001The February 17th, 2026 regular meeting of the Chardon Local Schools Board of Education is called to order. This meeting is being held in accordance with Section 3313.15 of the Ohio Revised Code. Deb, would you please call the roll? Mrs. Bikenship? Here. Mrs. Clark? Here. Mr. Galhocha? Here. And Mr. Landy? Here. Welcome everyone to the February 17th, 2026 regular meeting of the Chardon Local Schools Board of Education. Prior to this meeting, each board member received for the review and consideration the agenda and materials associated with each agenda item for the board's consideration via the Electronic Board of Education Agenda System Board docs. The public can access the agenda through the school district's website one day prior to the board meeting. Pursuant to Board of Education Policy 0165, this meeting is a meeting of the Board of
002Education and public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not to be considered a public community meeting. There are two opportunities for public participation during the meeting as indicated in agenda items designated as public participation. Board members have the opportunity to call the superintendent and chief financial officer for information concerning agenda items and to request, if needed, additional information. This meeting may also be replayed for later viewing on GTV network and video on demand site. The Chardon Local School District is not responsible for the video and or quality or future availability of such recording. So the first item is the adoption of the agenda as presented. Do we have a motion and a second? So moved, Andrea. I'll second it. Do we have any questions or comments about the agenda? Would
003you please call the roll? Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Galhocha? Mr. Landis? Yes. And Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. So that brings us to the Pledge of Allegiance. Tonight we're going to have the Pledge of Allegiance led by second grade Park Elementary student Mackenzie Messenger and fourth grade Chardon Middle School student Maddie Messenger. So would you join us up front here? And if everyone please, wherever you're ready. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Great job standing right there. Yeah, that was great. I like the way you spoke up. So, in recognition of second grade Park Elementary student Mackenzie Messenger for your contribution and commitment in serving as the Board of Education's Pledge of
004Allegiance leader on the 17th day of February 2026. So thank you. You can say a few more pictures if you'd like. In recognition of fourth grade Chardon Middle School student Maddie Messenger for your contribution and commitment in serving as the Board of Education's Pledge of Allegiance leader on the 17th day of February 2026. So thank you for coming out and doing this. Great job. If you guys want to turn around, you can almost see their picture. Thank you ladies. Great job. The mission of the Chardon Middle School district, we commit to high achievement for all students. Okay, that brings us to the first hearing of the public. No. No, we have a public hearing. This is the second hearing on proposed 2027-28 district calendar as detailed in the enclosure. There was a small adjustment to
005this calendar, nothing significant as far as starting or that affected starting or end times. Therefore presenting for second hearing and no action this evening. Happy to answer any questions. Anyone have any questions? Okay. Now we can do hearing in public. Okay. So this probably hasn't been read for a while, so I'll go through this. The Board of Education provides for public participation of residents of the school district, individuals in a business ownership in the district, or elected or appointed public officials whose jurisdiction includes the school district. The board is also committed to conducting its meetings in a productive and efficient manner that assures that the regular agenda of the board is completed in a reasonable period of time. Public participation occurs as indicated on the order of business at every regular meeting of the board
006or at those public meetings of the board during which action may be taken and is limited to three minutes per participant and 60 minutes total unless extended by the vote of the board. Participants must be recognized by the presiding officer and will preface their comments by announcement of their name, address, and group affiliation of appropriate. The board does not discriminate based on the identity of the speaker, content of the speech, or viewpoint of the speaker. The presiding officer shall administer the rules of the board in this regard to maintain decorum of the meeting. So first we have, I think, Shallon and... Kristen. Kristen. Now the first name's here. You guys wanted to address the board? Okay. State your name and... I am Shallon Swick. I am the Chardon Education Association president and a fifth grade
007teacher at Chardon Middle School. I'm Kristen Saranen. I am the vice president for the union and I'm an intervention specialist at the Chardon Early Learning Center. Okay. The Chardon Education Association appreciates the opportunity to comment about the proposal for pushing back the start of school until after Labor Day. Our association recently surveyed its members regarding preferred start dates and the impact of the calendar on teaching and learning. Approximately 70% of our respondents indicated that they prefer to maintain the earlier start date. A strong majority emphasized the importance of having sufficient instructional time before state assessments, noting that it is already challenging to cover a full year of curriculum prior to testing. Losing additional instructional days before the test would make it significantly more difficult to meet state standards and serve students effectively. For those in
008favor of the later start date, the primary reasons were related to the building heat, lack of air conditioning in buildings, and personal or family considerations. We thank you for your time. Okay. Next we have Tara Reichs. Good evening members of the Chardon Local Schools Board of Education. My name is Tara Reichs and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. The overall change I am asking you to consider is this. Start the school year later in August or after Labor Day without making days longer. I'd also like to just point out I currently teach at Berkshire and there are minimal challenges with starting at that late date with the state test. Change starts with us. As a local board, you have the authority to examine what is working, what is not, and what better serves
009our students, families, and staff. Beginning school in early August during some of the hottest weeks of the year is not working for many families. This past year I had to keep my children home several days because of the excessive heat in the building. I am very interested in hearing from the park elementary teachers who work on the second and third floors during August heat. How effective can instruction truly be in those conditions? How comfortable and focused can the students be? At the beginning of the school year I seriously considered keeping my children home for the first two weeks. Ultimately I chose not to because I knew they would fall behind. No parent should feel forced to choose between their child's well-being and their academic progress. If the concern is meeting state instructional hour requirements or
010maintaining test performance, then let's talk honestly about that. The current daily hours work. So I know like they've talked about adding hours on or extending the school year. The state allows flexibility and reporting pathways to meet required hours. If those options exist, then we should thoughtfully use them. It often feels as though test scores have become more important than family time, summer break, overall well-being, and the voices of parents and taxpayers. I understand accountability matters, but so does balance. So does health. So does listening to the community you serve. Do not tell us it cannot be done because it can. Other districts make different calendar choices. We can too. Solon, for example, started the 18th this year or the 20th correction, not the 13th. So Solon was able to start later. The 13th is very,
011very early. I respectfully ask you to strongly consider starting the school year later in August or after Labor Day. Listen to your constituents. We are asking for a calendar that reflects common sense, student well-being, and community priorities. Thank you for your time and consideration. And one final thought, which is the reporting hours. The reporting hours that we are reporting from last year, correct me if I'm wrong, were 6.55 in the middle school alone. It is projected that we are only reporting 5.82 hours. So where are these minutes coming from? Why are we down almost three quarters of an hour? Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next we have S. Thompson. Stephanie. Stephanie, okay. Yeah, everybody put their first initials here. Sorry. That's okay. I'm a Chardon resident, just a parent who has students at Munson. My
012concern is the Munson school kindergarten class right now is at 27 students per teacher. So what we'd like is to see a reduction. We'd like to add an additional first grade teacher to Munson Elementary. Because we have found online that the kindergarten classes currently should be below 24 students with one teacher as a student ratio. So we'd like you to we'd like you guys to look into that for the 2026 fall. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Just so everyone else knows, this is for agenda items only. So anything else that's not on the agenda. Anything else that's not on the agenda. We'll do it the second hearing of the public. So, okay. Is it master? That's me. I thought I was signing inside. Oh, okay. G. Pavlik. Can we switch? Can I go
013first? Yeah. Eric, right? Yep. All right. Hi, board members. Hi, Ms. Blankenship. Hi, Ariel. How are you? All right. My name is Eric Pavlik, P-A-V-L-I-C-K. I reside at 9288 Brakeman Road in Chardon. My wife, Jenny Pavlik and I both reside in the Chardon School District. I'm a proud graduate of Chardon High School in 2011. My brother graduated in 2005 and my sister graduated 2006. My parents also graduated in 1981. And along with my mom's side of family, which is seven kids, they all graduate from Chardon. My dad's, everyone on my dad's side of family also graduated from Chardon. And Jenny and I are hopeful that we will have kids graduate from Chardon High School as well. We have three daughters, two in Munson and one that starts kindergarten next year. With all the attention that
014Jenny has gotten from the recent petition, I think it's obvious on why we're all here today. Not only am I here to show support for my community, I'm also here to support my wife and my kids. Jenny and I are not looking to argue or cause tension within the board or the district, but we are here to show up for our kids and to give the kids in the district a positive change for their childhood education. What you will hear from Jenny is something that she and other like-minded parents have been working on for quite some time, and it shows their true passion for our kids' childhood education. She and like other parents is doing what she believes is the best option for the kids to enjoy their summer and let kids be kids again.
