001[Music] oh my okay hmm uh i would like to call to order the may 24th 2021 regular board meeting of the stone monroe falls city school district board of education at 7 pm roll call please jason whitaker here jerry bettio here nancy brown here lisa johnson-bowers here jessica wright here if you all please stand for the [Music] pledge one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we need to have a motion to amend tonight's agenda we need to add the five-year forecast to treasurer's new business as item num item b do i have a motion please so moved second any discussion okay roll call please whitaker aye video aye brown hi johnson bowers aye right aye thank you okay moving on to the adoption of tonight's agenda may have a
002motion to adopt the undead agenda so moved second any discussion hey roll call please whitaker aye video hi brown aye johnson bowers aye right aye okay so the first item on our agenda is a presentation regarding the district's dei committee i'm going to turn it over to ms collier and ms kozmak for that good evening my name is aisha collier and i'm the dei chair recently this year i had the privilege of rolling out the work k-12 for dei as well as attending cornell university to get my diversity and inclusion certificate and i did the same i'm tracy cosmeck i'm the principal at riverview and a co-chair of the dei committee and was greatly i learned a lot through doing the certificate program at cornell here we go so we wanted to kind of repurpose
003why dei the purpose of the dei committee is to encourage diversity achieve equity and foster inclusion for all members of the stone monroe falls city school district community regardless of race color and century national or ethnic origin sex sexual orientation gender identity marital status pregnancy religion ability age genetic information veteran status employment status socioeconomic status or immigration status we wanted to do a quick reminder about the definitions that we've been operating from diversity referring to all the differences that exist in a community equity acknowledging the different experiences that people have based on social identities and the cultural competency that results in an inclusive experience inclusion referencing the experiences that people have around the differences and cultural competency referencing the skills that allow us to facilitate experiences and inclusion from a context of difference so i'm
004going to talk a little bit about the book study update our initial book was called courageous conversations about race and it was chosen because it was written for educators addressed relevant aspects of diversity and discussed raising student achievement which was obviously important to us the book provided several supports for having courageous conversations that support all dei work and will continue to frame many of our conversations the points on this screen are one example and the next slide shows this compass which was another support that scaffold difficult and courageous conversations so considering where your opinions originate helped us to clarify thinking and allow for greater understanding from listeners who are also able to use the compass to help process ideas the supports that the book study put in place for us allow us to develop a
005sense of belonging and psychological safety while building relationships so that we can continue to foster diversity equity and inclusion in our school district we recently put a survey out to all who were a part of the book study so that included the people at buildings administrators the dei executive board and you can see that all of the responses were pretty positive of the people who responded some of the big ahas that were mentioned were understanding that i have race knowing that i have been unintentionally creating bias understanding that race affects 100 of my life examining my own class and privilege and understanding that diversity should be celebrated so we've been really pleased with the positive feedback from the participating staff members and looking forward to more learning together which brings us into the panorama data
006so we had a panorama survey that we gave all students and staff in october of 2020 and then we did a second round of surveys to have some comparison with our data points um in april of 2021. so just recently last month we kind of wrapped that survey process up and our intention is to move forward with that into next year so here are some of the data comparisons that we had this data set captures the comparison between the surveys from october and april like i just said you can see that we have made positive growth in the areas of cultural awareness and diversity and inclusion our improvement areas are in grades 11th and 12th as well as our english language learner and female students we also have shown some growth in one of our
007subgroups but we still have some disparities in our african-american data as well as our multi-racial data in the area of diversity and inclusion so when we examine that with our sel data comparison you can see that we have seen significant growth in the areas of expectations sense of belonging and student-teacher relationships areas that we did not see growth will become our areas of focus for the 2021-22 school year many questions in this survey are centered around the student's classroom feelings about being at school and encouragement during school the other component includes your behavior feelings in general and their personal feelings and obtaining help from other people in the six through twelfth data set um we have some dips we kind of acknowledge the fact that at k-6 we brought our students back sooner from hybrid
008versus seven through 12. um so we wanted to kind of acknowledge that as probably one of the reasons for the dips we also wanted to kind of identify that the bulldogs taking action will be able to be uh use a root cause analysis moving forward into next year to determine their areas of focus and our bulldogs taking action teams consist of administrators at the high school as well as the middle school as well as students there are several students on the committee as well as teachers and school counselors because we want our students to have voice in their educational process and this is the same data comparison set for african americans multi-racial and our caucasian students as well so how does that stack up nationally it's always interesting to see how data relates from one
