. Title two and four are probably not going to be available to us. Not not only are we not going to have title two and four, but title one and three, we're going to see a revised downward probably because that money will be directed to other states whose p poverty went up faster than ours. Have you estimated how much money that is? No, they haven't modeled it yet. They don't know exactly because they also don't know how much the Fed is going to put into that bucket. And when should we get an answer on that? Well, uh, the the president just put forward their, you know, the budget, right? The and that'll get worked through a number

085of different committees and everything else that it goes through at the federal level and then from there it'll go into the departments, right? And then the departments will share out what they uh had with their priorities within that budget. And so um we're probably going to look at another three or four months before we really start hearing some of the modeled numbers for our title. What did we get last year? Um, we got just over $600,000. And you're saying that's going to get cut drastically. A good portion of it. I mean, title one is our our biggest amount um that we get. But even if we're if that was revising down, it's good that they didn't say that one's taken off at least at this time, right? So, but we're we would still will we

086still be required to provide the title one services for prochial students if those funds are not available? Yeah. I mean, the law hasn't changed, right? But that they will be getting uh less service as well. Okay. I mean, if we have fewer dollars, their share of those dollars will impact it will impact them as well. Right. Um so the the scenario one that you you provide uh does that are we looking at doing something similar if we decide to try to move forward make a decision moving forward with a ref a referendum that we're going to communicate that we're baking in a $4.5 million reduction at that point or uh that will depend on the level of which you as a board want to do your ask at, right? Um and certainly uh you know

087Sarah and I can start and already have started uh thinking about what would that look like. Okay. Right. The biggest amount of information that we heard from you as well as the community is um uh that the bigger part of uh the no was the recurring portion, right? And so to to take that out, we may garner some votes, but also I do think that there was some hesitancy on the amount uh as well. Um and so we will have to figure out the what that is, how we structure that um over the course of number of years and then decide what that impact on uh what we think the TID is going to be or I mean the not I just read TID up there. I'm sorry the um the the the tax might

088be for the mill rate. So uh and then say is is this something that you support? So, um, over the next two to three months, we're going to be doing some heavy modeling. Uh, we're going to be coming back to this committee and saying, "Here's some here's some looks at that." Um, I I work closely with board leadership. Um, on a, you know, instead of an every month basis, you know, every couple weeks basis, as I'm talking with Sarah, we're talking about what the budget looks like, what you can expect on the budget front. And then also when we start doing getting heavier into the modeling, we'll we'll be starting to talk about that uh at the modeling level just to inform. Right. Right. Uh and say here's where we are with our work product

089so far. But that really just depends on on you. Um and uh whatever we do, you can see that um it's just going to buy us time before another ask comes unless the state really changes what they do for funding schools. Cross, right? I mean, because you can even see when we do a $4.5 million, right? Add another 4.5, you still get to red when you get out there, right? I mean that that's that's cutting nine more million dollar out and uh $800,000 in that model this year, right? Yeah. Because if you look at the revenue line as things stand right now, the revenue stays almost the same every year. Like all these expenses that we really can't control just make the red get bigger every year. Yeah. I think if you do a uh

090non-recurring referendum and I think that if we uh continue to work to make sure that um the goings on of the district are reflective of the values and desires of the people of Watertown. I think that we're going to see people warm up to the idea considerably. But I mean I know from everyone I talked to the recurring thing was I don't want I don't want to give a permanent increase. that makes me very uncomfortable and I've seen a lot of things that I'm displeased with in so far as cultural and political things that go on particularly um some previous actions of school board that people thought were important. So I mean I don't know if this is really the place to get in depth in that discussion but that's certainly we have to do

091that sometime and it's in its agenda. So yeah, you know I mean that's what we're here to talk about is you know um the referendum how it went feedback and and any other discussion points. So, it's very valid to have those discussions. Now, um I mean as well as um you know kind some of the kinds of things you're looking for um when we when we move away from a recurring um and you can see why we asked for it. I mean that that that state model or state funding formula, right? It just doesn't do justice with increases unless the the state really ups how much they put in each year, right? Um, so if we don't do a recurring and I and I don't think we're going to, I wouldn't even recommend it myself.

092Um, the next best thing is to go for a number of years. My question is, is that three years, four years, five years? Uh, the last time we did a sun setting, it was a fiveyear, right? And that that seemed to have passed. Is that the maximum time? Um, no. Uh, it's not the maximum time. there is some uh you know a bill in the legislature that's not getting much traction that would put a cap at a four-year and then also make a recurring just something you can't do. Um but it's not getting much traction right now. Um but the if if you're looking at what are other people thinking out there um I can at least share with you that there's a bill out there that looks kind of like that. Okay. But I

093don't know what what your guys's thoughts are and certainly I mean whatever you say today doesn't mean what we have to end up with. It's just it just gives us a path to start doing some modeling for you to see what that looks like. Yeah. Um I guess I would be curious to see how if we did like a nonreoccurring and there was a sunset of I don't even know if it's possible but eight years. Um, is that even it's been done, you know, and just to see what that looks like. Um, what what's the expense to get a school the referendum? Like what are we paying up front to, you know, the marketing, getting on a ballot, like Yeah, it kind of depends how much we want to do. I think this last time

