001July 8th, 2025 special meeting of the Chardonnay Local Schools Board of Education is called to order. This meeting is being held in accordance with Section 3313.16 of the Higher-Row Advice Code. Deb, would you please call the roll? Mrs. Blankenship? Here. Mr. Albright? Here. Mrs. Clark? Here. Mr. Midgett? Here. Welcome to the July 8th, 2025 special meeting of the Chardonnay Local Schools Board of Education. Next thing is the adoption of the agenda. Do we have a motion to adopt the agenda as presented? So moved. Seconded. Any questions or comments about the agenda as presented? Deb, would you please call the roll? Mr. Midgett? Here. Mrs. Blankenship? Here. Mr. Albright? Here. And Mrs. Clark? Here. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation
002under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next thing is the Chardonnay Local Schools Board of Education. Would you please commit to high achievement for all students? Okay. That brings us to... None. You're not involved? There are none. Superintendent's recommendation. Thank you, Madam President. We have a couple of... The first item is presentation and discussion. We had agreed that following the signing of House Bill 96, which is the biennial budget bill by Governor DeWine, that we would have a session to talk about what the implications are of that budget bill on Chardonnay Local Schools. Mrs. Somborster's done a great job of pulling together some information that we'll be walking through. She tried to simulate some different scenarios for the board, and we can talk about those this evening. But where I will start is
003just to give you an overview of where we are. This has been probably the most activity, and I can't even find a good word for it, but historic in terms of the activity around school funding, property taxes, budget bill that I can remember in my time. So with that, we'll walk through a little bit. I just wanted to quickly touch on the timeline for the budget cycle. This is how it goes, and this is what happened in this go-around. House Bill 96, of course, was introduced in the House in February following the governor's executive budget release. It was approved out of the House, 60 to 39. And that happened in April, moved to the Senate, it was amended and adjusted, and voted out on June 11, June 12 through 25. Conference committee, which is made
004up of about six, eight reps and senators, attempted to reconcile the two versions of the bill. That was passed out and progressed to the governor, who signed it into law, enacting the fiscal 26-27 budget on June 30, and the governor also notably line item vetoed a number of provisions in this budget bill, and we'll get into the specific line item vetoes related to the education segment of the budget as we move. So I'm going to try to do this in an organized way because we're going to talk about some of these things and how they are impacting the state budget relative to schools. I'll also be touching on some of the items then. So I may be talking about some things that were passed by out of conference committee and by both chambers in House
005Bill 96 and then indicating that the governor subsequently vetoed that. So I hope it makes sense to everybody. So one of the big things that was introduced in the Senate and survived through conference committee was this performance-based supplement. The interesting thing that's for high achieving school districts like ours, in fact most of the increase that we're seeing out of the biennial budget bill is tied to the performance-based supplement. One of the curious things that was done is the supplement was carved out and kept outside of the formula, outside of base cost funding. So it basically makes it a standalone supplement and it doesn't help. There was some modification to base funding, fiscal 26-27, and notably the inside millage elimination that was proposed by Representative Thomas did not gain inclusion in the final bill, but it
006does still remain outside of the budget bill in House Ways and Means Committee right now. That's the elimination of the inside millage for all school districts in the state that could continue to progress as a standalone piece of legislation. I was just going back to the last one. You said the performance supplement was pulled out of the formula. Do we still get the same amount of money or will that affect the amount of money that those performance-based supplements? Well, it's new, so it's not really the same amount. It's a new supplement and it's basically based on the district's local report card standing, so it's not really more or less than anything before it. The complicating part from my perspective, having worked so closely with school funding, is that these funds could have been directed through
007the formula and accomplished the same goal that the legislature chose not to do. I can pipe in from a money standpoint, we will receive more funding than we did the year before in aggregate. Oh, that was the question. Yeah, I misunderstood. Sorry. So if they would have done that money towards the formula, would that still have brought the formula up to where it needed to? No, but it would have gotten closer. We're not in, due to successive significant income tax reductions in both House Bill 33 two years ago, which was the budget bill, and House Bill 96, the current budget bill, there was really no way left to get there from here. The resources just weren't there. So here's where I said we'll try to explain what was passed in House Bill 96, but then
008what was vetoed. So the legislature approved the 40% cash balance carryover for school districts, and this is a problematic component because it basically requires districts to certify annually to the county auditor the amount spent as well as the amount remaining in set-asides for permanent improvement, and it provided some exemptions for districts, outlier districts to not be subjected to this 40% cash carryover cap. This was one of the areas that most school districts advocated against as ill-conceived arbitrary threshold school districts to maintain and undermining local control. Basically, with the 40% number, districts would be, like ours, would be forced to go to taxpayers more frequently for smaller levies in order to stay under the cap but maintain a funding stream. It would guarantee that those voters would see more tax levies put before them. It would
009frustrate residents who thought that this was going to result in property tax reform, and what it would have done is just simply introduce more levy fatigue and frustrate homeowners as they see these additional levies coming up. So the governor did veto the 40% cash carryover. What is the cost to put a levy on the ballot on average? It depends if you give the school districts a stand-alone or if that cost is shared by other taxing entities, like if there are fire levies, road levies, other issues that are on the ballot. So it depends. So, because coming from us, the county commissioners were unofficially doing this. The budget commission, not the county commission. The budget commission, I'm sorry. So this was, they're trying to add this at a state level, but it's kind of already something
010we experienced. It's something that we already do here. So basically when the budget commission was doing that to us a couple years ago, what kind of threshold were we at when they were pushing us before? Were we at that 40% you guys brought it down? We were way above the 40% at that point. So we almost kind of saw this, but then he vetoed it, so if he vetoed it, that means it's not there at all. Well, we'll talk about the veto process in a moment. Because that could not be overruled. Because the answer is it could still be overwritten. And is there anything that, because this obviously isn't in law, that specifically our budget commission was picking on Gioia County Schools? Was there a reason for that or just push back from them? I