009data point to another but it's even more advantageous to see how that ranks us nationally and what tiers or quartiles that puts us in so as you can see third through fifth grade there's a lot of growth there's a lot of high favorability percentages in a lot of areas we're in the 60th percentile or higher average percentiles are around 50 um and so if you look we only have um one or two areas at third through fifth grade where we're showing kind of some disparities in grades 6-12 there's high favorability there is growth being shown however when we stack up nationally we have some areas of focus that we need to focus on one of them especially is a sense of belonging so tracy what are the next steps we're currently looking at the specifics
010um as it relates to professional development and how that will look next year one of the things we know is going to happen some of the class buildings are going to continue book studies based on courageous conversations for people who didn't do that this year and i think that's a good thing to help everyone have the same kind of language and understand the supports that are in place for difficult conversations we're going to move forward with some other book studies for people who have already completed that one and you can follow all of our work on the dei page of our website and that's the website is smfcsd.org and then you can find the dei tab located under departments and you can see pictures of executive board members so you can put some names and
011faces together there are tabs to view the mission and vision subcommittee action plans meeting notes dei events general assembly members and additional resources and we hope that you'll not only follow the work but that you might be willing to join us hi with that being said um this is the portion where i would like to address some concerns that kind of came up so if you look at our subcommittee action plans we have our members that are listed on those subcommittees as well as our mission statement where it says chalk talk feedback there's been questions around who wrote this and where this is coming from this is our level of transparency that we wanted to promote from our posture of listening session that we held back in june of last year and so this information
012was garnered from community members as well as some board members as well as some parents and students and so in an effort to remain transparency because that is part of our vision and mission um we wanted to continue to capture that but we feel as though it may have created some confusion because it could be misconstrued as everything that's here um is something that we wrote and um we wanted to remain transparent and consistent and have that feedback so that feedback is there and at the forefront of when we're changing our action steps and when we're adjusting our plan so oops closing words in closing i would like to address some community concerns that have come up around diversity equity inclusion some community members have expressed concerns about critical race theory in our dei work
013we have no plans on introducing critical race theory to students or aligning curriculum to critical race theory we use the ohio department of education standards when aligning curriculum we are educators in the classroom and not advocates for specific concepts as part of our job we have an obligation to be in tune to all perspectives and know about all perspectives as part of our dei work we believe that inclusion is a basic human right it is important that we are not just invited to the party but we're asked to dance at the party a bulk of our work this school year has been around representation and student voice if you are a student in our school district you should be represented in books and resources as well as have a voice our work with dei is
014about coming together as a community of allies to support our students it doesn't matter your political views race gender or religion everyone in our community deserves to feel included accepted respected and valued our panorama survey data shows that students are struggling with emotional regulation and sense of belonging it is imperative that we are building relationships with all students in our school district and promoting a sense of belonging as well as addressing disparities and concerns with any population that does not feel accepted respected and valued social and emotional learning is a form of psychological safety when students feel accepted respected and valued in a classroom school and community they are more engaged in the education process when students experience psychological safety they thrive in achievement and show higher amounts of growth and project progress when our
015students are hurting so bad that they want to harm themselves or even in their life it is important that we as adults rally together to support our students and move our political beliefs and differences of opinion to the side in order to support our students it is my belief we are all here at this board of education meeting tonight to do what is best for our students and continue to put the needs of our students first we can support our students by coming together as allies for their social and emotional learning thank you any comments to both of you thank you for the hard work you've done all year and i also want to say thank you for reaching out and giving each of us the opportunity to meet with you one-on-one that was time
016very well spent and i i enjoyed the chance just to talk frankly because it was just the three of us and thank you very much for that time as well it it's unfortunate that a lot of these concepts get tied up in the adult world and and and the bigger world i think at the end of the day some of this highlights that even though there's some the era that we're living in in some ways is a great time to be a kid you have access to all kinds of information that you never had before you can get it faster but then it's not a great time to be a kid you know if you're getting bullied you know when i was in school you got you when you went home they couldn't get to