094around we had a budget of 20,000. I don't think we hit the 20,000 mark. We did if you count uh Donovan Group into that uh piece, but it was just barely over that with Donovan Group. Yeah. So, that's probably a pretty good number is to say about $20,000 and that doesn't really matter how long the referendum is because it's just an expense you'd need to get messaging out to the community, right? Yeah. I mean, you have to incur cost, right? Yeah. But that doesn't also indicate. I'm just saying if you were going to say it's like something $200,000, then maybe a three-year referendum wouldn't be the best choice. You know what I mean? Well, and and honestly, a three-year referendum for all that you put into uh doing referendum and, you know, all the opportunity

095costs of uh administrative time, everything else, right? Yeah, the longer you can go um the more you can you can kind of secure that recovery or take that recovery over those number of years, right? Um of all of that. So, um I mean I totally get that. I think though that a lot of constituents are concerned about the dynamics of the city, which you have no control over, right? I like just the way that the kitty's expenses seem to be going up. They're not only concerned about the expense increase for a referendum. Right. Right now, the water is going to be going up soon. Who knows what's going to happen with the developments that's going on in the city and how that's going to affect. Well, here's where I'll say if Senator Jaguar or, you

096know, Assemblyman Pentamman are listening, I will say it one more time. Schools, cities, and counties be more fair share of the state dollars. Yes. Yes. What was the community sentiment on the amount? Just curious because generally when you go to referendum you fail because now you're trying to make that up the next time you go and you're asking for more because that's what happens when you fail referendum. What I heard $7 million is hard to swallow year over year. Um, but I don't know. I will say I don't know if it was hard to swallow because it was coming from an indefinite standpoint, you know, or if it's because of the hard number. And there seemed to be some confusion on what that amount actually was. Not for me, from my perspective, but just on

097some of the messaging that went out from the district. Not saying that you didn't. um people were unsure what exactly they were asking for and it could have really been lack of community involvement to actually be aware of what the district was messaging. Do you know what I'm question? Was it true that we were going to lose 60 uh teaching jobs? It it is true. If we don't pass, we're going to have 60 days staff members uh that we're going to be looking to um reduce staffing by. And it's not just teachers, it's administration. Okay. But it's it's not just teachers, it's other staff. No, it's it's it's administration. It's support staff. It's uh cooks, cleaners, uh maintenance people, you know. Um Well, there's there was miscommunication there because the way I understood it that

098they were going to lose 60 teachers because of it, you know. That's that's the impression I got. Yeah. Well, I kept saying 60 to 80 staff members in every presentation. I I understand that. I completely understand that. I understand how to how a word can get changed real quick down the chain of command. True. Y So I will say one thing that I think needs to be clear if we go to referendum again and Gordon votes for it is that uh it's a building plan and the closures or whatever. Yeah. They need to understand that that's not connected to the operational referendum, right? Like I feel like that was a really large misunderstanding by the community. Yeah, it is. And I think that uh as long as we continue to stay on our plan, uh

099what I mean by that is our plan to create a long-term facilities plan, right? Um, as long as we stay on that plan through the summer with P and Cullen, uh, we will have a much better idea of what we're looking at for a facilities plan, uh, in August. Okay. Right. Uh, and, uh, you know, some people have mentioned, um, that, uh, they wish we would bring everything to the table. I I know, uh, like Mr. Stan Martin has said in a post out there somewhere um you know that he's worried that there's this other secret happening and you know it's been no secret. We've had posted meetings that we do have some facilities uh maintenance requests. So he is right there is a there is another ask out there to repair our facilities and

100to maybe change uh buildings or whatever else. Um the problem is is we couldn't communicate that because we didn't have a finished plan. Yes. Right. And and that's where people were getting confused. Uh this time around uh should we have something that we're going into April with by about August or September and certainly by November or December when we put a question out there, right? We will know um not only what that question is and what the cuts are going to be because I'm we're going to work hard to identify those for everybody. Um, and matter of fact, we're going to put a letter out uh in the next week here that says, "Here's the things we're thinking about right now." Okay? Right. Uh, and that we'll have a finalized plan for you guys. Uh,

101in we we said uh some like um I think in the letter it said fall, right? Um but internally our plan is to make sure that fiscal has the idea of what those look like in October. Okay. Right. Uh, and then so if we have a plan, we'll be able to communicate everything really, really clearly in November. Like if this doesn't pass, here's the cuts for this year and here's the cuts for next year, right? And uh and also just so you know, we have a long range facilities plan that within the next three or next five years, we're going to do this with facilities, whether it's close buildings or move things around or whatever. We're going to have to have a couple different plans. one based on should a referendum fail and one based

