001Okay. The May 14, 2026 Force Broke School District Budget Committee meeting is called to order at 603. Please stand for the flag of the United States. Okay, we'll have the roll call for the members present right here. Jennifer Thomas, >> Susan Field, >> President Jennifer is online. We just can't we can't hear. >> Okay. How's that? Can Can you hear me now? >> Belinda Fisher >> here. Franco >> here. >> Kadeski >> here. >> Nicholas here. >> Here she [snorts] may Andre May. All right. Do I have a motion to approve tonight's agenda as presented? >> Move. >> Second. Second. And all in favor? All in favor say I. >> I. >> All right. Any oppos? Motion carries. I have a motion to approve the 14th the 14 2026 minutes as presented. So move. >>
002Do I have a second? >> Second. First and second. All in favor say I. I. Any oppose? Motion carries. Before we continue tonight's meeting, I would like to acknowledge that we received the resignation of Megan Bear from the budget committee alternate position on May 4, 2026. On behalf of the budget committee, I want to thank Megan Mayor for her willingness to serve. Due to the limit to the timing within the current budget process and the nature of the alternate position, the district will not be filling the alternate vacancy for the budget cycle. Dr. West, it's your turn. >> Thank you. Um, I we're in the midst of a mic replacement, but in the meantime, this is my teacher voice, so I will project and hopefully that'll be enough for about a minute. >> Super. Okay,
003thanks for your patience with that. To the Forest Grove School District budget committee, board of directors, families, staff, and community. >> Uh, yes, thank you. Director just reminded me if you want to follow along, the budget message is um behind the blue tab in your budget book. Thank you for that. I am honored to share with you the proposed budget for the 2627 school year. This document is intended not only to explain the financial allocations for the coming year, but also to articulate the values, data, and priorities that shape our decision-making. At its heart, this budget is built on an unshakable and common belief. Every child matters and deserves a great school where they can learn and grow. This shared belief is more profound and powerful than any fiscal challenge we face. While the numbers
004in this budget represent a necessary correction to our structural deficit, they also represent a commitment to the stability and long-term health of our district. Public schools have been a powerful equalizer in our nation's history, and they remain the best way to reach and teach our community students. By taking the difficult steps to balance our budget now, we are ensuring that Forest Grove continues to prepare our children for choicefilled futures. Our budget is not a set of isolated numbers. It is a direct reflection of our district's strategic plan. As we navigated the complexity of this year's financial landscape, we returned to our four core priorities to serve as guard rails for every reduction and investment. Starting with instructional excellence, protecting the instructional core, daily interaction between a teacher, a student, and rigorous content, student well-being and
005belonging, ensuring schools are safe, inclusive, and welcoming environments where students feel a sense of certificate connection, family and community engagement, maintaining transparency, and listening to the values of our stakeholders. And fourth, organizational resilience. Building sustainable fiscal systems that move us out of deficit spending and toward a healthy long-term financial future. To build a resilient future, we must first be honest about our current economic reality. Like many districts across Oregon, Forest Grove is facing a perfect storm of converging divisions. First, we are managing a decadel long trend of declining enrollment. In Oregon, school funding is primarily determined by student counts, which drive approximately 94% of our general fund revenue. Over the last 10 years, our enrollment has declined by 538 students, the equivalent of an entire elementary school. Enrollment decline is expected to persist for at
006least five more years, leading to a corresponding decrease in revenue. Second, while our student population decreased, our operational costs continued to rise. For example, in school year 2425, while our revenue increased by 4.6%, our personnel costs grew at a higher rate due to bargain salary increases, step and column movement for experience, rising benefit costs, and public employee retirement services increases. Historically, we filled this gap using one-time savings from our ending fund balance. However, using one-time fixes for recurring costs is not a sustainable strategy. To address this structural deficit, we identified a need to reduce our expenditures by $4.6 million for the 2627 school year. Combined with the 2 million reduction we made last year, this represents a total of 6.6 million reductions within the bianium. This is the work required to move our district toward
007a sustainable future where our revenue and our expenses are aligned. This budget recommends a disciplined and conservative approach to fiscal year 27. The need for this approach is reinforced by external factors, particularly federal funding levels and the Oregon legislative sess session scheduled for 2027. The 2027 session brings significant uncertainty regarding the final funding level for the state school fund and the allocation amount for our and allocation amount for our district may not be known until after our budget process is complete next spring. The state school fund has not kept pace with cost increases and the state continues to project a deficit as a result of federal HR1 and uncertain corporate and personal income tax revenue. This unknown timing requires us to plan conservatively to ensure the stability of our operations. Additionally, while our budget forecast
008includes provisions for inflation increases, the past year has seen tariff pass through rates, insurance costs, and energy rates increase beyond assumptions. These converging uncertainties further reinforce the critical need to maintain adequate savings and reserves as a buffer against future economic unpredictability. Our approach to these reductions has been disciplined and careful. We first looked at everything else, reviewing service contracts, material goods, operational efficiencies before turning to personnel. However, since over 80% of our budget is dedicated to the people who serve our students, a reduction in force was unavoidable avoidable. The board of directors authorized a reduction of up to 51 full-time equivalent positions, 27 licensed FTE, 21 classified FTE, two administrator FTE, and one confidential FTE. Our district leadership team worked diligently to minimize actual layoffs through vacancy placements, transfers, and early retirement incentives for our
009educators. We know that behind these numbers are colleagues and friends who make our schools what they are and we did not undertake a reduction in force lighted. While a reduction of this size will touch nearly every aspect of our organization, we first fund in those areas our students, families and staff identified as important to the student experience. This includes safety and security, electives, and extracurricular activities, and minimizes impacts to class size. Despite the necessary reductions, this budget remains an investment in high-quality instruction and in our students. We are centering our resources on highquality instruction and the retention of our most veteran staff. Our recent benchmark data reinforces that our focus is in the right place. We are seeing significant growth in third grade literacy where we have invested in curriculum and professional learning focused on
010the science of reading. For example, students in classrooms with letters trained teachers. Letters is a science of learning professional learning program showed a 22% higher proficiency rate than those in non-trained settings. We are early in our effort to ensure all educators are trained in the science of reading, but these results are encouraging. This budget maintains our investment ensuring our educators have the evidence-based tools they need to close foundational gaps. Furthermore, we are prioritizing dual language programming, expanding and protecting opportunities for dual language learning is an evidence-based instructional practice that honors our community, including the majority of students and families who are Latina or Latino and many who are Spanish speakers while also promoting essential work skills. Advanced coursework and electives, ensuring that students have access to rigorous courses and high engagement electives like mariachi and
