001I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thanks everybody for being here, carving out time in your schedule. Um going to cut right to the chase here and hopefully get everybody out well before 7. Uh so as far as reports from board members go, I have a couple of things. Um Ashley is going usually we have the uh drawing for the order uh on the ballot. Um the school board candidates the night of our April regular board meeting. uh this year being that that meeting is the 29th, it's not um within the time frame allowed. So, uh Ashley in her office is going to be uh do doing the uh drawing for
002the candidate ballot order on April 22nd at 9:00. Um any of you all are welcome to be there. um I plan to attend and uh that's how we'll determine the ballot order. Uh and that will I think probably be announced uh at our regular meeting on the 29th. Uh the next thing that I have I just want to take a very quick spin through the um onboarding of new trustees and I am asking your uh for your consideration of approval of this tonight. Um this basically comes about because uh for several years I have felt like uh we don't do a very thorough job of showing the ropes to our new trustees. Um so this is uh quite a bit more comprehensive. Uh there's uh there are several meetings uh a total of seven between
003um the um end of May basically and um November December uh time frame and uh each one of these sessions it's basically one a month and each one of these sessions has a focus and a goal and uh sort of an agenda uh to be discussed and a bunch of linked materials that have either been developed here locally or found uh through NISSBA resources and other resources or um u some other things that are generally available on the web that sort of uh go through each of the um uh topics for discussion. Uh so going uh to the uh say the the um middle middle of June, end of June time frame, uh the focus is basically getting the trustee, the new trustee ready to uh be a full participant at their first board meeting
004when they're uh given the oath of office in July. Um and you see the uh the u materials list there, you see the discussion items. uh in July uh we have another session um which uh talks uh primarily about school finances and board related uh uh professional development opportunities. Um in August we get into um basically district facilities and do a tour of all of the district facilities. In September, we start talking about student uh data metrics, uh district goals, board of education goals, etc. Um in October, uh we talk about employee contracts, evaluation of the superintendent, evaluation of the uh board of education. Um, so I I think it really hits um in a pretty comprehensive way uh all most or all of the bases that a new trustee coming in um you know
005should know as much about when they have to start making those decisions at board meetings. So are there any questions concern? Oh uh one thing before we get to that um at the very end in the uh November December uh meeting um there is uh an actual like Googlebased assessment that we administer to um the trustees u that hopefully will give us some feedback in terms of um you know what could be changed what could be updated what what they got the most out of what they liked the least that kind of thing. Any questions about this? If not, um, when we get to recommended actions, I'm going to ask for your approval of this new onboarding plan. And that's all I have. We'll uh uh turn things over to Mr. Burke and reports from
006administration. The first item that I have is a request of the board to approve two snow day giveback days. And that would be for Monday, April 28th. That's the day after spring break. And then also for Friday, June 27th, which is graduation day, which is also known as the rating day. Um, and those will be the first two of of possibly four giveback days. Um, if we have two more giveback days, I'll be bringing that to you um at our next meeting on the 29th. rating day. Sorry. Yes. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. And then if we could, Chris, I'm going to actually I'll stay right here and do the uh budget presentation. Okay. Okay, on the next slide, the essentials of the proposed budget. We are looking at a spending plan of $74,42,939, which is a
007two just slightly over $2 million increase in spending compared to the 2425 school year. And with this budget, we would again be proposing to go out to the taxpayers with a 0% increase on our And please, anyone from the board, please stop me at any time if you have questions. And Mallerie's also here. She can help answer anything that I can't. On our next page, the proposed revenue or the projected revenues, projected expenses, tax base staying the same at just over $15 million. The use of money is really what we refer to with our interest that we get on our reserve funds. Um, we have miscellaneous at 1.5 million. That's just income that comes back in. State and federal aid, $51.4 million. transfers of 300,000 and appropriating from the current fund balance 2 point almost
008$2.9 million. On the expense side, our salaries will increase to 30,39,000, benefits at 20,700,000, principal and interest of 3.9 million, buses and equipment um 1.8 8 million our Boseis bill 11.4 million and others such as textbooks um utilities that type of thing 6.2 million and again we can see that we'll have a balanced budget for next year. On our next page I do want to throw some caution on this. All of our numbers are preliminary at this point. We are now two weeks behind the statutory deadline to have a state budget. So, all of these numbers are based on the governor's proposal from mid January. These numbers could change. Um, I would, as I've said before, if they do, I would anticipate that they would be changing higher rather than lower. Um, one thing I'd