102on should a referendum uh you know operational referendum pass. Okay. And we may have another one that says um you know uh we're looking for both operational and and uh capital and that's what this plan will look like depending on what you guys want to do. Right. And uh I will tell you that if you do both it's going to get really expensive pretty quickly. Oh sure. you know, uh, and so I don't know if that's a good ask or not. And we need to we need to fund our operations first and then worry about fixing buildings and and and doing that kind of stuff later, but that's my opinion. Question. School closings. Yes. Who and where? So, we um we are going to uh if we don't pass a referendum, we are working on

103plans to close up to three different elementary schools. Okay. Um I can share with you that um we are taking a look at um what the maintenance needs are continuing, what those costs are, the the the the daily costs of operations. Uh we're looking at um future potential of that building. So, how many seats are available, right? And and a number of other factors that uh we are going to bring to you um when we talk about the possible closure of LEAP and my recommendation to do that regardless of any referendum or any other planning. Now that that um I'm working with the parent group right now uh because I think it's important for them to be able to share their uh thoughts, their discussion points about uh plans, right? So that you have it

104all at one spot. You don't have Jared's recommendation and bunch of angry parents for the next five meetings, right? I'm trying to do it together even though we won't agree. uh you'll hear hear my recommendation and you'll hear what they they think is important so that you have it all at one meeting. Uh and and I'm hoping that works. Um and Craig's been to uh all of those meetings so far. Uh and it seems to be, you know, um a lot of questions that were still being asked, information being shared back and forth and and whatnot. But um you'll have all of that information to make a decision and you'll understand um what order we're thinking about closing elementaryaries in if we have to. I wish I had that information today. I had one angry

105phone call. Well, you you you and Sarah and I can sit down and have that discussion. We have it um pretty much all together and wrapped up and have for you know um weeks now. So, um, administratively, we do have that information. I handle it, though. I settled the guy down. Um, I I think what I heard out on the campaign trail, more or less, uh, with constituents was a couple of different things. Yes, the duration of the referendum was a factor. Uh it was less about the the dollar amount. I thought um I there were people that felt pinched by the city by the you know already and that was a factor for them. uh not understanding that of all of the different measures that we've taken to try to ease that burden on

106them as uh as a school district. Um sure, it would have been easier for us to just go right back to the community right after the five-year referendum had expired and then just say, "Hey, we need another five-year referendum and your mill rate's going to drop by this much. Unfortunately, that's not what happened because we would have been sitting on a huge fund balance which would have been probably caught by the public and said and they would have said, "Hey, you guys don't need money right now. What are you talking about?" So, that's not the way that we approach things as a school district at that point. Um, I think that I heard uh that when we were talking about P and the facilities plan, that was like the game of telephone like we're talking

107about earlier where like this these rumors started flying throughout the comm community that oh, we're looking at a mega school and that we're we're considering ing all of this other um uh you know building and and yet I felt on a number of different occasions I've had to like explain to people no we're trying to get a temperature from the community on what their appetite is for for moving forward when it comes to our facilities. Uh because when we're sticking, you know, what was it? The tune of some something of like $80 million over the course of 20 years into our buildings, maybe that's not the best use of of your financial resources as a community. So there's just there's a communication disconnect there. did you and I have heard this uh one of the

108biggest concerns people had were what is the referendum for? They would keep saying that what is the referendum for? Well, we would say operational costs. Many people don't know what that under they have no idea what that means unfortunately. And and that's just basically meaning, you know, to pay to pay the current bills we have, right? You know, they had a hard time not not they they think that it's for something new, right? It's like, no, it's not. It's to pay a staff. It's to right, you know, fix, you know, do some fixes. It is just to keep keep our balance in in the black or not in the black, but you know, I mean, stable. Uh so some people even vocalized, oh it's for wage increases and that's the only reason why you're doing

109this. No, it's not. Uh uh so there's that. Then there was general confusion about our our current uh transparency around our our budgets. Even though I'd like to think that we're as transparent as we possibly can be. Um, I'd like to see if we can try to work together to try to figure out how how to um provide more of visibility and understanding to the community if we possibly can. we we have to at least try, you know, to to make make and and if it's not for the purposes of of transparency necessarily, but also to demonstrate a mastery of our particular um knowledge in that particular area so that people feel comfortable knowing that that we have a good team behind us that is looking at this information and conveying it to the public.