011beginning band, CTE and AP offerings, athletics and extracurricular activities supporting students in developing and demonstrating skills outside the classroom through activities that connect them with like-minded peers and shared experiences. Safety and belonging. We are committed to maintaining student access to counselors and mental health professionals. We will also continue to refine the implementation of our foundational instructional tools such as stoic packs and champs to ensure that our classrooms are predictable, safe environments where effective learning can take place. Fulfilling our promise. We remain committed to fulfilling our bond promises and completing the modernization of our human resources and fiscal systems to ensure operational efficiency. I recognize that this budget brings a sense of weight and uncertainty. In periods of change, the constancy of school matters more than ever. Our classrooms remain spaces where hope and stability take
012root and where kindness we extend to one another strengthens the care we provide to our students. Fear is contagious, but so is hope. Hope is built in the everyday acts of compassion that connect us in watching a kindergartener learn to read or a high schooler build and program a robot. By making the difficult fiscal adjustments now, we are protecting these moments for years to come. We will continue to advocate at the state level for funding that reflects the true cost of educating our children. Locally, we will continue to listen, to refine our practices, and to serve every child who walks through our doors with respect and protection. No exception. Thank you for your trust, your partnership, and your unwavering support of the Forest Grove School District. Together, we will navigate this season and emerge as
013a stronger, more resilient. >> Thank you, Dr. Wish. I may include it's your time now. >> All right. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Um, so just to orient you a little bit to the budget book and the presentation, you'll notice at the bottom left of the presentation in your slides is a page number. Most everything that we're going to go over tonight is a reference to a part of the budget document itself. So, if you want to look more into that or you want to follow along or need more information, um there's page numbers and references as part of that. So, you are more than welcome to flip back and forth. Um just a quick reminder of where we are with the budget process. This is the budget calendar for this year. Tonight is
014the night that you receive the proposed budget. Listen to the budget message from Dr. West. And then after tonight, you have two additional optional budget committee meetings to continue to discuss and deliberate. Our goal is to be able to adopt a budget on the June 9th schoolboard meeting. Quick overview. Uh a couple of these slides are an overview of what we went over on budget 101 just to orient you to the roles and responsibilities again of the budget committee. The budget committee tonight will receive and review the budget, consider public comment, discuss and deliberate, and then ultimately adopt a budget for recommendation for approve a budget for recommendation for the board to adopt. At this point, once we present the budget to you tonight, administration serves in just an advisory capacity. So, we are here
015to help support you, answer questions, provide additional information. Um, but it is now going to be in your pants. Quick reminder of what the budget committee doesn't do. At the budget committee, we don't talk about individual staff members. We don't place individual staff members. We don't set salaries and benefit levels um or delete add or delete pro programs. Um and then we don't develop policies. The policies is really the board's role. Quick reminder of what we are hoping to get out of the end of this is to set maximum appropriations for the district spending for the fiscal year 2627. And this is maximum appropriations by major fund and major function. General fund instruction, general fund support services, grants, instruction, grants, support services. This is also on page 164. It is your red tab in your
016book. And that is the draft of the motions for this committee as if you were to approve the proposed budget. Um and then if there's any changes, we'll change and adjust this options. After tonight, you can um or after you receive the budget, you can approve the budget as it's proposed. You can increase appropriations if you believe we don't have enough resources built into this budget. You can decrease appropriations if you think we are expending too much resources or you can move appropriations between major functions. Um that would look like moving resources between instruction and support services or support services to instruction um between those major function levels. Right now to dive into the budget itself, the green tab is where it starts with budget. the college question. Thank you for all that information. Once
017the budget gets adopted by the school board, we can make as a school board, we can make changes in that adopted budget depending on the vagaries of what happened in the outside world. What's the percentage of the change that we can do on that? >> 25%. Um, and we've done that. We did it earlier this year where we came to the board and asked for an increase in appropriations to do the FURs side accounts. >> So, we're not we're not increasing the total budget, but we're shifting after the budget's been adopted because of the necessities by >> unknown circumstances, >> outside influences. Thank you. >> And we've we've done that. Um, we do one or two resolutions every year. Um there's times where it'll be August and we'll get noticed that we all of a
018sudden got a new grant and so now we need to increase appropriations to be able to expend that new grant. Um we only need the approval really to increase appropriations or transfer appropriations by function. Um but administration always has the role to not spend as much and to decrease appropriations where necessary. So >> thank you. Any other questions or not? No. See, now go ahead. >> Thank you. Um, so page 23 in the book starts budget at a glance and 23 through 39 is really where the meat of the budget is. This is where it goes through everything from our revenue to our expenditures. It talks more about um labor costs that are built into the budget, FTE, enrollment, FUR costs, and it goes through a lot of information, more detail. Um it's more than
019what the legal requirement is. The rest of the document after that, that's the legal requirement for our reports and how we present the data. But we try to give you a budget at a glance that gives you some more information on that. And tonight, we'll go through that information. um we'll summarize a lot of that information and go through those pages tonight and I'll take over for the next couple of slides here. Um again down in the bottom lower leftand corner you see this slide is on page 23 if you want to follow along. Um as I've said in my message we started with identifying what are those things we're going to fund. Those of you who have been along in this journey um since about January know that we held several engagement sessions. We
020uh conducted a survey with our students and our families. And what we heard through those engagements and the surveys that there are three priorities that emerged as the top categories that people were interested in seeing funded. Safety and security was by far the top priority. Our students told us that extracurricular activities and their electives matter a lot. And then we heard from our teachers that they don't want to see astronomical increases in class size. So we use the community input that we received to fund the budget first to look for those areas where we could preserve as much of the services that we provide to kids, the safety, security, extracurriculars and appropriate class sizes as we possibly can. And then we looked at all of these other areas. We've got to safeguard the instructional core.