009like you to notice on the very last column here, it shows that we are going to be looking at um, $3.96 million more in aid coming from the state. However, if you go up about five or six lines where you see the building aid at an increase of 1.5 million, if you subtract that, we're left with $2.458 million. That's new money that we can put onto the general fund to actually pay our bills. And our actual new spending is $2,79,000. So, we're going to be having more aid than what we're looking at actual expenses. I think that's a good spot to be looking at that we're not in a deficit spending structure that again we believe our aid is going to be outpacing the growth of our expenses and that's still again with a $0
010tax increase. On our next page we can see what our foundation aid has been doing historically since the 1415 school year. And again, keep in mind foundation a took a fairly good increase just a couple of years ago. and we thought we'd be pretty flat this year, but again, you can see that we're seeing some growth in our foundation aid. And a large portion of that is some of the formula has changed that benefits Msina and that really goes back to the poverty rate. So, that's one major factor. On the next page, our property tax cap um is actually a 4.49%. That's the maximum that we could go out to to seek a majority vote. However, again, we are going out with 0%. So again, multiple years at 0%. Next page, I just want to
011go through some of the major cost drivers. Our health insurance is performing fairly well. We're seeing a 3.5% increase in health insurance. That equates to $463,000. So again, keep in mind, we're looking at spending $2 million more next year. Almost 25% of that is back on health insurance. And again, we are performing fairly well at a 3.5% increase. We have some new salaries which we'll be talking about here in just a couple of minutes uh for a speech pathologist, a school psychologist, and an art/IS position at the elementary. That comes out to roughly $300,000. Our CTE bill with Boseies is going up 225,000 and that's based upon our actual enrollment. They do a three-year average of enrollment and that's how we get our bill um from Boseies on that. The uh Bosey's administrative services that
012bill is going up $27,000 and I always like to put a caution here when it says administrative services that is not simply salaries for the Boseies administration. In fact, that actually makes up just a small portion of that. The bulk of the administrative services uh fee from Boseies really goes back to the postmployment benefits for retirees at Boseies. All of that money that we spend on the Boseies administrative side is fully Boseisable. So for us that's roughly around 80 to 83% of that comes back to us um from the state. So again it looks like a big number and it is but again there's a purpose for that and um we do get aid on this. Um, in a few minutes I'll be talking about the fifth bus, which is going to be an estimated
013$180,000 added onto this budget compared to last year. During the past couple of months, we've been talking about our strategic budget with all of our administrators and they put together their list of needs and wants. And this year, again, I'm very, very impressed with my admin staff. it was almost universally needs across every request. What we've done though this year, which is a little bit different than in the past, we're taking a much more conservative cautionary stance with this and trying to avoid things that have real legacy cost. And that means employees where we may not necessarily need to have those new employees come on board. We I think we're still in an uncertain economic time as it relates to federal aid and even with the state aid. Um so I think it's wise that
014we take this approach. Um at the elementary school, we know we've had difficulty finding an art teacher who was shared between two elementary buildings. So for next year, what we're looking at is an elementary teacher in each building who would also have responsibility for other um classes. and at night andale and at Madison that other per that art teacher would also be responsible for academic intervention. Um they will have our elementary certification. Um we've already got good candidates. Again, makes sense. What we found in um some of our special education classrooms is that we really should be having teaching assistance rather than aid. So we will be um converting two aid positions um from aid over to a teaching assistant. And the benefit there is that a teaching assistant can actually instruct. An aid can
015only help a student. They can't do direct instruction. That total cost is estimated at 115,000. On the special education side, we are looking at adding a school psychologist. that school psychologist um will also help with running cse meetings as I've indicated to the board prior. We have over 700 cse 504 meetings that have really fallen on the backs of the the director of special education. It becomes very difficult to have that many meetings and to actually be a director and running programs evaluating staff. We're changing up our model. Um that there will be um school psychologist will be running some of those meetings along with um a couple of other individuals and that will free up our director of special ed. The school psychologist is also necessary for evaluations of preschool children that are coming
016into our school. Likewise, we will also need a speech pathologist. We know that uh again we're we're getting behind on the number of ev valves that we're able to conduct and the children that are coming to us in prek more and more need that uh prek or that speech evaluation. So again um and I'll be honest the speech pathologist we already have one opening through um a resignation earlier this year. I will be ecstatic if I can fill one. I think it'll be a miracle if we could fill two. Um so it's there as a placeholder just in case we are lucky enough to find that individual on the office of curriculum instruction and assessments. Three new departmental chairpersons. Um these are departments that are starting to grow such as academic intervention where there's enough