110I think that's probably going to be a helpful thing. Um, uh, so I I think there's just a natural distrust out there unfortunately and and it's a hurdle we're going to all have to try to work to get over um, somehow. You know, I don't know if that summarizes some thoughts that people had. General distrust. I would definitely agree. I'm with people there. I got mental distrust at times, too. Is there any way I'm just It's all an ideal. Is there any way to create a page on the district homepage that is simply geared towards finances and you could make some sort of pie chart or graph and I understand that you use certain codes right because you're in the line of business but to like correlate that to lay terms somebody would use in

111their home right like I I don't know if this is foundable you would know better than I do but just so that they could equate an operational referendum like hey this is our shortfall right now okay we we need to pay the electric bill guys you know right and I don't know if that's feasible I think I know what they're looking for they just want to know where it's coming from and they want it in layman's terms right so much is coming from the state so much is coming from your tax base so much is coming from the federal government and so much is coming from somewhere else, right? Yeah. And here's the areas we're spending. And and then the breakout is what they want to see. How much do our teachers cost us? How

112much does our staff cost us? How much does the upkeep of the buildings cost us? And then when you break it down a little further more, how much is that damn football program cost us? How much does that baseball program cost us? How much does this cost us? How much does that band program cost us? that's what they're looking for and and I think it would be real easy to throw it in those terms. I I agree with you completely and I think we actually share that every month. So, it's just a matter of finding where is best to put the information and the daily times and let them read the daily times. 400 people read the daily times. Well, I you know, you may be right now, Sam, about that because I got rid

113of it, too. But they don't put they don't put anything like that in there anymore. I'm just saying, Carl, there there could be improvement on ensuring that they're reporting with accuracy. So, I don't know if we really want any financial data provided to the Daily Times and then they need to issue some sort of correction because they got the numbers incorrect. That's also a great point. Um, I'm just saying, well, where where is our our outlet for communications with the community? Where is it then? Facebook page. Um, yeah, forgive my ignorance, Steuart. Back in the day, we used to do newsletters monthly, months. I don't know if we do. Do we do a history newsletter? It's digital. There was one released today actually. So, who reads that? It's got to be posted in front of

114somewhere. Maybe Facebook would probably be there. I hate to say it this way, but we're not connecting the dots, guys. Like, we we did our we did our analysis with P of our community and we have an aging in place community. They're not all on Facebook. They're just not. In order to reach those people, they have to they have to receive something in print. They just do. And that's why we did a lot of mailers around. I think people are not. No offense, but I think when people get mailers, younger people are not especially if they have to do literally any action to open it, right? You know what I do with mailers? They go Yeah. Exactly. If you get so much mail a day, you don't want to look at mailers. We're just going

115to have to get out to local community events, you know, if we increasing that presence. Yeah. Yeah. You know what we should do? We should have a uh we should have a subcommittee meeting or not a subcommittee but a joint committee meeting of uh fiscal planning with Melissa Lampy about communicating uh fiscal matters to the public. I'm not saying that she that we've never done anything like that, but she's on right now. She can hear what you're saying. So um um you know if if you if you're bringing two committees together, you might as well just do it at a board meeting, right? you know, and and Dan, I think Dan kept mentioning that they're just there and and it's been a recurring theme for quite some time, you know, even even before you you

116were hired that there's a um that there's a a a general disconnect between the community that we still have to try to bridge somehow. And perhaps maybe that avenue is through the form of like like an open house or open forum that that has to be on a regular basis where we I'll update communicate with the public on on the happenings of the district and uh and that sort of thing. I do kind of like a page on that's what we started to do with the Burks briefings and then we transitioned the Burks briefings into basically referendum because that was the thing we were talking about, right? Yeah. I I do kind of like the idea of just a a a very detailed financial page on our on our website that would kind of u

117break down the areas of our budget, that sort of thing. We can try to spell out some of the things that we've done in the past and and uh and what the assumptions are in the budget moving forward uh and our projections and try to explain that but also you know other conversations that are ongoing uh specifically around P with the master facilities plan and where where the needs are for uh building maintenance. We can kind of explain that in in better detail and then also explain while we're talking about that are our the regular operational needs are still not being met with our current budget situation. And I mean they have to understand that those two are absolutely separate but they do impact each other because if um if we why would we want

118to keep shoveling money into a building that we're potentially uh that's a money pit or that's yeah I mean we to operate any longer. every every um year when we adopt a budget, right? Right. Sarah and her team put together uh a budget presentation information, right? We we could easily attach that to our web page, right? And say, "Here's here's where it is because, you know, really unless unless we're putting monthly updates, like having a live feed to that." Um and they can truly get that by attending these meetings, right? Or seeing these meetings. I I wouldn't even you know I mean not to I I don't mean to cut you off we produce it. I mean I would I would even go as far as to say on that page we can have a

119link to these videos of these meetings so that people can understand what kind of level of discussions are being had and and they can get themselves up caught up to speed. Uh, and I don't I don't mean to jump the gun on discussion that that is forthcoming to the board meeting in the future, but that I think that those those are valuable pieces that people have to I mean it can set the record straight quite a bit in the community for for any misinformation that seems to be out there. At a previous district, um we did the virtual monthly virtual. Yeah. Um but then we also and I don't want to put any more work on anybody, but we also had allowed the community to request for a mailing one for those who don't have

120digital access or don't aren't computer people, right? So, it was and the list was short. I mean, really was short. Nothing wrong with that. I'm sorry, Sarah. There's nothing wrong with that. But I mean, you know, it's up to them. they requested just in case, you know, and like I said, it wasn't many, but there I bet you1,000 that approve that or that the board probably will approve of. You're going to have 30 to 40% of the people in in this community saying, "What the hell do they need that for?" You know that better than I do. How'd you know about that? Yeah. Better than I do. So, Mrs. Charity, I just have two quick things. Um, one, perhaps we could also, you know, strengthen with with having a new mayor in place the relationship

