001Welcome to the April 18, 2025 Indian Hill Board of Education meeting. I'll call the meeting to order. I see some of our braves are here. Can we invite you to lead us to pledge of fusion? You guys want to come forward and use the mic? You can do that. Thank you. 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. Thank you. Could our thank you guys thing, could we just acknowledge why our scouts are here? I think we Mr. Wple, what did you want to say? Uh, yes. They're completing one of the Eagle required badges. It's citizenship in the community. There are four citizenship badges that uh scouts are required to work on and this is
002one that is essential and attending a public forum, public meeting is one of those requirements. So, thanks for being here. Thank you for helping. You're welcome. So, with that, can we have the roll call? Mr. Davis, Mr. Marks here. Mrs. Singh here. Mr. Summerall here. Mr. Tullus here. Mr. Warfl here. All right, with that we would need to adopt the agenda. Can I have the first and second, please? So moved. Second. All in favor? I I Okay, Mr. Davis. Any public commentary today? I have one name on the list. Brian Rivas. I just thought it was a sign in. Signing in. Happens all the time. Happens all the time. My wife did the exact same thing for us. So the first meeting. For the first meeting ever. Yes. So, welcome. Thank you. No public commentary
003for this evening. All right. So, with that, can we have Mr. Kennedy, can you lead us with the correspondence, recognition, and announcements, please? Yes. Welcome everybody. Welcome board members. Uh, tonight we'll start off with our monthly u welcome home video again. Uh, and the stars of our show will be our student ambassadors. So, if you could turn your attention to the screen for a moment. Hi, I'm Kirk Kcki, CEO Superintendent at Indian Hill. Here for another one of our Ambassadors broadcast today and I've got my man Tyler Fitzgerald here from the high school. Tyler, how you doing? I'm doing good. We are in the new alumni suite and as you see behind us, we've got an amazing view of the gymnasium. You just finished basketball season. Tell me a little bit about the season. I
004think the season overall went pretty well. I feel like though we had a lot of lost seniors, I think we still had a a great season. Yeah. Achieving goals, getting better, connecting to our alumni and our community. That's such an important part of Indian Hill. Can you do me a favor and help us send it over to Powers at the primary school? Powers, who are you standing by with today? Thanks, Tyler. Welcome to the primary school. My name is P. I'm in second grade. I'm here with a very special guest, my mom, Megan. Thanks for having me, Powers. Hey, Mom. How did you get into journalism? Thanks for that great question, P. I'm the editor of the Claremont Sun in Claremont County, and I'd love to share with you how I got into journalism. I
005wrote for my college newspaper, and I went on to pursue a career in the media. I actually worked in Hollywood for a little while before eventually becoming a reporter and now the editor of a weekly newspaper here in Ohio. My goal is to help educate and inform our readers about the world around them, especially locally. What do you think about our student ambassador program? I think it's great. You are helping to get people engaged in our Indian Hill schools. And as a member of the Indian Hill Parent Teacher Organization, I especially like how you promote a positive outlook and how you educate and inform the public about all of the great things happening here at Indian Hill Primary School. Go Braves. Now, let's send it to Mr. Johnson in the elementary school. Thanks, P. So
006excited to be on site at the elementary school in the unified arts wing with some very special guests. Introduce yourselves. Hi, Rodrigo, fourth grade. Hi, I'm Kendall and I'm in fourth grade. Hi, I'm Charlotte and I'm in fifth grade. Hi, I'm Hank and I'm in fifth grade. We've had some amazing things going on in our unified arts wing. Tell us more about the fifth grade play PDF. The name of the project we have been doing in UA is named Huee and in English that means play. And what we have been doing is we have been doing board games and making games for indoor recess. And what was your favorite part of the PBL project? My favorite part was designing it because it was a really fun experience. And I think my favorite class was probably
007art to do it because we got to decorate our boxes and we got to add anything extra we needed. I love hearing about awesome PBL projects. They're always taking place at the elementary school and they're awesome. One of the amazing things that our community was invited to recently was our ukulele concert. Can you guys tell us about your experience? I really loved experiencing the ukulele concert. We got to sing all of my favorite songs and also I love the part where we got to dance to Waka Waka. This was a community event. How did it feel to have your family in the audience? Um, it was really fun because we've been practicing for so many months for this moment and our families finally get to see it. Great things are happening each and every day