011would just say in their interpretation, and it was, the question really was, you know, how much is too much of a carryover value? And I don't, you know, it's kind of a Goldilocks, you know, this bed's too big, this bed's too small, this bed's just right. And what is that, what's that correct number? But, you know, again, 40% would make arguments for why that would hamstring districts, is somewhat of an arbitrary. The other thing that was included in House Bill 96, we saw property tax and 20-mil floor calculation provisions that were included. It basically would have excluded renewal levies for school districts that had an extremely high cash carryover balance of 100%. They couldn't submit those levies to their taxpayers. It also, it removed a Senate provision that was going to require a two-thirds vote
012of a school board to put a levy on the ballot. But it also included a number of levies that were, would now be included in calculating towards a school district's 20-mil floor number. And in effect what this would do is we would see hundreds of districts across the state that would no longer be at the 20-mil floor and would have no mechanism to deal with inflation through inside millage. And with all of the discussion around inside millage, we need to look back that that went into effect, that inside millage piece and 20-mil floor calculation went into effect back similar to when House Bill 920 went into effect back in 1976. We know that House Bill 920 was designed to protect taxpayers from runaway inflationary growth at the top end by ratcheting millage down to, you
013know, generate the same revenue. The 20-mil floor calculation was designed as a lower limit, if you will, to allow districts to have some inflationary growth on property taxes as well so that there would be kind of this throttle at the top but a little bit of a boost at the bottom to allow for growth. This would have moved a number of districts off the 20-mil floor, removed their ability to see inflationary growth. Again, it would remove local control at the school board level, and again, it would increase the likelihood that we'd see more districts facing fiscal emergency, tapping into the state solvency fund, and, you know, basically being in a difficult situation. Now, this reform, although it was included in the budget bill for Chardon, were not currently at the 20-mil floor. It would not
014have had an immediate effect on our school district other than any moves to impact revenue from inside millage. So, you know, that's kind of where that's at. Again, Governor vetoed these provisions associated with, these provisions that were associated with property tax reform and the 20-mil floor calculation. The budget bill included partisan school board races, the provision that would have made, you know, create a primary process for school boards and so on, and notably it did not include the language that had been thrown around about, but I wanted to include that as the note, about unused or underutilized school facilities. That was removed from the budget bill. Now, the Governor, again, vetoed the partisan school board elections, so that did not make it into the final piece. That's interesting they even went down that road because,
015my understanding, school boards are supposed to be non-partisan. That was the intent originally. So, I touched on a couple. Here's a quick summary of the vetoes by Governor DeWine by line item. The non-chartered educational savings account program, he felt that there was no accountability for those dollars going into non-charter. In non-charter, these are students that are exercising those educational opportunities. We're not talking about community schools or Ed Choice vouchers, things like that. Those are chartered schools. We're talking about, like, schools that might be in the church basement or something like that in a community. And parents take advantage of those opportunities, but he vetoed the savings account program that was associated with that. Basically, it was designed to create a voucher program for non-chartered. He vetoed the STRS and SCRS prohibition for boards to enter
016into contracts and make those employee contributions as a component of compensation. He, as I noted, vetoed partisan school board elections. He also vetoed county budget commission authority and procedures. This was a partial veto, taking away some of the elements, like there was discussion about replacing the county prosecutor with a member of the board of commissioners, county commissioners, replacing that seat with a county commissioner, and so on. So there was a partial veto in there. 40% cash carryover balance, he vetoed the 20-mill floor calculation veto and school district property tax restrictions. Basically, the elimination of a number of levy options that school districts could use and essentially reducing that to standard operating levies and income tax as the revenue streams that school districts could put before their communities. So with that, what is the veto override
017process? And we've already, well, I'll get to this, but in short, house override would need 60 of 99 members to vote to override, and it is by provision or provisions that the governor vetoed. In other words, of these things on the list, we could pick partisan school board elections and it would be on that, or it can be a platform of provisions if so desired by the General Assembly. So it's not an all or nothing override? No, it's not all or nothing. They can pick and choose the ones, and we'll talk about that in a moment. And then if the house is successful in overriding veto or vetoes, then it moves to the Senate, who must also override that veto with a three-fifths vote or 20 of the 33 senators in order for that originally
018vetoed item to become part of the budget bill and signed into law. It's also interesting to note that the override process can occur anytime in the life of a piece of legislation, so it can happen anytime in the next two years related to the budget bill. The General Assembly could act to attempt to override a certain veto. What we understand that is happening is that it appears that the House is going to bring its membership together July 21st to override several of Governor DeWine's attempt to override, I should say. And the following provisions related to the budget bill are the ones that they're looking at. It is the provision that directly authorizes the county budget commissions to reduce property tax rates. This has been an open discussion in Geauga County. Our budget commission has indicated
019that they believe that they have a legal basis to do that already. House Bill 96, what was attempted to be included in the bill was, you know, a direct statement to that effect. It also, another that they are attempting to override is the inclusion of all of these levy types into the 20-mil floor calculation. Again, the desire to get more districts off of the 20-mil floor and not benefiting fully from the increase in property valuations by virtue of being at the 20-mil floor. Again, it doesn't affect us because we're not there right now. And also what they are attempting to override is the veto on the elimination of all of these levy types. In other words, they want, the legislature wants to continue to limit the number and types of levy options that are available
020to school boards. And the governor said, no, those should remain. Again, the interest is to do that. It's also of note that in addition to vetoing, the governor wants to convene a task force to work on property tax reform separate from the budget bill. So he's not just saying I'm vetoing these provisions and not doing anything about it. He does have an approach that he would like to implement. Also of note, I shared this with the board already, is that the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and Ohio Realtors Association sent a letter which is shared and linked here in this to to the General Assembly urging the legislature to override all of the property tax items that were vetoed, including the carryover cap number. That's a significant letter and should be taken seriously. It's important to
021understand that this is not finished. We need to continue advocacy with House and Senate members and reinforce some of the key pieces associated with what's happening right now in Columbus. I have a question coming back to with the ability for the county commissioners to say how much property tax is. So I went in and I printed out my property tax bill because I was really curious how much goes to the school and where it goes. So would that allow the county commissioners to come in and say we're lowering this and the schools just get budget commission. So if they reverse that veto, are they putting legislation out that basically the budget commission can throw whatever property taxes out they want? Is that what I'm understanding? Well, it would be tied to the 40% cash carryover
