001work. This meeting of the board of education for the purpose of conducting school district. >> Yes. Mrs. Cherry. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Mr. Lump. >> Mrs. Simmons. Can we stand for the allegiance? Next, we will have our mission statement by Sixth grade students in middle school. to create a safe and inclusive community for all stakeholders that prepares students for graduation by promoting academic success through leadership. Global awareness, social emotional development and 21st century skills. There is one change. I am asking item 94. Yes, Mrs. Currington. >> Thank you, Madam President. This evening, I'm going to Terry Nielson and Josh Recker from Superior Energy Solutions to come up as we continue our attempts to reduce expend district. I met with Terry and Scott, excuse me, our supervisors and Terry and his group and I wanted to
002share this information so we can have a little further discuss about this project like this. Thank you, Superintendent Howard. Thank you for allowing us to present today. We have a presentation there. We're going to go through all the history of everything and pass that all by you can read about it. We want to get to the point that really matters, which is the dollars and cents of the deal. So, I'm going to fast forward through some stuff. Uh, we've been in business since 2009. um owned uh by three local guys up in Colorado, Ohio. Um and we do solar. We've done seven large school districts. We're in process with another two uh that'll get installed this year. And we came down to talk to you guys about solar for your project um after Scott was
003nice enough to give us a call. So, we're trying to offer you savings. Um solar always pays. Just a question of how you want to structure it, how you want to do it. If you roll through to the um through the layouts, what we're looking at is maximizing um roof usage. So, all three buildings over there at the high school complex are going to get panels. They're all going to be over a thousand panels a piece if you go with this direction. Um total system to get to 100% of your usage is almost 6,000 panels, which is a very big system. Um we're actually after we do all three buildings, we're still going to be about 3,000 panels back in the field back behind there. If you decide to go this direction, if we do
0043,000 panels, you're looking at the green section would be 3,000 panels. If you decided, I don't want to do anything on the roof and I'm just going to do ground mount, you would do that whole area. It's kind of give you the scale of what we're talking about. It's a very large project. Um, the nice thing about solar right now is between now and July 4th, you have the ability to get what they call a ITC tax credit. Even as a school district, you're able to get that tax credit. With what we're doing with you guys is we're going to give you some domestic content and we're going to get you to a 40% tax credit level. So, if you look at these numbers, we're going to talk about costs right now. This is a
005first page is the cash. So, you did You do it without the roof, you got 7.5 million. You get three million in a tax credit. You have a net price of 46. With the roof, it's 2 $2.5 million more. Um, so that takes care of the roof. If you, one of the things we talked about at length was the need for potential roofs on these buildings. Uh, with solar, if we put a white reflective roof underneath the solar panels and we put panels all over the roof, we're able to tax deduct you tax deduction of 40% on the cost of the roof. So, your $2.7 million roof, if you buy it without solar, is $2.7 million. You buy it with solar, you're paying 1.8, 1.6, something like that. I'm not math wasn't my strongest suit,
006but it's a much lower number. It's the only way you can get 40% off of your roof cost. Um, we're going to go to the next page. So, the next page is potential ways to finance it. We're going to start with I'm going to go one more page further. I'm do it out of order now that I'm thinking. Um, we originally talked to uh Mr. Howard about the idea of doing a power purchase agreement. In that agreement, you're agreeing to buy the system is going to be installed owned by another person and the district is going into a contract to buy all the electricity that it's going to it's going to produce at a lower rate. That lower rate would start somewhere around 8.7 cents. That is for a solar system without a roof. We've
007done systems with roofs. Right now, we're having capital problems. The reason we're having capital problems is I'm going to come back to that July 1 date. If you don't sign up and do something like this before July 1, you lose the 40% tax credit. You can talk to all the solar companies in the world. I'll send you all the all the information on it, but it goes away in July. Um because of that there's a capital crunch in that folks that invest in these kinds of things don't want to deal with roofs. They have a long list of potential projects. They're giving them to the ones that have the higher return. They don't have to lay out money for a roof and sit on it for six months before the solar gets running. So they're