121with the city to see if they'll include us in that weekly email that goes out to the community because it's a different kind of perhaps readership. Um, you know, from an overlap perspective. Um, and then when it when it comes to um, one of the things that I that I've heard from folks were that we maybe didn't focus a lot on the prochial schools because it was a public school referendum, yet those are folks that are voting. And so making sure that they understand, you know, what some of the the implications are and ensuring that they're hearing the same messages that those in our public schools are might be something that'd be helpful for us to consider. And not to say that we haven't done it, but perhaps to amplify those efforts a little. Is

122not wrong. I agree with that. So do I. You know, um I like the idea of working with the new city. Yeah. Connection here. What? So she only if he has a connection, right? No. school teacher. I think that's a that's a discussion that we're going to be having too. So, but yeah, I'm I'm if if it's an update that we have to have at, you know, um city council meetings and we invite them in to have participation. Uh also keep that open communication. That's that's a good thing. And if if if we decide that, you know, one of the biggest uh one of the biggest uh communicating um one of the biggest things that we need to communicate is, you know, um our financial well-being or you know, then that's that's what we need

123to do in in those updates. Any more discussion? The next item. Okay. Next up is the CC2 contract. There's a contract and a memorandum of understanding loaded into four ducks. Um this is done annually. And um I didn't check the boxes here, but what we're proposing is renewing everything except dialogue with attorney. We don't feel like we need that for next year, but we're proposing renewing the title 3 consortium. And then um aiology, orientation, and more ability and um blind and visually impaired students. Those are based on need. And there are some estimated costs attached. Um those are just estimates. It depends on what student needs are and what the IEPs say. The Title 3 Consortium, we get some money for Title 3, that's for English learners. And um by using um the CISA to

124help manage those funds, we get quite a bit of extras um trainings and resources that we wouldn't have otherwise. The first document is just the basics and then the second document had the estimated costs. I will say that in the past when we've utilized uh them for like for instance aiology um they've had really good good um practitioners that helped with that. They just they're just really good. I'm sure that there are other ones. I haven't heard any complaints with the u the assistance that we have received from CISA 2 or anything like that. I've always heard decent reports. So really I'm not really concerned about moving forward with this. Any other discussion? Not at the time. Is this the one thing just going back to the prior meeting that we do not currently have

125a rep decided for? No. uh Sam Mo and um uh the one that we don't have decided was the WB delegate that would uh go to the state convention and vote on resolutions. Thank you Jared and thanks Sam for being the rep. What's next? That's um the next thing is the monthly reports. Um, so in here we list every month all of the checks that have been cut, all the detail for all the credit card purchases, the Amazon purchases are separated and you can see what all of those are. And then there are two reports that are called variance reports. One is for fund 10, which is the general fund. So that's the majority of everything that the district does. And then fund 27 is for special education. Um, and I thought if we look

126at the variance report, um, the way that this is laid out is if you look over here on the left, it says source. That's the three-digit account number. And that tells us where the revenues are coming from. And then when we get to expenses, it's called the object. So this is the whole entire budget broken out by source and object. And then we have it the budget amount. and then the year-to- date activity, the percentage spent, and then we have it to compare to the previous two years. So, we can see where we are this year compared to the last two years in those same groupings. So, this shows every single revenue that we get and then every single expense for the year so far. So, this shows right here what we're paying for teachers,

127what we're paying for aids, what we pay for administrators, maintenance. It's all broken out. Um, salaries are all in the 100s. All the employee benefits are in the 200s. The 300s are called purchase services. That includes um anything that we're paying for um service outside of the district. It has all of our utilities, postage, um anything that we would hire someone to come in and do. So, professional development, travel, contracted work on buildings, that's all included in here. And then some of the really big expenses in this section are what we pay for open enroll tuition out and then what we pay for vouchers. So, those are the ones that are in the $3 million range and transportation is in there. So, those 300s add up to a big portion of the budget. The 400s

128are all supplies and those are broken out by section and then um the 500s are capital equipment. Insurance and um work comp are the 700s and then 800 the transfer to fund 27 that's a huge expense that comes out of the operating fund every year. that is the amount that we have to transfer to make fund 270 zero at the end of the year. So we get a few revenues in fund 27 if we looked at that report. Um we get idea, we get the state reimbursement and then we get Medicaid and otherwise fund 10 covers all of the costs for special education. So fun 27 is special education. Yes. Um, and then the balance sheet is at the bottom. And then we have that same report for fund 27. Um, and so that right

129now for revenue, we don't have a whole lot on there. We have whatever we've gotten for aid and what we've claimed for IDA so far this year. And then expenses are below and they're broken out the same way. And percentage-wise for fun 10 and for fun 27 we are running very close to what we have in the previous two years. And in the previous two years we did end up at the end of the year a little bit better than what was projected. So hopefully that is going to be true for this year as well. And that would mean our deficit would be a little bit less than what was projected. Okay. Are there any questions about the reports themselves? So I I know a number of you are rather new to just even seeing