015We want the board to listen to what we all have to say, support our community, to show up for our kids and make actual efforts and reasonableness to change this school calendar. Thank you. So, Jenny? Hi, my name is Jenny Pavlik. I reside at 9288 Brigham Road in Chardon, and I have two kids in Munson and one more on the way coming to kindergarten. By now, I'm sure you've all seen or heard about the petition we have going around to change the school calendar to begin after Labor Day, starting with the 27-28 calendar. We currently have 733 signatures and counting. I have been having this conversation with other parents ever since my oldest daughter started kindergarten in 2023. Last year, many of us emailed our concerns and reasons we believe that starting school in August
016was not what was best for our kids to know avail. I hold in my hands one of those emails that were sent last year from a parent who wasn't able to make it tonight, but gave me permission to share that her fifth-grade daughter passed out that year while seated in her chair due to the high temperature in her classroom. I've heard from teachers and staff whose rooms in Park Elementary reached 90 to 95 degrees in the month of August, staff and students who have had to be sent home because of the heat causing them to feel ill. Have you ever stepped outside on a 90-degree day and just felt the air get sucked out of your lungs because it's so hot? That's hardly safe or beneficial for learning for our staff and our students alike.
017I've heard the argument that we need as much classroom time as possible before the state testing, and that other schools in our area who are highly rated start their school calendar in August, so that must be the best way, right? I don't think it's fair to use that argument unless it's also met with data from schools who start their year after Labor Day or even later in August, which is something that is just now coming back around in our area, so there aren't as many schools to compare to. I would ask the school board to be careful in this consideration as there are many factors that go into the performance of other districts and our own, and I have yet to see anything that proves that those extra three weeks in sweltering hot classrooms is
018the reason. I have heard the argument that we have no wiggle room in our schedules due to busing. To this, I ask the school board to think outside the box when it comes to our busing schedule, not only for our school calendar but because of the major hindrance on families with kids in multiple schools who have a two-hour difference in start times. I'm well aware that there are many moving parts to this and that it's not as simple as just changing the calendar around. I do not, however, think that that's any reason to stay in this cycle forever. It's time for us to come together as parents, the school board, and our Chardon community, and put our heads together to figure out how we can possibly make this work. Thank you for your time and
019consideration. Thank you. Next, we have in...Humar? Hello. My name is Natasha Humar, and I previously had children in the Chardon School District, and I live in Hamden, Ohio. Based on some of the conversations I've had over the petition and even just listening to the few speakers tonight, I think it comes down to really the parents and the community members are not feeling like they're heard or a partner in their own child's education. And I think that's what the goal is here, is to sit down as a group, as a roundtable, put our heads together and say, okay, where can we compromise? Where can we meet in the middle? Where can we come up with some solutions? So that both sides are happy. I know we don't like to use Berkshire as an example for some
020reason. I'm not really sure why, but I do feel at some extent we are erring on the problem of reducing these kids to a state score. Okay? A state test score. And if we're really that serious about it as far as the schools in the area, petition to the state and tell them to move the state test back to May. Why are they in late April? I think there's just a lot that could be discussed and brought down instead of...or brought to a conversation rather than this you versus us kind of line. So I do ask respectfully that the board takes into consideration and learns the entirety of these issues and the instructional hours versus the physical hours and the exact breakdown and funding and all of these things when you consider voting on this
021next month in March. For example, it was mentioned that our instructional hours are declining. So from a business standpoint, we're actually planning for our schools to be less efficient with our time. I'm not sure that's usually in business, not the way we want to go. Now, the ORC has a lot of flexibility in how they report hours. There's no hard and fast rule other than don't include lunch and extracurriculars. But 15 minutes of recess is allowed. Two parent-teacher conference days are allowed. Two professional development days are allowed to count as instructional time. So there is a lot of wiggle room. I do think we could probably meet in the middle. The last thing I would ask is that you consider funding. From my preliminary research, and I may be off, but not a substantial amount
022of our funding comes from that state testing score or our report card. And Berkshires has actually increased. Their report card has actually increased the last two years. But the funding does come from the people in this room and the community members that are asking you to partner with us to make some changes. So those are the same people that you're asking not to vote down property tax and the same people that may or may not be considering other avenues of education. So I think that's something to kind of reflect and look inward as a district to think, okay, how are we partnering with the community that we serve? Thank you. Okay, so that's the first hearing of the public for our agenda items. Thank you, everyone. That brings us to our consent agenda. Thank you,
023Madam President, members of the board. Members of the board, we have seven items on tonight's consent agenda. The first item is approval of minutes as detailed in the associated enclosure for the December 15th meeting. I'm sorry, January 26th meeting. Yeah, I need to. I think it's named incorrectly. My apologies. Okay, item 4.2 approval of the warrantless check pay report is detailed in the enclosure. Item 4.3 approval of administrative certified licensed classified supplemental non contractual personnel and compensation related items is detailed in the enclosure. Item 4.4 approval of the college credit plus memorandum of understanding between short schools and coyote community college as detailed in the enclosure. Item 4.5 approval of the contractual services agreement between the Lake Geauga Educational Assistance Foundation and certain schools for the 26 27 school year as detailed in the enclosure.