008at our elementary school. Thank you guys for joining me. Let's send it to the middle school. Thank you, elementary school. I'm Kieran and welcome to the middle school where we just had an OSLN state champion team. Guys, introduce yourself. I'm Alex. I'm Ivy. I'm Annie. And I'm Zoe. What was it like to compete at state? Um, it was very interesting. We got to talk to a lot of people and get more information on what we were actually learning about for our project. So, tell us what was the project? We had to create a product that would improve the sustainability on Star Lab. So, what is Star Lab? Once the International Space Station comes down, Starab will be the new space station that's going up. Are you happy with how you performed? I think it was
009a great experience and I think we all had fun with our project and I think we're all pretty happy with the results. Congratulations to you all. Hi, I'm Adisha. I'm Isa. I'm Gray. I'm Austin. I'm Gigi. We recently wrapped up Irma to the show. Tell me about how it went. So, I played Trunch Bowl and the experience was really fun and exciting and I got to meet lots of new people. I played Bruce and my favorite part of the show was seeing all the special effects come together like the lights and like eating the cake and thanks to our crew that could happen. I do soundboard so I work with mics and my favorite part was probably turning up the reverb for one of the songs. That was really fun. I was middle school backstage
010lead and I really liked performing the show for the audience and seeing it in action. Well guys, the show was awesome. Thank you for talking to me today. Hi, I'm Arya. Hi, I'm Owen. Hi, I'm Mrs. Ball. The middle school recently competed in a Math Counts competition. Miss Ball, tell us more about that. So, Math Counts is a national organization in which they offer a competition series that Indian Hill participates in. This year at our chapter competition, we had three students placed in the top 25. Those students were Owen, Satchet, and Lucas Hugh. We also as a team placed fifth out of 16 students in Southwest Ohio. Owen being one of the top 25 was also ranked high enough to go on to state championship. So Owen, tell us more about what it was like
011at state. So after doing the state competition last year, I felt very confident going into doing the state competition this year and uh I was very proud to represent Indian Hill in at the state competition. That's great. Thanks for talking with me today. Hi, my name is Jean. Hi, I'm Gabby. Hi, I'm Lola. Right now we are filming from the Indian Hill Braves room which is all about wellness and recently Indian Hill Middle School won a grant from the Joe Barrow Foundation. Can you tell us about the grant? Yes, since we won the grant from the Joe Foundation, we had a mental teen wellness fair that went on at Indian Hill Middle School with stations for activities that kids could do during the day. And Lola, what would you say was really important about the
012fair? Um, I say what was really important was probably like us getting like a break from class a little bit and it's mental health is not something that's always focused on and it should be and you just kind of got to have fun for a little bit and relax. And my favorite activity, I think, was the photo booth. And another great thing we got to do during the day was utilize our great leadership skills by helping the kids during their activities and making it fun for everyone. That's all we have for the middle school. Let's send it to the high school. Thanks, guys. Welcome to the high school. I'm JC. I'm Alex Hazner. And I'm Jolene Gennady. Indian Hill High School just got back from competing at the state level for mock trial. Julene, being
013a semi-finalist at the state level is a huge accomplishment. Could you tell us about the process and preparation of getting there? Yeah, so I think that OLRE has a really cool structure. Um, we got the case back in October, I believe, and every competition, districts, regionals, and we even went to um UC Claremont for a tournament. Every competition we could just refine and improve our case. Uh, and I think that we all just kind of motivated each other in the last 2 to 3 weeks. So, I think it was just a really cool experience and a lot of preparation did go into it. And Alex, you've been a part of the program for 3 years and I've competed at the state level several times. Tell me about how the program has changed over the years.