021That is our business. That's what we're charged with doing. We need our environments to be welcoming. We have to set ourselves up for the future. You've heard us talk quite a bit over these past few months about avoiding one-time savings because they don't actually address our structural deficit. And then preserving our dual language programs is a priority for us. Both because of our student and family population, which I referenced in my message, but also because there is decades of research that show us that a strong dual language program is one of the most effective ways for students to develop English language proficiency. And we know in our own internal data that our English learners that are developing for proficiency are being very successful at the high school level. And then of course we want to
022ensure that our students at the high school level have comprehensive course offer offerings. We do need to meet the minimum state requirement so that students can earn the credits to graduate. But in addition to that, we want their high school experience to be rich and to have options. And then lastly, but that doesn't mean it's least, we also heard that mental health and counseling supports are really important. And so we have preserved those as well. You'll see in our budget as we get further in here, we did make a slight adjustment in our counseling um staff due to enrollment declines. Um but we have preserved the services that students have access to in our schools and their access to mental health profession. Next slide. In addition to these priorities, we also look to our strategic
023plan. You'll notice quite a bit of overlap. The strategic plan was not developed in isolation. Several years ago, this district before I started undertook an extensive community engagement process to develop the strategic plan. Much of what I just referenced, what that was highlighted in our engagement around the budget was also prioritized through the strategic plan process. So you see a lot of overlap here from a budgeting perspective. That actually makes it a little bit easier because we don't have conflicting priorities. Um but what the strategic plan does for us more practically is that underneath these bigger banners of behavioral health and wellness and creating a resilient organization, we start to disagregate a little bit. What does that actually look like? We break that apart into some measurable outcomes and we fund so that we can
024actually achieve these outcomes. If dual language instruction matters to us, we need to devote some level of funding to ensure that our educators have the professional learning to instruct in that environment well, that they have the resources that they need to teach well. So, we have to invest in those areas in order to see the outcomes that we're hoping for in those areas. And our strategic plan guides us through that process. Back to you. >> So the other part that is on page 23 is our financial assumptions built into this budget. Uh this budget is built on an 11.4 billion state school fund for the 2527 bianium. It is split 49% year 1 and 51% year 2. This budget is based on declining enrollment. It has flat funding for the state school fund because the
025way the state school fund works, we get funded at the greater of the prior year versus the current year. And so since we are in that declining enrollment, we are using last year's enrollment number, this current year's enrollment numbers for our funding level, but we know that enrollment is declining. This budget assumes a 97 student lock compared to this current year. um staffing reductions. It includes 68.8 FTE of reductions as compared to the current year's budget. 51 of those were through our RIT process that we completed in March and April and in the May. Um and I'll go into more detail about those in a little bit. It does include full labor contracts for both our licensed and our classified union groups. We finalized bargaining with both our groups this year. So we don't have
026estimates built built into this budget like we have in the past. We have known salary and full rate increases and health insurance increases in this. Uh we do have the continuation of the 22 bond. We are starting to wind down on all of those projects, but we do have a considerable amount of resources left. Um this includes that in there. And then lastly, it includes no utilization of our ending fund balance. This is really where we're trying to stabilize that ending fund balance and stop the deficit spending of our one-time resources and savings. Now, to get into the numbers, this shows our resources for all of our resources across the entire district for the 2627 proposed budget. It's about $180 million and 57% of that is our general fund. Our general fund is our only
027unrestricted resources. That is how we pay for most day-to-day operations, our utilities, our staffing in the building, our classroom instruction. Um that is where most of our resources and our expenditures go. um the special revenue, the food service, debt service, capital funds, those are all restricted and can only be used for the purpose that we receive those resources. Now, when we take those resources and look at just the new resources and we take out that beginning fund balance, we have about $141 million in new resources. 58% of that is state, 30% local, and then 6% federal. Looking at our expenditures for next year, we have about $164 million worth of expenditures built into this budget. 44% of that goes to instruction and 27% goes to support services. This is increasing as a percentage of the
028whole. As our facilities improvements in our bond expenditures start to decrease, the support services and instruction will start to increase. So, as those bond funds start to diminish, this graph will start shifting over time because it does have all resources in it. Now, because our general fund is our unrestricted resources, this is where we have the most control over and deciding how it will be expended. I'll spend a little bit more time on our general fund than I'll spend anywhere else. Um and when we look at our general fund, this graph was shown in the or similar version of it was shown in the last budget committee meeting that we have and it's showing the 202425 actuals, this year's forecast and then what is in this proposed 2627 budget. The dark green smaller portion is
029the beginning fund balance. The light green is the new resources. The dark gray is the expenditures and then the light gray is our ending fund balance and our beginning fund balance and resources has to equal our expenditures and our ending fund balance. And so what you see here is the $10.6 million ending fund balance that we have projected for the 2627 sorry 2526 school year then becomes our beginning fund balance for this budget. And then the other piece is you'll see in this budget, the $10.6 million beginning fund balance is equal to our $10.6 million ending fund balance. Our goal through this budget process was to stabilize our expenditures and to stop depleting our ending fund balance. General fund resources. We have $92.7 million of new resources built into this budget for the general fund.
03072% is state, 22% local, and then we have a little bit in transfers and intermediate. when we look at the state school fund because the state school fund uses a combination of intermediate local and state resources. It's our property taxes, our common school fund, our county school fund, timber revenue, um, and our state school fund. That's all formula resources with the state as part of our distribution formula. And that accounts for 92% of these total resources. That means 92% of our new resources going into next year is solely driven by enrollment. >> So Eileen, we're we're receiving zero amount from the federal government next year. >> This is general fund. >> Oh, general fund. Okay. >> Most of our federal resources are all in grants. >> Okay. >> Yeah. There's this tiny sliver of um
031transportation reimbursement in there, but it's it's doesn't even show up on the ground. >> Okay. Thank you. We have a quick comment or question from Chen. >> Oh, >> hi Eileen. Can you give us a few examples of local revenue sources? >> Yeah. Uh, local revenue sources is going to be our property taxes from our community. Um, it will be interest revenue, student gate fees to go to athletics. Um it would be reimbursement from the community school for them purchasing transportation services from us. So it's anything locally here in our community. The intermediate is going to be anything kind of regionally. So, our ESD service credits, countywide items, and then state items are going to be more of our state school fund, our federal forest fees or our state forest revenue. Um, our high-cost disability
032adjustment or resources. So, that's what's going to be in that state bucket. Kind of gives you an idea of what's in each category. >> Thank you. For the local category, are property tax revenues the bulk of that? >> Yes. Okay, thank you. >> And that again is where we can't go above $5 per thousand on Yeah. property taxes. >> Okay. >> The property tax rate uh for our general fund was set in 1999. >> Yeah. um as a fixed rate and it's it's set. Okay. When we look at general fund expenditures, I'm sorry, are we good with revenue? I don't want to rush you. Uh moving on to expenditures for the general fund. We're looking at just the general fund alone. We have $92.7 million worth of expenditures built into this proposed budget. 61% is
033instruction and 38% is support services. And this is pretty in line with what it was last year. Looking at expenditures in a different way, this shows expenditures by major object. So instead of instruction versus support services, this is what what type of item are we purchasing? Um salaries and benefits account for about 77% of our total budget. And if this is before we include other items like our custodial, our transportation, our substitutes or grounds, if we were to have all of those inhouse instead of contracted services, that 77% would be much greater. Great to move on to staffing and FTE. Because staffing is such a large part of our budget, um staffing, we had 725 total FTE built into the 26 budget. This proposed budget has 656 FTE. It's 68 almost 69 FTE. It's FTE