022cap. Up your 41% and they would take off 1%. The 1%. It's the top one you said to reduce property tax rates. So if you are over that 40%, they would reduce the property tax rate in order to return that to the property tax payers. So that would only hit the schools then with our cap. If you looked at my property tax bill, schools certainly got a lot of it, which I'm fine, but that wouldn't hit the city. It does because the 40% carryover cap was applying to those other taxing entities. The only taxing entity it didn't apply to was townships because property tax was their only source of revenue. Am I missing something? Well, I was going to say the provision for authorizing the county budget commission to reduce property tax, that's one of
023the things they're going back to override. But then the next thing at the bottom is the carryover balance cap. So are those two things or are they tied together? They're connected to each other. Okay. So my understanding is the inside mill in House Bill 335 is what's attached to the townships. That did not affect them. Sorry, you're right. It affected everybody else. But the 40% in my understanding is only for school districts. I'm sorry, I said that incorrectly. Okay. Because like I say, Chardon wouldn't have that 40% cap even if they carried it over. It only applies to us then to change the tax rate. So it really is just getting public education then. Correct. Thanks. Anytime. So what we attempted to do, what Deb attempted to do, I'm going to throw the clicker to
024her at this point. I got a little... Okay. I'm going to move over. We're going to go through what the impact is of the budget bill and what some different scenarios might look like. I just want to caution before we even jump into this. All of this is preliminary at this point. We're just presenting some thinking right now. We're not suggesting that we are doing any of the things that we will talk about here. We're just wanting to give you some 10,000 foot view strategy options that might be available. The other caution that I will throw out is that keep in mind that the budget bill is only fiscal 26, fiscal 27. What's going to happen, and Deb says it all the time when she presents five-year forecast, what's going to happen in 28 and
02529, we'll have a new governor, we'll have other changes going on, there'll be a new budget bill coming in for 28, 29. We don't know what 28, 29 will look like. So this is our best guess sitting here today with the uncertainty of what might happen in 28, 29. Deb? Okay. So this should look familiar. This is actually our May five-year forecast. And just to kind of recoup, not recoup, but go back to some of the things that we talked about. This was the governor's proposal. This had declining interest, some inside mill, some property tax increase from inside mill, a little bit of growth at the next appraisal update. The expenditures were both union contracts settled through 28. The capital assets went back to the PI fund, so all the capital improvements that we had
026going on in here. And then some moderate insurance increases. We were letty imminent in 2028, which is what we discussed before. One thing I want to point out here, because I'm really, really super proud of this, is this is our budget for this fiscal year. We budgeted our ending cash balance at 16,941,267. I just closed the books the other day. They closed at 16,938. So, spicy little over 2,000. So we were very, very close, which is awesome because if you look at the carryover percentage for 2025, we're at about 35%. And along the bottom is the carryover percentage for each year estimated, pretty much now after 25, in our May forecast. We're at 37, 27, 15, and 1. So we were under the 40% already with our May forecast. So now what does it look
027like with the budget bill adjustments? Like Mike talked about before, Chardon did receive the performance base supplement and some base increase supplement. We increased 468,000 in fiscal year 26 and 272,027. I modeled no additional increase for 28 and 29 in this scenario. The expenditures are the same in all of these scenarios, so I don't even need to talk about those. So that picked us up. If you recall, and we'll just pop back real quick, we were ending in 29 at 741,000, and with the biodeal budget that picked us up will end somewhere about 3.8 million, which is good news. Again, still levy in 2028. And what I look at for that and what Mike and I look at for that is, you know how we always talk about the 75 days of cash, which is
028about 20%. So you could see in 28, we're getting closer to stretching the levy out another year if possible. So then we added another layer. Scenario number two. What would it look like if we took one half of that inside mill that we moved to PI and moved it back to the general fund? Okay, left half of it in the PI fund, moved half of it back to the general fund, and we initiated that move in fiscal year 27. So that means half of it would go in 28 and the whole amount in 29. So what that would do to us, and if you look at the bottom right, we had 3.8 million in the last scenario. That would push us up to 4.5 million. And then our percentages increased. They're still all under 40%,
029but we've pushed up to 21% in 28, 9% in 29, and it pushed our levy limit to 2029. Just a question. Sure. So if we did the half mill move in 28, that's going to affect PI. How long do we have the TAN on? And 31 is when the last payment is for the TAN on. I just looked at it today. So that's going to affect PI? Yes. When that ends, then that money is going to go back into PI and bring it back up. And you, when we moved the PI, moved general fund money to PI initially, correct? That's what we did. What was the reason for that? Because our PI was just too low to do all of the projects? Yeah, basically it goes all the way back to the failure of the
030bond issue and investing in our current properties and facilities. And the fact that the roof project really, I mean, we got a ton of roofing done, obviously, throughout the whole district except for the park. But it also committed us through 2031, that $450,000 a year, give or take, that we need to pay off that tax advance now. So that was a significant chunk of our PI. And this general fund transfer essentially just replaced that and beefed up our PI so we could do some more projects like security entry at park and wall reinforcement at Munson and so on and so on, things that we've been getting done, security entry at the high school, all the things that we've been doing. What projects would you have to cancel if you did that? I haven't even looked
031at the list yet, and it would be an important question. We have to pay those projects out of PI? You don't pay those out of general fund? You can't pay capital improvement projects out of general fund. Given the trajectory that we're on, my, and I think Deb would agree, my recommendation to you would be to not be funding a significant amount out of general fund at that point because we want to preserve operating. I guess I just don't understand, are there perks to having a PI versus a general fund? One of the biggest perks for the community is the money is dedicated to working on your buildings. You can't spend that money on anything else. General fund money goes to salaries and benefits and supplies and purchase services, but when you take this amount of
032money and you put it there, you are guaranteeing the community you're going to fix your schools. You're going to spend that on your buildings. How much is due on the total? How much is due? I don't have the total. I know it's paid off in 31. I mean, give or take, we're looking at 500 years, 450,000 years, so give or take. So by moving that back, we're telling the community we can spend it on whatever we want, not necessarily improving the school building, which arguably does the community even differ? Well, I think by moving it back we're pushing a levy out further, and I think the community would be equally interested in that. And I think they will be more interested when you start saying you're getting closer to cutting programs and things like that.