008not as attractive as they were say last year when we still had time to get everything done. So you have this huge push for solar right now. Um we're screaming busy and everybody that does solar is screaming busy trying to get these done. So, how do we get the roof paid for and how do we get the project paid for? I'm going to go back to the previous slide. If I point this in the right direction, the way we do that in Ohio is we have what they call PACE. Ohio Pace Financing. Ohio Pace Financing is a state private partnership between lenders in the state of Ohio. There's probably over a hundred that you can choose from that will lend you the money to do this project. They will pay for the whole project and
009you pay it back as a 30-year loan. All right? Because it's a school, you're going to get a lower number. And the interesting thing about this is, okay, we're going to have the $10.2 million outlay there. You're going to get that tax pay, that tax credit paid back to you. It's called direct pay. I can send you information on that. You're going to get that $4 million back. You're going to immediately send that to the lender. You send that to the lender. As soon as you get it, you're financing a $6 million expenditure over 30 years. And that's a long length of the loan, but a PPA was 25 years anyway. So, it's only five years longer than what you were going to have to do for a PPA. The awesome thing about that is
010your loan payment is less than what you're paying on electric. So even though you're paying this electric this electric cost or even though you're paying this loan cost immediately the first year you're going to save $3,000 and then after 10 years you're saving 1.4 million 20 years 6.5 30 years 16.48. So that's where those numbers come from. That's how much money the solar is going to put back in your pocket over the course of the long term. If you look at the bottom number if you just buy utility rate just keep buying everybody in had their utility bill go up this last year, maybe twice because we had a we had a generation um increase and then we had a distribution increase. Uh if you haven't gotten the distribution increase, I'm sorry, but it's coming
011your way. All these data centers, you're going to get another one. So, we anticipate that we're going to get a 5% increase in in utility bills over the next 25 years. Um we typically pay like 17 cents in Ohio. To give you an idea, Illino at 27. So, I mean, going to go up unfortunately. Um, with that increase, if you figure out that the utility cost is going to go up 5% a year, if you do nothing, which is, you know, fine, you're not going to do solar, you're just going to keep rolling the way you are, you're going to spend $43 million on utilities over the next 30 years. So, you have the ability to capture a good bit of that back in savings by locking in your rate. So, what are you doing?
012You're buying a system for $10 million, 10.2. You're getting $2.7 million of roof for free that has a 25y year warranty. You're putting solar on top of it. You're getting your 40% tax credit, giving that to the to the banks. Then you're making a payment for 30 years that's still less than your utility bill over the next 30 years. That locks you in that whole system. If you look here, the big number is 4.6 cents. Once you weigh that out over the course of 30 years and all the electricity this thing's going to produce, you're locked. 4.6 for the cost of electricity for the next 30 years. And we guarantee it's going to make what it says it's going to make. If for some reason it goes down and it doesn't make what it says
013it's going to make, we're going to send you a credit, a check for the amount that cost. I bought you had to buy 10,000 kilowatt hours at 15 cents. You get the check. That's all part of the deal when you go with soul. All right. So, what are next steps? Next steps are to spend a little time thinking about it. Um, we have the ability with uh we got to get this thing done before July. So, other boards, ones we're working with now, they pass a resolution to take it out of the bidding process uh to take it out of competitive building. That keeps you in if the board passes that, that keeps you in compliance for Ohio Revised Code. That is a couple of slides down. So, let me get to that slide. Um,
014so that'll get you in compliance with Ohio Revised Code. You sign a contract with us. The nice thing about our contract is it's pretty short. It's like seven pages. Just says, "We're going to install it. It's going to produce this. Here's how the credits work." It's not a real long contract. And then you pick your lender for PACE. And you go through the PACE program. And you get your loan terms. These loan terms were set at 8 and a half%. You're going to do better, but we'd rather be conservative than aggressive on what interest rates we're going to show. So that in a nutshell, I'm trying to keep it brief. if I could go on for an hour. They uh Superintendent Howard had to put up with me one time for an hour. So, I