034means full-time equival equivalent. Um, and so the difference is the 51 FTE that we did the reduction enforce this spring and then we reduced 17 FTE from budget already back in August and at the start of the school year just based on positions being unfilled. We had um reductions in several of our grants last August that we had to make some adjustments from. A lot of those were just from natural turnover. It wasn't a full reduction. It was just we didn't have the funding to support them or we didn't we weren't able to fill the position at the time. So, we've never filled it this year. Um, so that's the difference between the primary year's budget and this proposed budget. And then in terms of the process that we followed again we started by looking
035at what is our community telling us and when I use the word community I mean our whole school community what are our plans our priorities based on the strategic plan that was developed and let's make sure that we fund those things first those things that we heard really matter and that we know really matter to kids and then from there we looked at our efficiency measures ers. So, what are the temporary positions that we could eliminate? What are vacancies that were never filled that we realized we don't actually need to continue? Um, and we looked to reduce those first. Vacancies that we felt like are important to our organization that we know that our kids need to have filled in order to have a successful experience. we held any of those vacancies because we knew
036these reductions were coming. So that when we got to the point where we were actually working through the process of reduction, we had places to put people. Um, as I've explained, the reduction process is very complex with several different variables that drive who has rights and priority for positions. But in order for them to have any rights or priorities, we have to have spots to put them in. And it was through preserving many of those vacancies that we were able to place enough individuals that we didn't have to lay off if we want to have TV. In addition, we made some strategic adjustments. We shifted some of our general fund expenses to grants where we had room. We also increased our class size ratio from a 1:24 to a 1:25. And I'll get into that
037in just a minute here so you can see how that played out. And then we postponed non-critical professional learning and where we could reduce discretionary budgets. So we looked across the breadth of our budget to identify where can we reduce to minimize the number of actual layoffs that our system experience and minimize the number of staff that we reduced within our budget. Next slide, please. So, here's what this looked like. Um, as it played out, I'm going to focus on just a couple of the numbers up here, and then if you have questions, we're happy to answer those. You'll see up there that in total 16.6 classroom teachers were part of the reduction in force, not layoffs, but the reduction in force. 12 of those 16.6 are just due to a decline in enrollment. The
038additional 4.6 were the result of the increase in the 1:25 ratio. Another area that I want to highlight, if you look at the classified on the right hand side, starting with special education instructional assistance and moving down to migrant liaison. So those four different categories of FTE. Those reductions were due to flat or decreasing federal funding. We had to make those adjustments because the funds are finite. We can't overspend. Some of these other reductions that you see up here fit with what we heard from our community. So, our community said, "Look to the district office. There's several district office positions up there." Um, we listened to that and we were able to identify some positions that we were able to consolidate or that we feel like we can delegate responsibilities um to others within the
039organization, the counselors I referenced already um as I was speaking earlier and then there's an assortment of other positions that we included in the 51 FTE reduction. Seeing no questions, we'll move on to FTE over time. >> Yeah. >> Um, so this chart just shows our FTE over time. Looking back at this, looking at this proposed budget and then going back several years, if we look at our adopted budget compared to this one, this budget still includes 20 more licensed FTE, 23 additional classified FTE, one additional administrative position, one additional confidential position. That's a 7% increase since 2018-19. However, if we look at our enrollment over the same period, we're down 9.6% of our enrollment. We're down 582 students, but we're still up on our FTE over the same period of time. So, just a
040little bit of history on our enrollment. Now we look at class size averages. Built into this budget includes uh our target of 1 to 24 to1 on grades kinder through 4. It does include a 30 to1 on 56 a 25 to1 on 78 and a 24 to1 on 912. Now our secondaries that is strictly a ratio of number of students to teachers. However, we do know that our teachers have prep time where those students are not with them. So if we weight that for the actual instructional time, it's more like a 29:1 and a 32 to one on average across the building. We do know that um grades 56 is high. It's at 30 to1. That is one place that we have our radar on and we are looking at. We do have a 1.0
041FTE built into this budget as a pocket FTE. So once students arrive in the fall and we have we can see where everybody lands, this is one place that we're already looking at. Um and this is 30 to1 because our SIA is built at flat funding in this budget and we did remove a 1.0 know for Tom call out of SIA just because student investment account grant funding just because that is the only place we had class size FTE in that budget and so also rates 91 12 and 78 for Neil Armstrong Quality Plains and for Scro High School those look lower than what they are because they have um high school success Yes. Uh grant resources and those grant resources that allow us to purchase staffing from cannot go down to grades five and
042six. So that brings their average class sizes down. So we have a couple of things that are at play here. And before we move on, a pocket FTE is reserve FTE. So we have budgeted additional FTE that we have not actually allocated to a school because we know that every year there's something there's a bubble. There's kids that show up that we weren't expecting. So, we plan for that by reserving a little bit of FTE. So, we have some flexibility. >> Put a question in here. Um, typically in the fall there there may be no such thing as a typical fall, but what is the variance usually between projected enrollment for what we think for projected enrollment for what we think next year and then what actually happens in the fall? Is there typically a
043variance that we over plan for that or does that look like? >> We budget pretty conservatively on our enrollment and staff conservatively. So the last several years we have budgeted for more students and allocated more staff than what enrollment has actually come in at. Um and this last year we've seen that really at the kinder level because that's the hardest place to budget. Um we don't have any data other than birth rates from 5 years ago to tell us how many kinders are going to come in and then at which school are they going to come in at. Um so kinders is definitely the hardest to estimate. The rest are pretty easy because we can assume a third grade class at Joseph Gail is going to move into a fourth grade class. Then we can
044look at historical trends on um moveins and outs and what it looks like from going from Joseph Gale to Tom McCall and what our capture ratios are there. So it's really that Kinder that's the hardest place. Thank you. >> A quick question. Can you just tell me what the student investment account funds are? Yeah, the student investment account funds is a state grant uh that we receive. It was part of student success act as part of the student success act which was a law enacted in 2018 2019. >> Okay, it's been a while but it's one one of the subsets of that piece of legislation. SIA was uh built within the student success uh the corporate activity tax if you're familiar with that. The corporate activity tax funds the SIA um and funds some other
045grants as well. That's where the resources come from. And so it's the SIA is a more flexible state grant than say a federal grant that we receive which is very narrow but it is more restricted than the state school fund somewhere in between those two. >> Thank you. >> And we utilize we utilize ours for um counseling. We have eight FTE for counselors built into the SIA grant and that's what helps get us down to that 250 to1 ratio. Um, so that's a big bulk of what how we utilize SIA is through counseling and then you have a mental health specialist I believe in there. Health IAS are in there. So there's quite a bit in learning. Okay. All right. Now to move on from this budget to really looking at our future outlook and
046with this proposed budget, what it looks like for not only the 2627 year, but if we were to project it out for two additional years. This is a planning tool and a planning model that we use internally. It has highle assumptions on what if. So, if we take this proposed budget and we add 4% worth of property tax increases, if we assume the state school fund is going to come in at 12.26 billion for the 2729 school year, we can build in negotiated contract rates in there. Um, this has in it an increase in PERS rates because we know our PERS rates are going to increase in the next bianium. Our rate credit is going to sunset in this next bianium and so that will have a significant impact to our labor costs going into
047the 27 school year or 2728 school year and we do have continued declining enrollment. So this does project continue declining enrollment. This does not however have any adjustments built into it to reduce staffing associated to the declining enrollment. So this is assuming we maintain current staffing levels and our current expenditures. But what that does is it takes this year's 10.6 or the 2627 proposed budget 10.6 million ending fund balance and it brings it to just over a percent for the 2728 school year and then it brings it well below negative the following year. So even with us maintaining the 11% ending fund balance for this proposed budget, we still do have structural changes that we will have to make in the future years just because of increasing costs, increase increasing pers rates and declining enrollment