033These are just ideas, again, like Mike said at the beginning, ideas where we can do things like this and not cut programs and continue operating the way that we're operating. I just don't know if the community separates the funds in their mind or even remotely pays attention. They're just like, my building's crap. I don't care who can pay for it. The number that people look at is the one that shows the total resources, and then they go, yeah, so much money. That's usually the number people first quote. I don't think they'd go and necessarily look at it. Oh, this permanent improvement fund is just to fix the buildings. So scenario number three includes everything you saw in two. So it's got that one-half mil of PI moved back to the general fund. And what scenario
034two does is we start to phase back charging fees, 25%, 27%, 50% in 28%, and 100% in 29%. So as you see again, the bottom right corner, we went from 4.05 million to 5.3 million. We picked up our last two percentages, 22% and 11%. And again, we're pushing the levy imminent out even further, still in 2029, but it's getting a lot closer to getting to 30%. If you started scaling those fees back and people stopped doing extracurriculars, or whatever you want to call it, and it started affecting outcomes, would you be able to scale that back? Or once you go down there, you got it? You guys can do whatever you want. The board always has the ability to do that. I believe, and Deb, correct me if I'm wrong, but even with the elimination
035of fees, we didn't see a significant change in the number of students that were participating in extracurricular activities. We did not. So it wasn't a barrier. I'm not saying that it wasn't important and it impacted people, but it didn't appear to be a barrier to the number of students that were participating. Let's put it that way. And the other point that we continue to try to make every time we have this discussion about student fees and the elimination of those fees is that while there was concern at the county level and so on about taxpayer relief, the board, by doing that, we are now at about $1.5 million in funds that you have given back to taxpayers in our community by the elimination of all of the fees that we've cut for the number of
036years that we have cut it. Now, I realize it's not, and I say this all the time, it's not perfectly evenly distributed across all taxpayers in our community as property tax relief, but it is a meaningful amount of money, in my opinion, that was returned to taxpayers in this community in the form of elimination of fees to parents. So for what that's worth. So again, just another option. We're just looking at all different actions, things that we can do that doesn't necessarily cut programs or any of the, you know, to extend and push it out for our life cycle. Go ahead. For fees, so obviously I can speak from having kids in the district who will be coming up, Hadley's going to start middle school next year, that would be fee. When they started kindergarten,
037was used to paying all those workbook fees and now we don't. So that's kind of something, you are giving it back to parents, but none of the retired folks who are complaining see that. Where, my husband and I would have the ability to budget to put those fees back into our, shall we say, expenses every year, because my kids also play outside of school for us that we budget for. Are there a lot of parents, do we know where the ability sits for parents to pay those fees if we brought them back to then, you know, push a levy out, which would make some of our retired folks probably more happy because they wouldn't raise their taxes then. Well, academic fees are subject to a waiver process. Pay to participate fees are not subject to
038an economically disadvantaged waiver process, but there are also other mechanisms to pick up the pay to participate fees for students that might not be able to meet that. I'm just not overly familiar with our socio-economic necessarily. I own the friends and people. So I would be curious how that would affect the parents if they, shall we say. Yeah, I mean, give or take, we bounce around 21% just so economically disadvantaged. Pretty good demographics report for Chardon out there. But it's specifically for the city that I found. I think you get kind of a, it gets you close to what the district as a whole is. Because like your kids, I'm assuming are still not, you just had your son in the high school, are your daughters here at all? Mom is going to Auburn. Okay.
039This year she's starting the EMT program. Okay, because I didn't know if like you would pay fees. I know he and I have kids that we would have to then be forced to pay those fees. CJ does. Yeah, when they were going here, there was like $1,000. Okay. For four of them I think at the time. Yeah. It's substantial. And usually it catches people by surprise. Yeah, that's true. You go back to school and you see them in there. Yeah. And I don't know, maybe you could, can you add that to their account and let them pay that off over time? That is how we administer it. Yeah. Sometimes the difficulty is that those fees are not paid until... Yeah, and they can't walk if they don't... Graduation. Yeah, that's a bummer. It's a considerable
040amount that's due all the time. I'm just trying to compare parents versus the retirees and how we can give to them versus the retirees. Because I think it's almost like intangible, like if you said we'll cut a million and a half dollars here, that means everybody saves 10 bucks or 100 bucks or whatever it is. There is no, because of the scale at which people are taxed, I don't know that, you'd have to look at your tax bill and see what difference did it make for you from one year to another. Yeah. It would probably be pretty small for the majority of people. So the last thing I want to point out before moving to scenario four is again if you notice the carryover percentage along the bottom with these proposed ideas I'm going to
041call them, not even adjustments, we're still under the 40% in all five years. So what scenario four does is it's on top of scenario three. So we've already moved at this point a half a mil. We phased fees back in. So now instead of moving that half a mil in 27 to affect 28, 29, we're going to take a look at what the whole mil looks like. So again, you know, it's pushed us out. It's made its levy imminent in 2029 at 17%, which is a much higher percentage. Keep in mind 20%, about 20% is our 75 days. So we're actually getting very, very close to pushing that out to 30 by increasing the revenue. And it just increased basically in, you know, 28 and 29. So is this taken into consideration, let's say we
042were to go on the ballot in 29, we only collect, correct me if I'm wrong, we only collect half in 30. Yes, it is taking that into consideration. Okay, because then you wouldn't get the whole until 31. So what this is doing, and that's a great point, is this is initiating this in our fiscal year 27, where there's half in 28 and the full amount in 29. That's a great question. Okay, so you're not looking at going on the ballot in 29. You'd still be looking at going on the ballot sooner, so you could get the full amount in 29. No, no, no, that's going on the ballot for the levy imminent. That's going on the ballot in 29. I did look two years past to see when we were going on the money. Okay.