130these reports or even understanding the budgets and school finance. Uh WSB has a really good resource. Uh there's two resources. One is their uh school finance 101 series. It's a series of webinars that you can go through. But even better than that, they have a really simple, easy to read, about that thick book for about $70 so that I could order it for each of you. It goes through the basics of fund accounting, uh the different funds that are available, what the budget cycle looks like, what the inputs are, revenues versus expenses. There's a whole bunch of information in that book. Yes, we will. Okay. Yeah. Um, would you would you guys like me to order a number of those uh and say, you know, here here's some information for you or I got one.

131You got one? He got part of it because the woofer now. Okay. He's got the woofer part. All right. He he knows. All right. He's getting speak woofer with us now. All right. Um, woofer is the financial accounting sequence numbers for those who may not know online or whatever, but I'm I'm going to assume I don't know everything about everything. So, Absolutely. I I'd love to learn more. I'll have Len order a number of those. Yeah, maybe one for every every every board member. And I think every board member should be at least. I mean, it's a good starting resource for you to dig in. Uh and then the next uh I shouldn't say the next best thing because the best thing really is just talk to Sarah but uh you know after reading that

132talking to Sarah would be probably one of the next next best steps because she can help continue you on your path to learn more and more each year uh about that. But it really does take uh some time and really um some resources to understand because it is different and the better you understand the better you can help us relay that in layman's terms because the the last time I thought you know about that differently um was a number of years ago. It's not hard that hard to break it out. No, it's not. And um actually I have uh at the last school district we we found a way to start breaking that out even and making more sense. I'll share that with Sarah how we basically took the balance sheet and bind numbers to

133make something sensical and she may like it, she may not. But um it'll be an idea starter. You can test it out on me, Carl, and when it starts making sense to me, you'll know that you're heading in the right direction. As long as it balances. Just remember, he's the one that wanted to take everybody's pinky. No, I said we're not going to do that. I said we're moving away from that barbaric pagan practice and we're moving towards more civilized age where everyone gets to keep their pinkies in the boardroom. Excellent. Excellent. Sorry. Well, no, no worries. No worries. All right. Last thing we have is the future agenda planning and we ended up switching a couple things. Like I mentioned earlier, we moved Chromebooks to May and we moved liability insurance to June because

134that wasn't quite ready yet, but it will be ready for June. I just had an update with them. So, I'll bring that to the June meeting. Um, the fire protection systems were already approved. Uh, Kevin brought that early, too, so we don't have to do that. But, we can talk budget again. We'll talk preliminary budget for next year and we can um continue our referendum discussion. And I think that was the only other thing that I had. There may be a maintenance agreement for um the HVAC. I'll have to double check with Kevin and see if we will need to have that on as well. But that's all that I know so far. Thank you. I'll have one for renewal bring back next month securely one because that's just over 20. Okay. Is there anything

135else? Um I I see that we started operational referendum planning in January. Should we start having discussions about that sooner? Um uh the the uh we started it well before January. I think you actually took um your discussion to a vote in December to go to referendum. So um that was a December vote. And so I think we started really finalizing what that vote would look for in October at the full board level, right? Uh and so uh basically August September for sure, maybe even July. Uh I don't know how long uh before uh Sarah can really dig uh into those models and start those models. Her first priority is you know getting the budget done but we may have a stall in what we know from the state on the budget. So she may

136be able to take on some other work uh sooner until we get normally or more not normally but more uh information about money coming from the state. Um so is it out of the question? uh let's see to maybe have that part of that discussion in October when we're considering Oh yeah, definitely the budget because I mean it has to play play into that conversation. It just does. I mean like what basically if I mean when we have financial projections there at October as well probably going to want to say hey what does it look like if we do have referendum what does it look like if we don't have a referendum yeah I would say before October for sure I would love to have some direction on are we talking like what level of

137referendum like what's your comfort level with a mill rate increase? Those kinds of things. I would like to have this. I think we should we should put it on for each month going forward so we can keep refining and refining until we get there. Craig. Okay. Like I I I I'm not saying that we need to hold off all discussions until then. At this level at the board level though, we we probably won't see start seeing that that level of uh depth of discussion until October. Right. Okay. But uh but at this committee level, I would assume that every month now we're going to have discussion about that. I think we should also uh because fiscal is the where where we talk about facilities. I think we should really start talking about um facilities planning.