024Item 4.6 approval of the renewal contracts with medical mutual services as detailed in the enclosures. There are three. And finally, item 4.7 resolution 2026-05 authorizing will house schools council to advertise and receive bids for school buses, chassis and bodies for the 26 27 school year on behalf of short schools as detailed in the enclosure. Recommending your approval of these items. Do we have a motion and a second. We have a second. Is there any questions or comments about the consent agenda? Hearing none. Would you please call the roll? Mrs. Clark. Yes. Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Landy. Yes. And Mrs. Blankenship. Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members of board. Next item is item five. This is the Chardon High School Student Liaison Report and we have two of our student liaison here this evening. Good evening, Board
025of Education. My name is TJ Dare. I'm one of the board liaison officers for the high school. My name is Walter Sweet. Looks like we started on the last slide. That might be my fault. I was running through this just before we got here to make sure. This is our February board meeting. We want to open it up with a piece of artwork from one of our students. This is from Susie Crosby. She's a senior. Where's that at? That looks real. Is that Bass Lake? We don't know. We don't know quite where they were standing when they got this. But I know that she's friends with one of my buddies. And they took a picture together here and she said, I'm going to draw that. And there it is. So, yeah. I think she said,
026next it's going to the Louvre. Good. So Drama Club. The show dates and times are February 26 through the 28 at 7 p.m. at Park Auditorium. And ticket sales began last Friday. Here's a quick winter sports update. Our boys basketball team is making great strides from last year. And they're guaranteed to be over 500. They're going to be a force to be reckoned with in the playoffs. Our girls basketball team just got finished playing the toughest schedule in all of Ohio. They've played numerous D1 schools. And they've put up a really good fight. And they have a pretty good record considering all the schools that they've played. So they're ready for their playoff bout against Madison. CHS Swimming is getting ready to go to states. I know they're sending a handful of competitors down to
027Columbus for states. And I know that the wrestling team has done a great job this year. They've done a really good job being role models of the Chardon Corps values off and on the wrestling mat. Senior Mentoring is a group of students, a group of seniors at the high school that volunteers time out of their day to work with the eighth graders who are transitioning into high school life. And just a quick update, right now the eighth graders are working on scheduling their courses for next year. And our senior mentors have done a great job all year giving them a helping hand. But especially now in this tricky time for the eighth graders, they've done a great job showing them the ropes and what they can expect for their freshman year. Our Model UN just
028got done participating in the annual Cleveland Conference. It lasted three days. And I'm sure they were exhausted after all of it. But they did a great job representing our schools. And our monthly charity trips are still ongoing. Every time we get the opportunity to go, we're always touched by the community and having the opportunity to give back. Ski club. So ski club is an awesome opportunity for students to go outside and have some fun. There's two more scheduled trips, one to Peak and Peak and one to Holiday Valley. These trips are open to all students at the high school. And that's me in the middle there. Valentine's Carnations. To celebrate Valentine's Day, the Chardon Student Council sold carnations for one dollar. You could purchase it for a friend, a loved one, or for somebody that
029you just appreciated. So it was a good way to spread morale going into the long weekend. And then Buckeye Boys and Girls State. This week, the American Legion has been conducting interviews with high school juniors to participate in Buckeye Boys and Girls State. Buckeye State is an eight-day hands-on experience in the operation of the democratic form of government. And that's all, folks. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Moving ahead, next section is Section 6, Superintendent's Report and Recommendations. Superintendent's Report is just very brief this evening, just noting that we have used up to six calamity days. It's always a good time to remind everyone that we don't, the state is no longer on five calamity days as it used to be. We are now at a point where we have to account for hours and address
030that. So just worth noting. And then just some quick items from tonight's agenda, which we'll be commenting on. So Deb, we can move right ahead to item 6.2, which is our teacher spotlight this evening. And we've been adding this to our board meetings this year. Tonight we have Casey Tasnick and Kelly Decato from high school. And they'll be talking about the Chardonnay closet and also the food drives. So ladies, thank you. Hi. Thanks for having us. I'm Kelly Decato. I'm a high school math teacher at Chardonnay school as well as one of the founders, I guess you want to say, of the Chardonnay care closet. Kind of. It's just been tweaked. Chardonnay care closet, it's our simple motto is just to make sure students can focus on learning without having to worry about basic necessities.
031Some people sitting at the table have donated graciously to the care closet. We have provided 10,424 products up to this point to any eighth graders through 12th graders at the high school. I've also reached out to the other buildings. I said we have whatever you need. If students or teachers are in need of something, I'd be glad to, you know, enter district transfer or drive it myself. It's just something that me and a couple of coworkers have found that, you know, you have a chapped lip or, you know, you have stress, sweat and you stink a little bit. It always kind of takes your mind off of your focus. And so if this is something we can do for kids to make them feel better at themselves, make them feel safe, happy, supported at school,
032that was something that I wanted to do besides just being a math teacher. So this is a way for us to give back. Thanks for having me. I'm Casey Tasnick. I'm here in my role as the National Honor Society advisor. I'm also a social studies teacher at the high school. A group of students were concerned in the fall when there was a government shutdown with the loss of SNAP benefits that there was increased hunger in the community. And all of these different groups have been doing things and decided to get together and work together at it. So this involves National Honor Society and Student Council, along with AC4P, Chardon Minds Matters, as well as Interact, which works with Rotary, that we over the course of three months did different events to basically raise money and
033canned foods. We did a faculty senior volleyball game, as well as a battle of the classes in the winter. And then we caroled for cans in the woods of Burlington right around Christmas time, going door to door singing, harassing people like Mrs. Clark for canned foods in return, for some really good singing from some of our theater people and, you know, some kindhearted gestures from others. I lost track of the food. We were at 400 cans, but they just kept coming in. And we delivered them to Pilgrim Christian Church on the Square, which is part of the Geogahunger Task Force that reaches out to different entities. So it's just a great way for kids, when they felt compassion, to channel that into something positive and work with other organizations to make a difference. Thank you.
034Thank you both. Thank you. All great projects. Thank you very much. Moving ahead, item 6.3, this recommendation to approve the change order for the High School Tennis Court Project. As noted previously, this change order is basically to install a stone base at the site of the construction project. What this will enable us to do is get asphalt down sooner than waiting for the sub base to naturally reach moisture content level that would be suitable for asphalt. With the hope of trying to complete the project a little bit sooner, yet this spring, the change order is being covered by the donor. So with that, recommending approval. So moved. Do we have a second? Second. Any questions or comments about the tennis court? No? Hearing none, would you please call the roll? Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. Mrs. Clark?
035Yes. Mr. Galholtz? Yes. And Mr. Landys? Yes. Thank you, Madam President. I was board. Next item is item 6.4, this approval of resolution 2026-04. This is membership to the Ohio High School Athletic Association for Chardon High School. I am recommending your approval. Do we have a motion and a second? So moved. Second. Then would you please call the roll? Or any questions or comments? No? Then would you please call the roll? Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Galholtz? Yes. Mr. Landys? Yes. And Mr. Blankenship? Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members of board. Final item is item 6.5, this approval of revision to the 26-27 academic calendar. I'll just have a brief comment following motion and second. I'm recommending your approval. So moved. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you, Madam President, members of board. Mrs. Clark
036had asked a question concerning the Monday following spring break and because that is falling in the week that we typically take our, well it's falling in the week of Easter, so there's alignment to that calendar for this year. The recommendation here is to flip the Monday after to the Friday before we take that break. So it's just basically that adjustment modifying those two days. Any questions or comments about the calendar change? So we're moving what's not Easter Monday anymore and covering Good Friday instead, correct? That's correct. Anyone else? Hearing none, then would you please call the roll? Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Gauhotra? Yes. And Mr. Landy? Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members of board. That concludes my section for this evening. Thanks, Mike. Deb, financial? Thank you, Madam President, members of the
037board. First item on my agenda is my January financial summary presentation. Of course, in here there's also an AI version, but we're going to go through the summary. Okay, so for January 2026 we ended the month with $22,672,000 in the bank. We did balance book to bank with some minor adjustments for annuities and outstanding city payments that are paid quarterly. Our second report we always look at is our cash summary. We always look at negatives in this third from the right column where we see our first one. If you recall, last month PI came in the black and now Steve started spending again, so we're right back to the red, which is nothing to worry about because we're going to be getting our second advance and our final tax payment in March and April. Our
038next negative is in our 022, which is basically our workman's comp fund. And if you recall, it's gone from 30 to 20 to 10. By the time we post our next payroll, that will be in the black. And then the only other place we have it is down here in the grants, which of course we use them first and are reimbursed. So nothing to worry about on the cash summary. So for January, we're still comparing to our spending plan is still being compared to October forecast. So we're 144,803. We anticipate we're going to get more than the October forecast. We're going to spend more 486,000 more than we anticipated in the October forecast, which changes our cash balance by about 341,000. You see a note in the bottom left. These are going to be adjusted
039as soon as we approve the February forecast. And then everything is going to be a little closer to zero once that happens. The chart in the middle is just our cash balance by month. The gray is last year and the blue is this year. So you can see our cash balance has been running a little lower all year than it was last year. And we understand why we talk about this all the time. So monthly, we received 2.5 million. Most of that was in advance number one on our property taxes. Our number one advance this year was much more than it was last year. So you can see right here, we collected more in the month of January this year than we did in the month of January last year by about a million. On
040the expenditure side, we spent 2.9 million more on salaries and benefits. But we saved on purchase services and compared to January of last year. And of course, capital outlay, we're going to see negatives when we compare to next year. They're all year long. For our annual revenue, we've collected 22 million and we've spent 21.4. You see how those numbers are getting closer together, which typically happens this time of year and again in June. Those numbers are going to go farther apart once we get our advances in our final tax payment. But when we compare to this time last year, our taxes are up, our state revenue is up, and our other revenue is up. And our taxes are up because we collect a higher advance than we did this time last year, right? Our state's
041up, we know why. We got a little bit of extra money for our report card. And our other revenues up, we talked about this last month, the MRDD gave us additional, they gave us an advance payment. So we didn't usually get that in January. As for expenditures, we are up in salaries, purchase services, which is understandable, and way down in other expenses because again, we're not spending the capital outlay that we did last year when we were finishing this building. So I know this is really colorful. This is my salaries chart this month. We spent 1.6 million in salaries, our annual salaries, a little 12.5 million. And we completed 15 of 26 pays. But what I wanted to show here, there's actually two things, is our salaries are broke down in all kinds of categories.