043Yes. So the last scenario is pretty much the same as scenario three with the fees, but with the one mil, what I did was if you were to initiate this fiscal year. So if we were to initiate this before December, this would be half in 26 and then a full amount in 27, 28, and 29. And it's one mil. One mil is $955,000 for us. So it would be half of that in fiscal year 26 and then 27, 28, 29. So now you can see those percentages on the bottom. They've changed. We're still under 40%, a little close next year, but we're still under 40% for all four years, and we've pushed the levy out, or we could potentially push a levy out to fiscal year 2030. Dan, what is the difference? I recall what
044last year Berkshire, they talked about moving some money between funds after their levy failed. Yes. What is the difference between what they did and what you're talking about here? So the huge difference is they were trying to move inside mil from the general fund to the P.I. fund, but they're already on the 20 mil floor. Inside mil from the general fund to the P.I. fund, which would have dropped them below the 20 mil floor because the money in the P.I. fund is not counted towards the 20 mil floor, and the taxpayers, their tax rates would have come up. Correct, Mike. So that is different. So that is different. So what we're doing, when we moved, we did move from the general fund to the P.I. fund a few years back, but we're nowhere near the
04520 mil floor. It's still just a dollar. It wasn't inside millage. It was inside millage that we moved from the general fund to the P.I. fund, but since we are way above the 20 mil floor, it was a dollar for dollar. It was in no effect on our taxpayer. Yeah. So it only affects Berkshire because they were dropping below that 20 mil floor. They were dropping below the 20 mil floor. So now when we move back, it's still dollar for dollar. Then you're actually doing the opposite now. Yes, correct. Yeah. Well, that's what we're looking at. I mean, we're not doing anything. We're just proposing, and yeah, just looking at it. Steve's not here, but if we don't have P.I. money, what's the... Right. Well, we have P.I. money, but again, keep in mind that
046half of that is obligated of what we receive every year is obligated for the TAN for the next several years, and we typically buy school buses which have gone completely through the roof as far as cost is concerned. So by the time you buy two or three school buses and pay your TAN obligation, the capital improvement projects you've gotten used to seeing in the last couple years would be repairing things. And so when it comes to the list of things that needs to be done, if we had an emergency come up or whatever, that's going to come out of the general fund no matter what, if we can't get it out of the P.I. fund, so it's still going to affect us. And even Chromebooks, do we take Chromebooks out of the general fund or
047P.I.? Right now those are still out of the general fund. Okay, so no matter how we look at this, we'd have to be looking at projects like Todd brought up earlier, what projects would be affected moving forward if we were to pull the money out of the P.I. and not have it dedicated to the building. And based on what the board decides to do with the general fund, then the cap plan can be readjusted and presented to the board based on the money available to it. But we still have the presentation coming in the fall from the P.A. about the elementary school. Actually in July. Yes. Is there a legal requirement for replacing buses in certain intervals? I'm remembering that correctly. Not that I'm aware of. I'd have to go back and research that. I
048mean, we've done a great job by comparison. There are some districts that have school buses that are much older than our oldest vehicles. And that was really one of the driving points when this P.I. that we have was passed by, approved by the board and passed by the community was to get on a consistent cycle of replacing school buses. So we do a great job by comparison to a number of other communities. So let's just be optimistic here. If the transportation facility was awesome, like awesome success like you intend it to be, and started generating some sort of income, could you push off the interval of replacing buses, supplement with what's being brought into the transportation complex and push that money? Or is that... I don't know that we could put it off. I think
049that some additional revenue coming in through the other services that we might provide there will help supplement what we're doing. But I don't think we'll be... I mean, it may take a little pressure off of what we're doing out of P.I. for bus replacement and things like that. Remains to be seen. We've got a lot of buses in our fleet. So if we were to cut back on that for a couple of years, that would put us really behind the eight ball and keeping our fleet up to date. That would be a hole that would be very difficult to dig out of. Is it possible? I don't think we have the staff to it. Could you almost, if you had people available on certain days, because I know Josh is really good in that area,
050could you utilize our staff almost like community busing for other districts and get revenue that way too? If there was like people available? Yeah, we'd have to watch. I would really want to brush up on the legal requirements for that. It's a little bit different than if you're a community buser for a student and providing contracted services for another district versus public to public doing contracted services. Okay, so this is scenario five, which we're talking about starting, if we were to go down this road in fiscal year 26, which is what we are in now. Yes. How soon would we have to take action to do the student fees and to take the one mil back from PI? Are you talking about doing that now? By December. By December? Yeah, the student fees would still
051be $27. Yeah, that's still $27. We aren't changing the fee concept. That's still starting August. That's why I just wanted to make sure. So we'd have to, by December, return the one mil from the PI to the general fund. Right, but the fees wouldn't start. They'd still be nothing for 26. We would have to put in fees for 27. So that means we'd have to take a really close look at what's going on with our PI fund and what projects are being projected before we would. Absolutely. I was going to say, my being a parent with kids in the little, any of the schools, let's be realistic, PI is of vital importance. We have schools without air conditioning that are just hot. We need money to keep up with these schools because they won't build
052us new schools. So taking money out of PI starts to worry me. But I guess I would have to see what TDA is saying and then switch, are we now going back to a bond issue instead of, now we can free up PI money because of, I don't know. That's a whole other discussion. Has anybody in the superintendent treasurer world done a worst case scenario? Like if this maelstrom of bills passes, all of them, some of them? This is just considering one. There's like 12 more or something like that. Yeah, we haven't even, this doesn't even consider legislation with circling. So we could be on the ballot next year. Yes. We're just committed to telling you where we see things given the current budget bill. So we could have another meeting and say we're providing