048before you move on. Um I think if you look at the column that starts there at 728 you can really see that illustrated there where the beginning fund balance is 10.6 million. You can see the resources decrease over the proposed budget that we have in front of you right now because we estimate that enrollment will continue to decline. Expenditures will continue to increase. That is one thing we can be absolutely certain of. And the interplay of all that means that our ending fund balance decreases quite a bit if we make no additional structural changes. Play that out over just a couple of years and you get the graph that director was just about to change to. And again, this is a planning tool. It is very broad assumptions built into this and it will change
049tomorrow but it is something that we use internally so that we can look long term beyond just this year. >> Thank you. Um question for Dr. West and I think it's primarily another what if question. This is by no means unique to forest grow is it? >> No. >> This is a carbon copy across the state. >> Correct. I I won't say all because I I I can't say that definitively, but there are many school districts across the state needing to make structural changes like ours. If you pay attention to the news, you probably have been reading about it. Uh, one of the most public of course has been Portland public schools and what they're facing for the upcoming budget cycle. Um, the way we stay in front of it is through the structural change
050that we're addressing in this budget and then these types of near daily adjustments to what we know about the real conditions in front of us. So having a tool where we can take the estimates that are updated on a regular basis by the department of education, look at our actual expenditures, what are we actually spending on a per month basis, being able to compare those two so we know what our actual cash flow is and make adjustments on the fly. That is how we stay in front of this. Um, Director Clut's going to talk in just a couple minutes here about how part of what we do that we bake into this is an assumption that we'll be able to realize some savings every year within [clears throat] the budget because we know there'll be
051a position we don't fill right away and that's some vacancy savings that we can realize. Um so we throughout the course of a school year we account for that as our expenditures are balanced so that we can make realtime adjustments. So to your point, having an finance officer who understands the eb and flow of how revenue and expenditures work in our state and in our department of education makes a huge difference in keeping us in front of what could be a disaster like we've seen in some districts where they're making midyear layoffs and furlow days and some pretty significant reactions to the situation that they are in. We are not there, but we're not there because we're making these structural adjustments now. >> Go ahead. >> Um, so this tool, is this a tool that
052most district CFOs are utilizing? Is it a consistent tool? And when OASBO is advocating to the state about this, are they showing this type of thing or what is what is happening with that next level of or is every district really utilizing different types of tools? Right now, >> I think most are using different types of things. This is just a workbook that I have built over time and we keep adjusting and working through um and it we just keep this live document constantly going with historical data and upcoming projections and we can adjust the assumptions and it so it's it's an internal workbook. >> Okay. Thank you. And to add on to this question, how much of how much the prominently knows about that 27 28 28 29 >> I have shared the same
053information the last three years in this meeting. So I don't know if it goes out beyond this. It's something that we talk about at the budget committee. uh we talked about it internally but um I'm not sure how much >> I I don't know how to answer that question either because I don't know the I'll use the word penetration of the message I don't know how to measure that to see what the reach actually is um we have been talking about it if you have ideas last year about this year we had a few million dollars but now it looks like it's going to worse and worse for the next couple of years. >> The same period last year, we were assuming the next year we were going to be down to 1% and have
054to make minor adjustments. So, it's this is the similar message that we gave the same time last year at the budget meeting. Um he also gave this ex not the exact slide but the same format. Um we talked about it in union negotiations with our license and classified groups. Um so it's something that we do use and talk with our our members with. Um >> the reason why I asked this question because at a couple of the meetings we had in here some people said oh we did not know anything about it. That's why I'm asking >> very possible. I also know from years of teaching and speaking in public spaces that it you can't overcommunicate. We could deliver the same message multiple times in the same forum and sometimes it takes the third or
055fourth or fifth time before it clicks for somebody who's listening to the message. So there's some of that. There's also I think to your point, we aren't in every space talking to every person. So sometimes this information is new to individuals. Um so it's a fair question. We are always looking for ways that we can get in front of more people and share this information. Um, what I I hope that the budget committee takes away from this is not that we have an impending crisis in front of us, but that we are like many school districts. As director Truax points out, we are at a point where we have to reckon with the structural deficits that we've been living with in this school district. Those structural deficits will continue for an undetermined period of time
056until our enrollment stabilizes and starts to climb again or until the state identifies a different way to fund schools. That's a possibility, too. But regardless, we're in a situation right now where we know given our enrollment projections and the increases in expenses that we can anticipate that for the next several years we are going to have to reckon with adjustments to keep us solvent. And one of the ways that we'll do that, Director Plute will talk about this um at some point again before we're done here, I believe, is that we maintain an ending fund balance that can weather surprises. Um that allows us to do what this graph here is depicting so that we can ride out into the next year, especially if we can realize some savings throughout the year. And I'll let
057director clude explain what that looks like because while we're in a situation where we need to be careful and we need to be intentional, we're not in a crisis situation. So this slide really shows the same information that was on the last slide, just more in a visual. The black first four dots, that's the historical enrollment or historical ending fund balance as a percentage revenue. And so the last three years, we were at 21% 21% 17%. This is the 11.9% ending fund balance that we project this current year. And then the green that goes down first, that's the proposed budget for that is in front of you tonight. And then the future two years out. The dotted line is the board policy for our ending fund balance at 8%. That goes across the middle. And
058then that gray line at the that kind of goes up higher. That's if we keep and continue to budget conservative conservatively every year and generate savings through that. whether it's vacancy savings or um monitoring our resources and expenditures during the year. If we budget for something and we don't need it during the year, we hold those resources to then be reallocated during the next budget cycle. Um, so that budgeting conservatively every year can help us push out that cliff a little bit and it allows us more time to be able to continue to adapt. And then the last slide I have for you tonight is just the things that are on our radar. There's a lot on here. Um, but I'll hit a couple of the big items. We do have the 2027-29 long session
059that's going to be coming up uh next winter. There's going to be a lot of things that are we're going to be watching through that including what the state school fund allocation's going to be and then any other unfunded mandates or any other items that are going to be coming. We know that every long session comes challenges and so we don't have that this year and we're not sitting in that place this year. However, we will be in that place for the coming year. Um, we do have unstabil instability for the federal funding. We are learning that uh flat funding for most federal grants and then we do have risk for some grants uh primarily the migrant grants for the next school year, not in this budget necessarily. Um, and then the other federal funding
060piece that we have that will impact us is the Medicaid and SNAP changes as part of the uh big beautiful bill. Um, the reducing the amount of people that would qualify for Medicaid and SNAP will impact our ability to qualify for C districtwide. C is the community eligibility program that allows us to offer free and red free meals, breakfast and lunch for all students across the district. With those changes, we could lose our funding for free meals for all. Um, we do have guaranteed one more year which is this budget cycle that in front of you that we have C and we are looking right now at reertifying and trying to reertify based on today's data to lock us in for four more years. Um, so that's our goal before June 30th is to lock
061us in for C for the next four years before we start to see any impact or potential impacts from that. But we do know that that is a risk for us in the future. uh first rate increases, our rate credit from our bond that we have is going to sunset in the 27 school year and that is going to increase our costs of labor by another 5.4%. Some of this will be offset by the expiration of our debt associated to that. Um, however, we are still expecting 3 4% increase in our costs for for labor associated because of the PERS. Um, we don't know what those final rates are yet and we won't know until next winter. Uh, but we will need to budget those and build that into the upcoming budget the following year.