014And what would you like to see in the future? Well, I'd like to see more state titles, of course, and I'd also like to see just more people get involved in it, just more uh diverse groups of people. I think it's definitely one of the best experiences that you can do as a high schooler. You learn to argue. You learn to stand in front of people and speak. And you learn to just think on your feet a lot more critically than other competitions and other events. Thank you guys so much, Jolene and Alex. Congratulations once again. Back to you, Mr. Kcki. Thanks, JC. Tyler, you've worked really hard this quarter and you deserve a break. And I hear you've got some plans coming up for spring break. Tell us about it. Yeah. So, I'm planning
015to head out to California to San Francisco and Los Angeles and while I'm out there, catch a Lakers game. Oh my gosh, that's going to be amazing. I hope you have the best time. Help me send it out to our families for a great spring break. Have a great spring break, Braves. [Applause] So again, I just want to point out in case you lose count, u we've had several ambassador uh projects and our welcome home video theme this year in this particular production which is being led by our campus life coordinator and our CCO Heather Hickden and Latif Johnson. And there are over 25 children involved all presenting and performing and practicing and talking about leadership and activities in the schools. And more important, they're not just doing it on camera. They're doing it off
016camera and they're doing it in the community. And and that helps us spread the word about what goes on at Indian Hill. And really, we want people to know about our programs. And there are so many offerings in this school district. Um it's quite striking when you see something like this um each month here, but on top of that, the students networking about it is really important and the teachers are doing such a great job with them. So uh I hope that you appreciate uh the welcome home video. We're going to celebrate tonight also some uh eighth grade students again who won their OSL uh STEM learning challenge. This is a big accomplishment for our middle school students on the way to working towards a STEM designation in Ohio in the future. Uh Battel uh
017in Columbus, Ohio is a sponsor of this every year. Uh it also lines us up for grants and awards for our students in the future. Uh they had a great competition this year in January. So congratulations to all those middle school students that were involved. Want to celebrate also some of our student artists who recently received uh prestigious awards in the governor's art competition. Seven students from the high school had 13 pieces of their artwork selected. Uh, this is an impressive feat in a competition that saw over 674 entries from Southwest High alone. The selections placed the Braves in the top 18% of those works selected. We also had four high school students receive state level recognition for their artwork, including Vivian Jenkins, Little Artist, Alistair Woos Vivian on the Balcony Alive, Jim Goo's Chinese
018Teapotss, and Janisha Rana's Paravar family received an honorable mention, earning distinction as one of the top 300 pieces in the state of Ohio. Uh, three of the works by Jenkins, Woo, and Goo will be featured in the Governor's Art Competition State Show, which is displayed in the road state office tower from April 21st through May 15th. So, congratulations to all of those brave artists. Like to also congratulate our high school student athletes who uh had a celebration in the gym on Wednesday, April 2nd to commit to academic and athletic careers at the next level. Uh, our signes that day included Marley Katy for soccer at St. Aries, Aiden Faber for soccer at the College of Worster. Elizabeth Fulen for artistic swimming at the Ohio State University. Aiden Rippy football, Ohio Dominican University, and Grant Stupinsky
019for track and field, thrower, discus, shot, weights, Missouri Valley College. Again, I'm always amazed at how many of our student athletes move on to the next level each and every year. Uh I think that makes over 16 again this year and um counting. So, congratulations to all of our brave student athletes and their families. Again, a shout out to our DECA state qualifiers. They'll be competing not just at the state level, but we had 19 international um qualifiers this year. Again, I'm not going to read all the names, but uh 19 international qualifiers. That international competition is coming up. Want to thank their mentor and teacher, Phil say, Susan Shaower, who helps out the program. Um, Phil S was recently recognized for 25 years of service to the DECA organization. We want to applaud him
020for all of his years of service uh with that amazing organization. And uh, last but not least, I want to recognize our athletic director and current head softball coach, Brian Phelps, uh, who I believe is out there somewhere in the world coaching tonight. Um, he was recently named the recipient of the Southwest Ohio Athletic Directors Association Athletic Director of the Year Award. This is presented to individuals who exemplify the highest standards of their profession and who through their influence on the lives of young people under their direction have made significant contributions to their school and community. I know you're all proud but want to make sure that we recognize Brian Phelps tonight. With that, I move on to the superintendent report if that's okay. So, under the report tonight, we have an annual uh first
021reading of school uh fee changes. Um there won't be a vote on this piece tonight. We will do that next month. Uh we have another resolution declaring impracticability of transportation and offering a payment in lie. Uh letter C has several future overnight field trips. Letter D has again some of the supplements required for the science of reading professional development. Uh we have some college credit plus uh attachments under letter E. Uh that's an agreement that we have annually with a uh community college. And then letter F starts our monthly personnel actions, tuition reimbursements, and professional meetings. If there are no specific questions, I would ask you to consider 7 excluding A. So 7B through F9A. At this time, I'll make a motion to approve 7B through F9A. Second, Mr. Marks. Yes, Mr. Summer. Yes, Mr.