017you anymore um they couldn't text you they couldn't you know use instagram or facebook or any of the other social media platforms that i'm too old to use they couldn't get to you that way and now they can and so you know from from one board member's perspective i guess for me it doesn't i'm not looking at the it's not for me to say make a judgment as to why they're hurting or the legitimacy of why they're hurting or argue with them about why they're hurting or why they should or shouldn't be hurting at the end of the day they are hurting and you know we had an issue last year where we had i don't know how many recent graduates had taken their lives attempted to take their lives um and that was not
018okay and i think our community has done a good job of rallying around that you can't reach everyone all the time with everything but i think this is an important step in many respects to just account for the way that that people exist in the world and there are things about themselves that they can't change there are things about themselves that that get them you know make make life harder because of the people around them and so i think it's important that the district continue to focus on student wellness focus on you know making everyone feel that they belong and whether it's this issue or any other issue um you know at the end of the day that sometimes that's that's enough to push someone over the edge and so you know i think the
019the work is is worthwhile i just wanted to echo ms brown and just say thank you for keeping the lines of communication open and being very honest about everything that you're doing with the board there are many districts throughout ohio that are having book clubs changing kind of the context of what they're studying making sure the books are aligned but your committee is one of the few committees that i've talked to heard about in the state of ohio that is taking a physical stand and developing the curriculum and the pieces that you've just explained and even though it just seems like data and like plus one or you know whatever they're green right it's a significant piece to our district and it says a tremendous uh thing about mr bratton uh that he has started
020this committee uh these two ladies are spearheading it and i look forward to the day when this concept is not a committee concept that it's just the way we are every day every student in every classroom is reached and it's not something that is just mentioned at a board of education meeting it is just the way we are in every room uh and that's my vision for what you're doing so as i told you in the email i i really appreciate the work that you're doing and the social emotional learning was not highlighted but it's the effect of all the work that you're doing you didn't mention it in every bulletin bullet point that you had but as you do your work and as people become aware and they learn and you know the social
021emotional learning is what's going to be the effect and that's nothing but a win appreciate it okay any other comments on the presentation yeah i just um i hope we as a board it's that we don't get comfortable in the fact that there's a committee that the work is really all of ours to do not just the committees that it's it's just the fact that the committee was formed doesn't mean that there isn't work for all of us to be doing and i hope that we take that responsibility seriously and i would even suggest that dei should be a part of every meeting agenda in some form not necessarily discussing every bullet point that you raised here but something about it should be discussed at every board meeting that we're keeping on on top of
022how are we in our hiring numbers are we hiring diverse candidates are we actively seeking diverse candidates what have we done to do that what books were added to the curriculum just something that in every meeting we're discussing this and coming up with problems or not i don't want to say coming up with problems but looking at problems and addressing them and meeting them head on and realizing as a district this is our responsibility not the committees i'm very concerned because last week started to learn that there are a number of families who are pulling their black students from our district because they don't feel safe here not in a sense of physically threatened but that they're subject to racism and racism is far more than somebody hurling the n-word at them that there's the
023underlying things that just are happening that they don't feel protected from and i i hope that we take that seriously and really look at it and work to work around that work against that and prevent that and truly live up to this that they feel safe that they feel welcome they feel included that they are invited to dance that they are equal as any student should be so thank you i i have a little bit different outlook on this i don't think that it should be the total school's responsibility unless there's a problem which arises with bullying or any act of violence with one student against another unfortunately it's society's problem today look at the world around you look at what's happening and look at what people are getting away with um i feel that
024it's not our job entirely to take care of this situation it belongs at first at home the way students are taught to respect other people to respect other issues and give them their own opinion but not to take it out on somebody else and although this is a maybe a start but i'm concerned about this critical racial theory it's getting to be a thing that you know oh you're a white supremacist you're a white racist you're this and that because we don't you know we have all the authority we are the best that there is and people of color don't necessarily count that's truly wrong and i believe the american people i would say 99.9 of them are good people that respect the other person so um i guess i could go on but i