053vetoes. Well, if they... Depending on the vetoes that are gone after. Well, they can override something the governor vetoed. They can't put something new in. Right. But there's enough legislation out there now that could always... That's correct. Right. But with the vetoes and the budget bill, even if the vetoes are overridden, we are in a very good spot. It's the pending legislation. Yes, it's the pending legislation. Who knows where that's going to go. When's the next staff negotiation, contract negotiation at 28? We're under contract with both associations through 28, fiscal 28. So you'd start negotiating at 28 or 29? Correct. And right now, so 29 is really unknown right now as to what that might look like. As we said at the outset, really fiscal 28 and 29 with a new budget bill and everything
054else, who knows? Yeah. So when we're saying new levy, and probably say this for viewers and for media's knowledge as well, that there are a lot of things that can change. Yeah. Affecting 28, 29. So to say, well, if you do this, we don't need a levy until 2030. There are a lot of things, a lot of forks in the road between here and there. We are trying our best, but the State House is also doing something. Basically what we're showing here is if any of those forks... We have a lot of options of things that we can do to maintain our longevity. Right, and maintain our operations the way that the students deserve. You touched on the veto override again. What was the threshold that's required to override that stuff? It's a... Two-thirds and
055three-fifths. It is 60 out of three-fifths in both chambers, 60 out of 99, and 20 out of 33. Well, I just Googled what the vote was on this House Bill 96. I assume this is right. What I found was in the House, the bill passed by 59 to 38, which was a 60% threshold. 100. And in the Senate, it passed by 23 to 10, which was a 70% threshold. So it seems like they've already met their mark. Well, House, if they have 59, they need 60. So they need one person to flip. But it's got to be people who's present to vote, right? Well, only 97 voted. That's why I was speaking up. Oh, okay. With the number that was voting... It was 60%. It was 60%. That's why the ongoing advocacy process, I'm sorry,
056is so important to help influence some... There's still room, just because they voted one way two weeks ago, doesn't mean they vote that way tomorrow over the 21st, given more information, more advocacy, more people communicating with them and saying, this is how it, you know, and understanding, for example, being a representative from the western part of the state, understanding how, you know, that carry or that override might affect school districts and their house district, they might change their mind. Right. I mean, that's a good indicator, but I wouldn't just take it to the bank and say, oh, well, it's foregone. Right. You know, there's still a process that needs to unfold. Because they voted for the whole bill before. Now it's these specific stipulations we can go argue. That is true, too. Everything's not still
057in the bill. Everything that was vetoed is not going before their committee, right? It depends on what the group in the house wants to bring forward as for the override. It could be one, it could be several of the veto items. All of them. And it won't be, it could be all of them, you know. And it could be a thing where they play the game where, you know, I'll vote for this, but you've got to put that in there, too. Because these vetoes that you mentioned here, that's not all the vetoes. No, those are the educational vetoes. I believe he vetoed 67 provisions in the budget bills. And clearly not education-related vetoes. So, you know, there is a degree of horse trading. There is, you know, it's also a different question when you're voting
058for an entire budget bill versus voting on a particular veto item and how a legislator might perceive that and feel about that. So when's the next governor election? Is that in 26? So, Governor DeWine, this is his last budget. I know. So, okay, so if a new governor comes in in 26, he could possibly still convince everybody to keep changing things, overriding things that may not even get overwritten. They have a year and a half. Do they still have until the end of 27 on this budget? Through fiscal 27. Right. So the new governor doesn't like what DeWine vetoed. He can come in and say, take it back to the House and pass it back or change it down. So he can't un-veto it himself, but he can push it back. The veto override has
059to come from the G. Oh, you and I are both doing the same thing. So lastly, what I want to do is I just wanted to put all the scenarios together on one simple chart. So we start from the bottom. This light gray line is our May forecast. That's a forecast that was approved. This darker reddish line, the next one up, that's the budget bill, scenario one. The next line is kind of tucked in this red line. That's scenario two, where we added one half of the P.I. starting in 28 and 29. The black line is scenario three, which where we added one half of the inside moved back from P.I. in 28 and 29. And we phased in the fees at 25% in 27, 50% in 28, 100% in 29. And then the next
060line, scenario four, same thing with the fees, but it had the whole mill moved. You know, starting to initiate in 27, where half went in 28 and half went in 29. And then this red line on the top, that's if we moved the one mill back now, where half of it went in fiscal year 26 and the whole amount went in 27, 28, and 29. So that kind of puts it all together in one picture and you can see what each change brings us up a little on the chart. I think definitely I appreciate the planning involved in that. I think if you're going to eliminate or reduce permanent improvement, getting the district involved to the greatest extent possible to show the work you're doing to try to mitigate the harm and have a discussion
061like, listen, we're going to be not doing this and this and this and this. You're going to simply scale back to just cleaning the floors and windows or whatever, essentially is really what you're going to be doing. And these are the options we have before us. I think to make it as public as possible I think would be really important. Agreed. I mean just to have Steve's presentation in general and to come back and say, nope, nope, nope, nope on his presentation if we take the money out. I mean, and have that as something to share. I think all these ideas are going to need a lot of communication and trying to find out how people feel. Well, yeah, because when you get TDA's report, again, like that first report actually kind of almost implied
062liability to some extent. Like these are things that are not going to put you in a good place. We recognize now that you have that knowledge of that to say we're not going to do that definitely needs to be like, this is why we're not going to do that. Not that this isn't good information, not that we don't want to do that. But if we do that, this is going to happen. I think that would be really good. Right. Right, important. I mean, I think there's going to be two camps of people in the community. They don't care how we're spending the school money. They just want money back. And then probably the more involved camp, grandparents, parents, do we want money in our school in the buildings themselves? Does it need to be in
063salaries and curriculum? You know, my worry is that the I don't know how large that we don't care how you're spending your money. We just want money back from the schools. How large is that population? How loud is that option? Because right now they're pretty loud in my personal opinion. I just don't know if they're large or just loud. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely an aggressive posturing against this. But the other thing I would wonder, too, could you pause textbook acquisition to mitigate some losses in that area? And what impact would that have in your opinion, too? Well, we did that in the past. We went for a number of years without curriculum changes. And that was a big, big effect on our students. I mean, we had really when Mike came there, we had