022Tullus. Yes, Mr. Warfl. Yes, Mrs. Singh. Yes. Thank you. With that, can we move on to the treasury report? Mr. Davis? Certainly. Under my report for this evening, I uh ask the board to approve the minutes of the March 11th, 2025 regular meeting to approve the financial reports for the month ending March 31st, 2025. Uh we do have a list of change of appropriations items one through nine. The most significant being the change to the general fund. Uh this will put our appropriations in balance with the 5-year forecast as presented in November. Item D is to pro approve the following contract for the Hamilton County ESC. It's our annual service agreement. This is a whole host of items that we have services provided to us uh for students within the district. Uh this is actually
023about a $17,000 savings from last year. So we're excited about uh being able to lower that contract by that amount. Item E is to approve the establishment of the following student activity tournament account. It's the middle schooli unified club. And finally to accept the donations from the IH boosters for the casino night proceeds in the sum of $14,413.91. um if you didn't have a chance to attend that event, that was a very wonderful event put on by the boosters. Um I had the opportunity to attend it. Um a lot of fun and a lot of good times were had. Um we are going to um do that same event next year and hopefully increase the size of it and hopefully be able to raise some more money for the uh boosters for that event. Just
024a clarifying question, Mr. Davis. This money goes towards the uh art department, right? That helps supports it. Uh splits between the two, athletics and arts, right? Sorry. Yeah, athletics and arts. Uh anybody has any other questions? I I just like to make a comment. I was out of town, so couldn't go to the casino night, but I know there was a lot of work, parents, boosters that went into it, staff as well, and just appreciate that. But our boosters um mean a lot to us and so thankful for that that effort. With that, can we have the motion to accept the treasur report? Yeah, I'll move to uh approve 8A through F1. Second. Mr. Davis. Mr. Marks? Yes. Mr. Warfl? Yes. Mr. Summer? Yes. Mr. Tullus? Yes. Mrs. Singh? Yes. Uh Mrs. Singh. Uh item
0259 uh A through Z. This is the second reading of our updated spring slate of policies with Niola. Um had no major questions for clarification. So I'd ask the board to entertain item nine. Can I have the motion to accept the Neola policies as present? I'll make a motion to approve 9 A through Z. Second. Mr. Saw. Yes. Mr. Tullus. Yes. Mr. Warfl. Yes. Mr. Marks. Yes, Mrs. Singh. Yes. So, with that, we move to other businesses by board and administration. President Singh, I'd like to, um, provide a presentation with my colleague, Mr. Davis, this evening to the board, um, to share some information that the board would like to make public. Uh, at this time, um, Mick and I would like to go through the presentation together. And, um, I will, uh, start us
026off and then turn it over. Uh so if you could turn your attention to the slide deck there. Um I'm going to kind of dive right in. Uh board members, as you know, we have been dealing with some changes that have been proposed recently. Uh tonight we're going to talk about the Ohio budget bill and proposals attached to it known as House Bill 96. Um this has been in the news a little bit. And I just want to start by saying uh this is it's rare for us to do a presentation like this at an Indian Hill board meeting and for us to share publicly the board's stance on proposed legislation. However, this is one of the largest and most significant proposals to change school budgeting since 1976. We think it's very important that our
027community is aware of the proposed legislation. Um and so we're going to talk about the impact on our budget if if any of these proposals were passed into law tonight for a few minutes. So every year the state approves a bianial budget. This is the year that our next bianial budget comes due. Uh legislators are working on it now. Uh there is a general consensus that legislators would love to be able to provide some property tax relief. We've been hearing that for a couple of years. Uh the proposal attached to the current bienial budget bill has proposed a 25% roll back amendment attached to this house bill 96. Actually they voted it out of the house committee today and amended it to a 30% threshold roll back. Um now it will move to the senate
028where they will continue to talk about the structure of this state budget bill and any proposed amendments. This would structurally change how voted millig school budgets works annually for us if it were passed. And again, it would be a legal overhaul to voted um budgets in the state of Ohio for public schools. It's really a major change in the way that legislators are trying to propose dealing with school budgets. And so that's why we're talking about this tonight. Mick, if you'd go on to the next, please. So, there are a number of things included in this roll back proposal. Um, the most important I think we're going to talk about with some examples tonight, but as you know, school districts do what are called five-year forecasts by law twice a year. This would effectively change
029uh the way that we have to prepare, communicate, account for, and analyze our budget and really shorten and tighten the cycle in many ways. But the practical impact of the law is we would lose money. Uh if we can go on to the next slide, this would be the immediate impact to our budget, which I'll turn over here now to Mick uh in a moment, but um you can see with the numbers there, uh a $3.1 million revenue loss. You might say, well, what does that mean? And Mick is going to show us a little bit of this. Um, but what I would like to point out at the start here, and I think we'll come back to at the end, is, you know, many of you remember in 2021, we had a historic bond