062And then the last thing that I have here is the fiscal transparency Senate Bill 141. Part of that is restructuring our entire PBAM and chart of accounts and that is our accounting manual that is required by all districts in the state. That is going to be a huge overhaul not only for our business office but for all of our buildings, our budget document, everything is going to change drastically. Um so we don't have to necessarily do that this upcoming year but it will be mandated the following year. Um we do have that change that is in front of us um and will impact our budgeting. Um >> should I go a question? >> Yes. >> Hi Elen. Um back to the C funding. Can you give me a kind of a rough estimate dollar-wise of
063what it costs for us to be able to provide the free meals to all students? Um, I don't have the total cost if we were to pay. Um, our federal revenue for our nutrition services fund is $3.8 million. >> What page are you on? >> I am on page 122. Um, we will still get some reimbursement for meals, but I think the biggest risk is is our families are used to not having to pay for meals and we can no longer require students to we can't withhold meals. And so what we were experiencing before we went 100% pre across the district is we had a significant bad debt. uh we were writing off 30 40 $50,000 every year of unpaid meals. And so if we were to continue, if we were to go back to
064free or if we were to go back to paid, I see that 50,000 increasing significantly because we will have most likely less families that are going to pay after being free for so long. Um, and then if we were to fully 100% fund that across from district general fund, then those resources would need to come from somewhere else. So, if the district wanted to continue with the free plan even though, let's say we lose federal funding to do that, um would it be allowable to um find community resources that are willing to contribute to those u funds so that we can continue that program? >> Yes. because I suspect that's a pretty easy sell if you say we need to raise $5 million so that our kids can continue to have free food. That's a
065very specific kind of thing that I'd like to think our community members could respond to. >> And I'm sure it would be less than the 5 million. I would just have to I'd have to run the numbers to find out like what we would get reimbursement from the state, what we would actually get reimbursement from the federal government and where that gap would be if we didn't qualify and if we didn't charge. So, we would have to we would have to run that. >> Okay. Thank you. >> This conversation is a good example of why careful and conservative budgeting matters. Um, these are considerations that could have substantial implications for our students if they come to pass. And there's a lot of unknowns built into this that it would be irresponsible to not at least
066consider in our budgeting process. And then specific to C and providing free meals for students, there's certainly a financial cost associated with that. And if that were to come to pass, we would have to wrestle with do we as a district continue to provide free meals regardless of reimbursement. And one of the factors in that equation, which isn't listed up here, is that we know when kids don't eat, they're not learning as well. And so all of this is interconnected in ways that are sometimes not talked about and brought to light, but they're considerations that we we have to weigh as we are evaluating if these factors come to pass, what is the right decision for our students? >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, two things. One, uh, the cost of public budgeting and accounting
067manual, the PBAM. That's Senate Bill 141. Is there any money attached to that? So, it would be what somebody might call an unfunded mandate. >> Correct. No. >> Okay. No mind about it. All right. Um maybe that's a message we send to the legislature at the beginning of the long session to say, "Hey, help us out." Um maybe, just maybe. The other thing that I want to complain about or comment on is the Medicaid and SNAP changes. Now, I think it's House Bill One, which everybody likes to call big beautiful bill. terrible name for it. But there is also a threat now by the feds to withhold Medicaid and SNAP money from states if they don't aggressively go after fraud. And I think in the past we've seen fraud and Medicaid and in SNAP not
068overly significant. It's not huge like some sponsors of the big beautiful bill um say that it's happened. So if we don't have a self-fulfilling prophecy there, we don't send in information that supports the wildeyed suppositions of some of these people, they could threaten to again remove federal funding from those programs. And that would, to use another popular phrase, trickle down the school districts and other districts and other special districts across the state. Neither one of those things are good news, but I think the fixable thing on the PBA is that the legislature can look to itself and say, "We created this mandate. We need to help pay for it." I'll shut up. just hand this right over here because the letter that you spoke about um director Truax was developed by Dr. include over there
069and share with a with the help of I think many different people from the house, but I'll have you talk about it, but it was submitted. We we will send it out again to this committee just so you can see the kind of advocacy that's been put right in front of board of ed. Becky Timuk spoke spoke about it at the board of ed meeting and once again they just passed it right by and and they today in fact are having a next um steps with chartered accounts. So your hope your hopes that the legislature will hear that and do something different. That ship has sailed and the train the the train has left the station. So again, it's what I was saying in the meeting before. I don't know what advocacy it takes, but
070it's going to take more than just a few people with a letter. It's going to take a whole bunch of people saying we're in this budget meeting and we're hearing this and why why are we still doing these things? So that's just the pan. I think the danger when we talk about things like the free and reduced lunch is we it's it's a difficult we have to have a holistic conversation with our legislators have to see and I appreciate the presence of Nicole here and Senator Sman's campaign here tonight because I think to see it in real time what's happening to be able to what you have is then you have some people that advocate separately and say we need this money for the free lunch program and then all the legislators are like oh
071my god have a free lunch program and they've they've once again we aren't looking at why do we even have to be to the point where we're having the discussion about we need the money for their free lunch but it's that or right now it's high cost disability. So all the legislations, you know, some are forming a work group around high-cost disability, but the the question needs to be why are we having to do all of these plugging the holes? And I don't know where we elevate that level of conversation while you're still advocating for kids at the local level. And and then there's these things that nobody's going to know what the P bam is. Who would know what the P [clears throat] bam is? But I know you know what the but I
072mean people you know to your point Nicholas like people in the community you know how do we >> explain all this to people so that we can >> and and I think it starts with just having our legislators having a deep understanding locally of what we're doing here. Um they do hear in the news what's going on everywhere. And so I think that's what's breaking through and we need to continue to find a way to say but here we aren't in a crisis. Here we are planning conservatively and this is why here we value these things. So I it's it's an ongoing challenge. I need to gently >> but I do want I said you talk a little bit more about >> I do want to gently remind that uh Nicole is on Senator Sman's
073staff not on her campaign. >> I'll shut up for now. Um, Eileene, do you have an estimate at what it's going to cost the PAD? And are you going to have to hire addition staff to help you to >> So, do you have an estimate or No, I think I did an estimate at one point. I put it in one of the letters. Um, we have sent several letters. We have sent community uh as a OASPO group as a whole. Um there has been a lot of advocacy around that. It's not being heard. Um for sure. Uh we do know we will have to incur costs with our software companies. Um we have several soft several of our softwares including our subservices and uh our time and attendance that include the account code structures. We're
074going to have to revamp our um infinite vision software or accounting software. Um, and we will probably have to have a full-time person for an additional year to help us navigate this change just because the entire structure is going to change. We'll probably have to um run parallels or try to figure out how to navigate that to make sure that everything's going in right. We'll have to rebuild all of our reporting software. Um, there there's going to be a lot behind that. And most importantly, and I think what people don't understand is it's not just the business office. It's all of our administrative, our secretaries in our buildings. I mean, having them understand our chart of accounts right now versus it going to 27 digits is significant. And so all of our administrators and our