064really updated curriculum. Right. And so here again, we've been fortunate to get back on track with a replacement schedule. It's been a long road to get the curriculum all back where we're currently doing what we should be doing. Basically, you're going in the right direction. You're going in a good direction. But you're going to have to turn away from that one way or another, more than likely, in some area or multiple areas, basically. Right. So maybe from your standpoint, what would be the least damaging outcomes? And from Steve's, what is the least necessary? They're all necessary. But what's the least necessary projects that we could scratch off the list and then go from there, I guess? Well, and that's a great tee-up to the next slide, which is, you know, we've also had some discussion
065of other things that we can do. And again, we're not doing any of these things today. We're not recommending any of these things today. We're just simply talking about concepts. But we can see that with enrollment trends that we're facing, and this goes back to the enrollment projection that was presented before, back in, I don't know, September, October of this year, that we may be, in the next couple of years, approaching what I would term a reconfiguration 3.0 based on enrollment trends that we're seeing. With, you know, the high school will be, in the next couple of years, dipping under 900 students. The middle school will be under 600. And last time we did reconfiguration, we were able to develop a number, a significant amount of savings to the school district that contributed in part
066to that cash carryover balance that we had, that Deb referred to earlier. That was like $7 million, I think, for each of those things? Yeah, it was significant. So it could be something that we start to take a look at and offline one facility, plus it's too early to say what facility that would be. We're not there yet. Just looking at raw numbers, it's something that we could start to consider and further consolidate what we have. And that also lessens some pressure on PI because it's a facility you're not maintaining to an academic level. But again, it's something the board could consider and we could take a look at. I think as our student population continues to decline, in my mind, re-kitchen makes a lot of sense, consolidating. It was a few months ago we
067were sitting in here, something was presented that showed that right now our student population with five grade levels has less students than it did in 2018 with only four grade levels. So that really speaks to me as to, it just makes sense to consolidate. That seems to be probably a pretty effective way to... Yeah, if you look at those next couple of years upcoming, we're getting close to 2,100 students by 2019. And so far these projections, we've been hitting them. This even takes into consideration new building or new construction, right? So when did we last reconfig 2018? And you can see where we were sitting back then. So again, it's something that I'm simply putting on the radar. We're not at all recommending a reconfiguration at this point. But it did result in significant savings
068to the school district and a source of revenue that we could do other things with. Sorry, I think you say you put on the radar. So this was my thought when I first read Park, Munson, Maple reports last year. Which one of these buildings are we going to put money into because we want it around for another 25 years? Versus which one could we possibly get rid of? I'm assuming nothing on this campus is going, so that means Maple stays for a certain reason. So there's really only two buildings, so I feel like that plays into renovations and PI too. I don't know if you can start talking about that because why do we want to put more money into a school if we can take it offline? Well, and again, it would be part
069of that conversation if we start exploring reconfiguration, another stage of that. I just don't know if that would be in this TD. It will be. We'll talk more about that at the regular meeting in July when TDA presents those results. So I assume we have these numbers on the grade level. So we know what grades we're looking at and where the bubbles are. Correct. And I mean as a general rule, we're still graduating larger classes and bringing in smaller classes. So it's moving through and getting smaller. We have a couple of spikes at the elementary and middle school grades, but I mean generally smaller in, larger out. And I just want to add, all the schools in Jogga County are seeing that same trend. Yeah, most of the schools are just cross-stater scenes. So you're
070saying you're a Muslim state or like that? Yeah. And it's like two districts in the whole state that aren't really rural. The old tangies of the world and a few other districts that are growing considerably. But, you know, generally school districts are declining and we're seeing about a 1% decline statewide in enrollment as a trend. We know this. Every year? Mm-hmm. 1% every year. Yeah. And we know that there are some other areas that we can take a look at that also contribute revenue to that picture. This isn't a meeting to talk about cuts or anything at this point, but I mean we're not there. But, you know, there are some other things that we can take a look at. I think, you know, the other piece and all of this kind of comes together
071in a very complex puzzle is the 40% carryover balance. If that were to get addressed through some kind of an override or anything like that, that may, as I said, we're going to see more frequent levy requests at that point. That might mean an earlier, smaller levy to extend operations into the future rather than a larger levy later on down the line, if that makes sense. So these are all, and again, big cautionary note right now, this is all very preliminary. This is our advanced radar way out there to see what's coming at us, and none of these are recommendations at this point, just ideas that we want you to think about. So with that, I would say save those PI and facility questions for the July regular. We'll have, I think, some lively and
072meaningful discussion at that meeting as TDA presents their results. Just one question regarding that real quick. Of the buildings, because if you idle one building or offload it, you'd have to do a RIF, correct? To save money, you actually have to reduce not only the cleaning, but the staff, I presume? When we did reconfiguration in 2018, I know there was concern, but basically attrition took care of almost everything. Where you see a little bit, like from our teaching staff, most of that was just absorbed, and we really didn't see too much. I think there may, as I recall it, a couple of positions that we saw a RIF with, and with classified, again, most of that was taken through attrition and absorbed as we did the reconfiguration. So I can only give you the experience
073that I've been through, what we did in 2018, and I've been in another district that went from six facilities down to four, and again, things worked out mainly through attrition rather than significantly cutting jobs. Because I didn't know if one of the buildings had a higher population closer to retirement, that maybe a buyout could possibly play into that? Yeah, I mean, generally teachers that are approaching retirement are kind of all sprinkled about, it's not really one building per se. The other thing to keep an eye on, and we haven't spoken about it in this discussion, but you've got the discussion at STRS right now about, again, lowering the years of eligibility for retirement, which could trigger more staff in the district to take advantage of that as well. Did that move from 35 to 32,