030and levy approved by our public. This proposed legislation would effectively wipe out that voted millage, things that taxpayers voted to approve. And I think that's a significant concept for us to really make sure people are aware of. So, turn it over to Mick for a few minutes. So, what the idea that there's a couple of key um couple of key words we're going to use here. We talk about revenue and expenditures. We all know that's the money we bring in. The expenditures are the money we spend on items from uh staff all the way through transportation and everything in between. And then we'll talk about a surplus and a deficit, which is just simply our expenditures subtracted from our revenue. And then we talk about a term that's that's really being uh presented in the
031house state house of representatives right now. It's called carryover. And what the carryover is essentially the the the school's savings account. If you think of it in terms of your own home finance, this is the money that allows us to do um things like expensive projects that we may not put in our normal normal budget over a year. It allows us to account for any deficits that we might run uh based on um activities that we do throughout the year. Uh really our safety net in order to maintain uh safe finances throughout any type of any type of school year and any type of 5-year forecast. So the numbers we're going to look at tonight are from my November 24 2024 5-year forecast and they're all estimated. So what we look at first is school
032year 2025. We look at revenue. It's approximately 47 a.5 million. Expenditure is 47 a.5 million. It gives us a surplus deficit of breaking even. The estimated carryover is approximately $14.9 million at the end of school year 2025. What the state proposes and since these like which Mr. Kcki mentioned, they changed that number from 25% to 30% late in the afternoon. Um the 5% in my mind is really irrelevant. Um this really boils down to more of what the process is going to be and what the what the state would like to do moving forward. So again we look at school year 2025. We multiply the expenditures by 25% which is their proposal. They want to take your expenditures at the end of school year 2025 would be multiplied by 30% now. But for the terms
033of this example, that would equal 1.9 million would be 25% of our expenditures. What they want to do is make our carryover in every other school district in the state of Ohio. The carryover balanced to what 25% of your of your expenditures are at the end of the year. For us, that would equal between three million and $3.1 million. Now, what do they want to do with that 3.1 million, 3 million, 3.0 million or 3.1 million? They want to take our property tax, which are locally taxed here in Indian Hill, and the same for every other district in the state of Ohio, and they want to roll those back in a in a one-time fashion, and take that, wipe out that 3.0 0 million the 3.1 million in one year. What that would do for
034the those proposed changes for school year 2026 would decrease our revenue by $3.5 million. So that is just the property tax plus we also have what's called a tiff that's based on uh property tax values as well. We would lose another half million dollars there. I have not calculated in potential uh roll back funding that we get from the state. That could be an additional loss. But just calculating what we would lose in property taxes and tiff, that would be about $3.5 million. Okay. That would then take our surplus surplus budget deficit from a deficit of 1.2 million to a deficit of $4.7 million. The scary part for our district in any of this, in addition to losing that amount of money, if you look at that estimated carryover at the end of school year
0352026, I estimated it at 13.7 million. With all of these changes that the that the House of Representatives proposes, we would be down to $9 million at the end of June. So, when we did the historic levy back in 2021, we were at a we were at a cash balance, a carryover amount of approximately $14 million. And we proposed to our public that we didn't want to see our estimated carryover get much below that because of the way the district runs and the way we need to have some form of savings out there in order to have the for those unexpected expenses. In addition, our cash flow doesn't run specifically to June 30th. Our cash flow goes up and down throughout the school year. This is our 2025 district cash flow so far. As you
036can see, through December and January, we were actually down below that 14.9 million for both of those months. The reason this is important is because our property taxes come in start to come in for the year around January 15th and trickle in throughout the rest of that quarter. A more a more glowing example was our 2024 district cash flow which those tax bills went out late in January. We did not receive the the the uh revenue from those for quite some time. we were actually down at to $10.5 million at the end of January and the same in March we were at 10.7. So as as as those those revenues slow during January we begin to get very low in cash balance. So if you think back to the example I gave you where we