025think i've said enough please if you're a parent teach your kids respect teach them to be proud that they're americans and that get an education to make something of themselves thank you any further comments i just want to add in i i'm part of a dei committee and not once has the phrase critical race theory ever been mentioned in a committee meeting ever the first time i heard it was in when i met indep individually with mrs collier and mrs cosmack and it was near the end of our discussion and we talked about what obstacles there are to making things happen and she and mrs collier made the comment to me you will start hearing the phrase critical race theory and that was the first time i'd ever heard it and i did do a
026little bit of research on it just to understand what it is but i thought i'm not going to try to understand this because this isn't this isn't where we are this isn't what we're dealing with so i have i have not experienced that being part of the work of the dei committee in any way shape or form so i just wanted to try to clarify that well i didn't mean to say that that's what's happening here but i've been listening to the news and there are different school systems in different states that are adopting this and i'm i'm afraid that i just don't want it happening here fortunately i think i believe mrs collier stated quite clearly that that is not the intent for stowe schools so okay any further comments you move on with
027the agenda okay the next item on our agenda are recognitions i'm going to turn it over to mr bratton at this time i would like to start off tonight with recognizing the certified and classified employees who will be retiring at the end of the school year certified employees james brown science teacher at kempton will be retiring 31 years of service leslie detweiler first grade teacher at highland with 36 years of service janine gurnack french teacher at the high school with nine years of service christina heiner a language arts teacher at kempton with 27.5 years of service sandra kane browse intervention specialist at the high school with 21 years of service john lacoste principal indian trail with 17 years of service jennifer maddox third grade teacher at woodland with 23 years of service lisa miles business
028teacher at the high school with 20 years of service kim nixon fourth grade teacher at riverview with 32 years of service andrea shepas art teacher at lakeview with 36 years of service margie smith social studies teacher at the high school with 24 years of service monica smilenski first grade teacher at indian trail with 34 years of service and margie wetzel sixth grade teacher at lakeview with 34 years of service classified employees cheryl crabtree monitored the high school with 24 years of service rhonda holland secretary of indian trail with 19 years of service brian kazan bus driver with nine years of service patricia schumann noontime assistant at lakeview with 25 years of service diane shaheen administrative assistant to the treasurer with 20 years of service and jill shafer educational assistant at fish creek with 27 27
029years of service we want to thank all of our classified and certified retirees and thank them for their service and just to let the board know we will be doing a retiree parade again like we did last year on the 8th 9th and 10th anybody would like to join us we're going to be doing it from about eight to noon on those three days we had to split it up over three days because there are so many but we will be doing that and it was a big hit with the teachers last year and the classified so we'll be doing that again just contact me and i'll let you know we'll get you a route and you can join us all right second thing is every year i get the opportunity to do a recognition
030of ohio school board association business honor roll for 2021 and i have the opportunity to recognize retail businesses that work with the district this year i'm happy to announce the following businesses were chosen for the osba business honor roll meijer dairy queen grill and chill bellacinos young screen printing and the tavern of stowe these businesses have done an awful lot for our district and continue to do so and we really thank them for all that they've done for our kids and for us and in service to our district thank you mr bretton i appreciate you recognizing all these individuals and businesses but the individuals in particular who have dedicated so much of their lives to this district and i think made a made a big difference in the lives of our kids so anyhow it's
031very very hard to replace those years it's exciting for those who are retiring and i will tell you personally you are not retiring you know you are switching to something else you'll find that out quick but it's very hard to replace you the the years of experience that you have you know you can't bottle it up so good luck anyone else okay we are going to move on to the next item on our agenda yeah i didn't miss anything uh comments from the audience citizens have an opportunity to bring their concerns before the board of education all comments should be directed to the board individuals presenting concerns and or questions to the board may not receive complete answers this evening the board will study and consider your concern and will either have a board member
032or a central office administrator contact you as soon as the information you require is available comments will be limited to no longer than three minutes i believe we have oh yeah if anybody has a comment they'd like to share there's a microphone down here is it on okay hi i'm monica robinson and i am the mother of the proud mom of a graduate of 2021 i want to first thank you guys i was one of the biggest critics of what we were going to do for graduation and i loved it i don't know that i ever want to go back to anything else so thank you second i want to thank aisha and tracy for the work they've done this past year i've been part of the dei committee and i am incredibly grateful jerry
033i'm miss betio i'm speaking i'd like you to listen i am the mother of two black sons in this district we are one of the families that are removing our sons because we do not feel they are safe here we are also checking about leaving the city because of the safety that my boys do not feel in this state in the city i would like to know what your definition of critical race theory is i will be sending you an email and i'd like to hear please direct your comments to the entire board okay i'm sorry critical race theory is not what we've been studying as i've been part of this it's not but my boys do not feel represented in this district and that is a shame that's a shame but aisha and tracy