017staff that they really should have their own departmental chair to lead the conversations about what's necessary. under the Office of Educational Supports. Not too long ago, we had a presentation from Mrs. Chapman regarding Summer Raider Academy, and that's a $72,000 price tag. And we've also been asked to have additional meetings between new teachers and their mentors. Um, and that would be an extra $3,000 to have those meetings above what they're already doing. under athletics contractual increases for the officials. It's estimated to be a fairly modest increase for next year. These are negotiated through section 10. It's really out of our control, $1,000. Uh Mr. Reagan has also asked for an ambulance at some of our higher risk sporting events. We're talking primarily football and ice hockey. Um, and he's working with uh local ambulance companies
018to arrange for that at a cost of about $6,200. And as I shared earlier this year, our numbers in track are growing. And if that continues for next year, if our numbers stay that high, we would need an additional coach. And that's estimated at $6,000. On the transportation side, we were looking originally at four traditional 66 passenger buses. Um, Mr. Room, the interim director, approached me about three or four weeks ago, wanted to know if we could possibly get rid of two small buses and replace it with one single 30 passenger bus as a wheelchair lift. And given the electric bus mandate, it makes a lot of sense to begin to um fortify our fleet of buses with conventional powered buses um while we still can. Um and again, that should add about $180,000 or
019so to the overall budget. Again, keep in mind on these buses, we get these paid back over five years. And again, we're running right around the 90% state aid on our buses. And go figure, parts are not getting any cheaper for the buses. So, we're looking at a $10,000 increase on the parts. Likewise, on technology, we're looking to increase um our supplies there by $30,000. Servers, um switches, those types of things are not getting any less expensive. On the district side, we are looking at um entering into a lease program and that lease program would be basically to replace eight of our aging vehicles and adding one vehicle for conferences, meetings to be used by staff, by board members. Um the first year I put in here that it's not going to exceed $106,000. The
020reason we don't have an exact figure is until we actually enter into the agreement, we don't know the actual trade values of these eight vehicles that we're going to be putting in. um it's probably going to be closer to six between 60 and 75,000 um once we do the trade in. Um and the benefit of this is if we go with this company Enterprise, they will monitor our vehicles, watching out in 24 to 36 to 40 months when that vehicle looks like it's going to have the maximum tradein value and make recommendations to us to to rotate that fleet around. Um the projected savings over 10 years if if we truly stick with the plan, it's about a $250,000 savings um to enter into the lease with with um Enterprise again over 10 years. The
021capital outlay project this year would include the security window going into the high school office as well as replacing some of the paneling that's in the corridor behind us um with more durable, less porous surfaces, most likely a ceramic tile um to clean that up in in the back. Um, right now we don't know exactly how much we'd be able to do in the back hallway, but uh, whatever money is not spent on security window would go towards replacing that paneling and beginning that process. The first proposition on our vote will be the for the $74.4 million budget. The second proposition is the capital project, which we'll certainly be doing a lot more talking about after spring break at $79.8 million. And the third one, which we really haven't done a lot of talking about
022here at the board level, is also a proposition to create yet another reserve fund for $5 million for equipment. Um, and again, that would have a life expectancy of about 10 years. Um we are ending this budget cycle on a very positive note that we're able to again create another reserve um for that rainy day down the road. Um it's absolutely impossible to predict when that's coming but historically we know we do see those rainy days. So typ yeah typically what when you create a reserve you're supposed to expend it within 10 years and if not then there are some legal mechanisms that you can either take to renew it or to move it back to general fund and or create another reserve. Um, part of that though, Rober, is we just spent around a
023million dollars of smart bond money. Um, in terms of smartboards and replacing computers, replacing the Chromebooks, and there's no more smart bond money. It's not going to it's it's been depleted. So, this would be part of that plan is that we'd be able to replace the technology when it comes due to be replaced. Um, and we'd be mixing and matching. So wherever we could, we'd still buy the items through BOSIES, get our 80% aid, and then pay the remaining 20% using the the reserve money. Again, maximizing state dollars. Any questions? Other questions? Okay, thank you. All right, I guess we move on now to recommended actions. Uh, first up is uh the an call for approval of the onboarding of new trustees plan. So move second. We have a motion and a second. Any uh
024questions or comments? All in favor? Any opposed? That carries. Approval of the give backs move. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Any opposed? That carries. Uh, next is a resolution to approve the Msina Central School District budget for 2526. Second. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Any opposed? All right. Next is approval of the Msina Central School District property tax report card for 2526. questions or comments? All in favor? Opposed? That carries. And lastly, approval of the capital outlay project resolution. So move. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Opposed? Okay, that concludes our business. Uh we'll postpone any discussion of new business to our um April 29th meeting. Um unless anyone has anything they would like to say. Hearing nothing, uh I would call for a motion for adjournment. Second. All All
025in favor? Any opposed? Thank you very much. Good night. And we got out before 7 o'clock.