037have an estimated carryover of 9 million, we could see numbers as low as 4 million 5 million in cash during those periods of low cash cash flow during January. So that's how this is very significant to the district. Are there any questions about the uh the slides I presented? So Kirk, you want to Yeah. So I'll just jump back in here for a minute. Did you have a question? I Okay. So one of the things about the carryover and the cash balance is is there in the first talking point that our board has made is this does not just reflect one fiscal year of management. This cash balance reflects the entire history of our district district strategic leadership and decision-m over decades. And sometimes people like to take a snapshot of a cash balance of
038a school district and act like it's a checkbook or it's one board's piggy bank. That is not the case at all. This represents the fiscal stewardship of the Indian Hill Board of Education throughout decades. And your cash balance evolves and changes and it es and flows over time based on those decisions. Uh, this district has a proud history of conservative fiscal stewardship that has made it a flagship school district for public schools in Ohio. We need to remember that and our story is unique to every other school district in the state of Ohio. This plan, as Mick has showed you with an example, only creates a temporary relief for one year for taxpayers. That is not really the intent of the proposed legislation. um and it's not the real impact on school budgeting. Um the
039roll back and how we have to factor in makes it nearly impossible and very complex for us to uh propose aspirational projects, even quick fixes for things like roofs in this school district when we don't know what our budget might look like in six months. Um taxpayers would not receive a uniform roll back across the state of Ohio. um districts with larger carryover would be subjected to larger roll backs and of course districts with low carryover would avoid roll backs. So this is not a uniform policy that affects everybody the same way. Go move on to the next piece here. Um, this creates a complex new set of rules that really shorten the cycle for how we do our inputs and outputs in the district and and really from my viewpoint, how a board of
040education communicates to its community about fiscal health. That is is extremely important for everybody else who works in different industries in the state of Ohio to understand that I think our community understands. Um, this plan penalizes a district for implementing costs savings strategies. That's completely counterintuitive to what we should be doing as public officials um and administrators and school districts. And and let me give you a quick example of what those two bullet point mean two bullet points mean. So if we looked at that $3 million and we said we want to figure out a way to reduce that amount of deficit and that that equates to approximately 25 teachers. Um, or you could think of it in terms of how much transportation we would have to start cutting, things like that. Now, we don't
041want to do that. But if you thought of it in terms of $3 million, if we actually made those cuts, we would be penalized the following year because our expenditures would go down and then become lower to multiply that base of 30% against. So, we're actually getting penalized for good stewardship of our tax dollars. So there's a lot of of of problems with the proposal the way it's laid out. You want to go on to the next piece here? So um the the nature of levies and the cyclical nature of levies is something that our our board and our community again have avoided. We rarely have been on the ballot for levies that affect the budget over the past. Um, I can't even predict how this would change that except that I know it would
042be um, a really negative change for us in terms of how we would have to communicate about our cash reserves and our budget moving forward. Um, and the last point I guess I would make before we kind of get to our action steps and what we've done here is this is not a really a proposal about the state budget in and of itself. I want to reiterate that these are proposed amendments to add to the state bienial budget. That is very rare. So what the legislators are trying to do is add proposed amendments to a typical bienial budget bill at the last minute. These things may be worth debate and dialogue. they require much more research and time uh to talk through and and I think citizen input uh before these types of decisions should
043be made um with haste. You want to go to just a couple couple of quick points I'd like to make before we move on to action steps. So the district over the last one to five years has made several financial decisions based on the way our outlook is or was for a different term. And you know those are hard to look back and say were those the right decision when when the the outcomes keep getting moved on us. So you know it's it's hard for us to come up with our with our budgets and it's hard to us for us to plan over those five years and think you know what would we have done differently knowing we were going to lose $3 million in 2026. The second part of that is not the not
044the past but the future. you know, how do we plan moving forward when we couldn't even think of how much we need for a levy because if we went over back over our 30% it would get we would get stripped down again in our roll back from our property taxes. So, there's a lot of things that are problematic for this that are really hard for for me to communicate and to make clear just how difficult this will be for school finances moving forward. Well, I'd like to make a comment because I know I think the ask is going to be for people to reach out to the legislators. I think, you know, the fundamental two fundamental things I think they're important and I I saw it on one of the slides, but it wasn't mentioned.