034have worked very very hard and i'm thankful for the board and their support where it has been supported so thank you would anybody else and i'm sorry i think i forgot to mention if you could please give us your name and your address for the record hi my name is debbie schenker i live at 3017 saybrook boulevard in stowe and i'm coming here to speak about the dei efforts i very much appreciate the district putting this into place i am a mother of two recent graduates one four years ago and one two years ago and what i've come to learn in my personal journey of being an active anti-racist is that my children and all children in this district are really critically harmed because of the lack of diversity and the lack of recognition of
035diversity in our community and the value of that and they have been harmed because they have not been exposed to the richness of life that comes when you have such great diversity and both my children left the district in middle school years one to study at the akron's magnet school of the arts and one to study online and both returned to the district and were greatly improved for their experience of diversity in those other environments and i would really like to see all children in our district have that same opportunity i think there is no better example of the education that needs to continue around this issue than some of the perspective we heard from the board members particularly at the end there is a lot of misunderstanding about our participation in a greater society
036as white individuals and this is something that i am learning day by day myself personally and belatedly unfortunately talking to my children about but it's never too late and we really need to remember that our children greatly benefit from a more diverse educational and sociological environment thank you any other comments hello uh my name is steve solik i just have a few questions i was looking over your curriculum on the one to three year plan mr sullivan if you could give us your address i'd rather not give my address that's uh it's the only way we can get back to you with your information my information so we can get you the answers to the questions that you have well i'll take whatever you give me right here we may not be able to give
037you that's okay that's fine i just have uh you know on their curriculum with one to three year plan it says they want to call out myths of white history could you clarify what that means um i believe i believe miss collier mentioned that that specific comment was something that came from the chop talk that was something that a community member had mentioned at that time it's on the curriculum if that's the case then i'm going to have to defer to somebody else okay all right question two uh she uh i'm sorry i don't know lisa yes um you admit you said something to we all have racial biases no i did not say that oh you didn't say that no that was probably nancy yeah what's that oh you okay i'm sorry i just
038got you mixed up that's okay if you could please direct your comments okay thank you um does that include all races or just one particular race i'm i'm gonna if you could please just ask your questions or make your comments you're welcome to email me if you want to have a direct conversation with me but this isn't the forum for that no i'm sorry you're welcome to email me so and i'm happy to have a discussion with you all right uh one of just one other question it says uh this is under the student experience and climate it says uh who what race is in charge now is that going to be taught to my grandchildren well that's not necessarily true because depending on we've made a lot of progress in this country over the
039years we've had a black president for two terms there's black congressmen black senators black mayors i think we're making progress that's all i have to say thank you any other comments for the public comment portion good evening my name is pamela wind and i reside at 4558 chatwood drive in stowe i would like to thank the dei committee for their efforts over the past year to quickly begin this extremely important work and i would like to challenge the board to not only support this work but to be transparent during meetings about how they are supporting this work we heard last year about the negative mental health consequences of race-based bias in our schools when we improve inclusion and equity we not only improve students lives we even save lives again thank you for your work
040hi my name is sunny matthews i don't live here but i was looking at houses here my address is 2515 phelps avenue chicago falls our houses are kind of old so i kind of wanted to move to like a new nicer community and i actually emailed a few of the people in this audience and told them to be on the lookout y'all don't have to do that anymore i don't understand how an all-white board can decide that me and my children don't matter i don't understand how we can't see that affirming the humanity and us all works to benefit us all every time i've been in spaces that are multicultural that focus on learning from all of each everybody learning from everybody i've had the greatest experience i have lived on a native reservation in
041montana learned so much i have lived in nicaragua learned so much i went to a private quaker school from an all black high school because i wanted to learn more and so for people to tell citizens that it doesn't matter that we are past this that we don't need to discuss this everything including clinical race theory is important it's who we are america as a whole has a lot of work to do we have come far not denying that but why can't we just talk and be honest and love and love on each other if there are students in the district who do not feel safe and i have had calls from parents and students as someone who does this work for a living about situations they don't even feel so safe enough to bring