042I mean, the orange is elementary teachers, the red is high school teachers, the green is middle school teachers, but we have special education teachers, we have preschool teachers, we have summer remediation, we have all kinds of different categories. And we'll talk about Ohio Checkbook later, but when you go on Ohio Checkbook, you can see these numbers broke down by these categories. The star shows January, that's a posted month. A little bit of a dip, that's because of winter break. Classified staff do not get paid over the two weeks or not all of them get paid over the two weeks during winter break. So salaries usually takes a little dip. You can see that again in April because it's a catch up from spring break. We see a little dip again, but what I wanted to
043point out was June. You would expect June to be higher. School's over by the end of May, but the reason school is a little bit higher is because we allow for summer school. We still have summer school in the budget, and we'll talk about summer school a little bit more when we look at the forecast. So here's our true days of cash. We average $3.4 million a month, $174,000 a day. After open purchase orders, we are down to $85.67, which is really close to that policy of 75 days. But again, I love this chart on the bottom left. This shows what our cash balance looks like all year and the last four. Very similar pattern. January is always one of the lowest months of the year. Then we get our tax payment, and then come
044June, we're right back down to where we were in January. Over to the right on the bottom is just a bar graph that shows the same thing. I like the line graph better. Remind me that 75 days, that's when we trigger eating a levy. Talking about it. Talking about what we're going to do is when we reach that 75 days per policy, our cash balance policy. Next is our food service report. Food service looks great. This is actually a month where we had a surplus of $78,156. Our balance is at $585.80. We received more revenue and spent less, so it's always good when that happens, and that's why we have a surplus. Again, right now it's looking like we're up over a little over $300. Over $300, I'd really like to end the year at
045$300,000. We are looking at equipment, additional equipment purchases to get it to that point. I have an extra slide. Our permanent improvement, we received $142,820. That was in advance tax payment number one. $1.2 million so far this year. Again, you're going to see more revenue. This is what we talked about earlier. You see the rest of the revenue from the tax payment come in February, March. It might even bleed into April. What do we spend our money on? We got two Micro Bird yellow school buses, two GMC 2024 cargo vans. Great deal on those. Racks for maintenance garage and new stair treads in Park Elementary. We spent $343,000 the month of January and a little bit over $1.8 million year to date. Our self-insurance fund lost $87,190. Our balance is still $2.2 million or almost
046$2.3. Our new reserve amount, $1.9. We're well over reserve amount. We typically have a greater loss in January because January is when we spend the seed money for HSA accounts. But our claims are very low right now. I can tell you I made a claims payment last week of $12,000 and it's usually $60,000 to $100,000 a week. Claims payment for this week was like $47,000. So the claims are low, which is really good. So if you look though, in 24 we were here. So this fund at any time claims could be high and then it dips the fund down. So I'm doing something a little new. So this is topper facts and these are just some questions I've seen pretty much out on social media. What I'd like to encourage the board though is bring
047me any questions that you have from the community. Anything that somebody is wondering about. We want to be transparent and we want to explain the facts. So I've seen a lot of people do schools budget. Yes, we budget. Budgets are created each year based on the needs of the students. Our budgets are created by building and by department. Each building department is reviewed by superintendent and treasurer twice a year. So we see where they're at during the year. Our annual budgets must be in within the restrictions of the cash on hand. We can never budget any more. Actually it's not even the cash on hand. We can never budget any more than the budget commission certifies us to. We have a forecast where we actually look out five years and we do that for planning.
048We only budget the current year. We can only spend money in the current year. But we have to look out five years because we have to see when are we going to need additional revenue. So the budgets are approved by the Board of Education and then again also reviewed by the Jogger County Budget Commission. Transparency is key and anybody that knows me knows. I will give any information. Anybody can ask me anything. I put some links on here. Ohio checkbook. I'm going to click on it real quick. It goes right to Chardon's page. You can look at any year. These are my total expenditures. You can break it down. It shows which is the general fund, employee benefits. It has a really nice interactive graph where you can select a specific school year or a
049bunch of different school years. It's really kind of fun to play out there if you like playing with charts like I do. Also linked out here is the auditor state site. That's where you could go see our most recent audits. I do like to brag. We've had five beautiful audits from the auditor state and we're award winning last five years in a row. Also the treasurer's website where I post all of these links. We could buy tickets. Look at that. I post the links to the auditor site. The Ohio checkbook that goes right to Chardon. I post the last two forecasts out here. 12 months of financials that I show at every meeting. And then 12 months of AI podcasts and videos which are the fun part. The next topper facts is there a difference
050between school district income tax and property tax and do schools receive both? Yeah, there's a big difference. School district income tax is voted on by the community typically instead of additional property tax levy. So the board of education can decide. There's different types of levy a board of education could look at when generating new revenue or when we look in that forecast and the board decides this is what we need to do. And they can decide to do an income tax instead of a property tax levy. That doesn't make the property tax levies on books go away. It's additional funding. It's typically in place up. And yes, some districts do have both. Chardon does not have a school district income tax. If we were, if property taxes were to be abolished, the district would need
051a 3.5% school district income tax to replace the current revenue that we receive from property taxes right now. As a treasurer, the cool thing about the school district income tax is it grows each year as people's incomes grow. One of the bad things is it does put the burden on the working taxpayer and takes it off of commercial business and public utility. I don't like that part of it. But I do like you can put it on earned income only, which exempts Social Security pensions, 401 IRA disbursements, interest, and dividends. I am not saying that Chardon is considering STIT at this time. I am just explaining the difference. So that is it for my financial report. Are there any questions or comments? I'll let it come in. I think it may be more of a
052suggestion as we do. Right. So we have all this discussion happening. What's going to happen in Columbus? What's going to be on the ballot? I think maybe we should look into being proactive as a team and see we all want to support school. No question. And we know how much we need. It doesn't matter where this comes from, whether it comes from property taxes or people choose to go income tax and all this discussion we are hearing. It may be good for us to map out options that option one if property taxes tax goes away like you label this number. That's one option. What if property tax goes away only for primary resident houses and commercial and rentals can still have this will have to pay what that option look like. That way we are
053ready to answer or battle that situation being proactive to lay out options. I think it will help us to be thinking ahead and have our options ready to see what it looks like. Okay. Thank you. I was going to say when you were talking my question that popped into my head kind of like that is the income tax the only option if we don't do a property tax. So I didn't know if there were other options kind of piggybacks on his ideas. Just looking ahead to make sure we know what we can't just say we're screwed if property taxes go away even if that's true. Excuse my language. Right. And Mike don't mind if you pipe in here. But as far as I'm aware school district income tax and property taxes are only two options.