015won't do that to you. But any questions, you're I'm more than happy to answer anything you have >> for this job. We got to put it through permitting. We've already done some talking to AES, so we know that the system's going to fit here. We have to spend 60 grand to get them to do what they call a load survey. Um that takes a month and a half. And then we go through engineering and state permitting. So, you're figuring about four to six months to get the state to tell us everything's good because we have to do structurals on all the buildings. Installing the roof is going to be a month. Installing the solar is going to be four to six months. So, you're looking at potentially roofs towards the end of this year and
016solar springtime and then hopefully running by the end of by fall next year is what we'd be looking at. It's a pretty substantial thing because you're looking at all new roofs, gutters, all the new stuff out there. And then we have a lot of stuff to install. 6,000 panels is a very large system. >> The the actual payment of the of the energy cost now is absorbed by if you do a PPA, that's the way that works. You're buying from a company that just saves you money. If we want to go for the roof, which is I can't get capital for the roof with that setup right now. Instead of that, you're paying a loan. But again, the loan payment, you own the solar at that point. We're going to maintain it. That's all part
017of the deal. But you own the solar, right? Then you're just paying back the loan, and you're paying zero dollars for the electricity it's generating at that point. But the loan payment works out to be about 4.6 cents over the 30-year lease. It's actually cheaper to do the loan than it is to do the PPA because the PPA, they own it, they maintain it. PPA is 70 pages of contract. To give you an idea, Light of Schools is still reviewing that 70page contract. Their lawyers had it for three weeks and it's still not quite done. So that's a that's a process. >> One of the district for another several weeks, months. Um this company has come to us highly recommend discuss next week or so really talk to you guys not just replace I'm ask
018you can speak to regards to to the combination of both of the projects You'll pay him a little bit. I mean, we try to get it down to zero, but you are going to estimate that cost that is that number back here. So if you go back to so we'll look at it a couple of different ways. Okay. So if you pay if you paid cash for it, you owned it and you didn't have the loan, you would save $619,000 on electric bill. That's how much electric bill for those three buildings was last year. We'll build a system that will replace it. >> Yes. >> So, you're rocking out a lot of power. This is the biggest This is the biggest combined meter we've ever looked at. We've done some big ones, and this one's
019a lot. Um, if you look at the loan, instead of paying that $619,000, you're going to pay $3,000 less with the loan. So, that's the first year. you're only going to save $3,000 the first year. But the thing is that loan payment is going to stay the same and your electric rate is going to go up. So if you guys took electric rate increase next week, these numbers change. All of a sudden I'm saving $30,000 or $50,000 with a very small increase. It doesn't take much to get you to the into the green. So with our projections, and granted that's 5% increase. You can argue whether it's 3% or 5% or what the number is, but at 5% you're at 1.4 million in savings over the 10 year period. Another way to do it, which
020is we've had other districts do it, is to do the PPA, pocket that $600,000 in savings, and then do that for four years and then buy a roof. We've had districts decide to go that way. It's really we're here to just show you how it can be done. Reiterate that there's a there's a unfortunately a freaking date that it has to be started by. Doesn't you don't have to pay for the whole thing. You could write me a small small $100,000 check and we can get it. You have to safe harbor, meaning the project has to be signed and started before July 1st. Doesn't mean you have to have $10 million. It means you got to make a payment while you're figuring out how to finance it. We have about four of them in that
021vote right now where they're going to make a payment while they figure out the situation. But if you don't start by July 1st with a system this size, you're out. Unless some Democrats get back in there and they put it all back in. And I can't tell you that that won't happen. I can't tell you that it will I can just tell you what the rules say right now. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Yep. >> That's still same thing because instead of you getting the tax credit, the financer that's going to own the system, they get the tax credit. So that that's let's say that I gave you a quote. I think what was it? Nine cents, something like that. Uh my quote was 8.7 cents. That's going to get 40% worseish in in July. Once