075admin support, they're going to have to be retrained. Uh, and then just the compliance afterwards to make sure it's all, you know, we all have it in our minds. It's like learning a new, somebody said it the um, it's like learning a new language. It's like me trying to learn French tomorrow and having our, you know, admin specialist trying to learn French tomorrow. It is like learning a whole new language, having to learn a whole new account structure. Um, so it's it's going to be pretty significant. the training for our staff is going to be essential. >> We have to rewrite all of our documentation. And these are these are some of the costs that as soon as this legislation hit the internet, we knew just by looking at it. We understood what the costs
076were because we live this work. Um, and our legislators don't. So to your point, when a piece of legislation is introduced, it really would be helpful to have some conversations and learn about what are the actual costs to a school district for a piece of legislation. And it's difficult for us to estimate what the actual cost is um when the chartered accounts and the PBAM switch over. But the the part about this that I think is important to take away because we are talking about budgeting and we are proposing a budget for the upcoming school year is that when something like the charter accounts and PBAM update comes into play where we are mandated to make this move, we will have to make a decision between a new accountant versus some other position that we
077could be funding. And that is a really difficult conversation to have with people about why we can't have another teacher and why we need to have another accountant. And the other piece about um thinking just beyond forc school district, one of the other changes with this is our community school. Our community school right now doesn't have to abide by the chart of accounts of PEAM. Just us. this new legislation requires them to and so using QuickBooks and using small accounting software um things that they do right now now they're going to have to also convert all of their stuff so it's not just it's not just for school district and then there's also financial implications for us so if the community school doesn't abide we get our funding held so it's it goes goes beyond
078just for school districts. Um it it's quite vast on the changes. >> So this whole conversation is illustrative of the fact that there's a lot of uncertainty in budgeting >> in education in Oregon right now. Um, and the more that we can identify potential impacts to budget and be thoughtful about planning for that, the better prepared we are if they actually come to pass. And then if they come to pass, again going back to the ending fund balance, that's how we weather some of these things and why we started these conversations, advocating for the correction to our structural deficit so that we were no longer spending our one-time mons and ensuring that we maintained an ending fund balance of about 11%. I am going I am done with my part. Nick, if you wanted to
079take it over with the next part on the agenda. >> All right. Thank you, director. Thank you so much. But the budget committee appreciates a community member sharing information during public comments. Public comments can be made in person, online, or through Zoom by submitting the designated form on the web page. Public comments will be limited to 3 minutes as is the protocol for board meetings. Budget committee members will not comment or respond to questions. Public criticism or complaints about school district personnel are not allowed. >> No. Are there any questions or comments or requests from the budget committee? >> Yeah, I again I lied when I said I was going to shut up. Um, we've used the phrase drinking from a fire hose more than once. This is a boatload of information. Um, and this
080discussion has been going on for ever since I've been on the board, which is all now maybe close to 10 months. Um, and I'm a little I get a little discouraged that we're dealing with uh drive off cliff here. And there aren't a whole lot of people. And we have one representative from legislative staff that is here this evening. And this is incredibly important across the width and breadth of this great state. And we're not we're not answering the bell. We knew this was coming. Um what is it? Pogo said we are our own worst enemy at times. We admit the enemy and he is us. Uh we're not listening to Eileen. We're not listening to Dr. West. We're not listening to Becca Timop. We're not listening to Teraki at times. uh these concerns are
081raised and I don't know I don't know what the answer is. I don't know how we get the our partner in coming to a solution the state legislature to come to grips with this. I think the PBAM thing is a classic example of the unfunded mandate. Um, and we knew that. And yet here we are in a budget process where it's an accomplished fact. And we're asking for a a fix in a legislative session that is what, next February. So I I don't want to paint the dark picture because we still have the people around the table here that are answering the call and doing the things they need to do. Uh and there are in all the other school districts across this state similar people gathered around similar tables having similar discussions and we
082need to coordinate that. And I realize that has nothing to do with adopting a budget for the next next fiscal year but it has everything to do with um financial security and stability in the years to come. Now I will shut up. Maybe >> I have a question. Did we ever think about like other school district are doing merging school together? Is this something we ever think about or do we ever contemplate of doing things like this to bring down the cost? >> I'm going to answer you a couple different ways. Um, >> can I jump in and answer one way? >> Thanks. >> My first my first regard is if we start making educational decisions based on economics, we're losing the battle. If we say we're going to close this school because we can
083operate the district cheaper, we're shortch changing those kids that will be changing their school enrollment. >> I know that. So to me again to use it to use that phrase that I'll use the phrase that's a non-starter because that doesn't fit that doesn't fit what we want to do and part of our strategic plan. At least to me it doesn't fit. it doesn't fit to us or to me or to you but maybe some other people thinking about that process maybe change their mind and then say why it's not fitting or why it will not fit in a way because a lot of districts are doing it and if someone from the community come and ask this question what should we answer >> yeah right now our schools are not such that we need to
084consider a closure so we're fortunate in that regard um it is not unheard of. There are districts that have been closing schools. Um we've read about Portland Public for example. They're considering now Westville, Bethl. There are many school districts across the state that have had to close some of their schools over the last few years. But for right now, we're not in a position where we need to do that. Um to expand your question just a little bit, that doesn't mean that we are not looking at ways that we can maximize resources between school districts. So, for example, one of the conversations we're having regionally is whether or not we could figure out how to share CTE programs. And that would provide more opportunities to students to be able to travel between districts to CTE
085programs that maybe we don't have here. For example, Hillsboro has an aerospace program. We don't. We have a mechatronics and Viking house program. They don't. So we we are looking to be able to collaborate in those ways so that students have maximal opportunities even if the resources don't allow us to offer those programs the ourselves. Um superintendents can be really creative when um when we're asked to be. So we'll continue to have those conversations regionally. Um, but at a local level, our enrollment hasn't declined to a point where we need to consider closing schools yet. >> Good answer. >> Uh, I would add to this conversation that there's been a couple similar conversations. Um Kate Lever who is the Ways and Means head of Ways and Means and I I believe Rev Sanchez had the
086town hall in you might have seen it um in the Oregonian down at Lincoln High School last week. It was actually the night we had one of our meetings and there was some based on some of the articles that I was sent and a a former student of mine who spoke at that sent me a a recap and one of the things that Senator Liieber did mention a willingness that the legislature I think is starting to understand what we mean when we say unfunded mandates and some of that is work done by our superintendents and oaso and CFOs to be able to show the impact. I think that is that is some of the role that we play now is really making sure they are understanding what the unfunded mandate is and how it's impacting.