054Correct. Yeah. The legislature's really constrained levy options for school districts with some of the recent action that they've taken. And the STIT is basically the other alternative. And I also want to even like and I'm not quite sure if this addresses the question but like apartment complexes and things like that they still pay property taxes. So if those were abolished those those would go away. Sometimes people either don't have the perception that a person lives in an apartment is paying a property tax. They're paying it through the rent and the property owners still paying that property tax. So that action to abolish property taxes would affect those those properties as well at this point. Yeah. That's kind of what I was suggesting is that we map out different options. We don't know what's going to
055pass like state of Florida had a discussion. They were talking about only primary residents one residence one house is going to be exempt. Everything else will not be so who knows where we end up. But if we if we map out these options at least we have some idea like to your point what other options are there. You brought up earlier agenda right. The buses have those are minor revenue streams. But if we map out some of those maybe they're not allowed today. But if everything is up in the air who knows what will be allowed. And last comment from a people's standpoint. I don't know from a tax expertise but if property tax of a primary residence is not tax exempt. But if that's going as an income that reduce your income and your
056tax liability is reduced paying this way versus property taxes on your resident. Not expert but all I'm pointing out is let's explore all these options and see maybe we get educated in this. We can help the community. I will say from my experience in other states in the last three four years and right now instead of Washington the sales tax on a car is about between 11 and 12 percent. So when you have very little income tax actually all the politicians will move to a sales tax first. They said well that just spread that out. So you you're going to I mean I don't know if we'll go to a zero real estate tax. I don't I don't personally think that's going to happen. But but there may be you know pretty significant changes to
057it and they'll always the fastest easiest way for politicians is to move you to an income tax on the wealthy or increase that substantially or add in at sales tax. And there are states like California and Washington have like 12 13 percent sales tax on certain things. So that's that is where that will go if you have these kind of changes that happen. They have to get tax from somewhere and the easiest place to do they they just balance one off the other. If we go to a sales tax that's nothing. How does the school can school get any money off of the politicians basically as you get less as this as a school gets less they have to get it from somewhere. So the fastest the easiest thing to do is to pass layers
058of different kinds of sales taxes or increase them. And I was a sales tax in Georgia County on cars six and a half percent. So double that in these other states. So that's but that's because they they need more revenue. I'm just saying does that are you allowed to fund a school district. They would they I think they have this radical change. They would have to change it. Right. They don't now. Definitely. They would definitely change it. So that would be a state because it would be an emergency emergency. So it has to come from the rainy day fund sales tax. Those changes would happen immediately. I think the most troubling part is from Columbus. There hasn't been any plan to offer to say this is what's going to happen when this comes to pass.
059Right. It would be a lot easier to calculate if they gave us some sort of plan. But there isn't one. So it's hard to pick and choose what you want to calculate or plan for when you don't know it's coming. True. But in a nutshell there are no more than a few things that. Exactly. Yes. Well Mike I don't know if you know the answer to this question or not or Deb. I know Mike DeWine has said that it take a 20 percent sales tax to replace property tax. Does that include school funding or does that just at the state level? So what the governor is looking at is purely there's 21.5 billion dollars that comes in in revenue received by all taxing entities through property taxes. So they simply equated that to a sales
060tax and said to replace that revenue. It would take a sales tax increase of that amount and that 20 percent numbers been thrown around quite a bit. But again the devil's in the details about how those revenue would get if if it all would get funneled back to school districts. So he long way of saying he's doing a simple math calculation and saying to replace that 21.5 billion. It would take an estimated increase of this amount just to generate the number again. They wouldn't do that. Oregon Oregon just did. They have a very low sales tax. They have the high. They just put an incredible death tax on Oregon has now the number one. They call it an estate tax but it starts like at five hundred thousand dollars and it's like 15 percent. And
061so you know Ohio got away from their state tax 14 16 years ago. But they will look at all these options. I mean if they they go to that they're not going to do a 20 percent sales tax just be 13 and then this tax and that tax. So it's got to come from somewhere over here again right now our state funding. I mean most of our funding comes from our local property owners. So it'd be interesting to see just what how they would divvy up the money if they were to go with a higher sales tax or what you're talking about death tax. You know how much they would funnel back to the schools. I think we can speculate all day long. The point is we need to contact our legislators and tell them
062to at least give us a plan so that we can plan so that we know what we're doing. My legislative report continues to be nice from the state house. I would agree. And thank you for all that input. That was great conversation. I just want to touch on a summary. We had a records commission meeting. It was on February 9th 1 30 p.m. The records commission consists of the superintendent a treasurer and board president. We reviewed the RC 2 which is basically a list of retention periods for all the records that we keep on file. We did tweak a couple of items based on state recommendation. We approved our minutes from the June 23rd meeting and adjourned. So no other questions. We can move on to 7.2. 7.2 is very generous donations. It's detailed in
063the associate enclosures. I am recommending your approval. Do we have a motion and a second? So moved. Do we have a second? I'll second it. Any questions or comments about donations? Like always thank you to our community. It's always humbling to see donations every month. It's greatly appreciated by all the students and staff. So thank you. And our donations have been full of care closet supplies lately. So we've seen a ton of that. Okay. Any other questions or comments about donations? Hearing none. Would you please call the roll? Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Galhosa? Yes. And Mr. Landy? Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members of the board. In the motion we have agenda, equipment disposal. As detailed in the associate enclosures, I am recommending your approval. There's one item. Do we have a
064motion and a second? So moved. Second. Any questions or comments about equipment disposal? We must have got rid of all those DVRs. I've seen one in a while. Or VHS and all. Yep, VCRs. VCRs, that's it. Okay. Any other questions or comments? or comments? Deb, would you please call the roll? Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Gehoce? Yes. Mr. Landys? Yes. And Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members on the board. Next item my agenda is final appropriation. Amendment number five is detailed and associated closures. I am recommending for your approval. Do we have a motion and a second? So moved. Second. Do we have any questions or comments? Hearing none, Deb, would you please call the roll? Mrs. Clark? Yes. Mr. Gehoce? Yes. Mr. Landys? Yes. And Mrs. Blankenship? Yes. Thank you, Madam President, members
065of the board. Final item on my agenda is the three-year forecast is detailed and associated closures. After first and second, I have a video and a presentation recommending your approval. Do we have a motion and a second for the five-year forecast? Motion. Second. What do we want to do first? Presentation. I want to hear you talk about it. You want to hear me talk about it? Okay, we'll do the presentation first. Okay, the state requires the school districts to file two, three-year forecasts a year. Shard Local Schools chooses to do a five-year forecast just to look a little further out. And of course our forecast and our plan is everything is to our mission where we commit to high achievement for all students. So the methodology is communication, collaboration, analytics with key personnel, a lot
066of conversation, superintendent, director student services, assistant super business affairs curriculum. We capitalize on grants as much as humanly possible. We're always searching local grants, state grants, federal grants, transportation services. We're beefing that up for additional revenue and then our vocational programming is looking like it's going to be generating revenue as soon as next year. So that's really exciting. A important reminder, we already talked about the three-year forecast. The forecast is an estimate. It's based on information that we know right now today. Circumstances in Ohio are always changing. Inflation, state funding, tax collections with delinquents. You never know what's coming down the pipe. The forecast makes assumptions concerning numerous variables that are not yet known like property taxes and supply chain, interest rates have been all over the place. The forecast only represents the general fund.