042to the principals and the teachers and to you about people who call them the n word about people who will attack them daily it is not just about what's happening at home the school district has to own that we are a community for everyone so i will tell you this if anyone ever asks me to move to this city i will tell them to reconsider until i know that as a board you all support the work of these folks because i know them personally and they do it [Applause] any other comments okay moving on to tonight's consent agenda mr brenton do you have any comments i'd like to recommend the board of education proof consent agenda items b through m also this time i'd like to read the names and information of the donations listed
043in consent agenda and personally thank the folks for what they do for our students and us the following donated to fish creek elementary school smf nice miscellaneous clothing natalia of stowe eleven library books donated to highland mrs churcala five cases of bottled water highland pta instructional supplies and office supplies the community close closet the stone monroe falls community clothes closet miscellaneous clothing to the high school speech and debate club miss ms covey donated 200 and miss steiner 10 the following donated to the high school all musical mr and mrs raymond 50 and mr and mrs raymond smith 125 dollars and the following donated to the stoneman row falls lakeview and kempton rocks program the rox program miss hearst donated 400 and miss walker donated 500 also i'd like to thank the giant eagle located on
044norton road for loaning us 60 grocery carts to be used for transporting all of our chromebooks from the buildings to lakeview where they will be cleaned and serviced for next school year do i have a motion to adopt tonight's consent agenda so moved second any discussion i just want to single out a couple of the administrative contracts this was a change for the district and i think it's important that the community knows that we've had between mrs collier and ms julie miller heading up curriculum from k-12 you know one takes k-6 the other takes seven through 12. in the four years that i've been on the board i've not seen more alignment from a resource and perspective and it's been it's been refreshing to see you know we have six different elementary schools with six
045different principals and we have all of the schools ahead of them are above them as far as age-wise and sometimes everyone's kind of doing their own thing and they have done a really good job of streamlining that our subscriptions are all aligned you know we're not subscribing to five or six of the same thing in different areas of the school that the curriculums are aligned so that you know when the kids are coming from the the six elementary schools going into lakeview and on up that there is some um cohesiveness uh in how they're learning and materials that they're using and so i i'm happy to see the three-year contracts for the both of them there and they've done a tremendous job in that regard any other comments on the consent agenda okay roll call
046please verio hi brown aye johnson bowers aye whitaker aye right aye okay next item on our agenda is the treasurer's consent agenda mr gumry do you have any comments uh once i have a first and second i'll just kind of talk briefly about the reports and it's more important to get to the five-year forecast and the joy of walking everybody's eyes glaze all right may i have a motion to approve second any discussion uh right now what you saw in the variance report just i thought we were going to get our roll back in homestead last month and it's going to be this month in may so this is a month in a rear so it looks like we've missed terribly on revenue and that's not true the right now the supplies that we're going
047through we're purchasing are we're just spending budgets on preparing for next year and budgets what they have now that will probably tie up in the next 60 days be very less so i look this to be right around the anticipated number less than one percent um [Applause] the u.s bank investments we're probably going to look at putting about three or four million dollars which it may sound like it would be a lot if you had in your checking account but it's uh literally about 25 days of operating capital for us into short-term investments that we have sitting in a checking account in the next 60 days but that's all i have for those reports any questions or comments from the board roll call please brown i johnson bowers hi whitaker hi betty oh right hi
048is this a new business owner yeah moving on to treasures new business mr gumry i'll leave it with you first and second is the creation of an 035 severance fund once on a first and second i explain what the purpose and how this is going to help us financially okay may have a motion please in looking at business and best practices we have on typical years anywhere from 220 to about 400 000 in severances and in looking at the number that we've talked about probably six months ago of staff that are going to qualify now until about 2026. there's going to be by that time roughly 110 people which is a sizable amount of cash and that is that was over how many years that was between now and 2026. okay thank you and so
049when looking at that it's easier to eat an elephant by one bite at a time which would be a transfer of money each year to build a bit of a balance to kind of get to a targeted number which we'll have in about 45 days but right now the severance fund is created to pay any and all severances to any employee within the district therefore it's outside of your general fund consideration and outside of your general fund salaries and or retirement benefit consideration so that means that it's just taking about four about 200 to four to five hundred thousand dollars a year out of that and putting it into a severance fund where we can see that activity on a year-to-year basis so that's the purpose i imagine it'll help with budgeting that will help