087That's one thing. This morning Pete and I attended the Westside Economic Alliance meeting and the guest speakers were Senator Wagner and um Subriiki Smith who's a former superintendent but now a rep um representative. And the question I asked at the end was what what are the barriers of what are the barriers preventing our legislature from funding schools and providing a vision? And and Rep. Ricky Smith did mention that within the Democratic caucus, she said there is a small group in this caucus that has been um wanting to come up with pragmatic solutions to education and she said that will require support from leadership as well. It it sounds like there is quite a discussion happening, my understanding, among the Democratic caucus about what to do about schools. And I'm getting the impression that they're not
088all aligned on what that looks like. But I think they're starting to realize that the the other thing they say or we have heard um legislators say, "Why should we give schools more money until they can show us how they're using the money?" Well, I think we've all been able to show plenty of examples of how we use our money, but it's examples that Dr. West just mentioned about sharing with our legislators the way we work together as districts, the way we share programs with CTE, the way we're building out literacy programs. It it's kind of a both and as we say to be able to make sure that they do have a full understanding of how our districts operate and how we are operating effectively and how we're moving to to streamline that and
089align our practice across school districts. So I think multiple conversations this week because those are the leaders Senator Leieber and Rob Wagner those are the ones pulling the lever right now. So we can share all the pean letters we want. We can go to the board of ed, but there are people in positions now, Senator Sullman, who who can say yes or no on these things. And some of these unfunded mandates, there was plenty of yeses and they should have been nos. >> This one. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. >> Agreed. >> What other questions may we answer for you? Any other questions? Any comments from anyone? >> Is this this book? That was my question. Is it just for budget committee? How much of this is this available? >> It it's a PDF that'll be
090available online tonight under board and then budget. So, >> okay. >> Thank you for an excellent message on Gohead. >> Sorry. Um, I guess my question I'm not sure quite sure how to phrase it, but it has to do with more of kind of what our next steps would be regarding kind of federal funding and grants we receive that support the the migrant program that we have. What is that going to look like for our district? and kind of what the thoughts are going as I know like can't necessarily predict but we do know it might happen next what it's going to look like tough question um we are set for next year so we we're not going to make any other changes than we already have at this point the threat that is being
091made at the federal level is that there will be no funding for migrants services, migrant education, um depending on who you listen to. That is the same threat that was made for this year about all federal grants and they were all funded. Um they were either flatfunded or we saw slight reductions but they were all funded. So your your question is a tough one because none of us have a crystal ball. I really want to believe that calmer heads will prevail when it comes to actually creating an education budget at the federal level like we saw this year. Um, in terms of what could happen if there were no funding, uh, we're we're faced with a couple of challenges at that point. One, there could be no funding, but also no change in federal law.
092If those two things are true, we're left in a position where we still have federal legal obligations under title 1C, which include things like having a migrant recruiter um to go out and certify families to qualify for migrant services. So, that is a legal requirement. if we receive title 1 C monies and if there are no monies we would still probably have to meet that legal requirement. Um so that is one challenge we may have to navigate. The other challenge we have to navigate is what if any migrant services do we continue to provide without funding above and beyond what the legal requirements are. So we'd have to answer that question for ourselves as a school district. And right now I can't project what that would be. The third question that we would have to
093wrestle with is Forest Road School District because of the number of students and families that we serve through migrant education. We run our own program and there are not too many school districts in the state that actually run their own migrant program. Most of that is done through sourcing. So we may have to wrestle with the question of whether or not we join our regional consortium at that point if there is no funding available to us to run our own program. But that raises additional questions. What is the consortium going to do if there's no funding? So one question leads to another leads to another. All to say I can't predict. But I I can tell you that last year at this time when we were facing the possibility of no funding, we started to
094ask those questions and started to scenario plan. Those scenarios still sit on a shelf and hopefully it'll stay there. But if we are facing that reality, we'll pull them down, dust them off, and then take a look at what are our options given what we know about funding. How was that for a non-answer? >> I had a hard time posing the question because I'm like it's a lot of what ifs. So, it's a good answer to my what if. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> I think the answer depends. >> That's what they say in hospital. I think a big big outrage is going to come when if SNAP and Medicaid would be cut down with the in comparison to the school for children's lunches and breaks. Any other questions? Seeing no other questions
095on that. So at this point tonight we have a couple of different options. Um of course the first one is to approve the budget as is. Uh the second one is to amend appropriations by major funding function and the last one is to adjourn adjourn tonight to be able to allow more time to be able to digest all this information look at the budget book and consider or ask any additional questions. So >> okay >> it off to you. Well, so our first motion is to approve the budget as is. I'm going to have we'll call and see if this is going to happen or not. >> Jennifer, >> we've not made motion. >> Oh, that's right. We haven't made the motion yet. Let's make the motion to you. Glad to do that. >> No,
096I would not. Okay. I I move to approve the budget as is presented by our director. I'll second >> being moved and being seconded. All in favor say I. >> Discuss. >> Oh, discuss it. Sorry. Here we go. Let's discuss it. Go ahead. I would actually um I would get as much as I do approve almost all budgetary discussions that we've had and and after thorough explanation I I would I definitely need time to look through books. So I I will be on this although I appreciate the confidence in Eileen. I I would rather um I think it's important to have time to look through and give people time to or at least me time to clarify and ask questions and then time for the community also to see what's posted. >> I mean your
097answer I think I'd also like some time to adjust to >> I understand to look at the book too like we used to look at the book and just to see make sure that there's this book. Well, I think the other point Miss Scotty raises is that it gives the public a chance. If this was the first time that the document became public and we vote to approve the budget tonight, that gives the public approximately an hour and 40 minutes of deep dive into this budget. And if you take a deep dive after an hour or 40 minutes, you're going to strike your head on the shallow end. So I would say even if we were to first order of business at our next meeting was to move for approval of the budget as is,
098at least the public has had a chance to weigh it. And in the spirit of transparency, I I don't think there's a hobbyist. Sorry, Mr. >> Oh, that that's fine. The question I have, do you see this changing between now and next Thursday? Your presentation of the budget, >> the proposed document will not change between now and Thursday. The only change that would be made is if you guys vote to have a change made. >> Just an understanding vote. >> Yeah. And I'm fine. I'm fine with waiting anotherly. Um I just didn't think anything was going to change, you know, unfortunately. >> Yeah, I don't think there would be any big changes either, but it's just the understanding see it and then like we've been reading it for many years and then >> and then
099just like the perception of the community that just left the community with question, we just approved it after one session. Could I could I do a friendly amendment to >> I believe to question Jennifer. Can I withdraw my >> In the spirit of what's already been said, I also would have to vote no on the current um move or proposal because I think it's really important that we take some time to carefully digest and consider the information that we've been given this night. And were we to approve it after an hour and 37 minutes of presentation and some minor discussion, it would suggest that our function is basically to listen and say yes. And hopefully that's not what we all signed up to do. I don't have any objections right now to what's been breathing
100in, but I'd sure like to take some time to to to ponder and contemplate and dig a little deeper >> before we make a modified agendment to adjourn. Um, I do want to capture was there an official withdrawal of so that it doesn't appear that we're voting no on the budget? >> I make a motion to withdraw my motion. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. All right. Well, that's first motion. What we might go to the second motion. So I'll move to I will move to adjourn was up there. I will move to adjourn and give us time to look over the budget and revisit at the next budget meeting. >> Second. >> Any discussions? Just discuss. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? No. Motion carrier will get difficult meeting. >> Okay. All
101right. >> Figure it out. Reflecting.