001of the board of education is called to order. Please rise for the pledge. >> I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands nation indivisibley andice for all >> Mr. Aim >> here. >> Mrs. Schneider >> here. >> Mrs. Click >> here. Mrs. Mahalis, >> Mr. Soloski >> here of June 23rd >> moved >> Mr. Sabolski. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Schneder. >> Yes. >> Mr. Aim. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Click. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Mahales. >> Yes. I do. Thank you. So, I know it's uh summer and I'm not supposed to have official reports due to July. However, uh there's it's been a busy summer and there's a couple things I just wanted to bring your attention and they're at the top of your packets. Uh
002just to make sure we we highlight those as we go into this uh meeting. So, the first one is the uh salary study uh memorandum uh that I put in there for the packet uh for the board to take a look at uh and sent in the last week uh weekend update, superintendent update. And um really I just wanted to give uh the board a summary of where we stand after all of this hiring and transition uh that we've had, which still continues. We're still trying to wrap up the last couple positions, but um after all the hiring, you can see that uh you know, we had uh you know, roughly 30ome uh positions, although only some of those were new. Uh the cost of the former staff, and that's with benefits, uh Mr. Vison
003and Mr. Shiraldi helped me with this, was roughly $2 million. Um and then you can see the cost of the new hires, uh who are highly qualified, uh very excited about these candidates, just happen to be less experienced. that was part of what we were we were looking for. Uh so including severance, that's about $1.5 million. So, you know, year one in this fiscal year, obviously it's muted a little bit because we have to pay out severance. However, if you look at the long term, uh with the hires and those two positions of attrition, if we're able to maintain that, you're looking at roughly a savings about a million dollars per year in salary and benefits, working towards that goal of reduc reducing our, you know, percentage of our our budget on personnel costs. So,
004I just wanted to to bring that to your attention and obviously um the board knows we have some provisions in the in the contract with AEA and you know potential re retire hires and some of those uh those moves for next year. So, thought that was important to to bring to the board's attention now that that we've mostly completed hiring for this year. >> Yep. >> Yes, I think it will. Although, I did put in there five-year forecast. I don't know if we're going to have 5-year forecasting anymore and maybe threeyear forecasts with the the changing landscape down at ODU, but I'm sure Mr. Sheldy will tell us all about that soon enough. Um, moving on, the other one, this is an old agenda item. Uh, but obviously this is uh something that's that's up
005for the board's vote uh tonight. So, just want to bring our attention back to the pay to participate recommendation. So, uh, this was studied for a number of months by athletic council and with the recommendation to for the first time in 18 years since the institution of pay to participate to actually raise this cost. We've really tried not to and I think we've done a great job with that. Uh, but the problem is everything's more expensive from, you know, just the equipment and supplies, transportation, referees. I mean, the, as you know, the costs go up. I mean, just a little crate of 12 baseballs, it's insane how much you're you're paying for that. Um, so, uh, we studied it. What we try to do with the pay to participate is simply cover our cost with
006the non-personnel portion of athletics. That's it. That's what we're trying to cover there with the pay to participate. We have not been able to do that recently, you know, with cost with um, added sports uh, such as boys and girls lacrosse. So, we were we were off uh, quite a bit this past year. So with a threshold of trying to cover 100% of the costs, if we raised high school from 100 to 200, Harmon from 50 to 100 with a family cap of 500, that should based on my bill and mine's estimation, we hope keep us at that threshold and then we'll sort of have to study that on an annual basis. Obviously, uh if we don't need to raise it, if that if that covers moving forward, we can do that. Uh but hopefully
007uh this move will take care of that. and um just wanted to make sure that that I provided that rationale to the board uh and see if there were any questions or you know obviously if when the vote comes up I can take those as well. >> Are you suggesting that there may be future more frequent recommendations for increases? Um, I hope not, but at the same point in time, I can't I can't really tell the future. And with rising costs or if there are more sports, then that could potentially happen. And and I do think it needs to be re-evaluated. Um, you know, as as the board knows, we know we cannot go beyond that.5 of 1% of our budget on athletics. So, if the costs continue to rise and we do have uh,