050us with general fund balance and budgeting going forward any comments or questions i'm a severance fund i i i'm 42 years old i've never heard anyone use the phrase eat an elephant one bite at a time i don't i don't know where i've been sheltered i heard that in law school all the time any other comments no all right roll paul please johnson bowers hi whitaker hi video hi brown hi right hi uh i'd ask the board to prove the five-year forecast as presented uh in the harder document and also in electronic format to the board first and second then i'll do a presentation and we'll go from there motion please still moved second second and is this on the agenda the electronic version now this is the item two that was amended right so
051it's not currently on the website correct no peace for those watching no no i need to sit and see it normally i like to stand up and do this presentation and i feel bad i didn't give you that my board this and paper format so they could look at instead of turning around so every year on may and october we have to provide a five year forecast to the od and for taxpayers to basically show what we're spending just general fund for and one of the items that comes into play all the time are what is okay why is this not okay what comes into play is what is and where are the cash flows that we have and currently what you see is the black line is zero dollars for some reason it's not
052coming through on the dell computer so when we run into that it is fiscal year 24. that amount is about 1.6 million which changed drastically if you guys don't look at your notes you can look at it through there it's changed drastically from about six months ago and there's a number of reasons why and one of them is our our continual growth in open enrollment but also the fact our estate real estate appraisal came back at roughly 14.6 instead of eight now when that happens that's about double what i anticipated the growth to be and that was uh albeit wonderful i also realized when that happens that taxpayers are getting hit with increases and there'll be challenges to that but we'll we'll look and review those as needed but typically we don't challenge many real
053estate transactions for the residential folks that are in the district one of the items you'd like to talk about is keeping that 30-day cash balance at a minimum target and right now we're through the end of fiscal year 23 will be will be okay but 24 and 25 looks uh as we know it looked bad six months ago and still it doesn't look as bad now and you'll see why later on with some of the new or some of the one-time money what this graph shows is that even with that 23 renewal we're going to run out of money in 24 and the amount we're going to run out is right now 1.6 million mr montgomery when this is put onto the website we'll yes it'll have its correct thing with the years on it
054this is a wonderful way of switching between mac and dell and i can't say anything nasty against dell because that means i would then be liable for any type of messiness i won't do that so when we look at the supplement i can tell you this on um our enrollment is a nice thing and it's open enrollment but state revenues are flat and based on the budget that we've talked about they're going to put us back to fiscal year 19 guaranteed for fiscal year 23 going forward 22-23 going forward and that's simply what they talked about they haven't talked about any increases even though they took a million two away from us last may now the governor was kind enough to replace some of that money back which was ongoing of about 640 000 and
055that helps but we still are out the other 640 000. now when we talk about how does it look so good so quick in six months well when we talk about care's money when you guys talk to hear esther and you hear about the federal government bailing out of providing monies there's some things we want to talk about summit county grant that we have for half a million dollars was applied to any and all covid supplies that we purchased to reopen a school we'd exhausted that in seven months and the broadband grant that was provided to this district and other districts within ohio were targeted to provide those that did not have wireless access access points and or technology to access school outside of the building we also did purchase i believe wireless ports outside
056of school so the kids could possibly show up and do the homework in the uh in the parking lot even if it was and parents would probably do some other work on the computer as well which is good because it's a secure site as well uh sr1 monies of which we're working on currently is backed with the karzak money and that was expended by mr bratton finding and solidifying our four-day subs that worked all year long that helped us identify when we went to the maroon and gold ladies and gentlemen i tell you this sincerely that was one of the better things i've seen in 18 years as a treasurer what the superintendent did to identify a huge operational issue which we didn't understand how we were going to have to attack and it was
057i thought brilliant the sr2 monies are currently being set now and sr-3s we're getting ready to write the proposed opportunities about what we're doing and i'll be working with our assistant superintendent christy pro so when we talk about how does your forecast go from one thing to the next with the revaluation of the taxes we got about a million three to a million five a year in the next five years every year that's six and a half million dollars to the good on the bottom to the bottom line with this six million you see that we've just basically put in 12 million dollars into a forecast that was very when i came here if i said it was a shaky ride it was very shaky but i think now we put some we put our
058feet on the ground and we're solid going forward now we're also talking about when this the budgeting goes on right now right now the budget's in the state about the next four the next two years but we're really looking at the next four and we don't know how that's going to come out again it's a political process it's not there's not a reason why certain things get funded the only thing that got granted an increase was the governor's wellness money and i often think that is a good thing because what it talks about identifying but it's one of the ones the governor wants and it's it's very hard for us to accept when it's just one person that gets that so when we do look at this about changes of the operating items that have