045You know, one of the things that I think we collectively as a board and as leadership try to maintain a AAA rating so that we have the best credit. And part of that formula is you have to have good cash reserves, right? So, that's one thing that's really critical. I think the second thing is, you know, the way school finance works is you're essentially building up your bank account, right? Because our revenues do not really go up because you got the inside and outside millillage, right? As a person, as an individual taxpayer, as my property tax goes up, we see a bigger bill. But what folks don't realize is that doesn't mostly come to the school. It goes to the Hamilton County Parks. It goes to jobs and family services. there's all these other people
046that are getting that extra money but not the schools. So, we then have to say we're going to have a rainy day account, right? And as we give teachers raises, which they deserve, our payroll goes up, our health insurance costs go up, the cost of fuel goes up, we have to replace school buses with tires, all those things happen. And so, what happens is initially, right, we've got this surplus, but then eventually we go into deficit spending and we spend that down over a long period of time. So it it erodess the whole premise of how schools are currently funded in terms of taking away the ability to have the rainy day fund, but it gives us no future opportunity for more revenue. Um I mean it would be this would be absolutely peril for
047public schools. Um so I mean it's a very very serious issue um that we have to really have the community be part of. So, um, the our board members have taken a couple of of serious action steps along with Mr. Davis and myself. Um, we shared a letter outlining the rationale and the points you've seen in this presentation tonight. We've made them very public to every Ohio legislator and all of their aids in the last week. Um, we have also asked our state associations and the representatives there with their advocacy arms to relay our concerns directly to the legislators uh, in both the House and the Senate. This bill is now moving to the Senate. there will be hearings and debate in the Senate uh before it is put to question and before it would
048ever be sent to the governor. So, we still have some time. We uh wanted to do this presentation tonight to make sure that there was some awareness and that people can publicly see uh what the talking points in the letter were and how we outline that. Um so that um people understand uh more than anything um this is a timely and and very um uh important topic to be aware of and to make sure people have questions that they can check out the presentation letter and feel free to ask uh as we move forward. Mick, could you go to the next piece, please? So, um, again, I just want to reiterate as we finish up here, uh, we've talked with the board about this. The board has shared in the letter, every Ohio school district
049is unique. And while it's great to want to have process and systems in place that impact schools, our cash balance and our carryover reflects our history only. U, everybody's is different and we wish the best for all students in the state of Ohio. this is bad fiscal policy that hurts students immediately. Uh we need to all be aware that's a fact if this happens. Um to classify or quant quantify the long-term impact of these changes uh I think Mr. Davis has said very clearly is a very complex thing with a new set of rules that I'm not sure I understand. And um our board of education uh is vehemently opposed to this and we have said so publicly and we want to make sure that everybody is aware of that. Um any type of amendment
050to the Ohio bienial budget should be discussed and and as a set uh or stand aside bill uh and proposed on its own merits and and then it could be debated by anybody. So I want to thank the board um for allowing us to kind of review all this publicly and share this. I want to thank you for your work and effort on the letter. Um the advocacy word has gotten out and also um want to make sure that our community that's listening tonight or that sees this knows this will be on our website. They'll have ability to access it and we will provide updates and we're going to we're going to monitor what happens in the Senate and uh we'll be getting back to you with any updates we hear. Just wanted to sorry
051um add a few points of that and thanks Mick and Kirk for for going through this presentation. Um, since we have some scouts here seeking merit badges and participating in the public process, uh, oftent times it's good to learn how to not do certain things and if you ever decide to be a state legislature and you want to pass laws, uh, this is a classic example of how not to do something. Um, what we're seeing is a reaction to property values going up and people complaining about the taxes they pay. Fair enough. They don't want to pay higher taxes. Nobody does. What's happened though is they have found a proposed solution and are pushing it through without really studying and thinking through what are the practical real world impacts of that decision. Um we as
052a school board and as a school district make it a point to stay out of the political fray. Um this is an a-olitical board. We do not run as Republicans or Democrats or any other party. And what has happened here is this idea of let me reduce somebody's property taxes has manifested itself into a lastminute budget bill amendment um with different consequences for different school districts. My primary focus is this school district and what I can tell you is this will be devastating to us in the short term and incredibly challenging and potentially devastating to us in the long term. We make a lot of decisions based on mixed five-year forecast and what we think our budget will sustain. Some recent examples include the building we're sitting in, the primary school editions, the elementary school