022you miss that, all the lenders cost goes up 40%. All the rates go up. It's still with a regular without doing solar panels. It might still save you money, but it's not the no-brainer deal that this one is. >> Are there other districts in the state of Ohio that have taken away your system? >> Uh yes. We haven't done all of them. I mean, we're we're up in Northwest Ohio. We're kind of farm school land. So, um, but you know, we're doing Alida schools right now. They're doing their third system. They've had two systems for seven years. They we are building their third system. They're working on the contract. >> Alida, it's just outside of Lima. We've done Was we've done Delus. We've done basically rural Ohio farm country. There's there's seven of them up
023there that we've been a part of, but Columbus City Schools has it on multiple high schools. Um there's a lot of them that have >> Yes. reason we weren't expecting that change. >> Right. Well, the big beautiful bill changed it and then all of a sudden once they defined the new rules, which was basically in fall of last year before we even knew what the big beautiful bill said, all of a sudden all the new guidelines and see the guidelines for a system this big is different than a system for your local barber shop. So, it's all the dates are different. All the all the components are different. Everything's changed. And it could go back. I I can't tell you. We're kind of cautiously optimistic it might come back, but We think if it comes
024back, it's going to come back at half the kind of incentives it has. Now, I appreciate you very >> Well, thank you for giving us time. Hopefully, we didn't make you run too long, but uh anybody have a question, you have my card, shoot us a phone call. We'd be happy to come down here for a special meeting. at any time, just let us know. The big thing is we don't want to be hanging in July 5th saying, "Oh, shoot. We missed something." Somehow we got to figure out if you want to do it. Thank you. We have some retirees that we are going to recognize. proceed after 10 minute reception. Good evening. We're here tonight to celebrate some fantastic people who have given hours, days, months, and years to the students of medicine. We're
025so happy to host you this evening and to recognize you for all the dedicated years of service. Thank you. I'm going to call each retiree one at a time. If I call your name, please come forward and there's a designated speaker for each retiree. So, please stand and take your speaker and we'll give you Carla Battle School. Please come forward. Mr. Howard is coming forward to speak about one thing about Miss Battle, she's always smiling. And even if I'm having a bad day and I'm I when I was working operations specifically and I go over to the middle school, first thing I would get greeted with was that smile right there. So uh from uh from you know from the bottom of my heart, you know how much I care about you and and your
026family. Miss Battle had a she has two twin brothers that um that are trial residents and one worked here in the district with us for a long time. Keith and every time I see embrace and we talk about his time here and Miss Battle is a special lady. She's always happy. When she's upset, I can't tell because she starts with a smile. So, we are going to miss you and hopefully there will be someone to replace you. I doubt that smile. So, congratulations Next we have Tamora Clink, middle school intervention specialist. Please come forward. Mr. Gibson is coming forward to speak. This is Miss Clink. Miss Clink works at the middle school, one of our units. And when I say she's one of the best teachers I've seen at the middle school that I've ever
027seen. She does some things in classroom that is special to see how she operates. Even in her meetings, she just leads leads by example. A lot of her peers follow the things that she do. It's gonna be hard to fill these shoes. Miss Clint, honestly, I've already told her that, but we will miss her. She's been in our district uh I think this is 25 years 26 26 years with the students caring for our students. So, we will miss you. Next we have Tamaro Rizzo Sterner Tammy. Will you come forward please? Mrs. Sterner and I have worked for over 20 years together and she has been a the essence of consistency with regards to her her employment here in the district. She was always even killed, always focused and truly cares about children and her
028staff. We are going to miss Miss Her staff is going to miss Ster. His kids are going to miss and community is going to miss. Miss Sterner is a is a Troutwood graduate through and through. She's committed almost all of her career to this community and it is going to be a huge hole that we have to try to fill in Madison City School. I call her Stern but uh we are definitely for your next step and I'm sure you're looking forward to your next step. But again, we are going to miss you. So, I don't know what to say. Good luck. Best wishes. Wishes I've been here quite a while. Appreciate you. >> Next, Kimberly Scott, high school intervention specialist. Miss Scott. You know, she see how she act when I came up. Me