074and they're talking about moving it down again? We're at 32 right now, and there is an stated intention of the current STRS board to get back down to 30. So they also danced with the idea of increasing the employer contribution. Which would cost more, would it cost the district more? When they do that, if they get it passed, yes. Well, last time they phased it at like 2% a year for whatever, 1% a year. So there are a lot of things on the horizon, and interacting with each other in ways that are going to affect this picture. And that's why, again, the huge grain of salt right now is, we don't know for sure what's happening in 28, 29. We're not even sure what's happening in 26, 27 to be honest. That's so true. But
075we really are not clear on what's happening in 28, 29 and how those might affect us. We're giving you our best thinking today. You've been pretty accurate in all those things. I think it's very well thought out as a reactionary. You're bracing yourself for potentials as wisely as possible. I have a question on fees. Do you guys have more? So like, if we, like, from my understanding you have sports fees, academic fees, there's probably musical fees in there. When you say bringing the fees back, do you mean just increasing them all a little bit? Yes. Or do you mean sports first, then work? No, we're talking a phase-in process on everything. You know, like maybe start sports. Like we phased out with phase-in, where things start at maybe $100, not go right back to the
076$350 for the first sport or all of that. You might have to get back to that. But phasing it in slowly so that you keep things as low as possible. I just didn't know if there was a division where you said bring back sports and music first, but leave academic fees alone. We haven't gone that deeply into it. But the general concept, I mean, we're looking at the total revenue that we were bringing in through all fees and just saying, okay, 25% of that, 50% of that. Okay. Yeah. 100% of that and ramping everything back up. Because to me, I have to pay for a workbook. My kid needs the workbook. That's their textbook. I don't necessarily have to pay for my kid to play soccer. So this is more of a want. This is
077more of a need. But I don't know if that's $100,000. That's a drop in the bucket. And in all honesty, that's a board decision. If you bring the fees to you, and that is a board decision, you approve the fees and what's going in and what isn't. And I've never broken them down like that to see what the difference in them is, quite honestly. So I was just wondering if there was any breakdown like that. I just want to add, I know Mike gives me a lot of credit for the presentation, but as you can see, he's done an awful lot of work on it. Not only for Chardon schools, but advocating for all the schools in the state. His knowledge on school finance and school law is just amazing, and we're very lucky. So
078I just wanted to give you props, Mike. All right. Well, hopefully that wasn't too much of a downer. Oh, I've been trying to get an accurate picture of what's going on. We don't have to make decisions yet. No, no decisions. All information. So we have a couple of action items tonight. Item 3.2 is approval of resolution 2025-18. This is declaring transportation to be impractical and providing reimbursement in lieu of transportation for the 25-26 school year as detailed in the associated resolution. I am recommending your approval. So moved. Do we have a second? Second. Any questions or comments concerning the declaration of transportation being impractical? Is this just a payment to the parents then? Yes. Okay. Yes. It's like $750 or something, right? It's five something. Yeah, you can do anything from there's a minimum amount
079up to the average state cost of transportation costs in the state. We've arrived at this number seems to work. Okay. I guess you have a formula that you plug in that determines if it's impractical. So there are, Deb, would you mind clicking in the resolution, please? Not at all. There are six or seven reasons for which we can deem threat. Time and distance require the number of pupils going to that particular location, the cost of providing transportation in terms of equipment maintenance personnel and so on. So there's all these reasons and we evaluate. And so if you scroll down in the resolution, we identify because we're required to identify the students by name and what school they go to. And then we, Josh has done a nice job of identifying the primary and secondary reason
080for which he has determined as transportation supervisor that it's impractical for us to go to that location. Yeah, I went through the list. I noticed how many cornerstone Christian academies there are. Yeah, there are a fair number of students. Seems like there were a lot. And as I looked at that one, Josh indicated that it was basically disrupts current transportation schedules. So that it probably was needing to get those students to that location at the same time that we needed other buses to do other transportation. I'd say there's a lot of five and twos until you got to the Christian Academy and then it was one and five. So time and interrupting again. Because that's the one that's out by the metro parks on South Center Road. Willoughby. Yeah, Willoughby or Willoughby Hills. It's a
081far drive. Isn't this another one that's under possible legislation saying that schools won't be able to do this in the future? Well, there is continued interest of the legislature to remove the entire reimbursement of transportation provision and indicate that the school district is responsible to transport. And one piece of legislation that's out there is right now we're governed by a 30 minute radius from the student's address, primary address. To any non-public schools chartered non-publics that fall within that distance are schools that we're responsible to go to. One piece of legislation is indicating that any student going anywhere. That's so ridiculous. And no reimbursement, no declaring impracticality. And you have to maintain that once you start it too, regardless of staff or buses. This process would go away and it would be you take the students
082where they go. So if we have a student that goes to St. Ignatius, we're driving to the west side of Clifton. And with vans with them. This is a van. Plus gas. Yeah. Can we put them in some electric cars, no gas? Okay, any other questions or comments concerning this resolution? Would you please follow along? Mrs. Biconship? Yes. Mr. Albright? Yes. Mrs. Clark? Yes. And Mr. Midgett? Yes. Thank you Madam President. Member's board item 3.3 is approval of administrative certified license classified supplemental noncontractable personnel compensation related items as detailed in the enclosures. I am recommending your approval. Do we have a motion and a second? So moved. I'll second it. Any questions or comments? This goes into like the, is this the wellness coordinator? Only half of that, we were talking like about kind of
083assistant athletic director job. Is this only like half of the job or is this the whole job? Well, it is the job, part of those responsibilities would be quote unquote assistant athletic director. Okay. And these would also, it's baked into the job description. Okay. So that, but we're calling it, we're not calling it assistant athletic director? Correct. No. Okay. Correct. Any other questions or comments? Would you please call the roll? Mr. Albright? Yes. Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Midgett? Yes. That brings us to meeting adjournment. Our next regular board meeting will be July 21st. Do we have a motion and a second to adjourn? So moved. Second. Would you please call the roll? Mr. Midgett? Yes. Mrs. Blanketchett? Yes. Mr. Albright? Yes. And Mrs. Clark? Yes. 626. Thank you everyone.