059happened you want to talk about tangible personal property being basically put back on the residential taxpayer and that not being tax to business good for taxes but it's also additional for the our local folks as i talked about the restricted student wellness i want to thank the public and the taxpayers for passing and renewing the two emergency levels it was critical we passed those but it's also critical that we passed the next one in 2023. one of the nice items we got was a surprising 1.1 million refund from the workers comp because of what we've been overpaying for the last number of years as you say when you get refunds you've normally paid for it before so we appreciate that but i'd rather my rates go down for the school and we can do that
060now when we talk about wages and benefits i can tell you it is 81 for wages and benefits that's a little high for us but the bigger problem is because our growth of expenses is more than what our revenue growth is and that's tough to do and stuff to continue but with the monies that we had come in one time and the growth on the real estate we've extended the period where we can carry the district going forward this is just another one to show that we're just showing that our costs are rising faster than inflation there are things to consider about our financing like i said they're changing ohio had when i started in this business eight years or eight no eight ways to tax yourself currently we have 27 now for school funding
061so besides not increasing a lot of education budgets they give you a lot of different options to spend to tax yourself so we do need to look at just something beyond 24 and 25 and it's something that tom and i and the cabinet have been talking about about when we do have retirements we do have things like that to take that that approach of review and establish do we really have to bring that position back we're not talking about reductions but we're certainly talking about uh changes now one of the big things we talked about and we've heard the complaint of is what are you guys doing to help with buses and we seem to have limped along the last two or three years and with how the with how the finances have started to
062maneuver a little bit to get better we've we've put in the forecast for the next five years five new buses out of general fund every year we have a couple leases we're gonna pay for but we're gonna put we put five new buses in this forecast under capital every year for the next five years so we heard we've adapted and we're moving forward so any questions so in addition to what we have here um where i see where about 1.6 short in fiscal 2024. um but what's not on here are our insurance holidays so the yeah and they can't be put on i get that they can't be but yeah when you add those in for 2022 2012 they are lisa they they are added in 2022. 23 and 24 they are not in that's
063correct so that will put us in the black in fiscal year 2012 yes if they would happen i would as soon as those get mentions we make those happen yeah that's fantastic okay i mean the highlights here obviously are that the fact that as you said our costs are growing faster than our revenue that is it's something that many public school districts have had to sustain over an extended period of time because of the way the funding comes in but from a a you know looking at the taxpayer standpoint um you know that there is a saturation risk and it's getting very difficult on them um to continue to do that and we're again we're we're headed toward i mean we may stay in the black longer than this then this shows but it's not
064ideal um and if at some point we hit another housing bubble um this is going to look much different and we could be headed in that direction as well so there's concern here um it's not i don't know anytime you're spending more money than you're bringing yeah yeah there is concern but it's a it's a typical levy cycle of a district in ohio and hopefully if if we can handle if we can do the very things and the insurance premiums come in and we can do those we can look at the type of levy that we're going to have coming up in 23 the renewal we may need to change the type of it to help our district tax workers the current taxpayers won't receive a bump an increase on the renewal just be a
065renaming of it and taxing the new construction differently so and regarding the insurance holidays if only they would just charge us the right amount to begin with instead of refunding the amounts several times later that would be appreciated yes so that's all i have any other comments on the five year forecast a roll call uh whitaker hi hi brown hi johnson bowers hi right hi thank you new business mr bretton uh quickly items a and b and this is a little bit different once a year review of the homeless board policy which is included in your packets as exhibit as well as the review of title 1 and parent engagement policies which is also included as an exhibit in your packet for the ohio department of education these policies need to be reviewed annually by
066the board no action is is uh as required or needs to be taken but it needs to be shown that i did uh supply you with those policies uh review um and letter c this is neola board policy 5336 this is the first reading special update march 2021 this is the first reading the overboard policies that the policy committee reviewed on march 29th and then again on may 20th regarding the care of students with diabetes there are statutory language changes and copies are available here at this meeting if anybody would like to review them after the meeting just let me if i don't have enough copies i will make sure to give you something but no action is required on that either this is the policy that we withdrew at the work session this is
067the name correct no action needed any comment okay that brings us to the last item on our agenda which is adjournment i will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved jason second any discussion okay roll paul when you're ready whitaker hi betty oh hi brown hi johnson bowers right hi uh as a note don't say that yet i will be putting this presentation the forecast on the treasurer's website so you'll be able to see it uh as in with the dates because of the superior dell technology all right we are returned at 801. you