029and her have we had some great conversations over the years. I had a luxury to have both her daughters. Uhhuh. We both graduated from Triwood High School. Um, Scott lives in the community and her whole career has been at Triwood 33 years. She done gave us everything. Also, you didn't know when that time period she was a army reserve, Air Force reserve and she had disappeared for like four or five months. I said the only thing he was doing was pumping gas. Backing tanks up or doing something like that and always crack on. You wasn't really doing anything. But uh she's been over the educ uh uh special ed department for many years. Uh she dedicated to our kids. Uh she loves them. She cares about them. And I'm going to truly miss her. I'm
030going to miss our conversations or arguments or disagreements. And she keeps me in line. And uh she got two jobs. She works a lot. First time I've seen her at work at Lowe's. and she caught me just shopping. She said, "You just just walk around here just picking up stuff." I said, "Right picking up." Uh, first time in a long time. But I'm I I know we at the high school is going to really really really miss her. Okay. And I know she going to enjoy herself. She got grandkid. She always working on a project. She trying to fix something down her daughters. Okay. So, uh, I know me, my staff, and you know, I kind of get emotional. We've been together long time almost 25 years together. So I will miss you and enjoy
031it. Don't do like me. And I want to say that Miss Scott when you if you ride down Salem Avenue and you crawl right before you cross over Olive, you will see a picture of Miss Scott on Hometown Heroes um military hometown heroes with with her with her uniform and and and just you know making sure you we understand everybody understands that we we appreciate your time here, but we also appreciate your service to this and it's a nice picture, too. Next we have Joanne Cheryl, Early Learning Center and Miss Tammy Rizzo is coming up to speak about Hello. Miss Sher is a kindergarten teacher at the ELC. Uh I acquired Miss Cheryl this year uh under my direction and she has been in our district I think for four years. She started out as
032a math coach and she has done a tremendous job within our district. Uh she she I think did you come here? Did you move to this area? Yes. So, so a lot of her career has been in other places, but she chose Trotwood to uh be her final final place. Um, and she has done an outstanding job with our students. Uh, I asked her, you know, what her favorite thing is about teaching our students and it is the aha moments for her. Um, seeing the students, you know, really catch on to something that she's teaching and watching them grow. Um, she's she's got a lot of cool plans after she retires, unlike myself. I don't know what I'm doing, but she's got uh a lot of travel plans and doing things with her husband. And
033I wish her all of the best of luck, and I thank you for everything you've done for our students here at TRwood Mass. Thank you very much. Next we have Elizabeth Spats, Madison Park Elementary. Mrs. Dr. Mallerie, will you come forward, please? >> Good evening. Um, so Miss Spatz has been a PE teacher in the district for 13 years. Um, and I've had the pleasure of working with Miss Bats a few years when we I was at Westbrook Village and then her last year with um, me being the principal at Madison Park. Um, but I did ask um, Miss Sterner to come and say a few words. As Miss Sterner shared, she's worked with all of y'all for a long time in different capacities, but I think her and Miss Spats have worked together for
034several years and they are lifelong friends. So, I did ask Miss Sterner to come up and say a few words for Miss Spats. >> No, that's not the reason. >> Um, no. So, uh, after I left the high school, um, I went to elementary school and went to Madison Park and we needed a PE teacher and I knew that Lisa definitely had the potential to be an outstanding teacher. Uh, very creative. I mean, she's got so much equipment that she uses with the with the kids and does so many creative things that um I just thought it would be an excellent opportunity for her and an excellent excellent opportunity for our students in Trotwood. Um she was always one that helped out with extra projects. Um whenever, you know, we did things within the district,
035whether it was the parades, she made sure we had the floats. She, you know, the last, I don't know, 15 years when we were having parades, um, her and her husband would get a float together and pull the kids around. She would come over to the school and take them on hay rides in in the fall. And I mean, her her job as a teacher extended far it was just so much more than just being a teacher. She knew the kids. She loved the kids. and she did everything she possibly could to make it a great experience for the students. Um, she brought goats to school. She brought I don't know. I think he brought horses. She brought horses. I mean, if if there was a farm animal out there that she had, it came