008you know, additional sports, yeah, it could be something that that isn't a need in the future. Um I'm assuming that this has already been kind of communicated to the families if to expect this increase for this upcoming school year. >> We well that's something that we we're going to have to do uh with that they're waiting for approve. >> But the good news is >> athletes can't participate. They can participate and this is added to fees if they participate and then they can pay that you know when they pay their fees. That's it for now. Yeah, for now. Yeah. >> Uh, thank you, Mrs. Mahales. My final financial report. Um, and this evening, I have three resolutions for your consideration. And we'll start with uh financial report for the end of June of 2025, which
009is obviously the end of fiscal year 2025. And in June, our expenditures exceeded revenues by about 3.1 million, decreasing our general fund cash cash balance to 14.6 million at the end of the year. Revenues were about 68% greater than projected and expenditures about 14% greater. Uh things on the revenue side. Uh on restricted grats and aid, we did get our special education catastrophic aid reimbursement. Uh this year we got $293,000. So significantly higher than what we've uh received in the last five years as you could see listed there. Last year we only received $169,000. So uh uh typically on catastrophic aid reimbursement, it's kind of an after-fact appropriation at the state level. And so, uh, as things come in throughout the districts, it's it's kind of divided out then based upon how many special ed
010kids or what the, uh, uh, costs are per district. And depending on the total appropriation, they divvy it out, you know, appropriately. So, in this particular case, uh, again, it's the largest we've received, uh, in the last five years. Also, in the, uh, restricted grants and aid, we received $240,598. That's the reimbursement payment of the science of reading dyslexia stipen. Um of this amount 214,000 was salaries and the remaining 26,000 was STRS and Medicare. So but because of this uh these were personnel expenses. So really our personnel expenses uh just from this grant are going to be overstated for this year and as will our revenues. So we were from the state. This is how we had to recede it in. So we couldn't spend the money and then reduce the you know do a
011reduction of expenditure to kind of balance it out. They wanted it to go through as a restricted uh revenue and then also then as a charge to whether it be salaries and or retirement Medicare. So those would be overstated or kind of makes our personnel costs higher than what they normally would be uh for this year. Um all other revenues also includes uh $200,895 and this is the city of Aurora shared income tax credit on the abated properties again higher than last year which wasund about $175,000. So it's kind of been going up uh annually maybe 20 $25,000 a year based upon um um you know what's going on with those particular businesses. So, what it is, it's it's a split income tax on uh wages over a million dollars. So, if they bring in
012a new company or a company that is abated uh has new wages that they've added folks, once they get over a million dollars, the income tax is split between uh the school district and uh the city and that's per revised code. Um so for the year um revenues are about 400,000 greater than projected again mainly as a result of that science and reading dyslexia stipen and expenditures are about 1.4 million greater. So we had a big un unfavorable variance this year um of about a million dollars uh in the uh general fund uh giving us that cash cash balance of 14.6 million. Um the two areas where you're going to see this are personnel services about 469,000. So of that obviously we already talked about $24,000 which was that stipen and the other is with
013the larger number of those folks uh retiring this year. we had over $200,000 in payouts um for those people in uh in June because typically what happens is they retire will pay off their July and August salaries in June. So at the end of the fiscal year, so with 13 uh retirees and a couple also classified folks, uh that increased uh about $230,000 in that particular category. And when the projections are based upon uh the forecast in November, so I don't really change I mean though I keep updating the forecast as we go along, I kind of still compare uh what everything was to that November forecast. And that's why you'll a larger variance. So, we kind of knew it was coming. Uh, but uh just kind of shows you sometimes things come up during
014the year that maybe you didn't anticipate at the beginning of the year. And then also severance, which will be larger for fiscal year 26, which we know, but we also had a couple of severance payouts in uh the middle of the year last year as a couple teachers retired mid year. Uh so they didn't finish the school year so their severance has already been um paid out.