067As you saw that cash summary report there's 30 you know there's another 20 or 30 funds. It's just the general fund and assumptions are located in board decks. They're also linked here. They're 52 pages less than last year. They are 52 pages but they have a lot of charts. So the first thing we like to look at is the last forecast. We just did one in October. The state has changed it. It used to be in November and May and now it's in February and August. So it's just really different. It's a different time of year but let's let's compare. We had to do one last October. So on the left you have October. On the right you have this February. We've been talking about some of these changes all year. We increased our revenue
068you know some hundred forty thousand dollars. We increased our expenditure some 480. These numbers ringing a bell. We just saw them on our spending plan. We thought our cash balance was going to be somewhere around 16-4. Now we think it's going to be closer to 16-1 and then after open purchase orders we always leave those at about three hundred thousand a year. So in in a nutshell we are reducing our cash balance by about three hundred and forty one thousand in February compared to October. Now I can give you the why and we've talked about the why. We we added a inside fund transfer for vocational that increased our expenditures and our revenue and then we also added additional expenditures to replace Chromebook for teachers. So those of you that didn't know that, well you're
069going to be doing that this year. February forecast for this fiscal year. The plan always to align the forecast to the 2023-28 district success plan. We concentrate on our goals safety, security, facilities, communications, resources and fiscal responsibilities. Take that one personally and engage student learning. We like to talk about deficit spending when we look at this chart and just to give a kind of really simple explanation. It's when the orange bar or the yellow bar is higher than the blue bar. Okay the blue bar is revenue. The the orange yellow bar is expenses. So when your expenses are higher than your revenue we call that deficit spending. What that does is takes your cash balance and every year it just drops down a little. Which is very typical and the beginning of a levy cycle
070usually your cash balance grows and at the end of a levy cycle it starts shrinking as your revenue flatlines and we'll look at that in a minute right here. So here's our revenue. Blue is the revenue line and the again the orange yellow is our expenditures. I love this slide because this is this shows how our revenues are flatlining. So they're basically staying the same. There is some small growth if you look at the left side back in 25 and you look at 30 we're a little bit over this line right. But our revenue is with all the changes that the state has made a revenue is pretty much flatlining while our expenditures are going up at least by the cost of inflation. We have negotiated agreements. We have increased pricing supply and chain you
071know supply chain increases can't prevent that. So let's just go to the revenue side. We're going to compare our revenue to October. This on the top is February on the bottoms what we thought it was going to be in October. Really not much different okay. We had that 300,000 vocational that we put on both sides the equation but more importantly are these years out here and another reason I'd like to look at a five-year because House Bill 335 very confusing. School financing is confusing but what it does is it shrinks our growth. We always got growth from inside mill. Now it makes that growth smaller. It puts a cap on it based on inflation. Good for me as a taxpayer because our taxes can't go up as much on that inside growth but it does
072as a school district limit our growth and that's why you see the negatives far out. It's also important to note here is HB 315 another House Bill passed by the state in law that was reduces public utility tax. So public utility used to pay tax on 88 percent of their value and they have lowered that all the way to 25 percent of their value and that reduced our taxes a large amount much larger than the HB 335 reduction. So let's look at revenue. 68 percent of our revenue is in local taxes that's real estate and public utility. We don't have income tax. 22 percent is state although I could argue that the state reimbursement the 6.14 percent that's actually property taxes but that's for the people where the state pays that portion the homestead and
073rollback and then 10 percent is other revenue things like we're getting other revenue from our transportation compound interest when we rent our facilities. In fact 10 percent's pretty good. I was looking at this when we did the group presentation with the other districts and I was really proud because we were the highest in other revenue. So I was I was I was proud of that. So the star just shows 26. We project we'll receive 40 million nine hundred forty seven thousand three hundred eight thousand in revenue for fiscal year 26. So now we break down our two largest and I probably already said everything on this slide but we do look at collection rates. The county only allows us to cert to certify ninety eight percent collection rate. So even though I can go in
074and calculate and I figure out this is what I think Chardon's going to collect in taxes they will lower that to ninety eight percent. Chardon has a 101.32 collection rate for 25 and over a hundred percent on the five-year average. We always collect I don't know if it's delinquents but I think a lot of it has to do with our mobile home parks aren't in the calculation so they put us over a hundred percent. I again a slight increase for the next five years account for inside mill which is now capped at nine percent and then a decrease. We always have to keep in mind that we did move one mill out of the general fund to the PI to really beef up the the projects that have been happening in our buildings, new windows,
075roofs. We're doing classrooms so many classrooms every year. We have really really capitalized on the improvements of our facilities. Secondly state funding on the left is unrestricted means you're not restricted on how to use it right you can use it on anything. On the right is restricted funds that's things like student wellness and threshold cost reimbursement which is special education costs. We have to use those funds I have to track and report to the state that that's what those funds are used for. Our wellness has been dropping considerably every year so that's why on the right you see this step down and then threshold cost it's what it does is you apply for it at a state level and all the other schools that apply for it too the more schools the less we all
076get. So at first not everybody was doing the work and now everybody's trying to get every penny they can so it's less and it's been going down for the last two or three years. On the left is the unrestricted and it has gone up and that reflects the performance bonus that we received for 4.5 stars so that helped that gave us a little bit of a bump but it by stretch wasn't a ton. Expenditures compared now we're going to look at expenditures and we're going to compare them to October again not a huge difference in fact the difference that you see all the way across is the vocational programming there's 300 on revenue it's 300 on expenditures and then increased technology for the Chromebooks for the teachers that we discussed earlier. So 76% of our
077expenditures are benefits and salaries we are a service oriented business we teach kids that is what we do as our business. 11.3% is in purchase services and then 13% and other like supplies and capital outlay. I always like to look at the outliers on these charts and these three years are higher those three years is where we actually purchased the transportation compound and we had three phases that were paid out over three years and now we've dropped back down the only capital money outlay money that we're spending is technology out of the general fund everything else has been moved to the PI fund. The increases that you see and I probably should go to it are the standard increases so here's our salaries salaries are really interesting you see the blue on the bottom we
078had an EPC buy out so much of our staff retired after 23 24 but really interesting as we had 17 retirements and 25 and that was without an EPC buyout so we have had a great deal of retirements over the last three years which reduced our salaries teachers on the higher end are retiring we're hiring teachers that start on the lower end of the salary schedule when you account for that many different changes we actually dropped in salaries which is awesome we also do you know we analyze our staff to ADM every year we take a look at our class sizes and everything that we can do to try to keep it at a good educational level for the students so 26 we did increase some staff at our vocational programming I really believe that's
079going to end up really paying off in the long run one thing that made a big change in my forecast it's hard to see as we moved substitutes we went with that OSTS substitute system who's paying from purchase services rather than salaries so it made it also look like a drop in salaries but it really wasn't because it was bigger in purchase services the one important thing to keep in mind here is in 29 and 30 our negotiated agreements for both unions only go to 28 so I have a 1% base plus a 1% step 1 1.7% step holding place for 29 and 30 well those aren't actual numbers I believe those could potentially be higher but that's a holding place I just want to point out I love this chart because out of all
080of our expenditures 64.3% of our district's expenditures are spent in the classroom they're spent on instruction the transportation you know on the student instruction and support employee benefits and play benefits always looks like I like some nice little stepladder we've had a steady increase in October forecast it was 23.65% of our total budget now it's at 23.99 or the other way around it's down from 23.99 to 23.65 in 26 we had a 9% increase we thought it was a 10% increase we found we had our actuary redone and we were able to lower it to 9% but the forecast does have it at 10% from 28 through 30 other districts in Ohio are seeing health insurance increases in excess of 20% even up and Mike I know you know several even up around 25 and