036to school and the kids, you know, petting zoo, whatever. Uh, but we we are we have been through this district for a long time. sports when we were in high school and uh college. So, it has been a while and and I can't believe we're we're actually retiring at the same time. I am way younger than she is. Uh so, uh but I I definitely congratulate her and I'm glad you you joined the team over here in >> Thank you, Tracy, for taking care of her. And finally, we have Miss Kim Potter. Is Miss Potter? Mrs. Potter on on behalf of all of us as part of the board and and the administration, we thank you for for everything you've done. Uh Mrs. Potter serves as the administrative assistant to the superintendent and uh she
037has helped me uh through the transition as much as I I needed as much help as I needed. She has provided that. She's always on point, keeps me on point, and we really appreciate everything that you that you've done here for uh for the district. I happen to have I have know Miss Potter in a different capacity from Jefferson Township when she worked in Jefferson Township for years and she she took care of my kids in preschool as well. So, uh we uh we really appreciate what you do and I am I am really happy that you get an opportunity at this point to take care of your family, take care of your grandkids, take care of that man right back there with that gray hair because he's still he's still working. That's Mr. Potter
038who who retired from here several years ago. But uh I I I truly am happy for you and and thank you for all you >> Thank you. At Miss Cherry's direction, we'll head to the reception which is for all the retirees. It's in the cafeteria right behind us. Everyone is invited. Miss Cherry, is it okay if we go ahead? >> Absolutely. He gave the go ahead. Madam Chairman, thank you. >> Yes, Mr. Lincoln. >> Mrs. Simmons. >> Mrs. Currington. Yes. Mrs. Cherry. >> Yes. >> We'll take about a 10-minute recess and then we'll come back and get Thank you, Mr. M. Thank you. There are several items. The Next is next we Next we have church. This is another $1,000. And the last This is This is here. This is Please A lot of language.
039April 2nd, 2026 work session. April 16th, 2026 regular review on those. graduation update. I senior count students requirements students on track by the end of the year. So with that being said, of those partnership right now. 49. Okay. So, last week we had A lot of times they are number. I just wanted to updated our last $66,392. The other thing I wanted to share is just I had the opportunity yesterday. It's the first time I had able to hear. It was just really special how they'd like our students to be a future. The reason why they're doing That was refreshing. And then I just wanted to say in honor of teacher appreciation, thank you to all of our staff for their service to our students. I think we say it every but I want to
040remind everybody that tomorrow We'll make sure also 6:30. Great. Papa Also in your folder afternoon. There's several Maybe great. Steam night basketball. And then I wanted to share years ago organized email yesterday. Yes. Excited. Thank Um last notoment. God's ears are probably But with that, we have a behalf of the hospitality. probably indeed. Superintendent staff. Thus, this sponsor. And finally, I just congratulations to all of you the best of luck in whatever it is in next congratulations to the teachers teacher Um, thank you for all the teachers and all the staff who have had an active role in our student success and just to our students. Um, congratulations to our graduates that are on track and the ones that will be ready to walk across the stage. And I have my fingers crossed for those
041who have a little more work to do. Um, keep pushing at it. You still have time. Um, and you can get there. Oh, happy to hand a lot of Congratulations. I really appreciate my time yesterday showed happy app and as well as our nurses. Um we know that teachers and nurses are kind of the roots on the ground in all of our buildings and they the grunt work every day. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Congratulations to the retiree as most of them have been here a long time. So, that shows your dedication. They can definitely choose other places. So, we are more than that with us. to the students that did their signing this morning. Kudos where we're going for those that are struggling a few to get across that um
042finish line. Congratulations to the parents, the families, the teachers, and the counselors and staff who push those individuals that will be graduating on May 19th because we know that they didn't alone. So, um congratulations to those graduates. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations to all the students. Thank you all. Everyone G. Yes. Mrs. Correct. Yes, Mrs. Mr. Are you