138Um and uh I I've got an idea of a board meeting date uh that I'd like to do a special meeting to uh restart our facilities process. Um, I think that's like May 27th. Um, but you and I could talk about that and get availability um, questions out there to people, but I think that that should be on the agenda, too, is is facilities planning updates, right? Uh, so that way we can hit those markers and have everything wrapped up by, you know, end of September, October. What's that? Yeah, tomorrow. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I think it's a good idea, Greg. Yeah, we'll put that on next month's, right? I'll add it to every month. Every month. Yeah, might as well. Yeah, we'll talk about that every month. I'll put down the spreadsheet. People are going

139to be very concerned about that. I'm sure it'll get a lot of phone calls. you're gonna you get a lot of phone calls next week when the letter goes out. And I'm not, you know, I'm I'm working really hard with uh, you know, Craig and and the administrative team. I'm not trying to put a letter out that is meant to um, you know, have people get their dander up. people will get their dander up because it's gonna I think shock some people to the level of discussions that we need to have uh to get to you know um you know four and a half million uh not next year but the year after and four and a half million after that. Um, and I I I think people were shocked uh that we were doing

140even, you know, nearly a million dollars worth of cuts this year. And um because I said regardless of a referendum, we need to at least cut 1.5 over three years. Um and we're taking this serious. We have to, you know, like I I I've seen colleagues in other districts who've gone through two, three, four referendum, right? uh and they're still not passing them, right? We don't have that level of runway. We have basically last April and and if we choose April again, that's it. We're out of money. And that's what the cuts were doing. You guys just saw the projections. So, can't say anything more other than it's got to be serious. I'm not trying to inflame people. I'm just trying to let them know. But they you were gonna get calls. I hate to

141ask this question. How do we get to this point? Well, uh I I would say actually we did a really good job as a school district and I know we're we're at a devastating point now, but the number of school districts who fell before us and had to do things, I mean, you saw fort went through this whole process and they did huge cuts a year, was it a year or two years ago? I can't remember. um and they had failed a couple in a row. Uh what had really put us in a good spot was we had a five-year referendum that was in place. Uh we had the ESR dollars that came in and we had um a budget team um over the last five years uh two before me and the last three

142uh with a board that was really conservative, right? Uh, and we we try really hard to monitor costs, shave things, do some, you know, moving things around. Um, but we're all school districts, unless you're in a suburban area or a high urban growth area, right, where you are attracting families, everybody's getting hit by the low birth rate, right? That's why the universities closed their two their two-year university, their community universities, right? And and they're thinking about closing other universities, right? They just don't have uh the number of students coming in. And when you're um revenue is dependent on how many headcount you have, that's that's hurting. We had declining enrollment. We've had years where we've had no increases to the revenue at all or $50 a student. It just hasn't even come close to keeping

143up. We had a year of 8% inflation. CPI was 8% one year. It was I understand that. So increasing increasing costs, revenues that stay the same or or less or less. I mean what we actually are getting as revenue has been going down every year in the operational fund. the way that they have school choice and voter programs right now in the state is really not great for public education funding. Carl, I can understand that real well. And it's not it would be okay if the state would reimburse appropriately to the public district that has choice options available, but they are not appropriately funneling dollars down to the public education system to send to those alternative choices. Yeah, they're actually putting it all on the local property tax. And so when people see the tax

144bill, they say, "Well, our school, you know, it says public school tax, right?" Uh, and they're like, "Our schools are charging so much." And it's like, well, it's not just your public schools, it's all the voucher schools, right? Choice schools that we have as well, you know? Um, and that's that's their right. It's part of the funding, right? Uh, and so, um, but I don't think there's clarity around that. And I don't think that um when the state decided to have more students come on the role, they didn't appropriately fund that many more students coming on the role that were um out of the parents pocket before, right? And uh they should have they should have increased the amount of funding to schools, not just public schools um that they were going to fund and

145they didn't. Well, the the other part of that too is um the legislature involved with uh the Wisconsin parental choice programs overlooked the disproportionate impact that would have on other on districts on like for instance, Watertown uh happens to have it a $4.5 million approximately $4.5 million impact on our budget um through uh through the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program and that accounts for about 8 to 9% almost 10% of our pushing 10% of our budget and it will become 10% of our budget uh really quickly here. So, it's um it it it's a it other school districts don't have that. They're maybe at like 2%. Right. Because they don't have as many school choice schools. Yeah. We're one of the top in the state. The second percentage wise, it's the second highest percentage of the

146budget. We're the second now because we were fourth. Now we're second. It was the sec as a percentage of the budget. That is a total dollar amount. Okay. Oh, I see what you I see. I thought you meant like because I think we were the fourth highest in the state, right? Yeah. I thought you were saying now we're the second. I'm like, well, how did that happen? But we're like first fourth highest uh amount of dollars going to uh parental choice or voucher programming in the state because of the number of private schools we have available. Who who who choice? And we have some that don't even do choice. you know, if they decided to do choice that that would also impact our budget. I mean, the I think the only the only real solution

147is to become a viable competitor in any case with other schools, with alternative schools. Everyone I talk to who's young says three things. They say, "Why would I ever send my kid to public school? My kid's going to get indoctrinated. I would much rather send them to a private school where they're going to learn uh ethics and values that are actually aligned with what I believe or I'm going to homeschool them. So I make sure that that happens. Uh that's one thing I hear kind of split into two parts. And then the other thing that I hear is I'm an antiatalist because that's a big thing that you know my sister has been taught about in school and when when she went to college. And uh I you know I think it's funny actually that