08126% so we're doing really well on health insurance costs I just want to point out to our retirement as part of benefits and as the salaries decrease in retirement and because we moved the substitutes so did this and so that our cost came down a little bit in benefits for those reasons so our assumptions interest on investments interest is dropping and it makes me sad so it was you know well over 5% last year I think it was 4.4 just in October when I did the forecast now it's at 3.82 again negotiated agreements that's 2.6% for 26 through 28 with the 1% holding in 28 and 29 technology capital expenditures are still going to be included in the general fund vocational programming is put in place from 26 through 30 it's important to point out
082that activity athletic fees have been eliminated to reduce and reducing supply fees for district families it's five hundred and sixty thousand annually and a hold that thought also want to point out that summer school elementary world language vocational program CCP AP programs are all included to continue in this forecast as for the the fees so the estimated savings on the fees we only reduced half these in 2023 but full fees and 24 through 26 and it's roughly five hundred and sixty thousand a year it's I look at the difference that what we were paying and what we're paying now and and you got to try to allow for inflation so this is a this is an estimate roughly five hundred sixty thousand years so we've saved our taxpayers roughly 1.8 million over four years and
083this is to allow more opportunity for our students to achieve for high achievement because you know that's our mission so we want all the students to be able to participate in whatever they would like so we look at the bottom line and and this is a lot of numbers I know but again right here is our revenue that we just saw on the bar charts we subtract our expenditures here's what we call deficit spending which simply mean it doesn't mean we're out of cash it just means that we're spending more than we're receiving at the end of fiscal year 26 16 million 101 the cash balance is going to deteriorate to a negative 5.2 projection in 2030 on the bottom of this page is a link to the forecast I have to submit to the
084state and again the assumptions I'm just going to pop into them real quick if you want to see the details behind every single chart every single line item on the forecast I go through in detail right down to you can go in and see I talk with the city planner every year I know the new developments that are coming the businesses that are coming to town I have an estimate of what kind of revenue we're gonna get I look wherever I can and it's all in here in detail so let's talk a little bit about balanced reform the five school districts in Jogga County did a meeting a couple weeks ago and these are just a couple of things you know at the state level and we were talking about this a little earlier the
085chart on the left to me is very alarming this is property taxes in 1975 so in 1975 the blue bar is a residential and the orange bar is what commercial property tax used to pay so the businesses in the area with state legislation changing and all these new laws coming down the pike it has pushed the burden to the taxpayer so now commercial pays you know that the orange is what commercial pays and the blue is what the property owners now also while that's happening other state laws are changing where Ohio is now 45th in the nation out of all the other states for funding their public schools in 1991 the state used to pay 47 percent of school property taxes right and now now it's shifted so it's shifted where now the prop now
086they pay you know 30% so they are just moving way down and they're shifting more of that burden onto the property owners so while the state is shifting their share the tax also the change in tax laws also shifting to the property homeowner so I believe that's why we're having the conversations or the situation that we are today so Chardon you know takes seriously its responsibility to stretch our resources our cash reserve has grown it did grow over careful spending and obtaining grant funding we pushed the levy it's currently going to be ten years from our last levy which is a historic any reduction anticipated revenue will call the cause the district to be on the ballot sooner so right now with the no new revenue we'd be in the negative you know 5.2 million
087by 2030 but it's important to point out right now we're over here we're the 16 101 so we're still in a good spot right now it's estimate our projected cash balance we talked about the district responded to the recommendations of the Jogga County Budget Commission to address our high cash balance so that's why we had some one-time large capital outlay projects that brought down our cash balance we also moved one mill to the PI fund to address the concerns that our buildings for safety and security again numerous variables that are out of our control that can impact the general fund federal grants state funding property tax laws retirement law changes in a five-year forecast is updated every six months I am going to do one in May only because I get a better picture of
088our finances at the end of the fiscal year so I'm going to do an extra one in May and then do one again in August so anybody have any questions okay if there's no questions now we get to watch the video which might use only one minute and 47 seconds okay is a way faster than I am today breaking down the shard and local schools five-year financial forecast let's see what's inside all right first up let's take a look at the district's overall financial health so the big picture right now things look stable but you can see expenses are creeping out and if that trend continues we're looking at a shortfall of over five million dollars by 2030 so what's driving these numbers let's start with the income side just like a household budget as
089you can see a huge chunk of the district's funding comes right from local taxes to be specific we're talking over 61% just from local property taxes that's significant state funding is the next biggest piece but yeah it's a much smaller slice of the pie okay now for the other side of the coin expenses let's see where the money's going by far the single biggest investment is in people we're talking teachers and staff in fact just salaries alone make up more than half of the entire district budget Wow and this is key most of that money goes right back into the classroom supporting students directly so with a budget this time you gotta wonder how's the district stretching every dollar well for one by cutting fees for things like athletics saving families almost two million bucks
090all this careful spending has delayed the need for new taxes for a historic ten years so what does this all mean for the road ahead let's look at the long-term picture eventually the district is gonna need something called a levy which is a voter-approved tax for funding you know this declining cash balance isn't just a shard on story it's happening so I see for decades the state's been shifting more the cost of education on local towns so it all leads to this question how can a community really work together to keep its schools thriving see much faster than me do we have any questions or comments about the five-year forecast no and I think the answer to that question is it depends there's a lot riding on what happens in Columbus property tax elimination is
091there replacement revenue stream all of those open questions at face value nothing changes Devon I have been modeling 2028 property size of that revenue will depend on a number of factors you know how long the board wants that levy cycle to stretch and kind of any other considerations that come through the legislature in the next I mean there's a host of additional tax reform initiatives that are in consideration Columbus right now so all that to say a lot of moving parts no 28 for 29 we're modeling calendar year 20 and it's a it's a board decision Gordon what I will do is we'll discuss it as a team and I'll bring you what you tell me model this model this model this and I'll model it and we'll look at it and discuss it talk
092about it well the governor if it progresses to the governor the governor has ten days to have done something that's been approved already that's correct or if the governor vetoes something like we saw this last summer there were six items relevant to school districts that the governor vetoed the legislature overturned one I believe yeah others are sitting right now but anytime over 18 months the legislature can reach back on the shelf pull that vetoed item off and if they have the necessary votes and override the governor's feature yeah correct it does it's very difficult so there's there's a big grain of salt with you know when we say all things being equal right now but it does change and it has changed with law changes and I believe we'll have a new governor next year
093because the wine is termed out right yes any other questions or comments about the five-year forecast that was presented tonight before we vote on it hearing none that would you please call the roll mr. Gaucho yes mr. Landis yes mrs. Blankenship yes and mrs. Clark yes thank you that concludes my section okay that brings us to board reports we'll start off with the shard and schools foundation Gordon do you have anything to report yeah just really quickly I think I did a little presentation yeah okay it's loading it's um the schools foundation it's been around like over 30 years it's it's a resource for teachers it's actually a resource for not just curriculum it's for other things most people don't know that so I've been digging into a little bit more working with them there