053editions, the Sue Harter Performing Arts Center, the fields out there, the entrepreneurship center, the arts conservatory, studying what to do with our expanding enrollment, particularly in the lower levels at the primary school, a potential full day kindergarten, a potential preschool offerings. And we can't make those decisions if we can't rationally and reasonably predict what our revenues will be. Uh schools are unique in the sense that they have very little control over their revenue. Our particular school has virtually no control over our revenue. About 90 to 93% of our revenue comes from a real estate tax or a tip or a tax equivalent. And it's hard enough to rely just on the changing values to forecast that. But at least that we can have some sense of an idea of what's going to happen. We had
054an ideas our revenue would go up somewhat based on increasing property values. But when our community was asked to vote for an operating levy which funds every day expense, our teachers, our administrators, our bus drivers, everybody, our coaches, we had a very similar cash balance to where we are today. And what the state legislature in Ohio is or in Columbus is proposing is essentially usurp the will of our voters to say we want to continue to fund our school at the levels we're funding it so we have the best paid teachers so we have the best paid administrators so we have the best programming possible and they're taking that away from us a decision we made as a community to support our school and I don't really care what the policy behind the issue to
055do it this way without thought without debate without understanding the consequencees of it to our school district and to others out there is just irresponsible. Um the idea of lowering property values and even the idea of saying a school district should only have so much of its budget as a cash reserve, that's a fair debate and we can have that debate. We can have that discussion about what the amount is. But to do it last minute, to do it in this manner is simply irresponsible. Um and it's going to pose significant challenges to our school district and others. So the question of what can you do? Um, this is the time to speak up. Call your legislator, call your senator, call your representative, call any group you can. Express to the people who vote on
056this to say we are opposed to this method of governing. That this debate, the discussion of what should schools reserve in cash versus what they should ask the taxpayers to pay for, that's a fair debate. But doing it now in a last minute effort is not the way to do it. Um, so like I said, we this is rare for us to get involved in some kind of pending legislation. We don't like to do it. We don't do it lightly. We're doing this without taking a position one way or another as to what is the right amount of money a school district should reserve and should hold back. We do this simply as saying this is not the way to manage budgets. It's very hard to manage our expenses and our revenue on a good
057day. Uh particularly on the revenue side when we have no control over at least we can kind of control expenses but this just throws a gigantic um wrench in the operations and is going to lead to some difficult decisions. So, call your state representative, call your senator, call your friends, tell them to do the same thing. Um, if you need more service hours, boy, Scott's push, let's let's push it this way. Uh, and do everything you can to not let um an irresponsible policy decision impact us. Very well said. So this is something important that we all are going to continue to monitor it and see how it moves and we will keep updating you guys. So with that I think we have our scouts here so just want to say thank you. I know
058it's a weekday and it is not easy for you to come and sit through a meeting that doesn't make sense in so many different ways. So we really appreciate you guys coming here and sitting through all the way till the end. So, any questions about the exciting school board you expect to observe? I would just add, yeah, got a question. What's your name? John. John. Why did newspapers write an article about I don't know. That's a great question. Perhaps they should be. Excellent question. And the question, if you you didn't hear it, is why isn't the Hill newspaper writing articles about the schoolboard meetings and the topics? To um defend some of our high school students who aren't here tonight, I do know that they typically will write some summary articles, but maybe if you
059don't see them all the time, right? It depends what month. Um, but they only put so many issues out a year, but we'll remind them. Thank you. Great question. Maybe you should be on the newspaper when you get there. Yeah. So, I would just say I know there's a few Eagle Scouts on the board and uh I see a looks like a life life rank out there and some others. I would just encourage you all to continue through um this journey. Um I think if you can achieve your Eagle Scout, I think it will serve you well in life um with the different lessons you learn, the skills you pick up. And so we're happy that you're here and we seem to have a lot of um folks from the Boy Scouts different times and
060we appreciate you guys doing it. If you're wondering who the Eagle Scouts are up here, again, we thank you your your presence here. And there is one of the other requirements which is is there a topic of debate or discussion? And certainly I think we've uh voiced that pretty clearly this evening and and that opportunity that extend extends beyond the people that are here in this room and hopefully those that are watching or listening uh even at a later cast. U this is an urgent matter and it is something that I think bear phrased it very eloquently but we as a board uniformly um are taking up um in in advocacy against uh this this particular action. So thank you. Any other questions comments? No. So with that, can I have the motion to adjourn
061the meeting? So move. Second. All in favor? I I. All right. Good evening everybody. Thanks everybody. Exclusive coverage on the Indian Hill Television Network has been a copyrighted presentation of the Indian Hill High School video department.