148you're talking about how we have a low birth rate and how they're closing colleges because I mean I don't know that the values that are being taught in colleges are necessarily contributing towards higher birth rates. I actually think that they're not they're discouraging if anything unfortunately. So I think the only solution is you know any for any community really not just Watertown but for any community you have to become a place that people want to send their kids to. right now. I think that many of the people even in this room, but I think most of the people in Wondertown would agree with me that there's a general attitude of there are better options for where to send my kid. And that's what I'm interested in. Again, when I talk about like people are looking

149for why should I give more money to a to a system that I don't think is doing the best for kids in general. So far, um, public schools in general, uh, in in the state of Wisconsin, we haven't reached that threshold yet of a we versus them mentality. I don't think we should either. No, but what I'm telling you is is this, and the reason why um like I believe if they were to go full voucher, we would, right? But because the cap is there um parents who are already selecting I don't want a public school right there there are private schools who still have their private students on a wait list to be into the choice program right so it really hasn't affected the public versus private discussion yet because the the cap has

150been in place right if the cap goes off you're right there are going to be some people where there's going to be some choice and they're going to say, "Yeah, um I I can choose uh public versus private." But now, if you're in public school and you're worried about public school and where it's headed and you go to a private school, you're going to sit there and still wait for the voucher because you're going to be on the wait list because they still have uh kids on the wait list that they've had for a while. So, again, like I said, that doesn't really impact the ins out yet. Oh, yeah. No, I mean I actually think that if they just went uh for a full straightforward school choice program, I actually think that that might

151make things easier in a lot of ways. I think that, you know, as it stands, most people are saying whatever. I'm going to figure out how to incur the costs. I'm trying to I'm trying to move towards an option that I think works better. And I'm not saying I mean, I went to I went to Watertown High Schools. It was a while ago, but I went to Watertown High Schools. I think that many of the classes that I took uh there was a lot of academic value to them. But I think that we've we've all seen the kind of uh the dissolution of language and we've seen the loss of uh of cultural norms and things like that. And I think that a lot of people whether right or wrong they look to the school

152system at large, not just elementary, not just college, but the whole gamut and they say I feel like this is just not doing it. So I don't I mean, I think it's a big discussion. I do think that there are a lot of different pieces at play though. A lot of the things that Craig has talked about tonight very valuable as well. But I think that especially in Watertown, people tend to vote or move along their value system. And I think that until we have a clear understanding of that, we're really not going to we're really not going to get any traction. You know, I think I think the last time I I looked at it, I tried to I looked at some sort of a a US census to 2020 US census tapestry report

153for um for the Watertown Unified School District. And it it indicated about approximately between 5200 and 5,500 students being educated within the school district. We know that we're educating about 3,200 within within the public school system, right? So that we use approximately 2,000 students that are being uh served by either homeschool, parochial school or uh or other districts other districts then you know so I think it would still be fair to say that majority of kids living in the school district are being served by the school district by the public school right and and honestly uh I think those who are making their choices uh have made their choices. Um there are there are waiting seats in in our private schools here in town, right? Um and people do have choices that change, right? We

154get open enrollments uh in and open enrollments out uh as people make those choices, right? And so I'm I I'm saying that I think percentage-wise unless funding changes to allow more students to have as free of access as possible, we're going to be stuck kind of in this little bit of a zone that is a little up, little down, and a little up, a little down, right? um if funding um in in the way I I have talked about it um because you guys know I'm a choice advocate. If we went full voucher for everybody and we paid a tax credit the families for each child, right? And let's say that tax credit was like $13,000 per kid because that's truly 135 is what it truly cost to educate a kid and that's why we're

155underwater because it cost about that and we're not getting that right. Um, if I if I had a family of four, that's a pretty good tax-free salary that I'm getting to homeschool my children. If it's my values that I want to impart, right? If I want to send them to a private school, right, then I can take that money and go to the private school. If I want to be at the public school, I can take that money and go to public school. Some people disagree with me on that because they're saying people who want to and can afford to send them to private school, right? They have the money to do that and this is just a a regressive tax credit, right? And I won't get into that, but um I just look at

156it as uh you know it to be a democracy having the right to educate kids equally is important to me. Anybody else got anything to say? Good. I think we got reaction items. Oh, that's right. All right. So, action items. We have resolutions for Skyward. um the light walls, the hardscape bid, um student fees will be on the agenda, Chromebook purchase, and I think Oh, and the C2 contracts. So, we're good. We're good. I guess Greg, it's just me and you. Yeah. Yeah. So, I guess we can just adjourn then, huh? Well, online too. Yeah. Pardon? Charity's online. Oh, charity. That's right. I forgot online. We don't technically need a motion to adjourn. No, you can just say we're journ at mark down the time and we're good. Yeah. Write down the time for me,

157please.