094was only three grants approved last year so it's very small one was in I think Munson there's $11,000 they got in like $23,000 there's donors that give substantial amount of money every year so again I'm just gonna encourage people they're putting out the they put out three times a year they're gonna release here's the application for for grants and the ones gonna be sent out like this next week and that's for the spring they do the summer in the fall basically there's a money there for teachers but it's more than just for teachers there's there's actually when you look down there it can come from the public somebody can say hey I think this would be in the best interest of the school and that's like use number five somebody come up and say here's
095a program and they could submit an application for a grant for something for months in school or park or whatever and I don't think anybody's even realized that and this last year the last two or three things were furniture so they're doing more furniture like you know ergonomic things things make it easier for kids sit things in the science lab and stuff which they never did before but they're looking at they're approving that too so I'm not sure it's probably an informational thing that the teachers really don't know maybe they get a lot of money from the PTAs and stuff but there is money there so we're gonna try to share more about that and again the fund this the release is gonna come out this week to the teachers and hopefully they'll apply for
096a grants for some of their ideas there's a substantial amount of money in the Sheridan schools foundation and so and they got this in and it's it's it's sitting there looking for waiting for grants from grant requests from from the community so that's it in the past the teachers have had to go through a much more rigorous process to get the money so they were scared away so when I was on the foundation last year as I was trying to I think they're more open to ideas it used to be academic based only so when they approve some of these seating options everything yeah exciting to see last year if you talk to a teacher and passing the money's there it's really it's an application and it may be a zoom or phone call now
097it's not in person yeah so thanks to Andrea they have like a greenhouse project that's been funded half by the school half by them it was something that kids did at the high school right yeah so and that's new and it's different it's like the money's there I'm just got to ask for it there are several parents on the foundation that I think say back whatever the teacher was so when you ask for something it's not people outside necessarily understanding what we need yes that's what it is ask for money bring your ideas thank you Gordon legislative report Andrea yeah so the state house is back in session they started at the beginning of February so we're gonna see start seeing what pops up again I'll say Dr. Hanlon kindly OSBA provides a list of
098report or legislation that could affect schools and it was 20 pages when I printed at this time so I tried to pick out just a couple from what he pasted in there there's one lawsuit which I think I pitched about on my Facebook that they are trying to bring forward against any school which has a lawsuit pending aka any of the schools that are part of the voucher lawsuit they want to withhold funding from them in an escrow account I did some research before I came today and now he's slightly backtracking to say he'll only hold in the escrow account the money spent on the lawsuit not the entire amount the district would get but still very much retribution for the 300 and some districts who are going against the vouchers so we'll see how
099that progresses and then there was also one you already covered the tax cap one that was passed there's a new one on property tax credit expansion House Bill 673 and not 100% sure I was trying to read this here but it said give property tax discount for all levies on the homeowners bill not just levies passed before after they had an August 2013 cutoff so they're trying to give more property tax expansion there but that in turn if they give discounts on more levies you've had levies and the one that caught my eye was just came in representative Brenner was for intervention plans for mathematics um I know there's been a lot of focus in the state house on science of reading and a lot of writing so it was interesting that now we're finally
100bringing math up I don't know how far that will progress but I know if you're in the district your kid could be on a rift or reading improvement plan they're identified I know that plays into our progress in the report cards so if that comes through now you'll have mathematics too which could be interesting I like focusing on both but at the same time what kind of paperwork is that yeah lots going on just to keep watching I guess they're back in session though so we'll see and they could always pull the veto ones out too so they're always up to something out thanks for that yeah Auburn again so I was appointed to the one-year term at Auburn mr. Albright is on three-year term so there's a one-year rotating term that goes between districts
101so I took a tour with dr. Glavin who just started there in August he's the superintendent the man has more energy and positive ideas that I can begin to describe we're walking around and he's pointing out and explaining everything so that was super interesting to me he's also very fiscally I was a fiscally responsible it's always how am I gonna give the best back bang for my buck so that was cool I had my first meeting at the end of beginning of February we had dinner beforehand by the culinary students I am thoroughly impressed for high school of culinary students I've probably had the best dessert I've ever tasted it was tiramisu cheesecake together fantastic along with all the other foods so that's what's coming out of Auburn they do have a restaurant you can
102eat lunch and by reservation only so if you ever want a delicious lunch I recommend checking it out right before I started they announced a partnership with Lake Erie College so they're going to offer CCP classes right on campus dr. Glavin had kind of said charted does CCP really well some of the other districts they serve do not so this gives all of those kids an option to another place to take their CCP classes that's therefore covered before they graduate and get some of those college credits so I believe he said there'll be three classes starting next year the other things they're looking at they're talking about high school expansion programs there's two construction programs and one of them they were looking at Chardon so we'll see if they get that through they're also looking
103and they're really big right now on the middle school expansion so career tech in middle school and that's a big push from the state so we'll see where that goes that's kind of a discurriculum budget in the future so we'll see and then they just passed their application deadline so all of the current sophomores could apply for junior and senior year they usually run on two-year programs they were there for junior and senior year they had 555 applicants from all the districts they serve Chardon being one of them Chardon had 88 of our sophomores apply to go there their top programs not just for sure but for all the applicants were cosmetology welding nursing criminal justice HVAC and an auto technician all of those therefore have wait lists of course they are doubling the cosmetology
104program that was a part of the tour dr. Glenn showed me they had the other room ready to go so that's going to be hopefully over the summer welding they're talking to both Riverside and Perry to get additional expansion there on their campuses but that would helpfully be money from Auburn into their campuses nursing they want to expand by offering a single year so you don't have to do a junior and senior year you could just do it one or the other to get that wait list down and then when he was talking about criminal justice I didn't realize I asked where does the criminal justice associates degree go is it just on the college and he was saying as part of their public safety Academy they're looking to do police in addition to fire
105and EMS but police has a age requirement so they're trying to figure out how to work that together so it's interesting that he has plans for every single one of these top programs to keep our kids so that's pretty cool and then they continue their treasure search so I'm going to stop talking because after here I get to sit on a treasure interviews oh that's right you've got another meeting don't you so they're very busy Dr. Glenn is absolutely amazing but if your kids get a chance to use it I'm already telling my kids they better plan on finding something to do thank you Andrea so that brings us to our student-staff liaison report James is not here tonight so we are going to have AI do our students and apologize in advance I cannot
106get AI to say Chardon correctly okay so you could giggle when you hear it but it's still pretty cool Munson students successfully raised over $2,000 for the veteran food bank this generous contribution demonstrates the students commitment to supporting veterans in their community Chardon middle school students were selected for the OMPA all-state children's course congratulations to these talented students and their instructors on this achievement Chardon middle school's power of the Penn team finished fourth at the district term this strong performance highlights the writing skills of the students the Chardon early learning center hosted a fun and engaging fashion show the event provided an opportunity for the young students to shine I was at that and that boy at the sunglasses was so cute he had me hold his sunglasses way they had a dance party so
107that ends our business or our board reports is there any new business for the board tonight anyone nope so that brings us to our second hearing of the non-agenda items so we have reason to recess to executive session tonight to consider employment or compensation of an employee do we have a motion and a second to recess to executive session I'll second it so there will be no action taken as a result of executive session do we have any questions or comments about it before we recess no then would you please call the roll Clark yes mr. Gallo truck yes mr. Landy yes so thank you everyone for coming tonight we're going to recess to executive session our next regular meeting is March 16th