001how are you six points or something well most of the time foreign [Music] good evening everybody the purpose of this meeting is to conduct the business of the gainesburg area school district public common is welcome and issues referred to the appropriate board committee or administrator Columbus will be summarizing the official board minutes which will be made available by contacting the business office please take a moment and silence your cell phones or any other devices everybody is present with the exception of Al Moyer who is excused tonight stand for the Pledge of Allegiance foreign members you'll notice under notice of communications you have that information in advance which leads us to Citizens participation Mike yep good evening everyone we have one speaker tonight um Miss Janelle wertzberger thank you can you hear me yes my name
002is Janelle wertzberger I currently have one child in the district and another is an alumnus of the high school I am also a professional librarian with over 25 years of experience in academic libraries this board has been engaged in conversations about how to restrict student access to books not whether they should restrict access but how I am here to State clearly that I do not support restricting access to books in our school libraries children and young adults have First Amendment rights just like all of us and that includes the right to access information from our library that said parents have the right to guide their own children's use of Library materials they do not have the right to restrict other children's access and I'm relieved that this board does not seem motivated to censor information
003by Banning books from our shelves altogether that would be patently wrong the proposed revision of gasd policy manuals code 109 regarding library media and resource material selection includes an alarmingly vague statement that quote the superintendent or designee will develop a procedure to allow parents to have the option to limit access to challenged books end quote this procedure is going to be costly why because libraries are made to share information not to restrict it our open bookshelves and displays reflect this value our integrated Library systems reflect this value our user Services reflect this value any procedures designed to work against these core values will necessarily be costly in terms of Staff time money and human relationships the proposed initiative will require High effort on the part of staff and administrators High effort initiatives that result in
004high impact are fine but this is not that kind of a project it will have little impact because as amazing as libraries are they are only one information node in today's society perhaps you will keep some students from accessing subtitles but there are many other ways for young people to get them do we really want to devote a lot of Staff time and taxpayer money to prop up the fiction that we can block information from young people we cannot and we should not local efforts behind this proposed change are fixated on the so-called challenged books list a list of titles that are most often challenged in U.S libraries these titles are challenged for a wide variety of reasons so using the list as a guide for what to limit is bizarre the list includes works
005by authors who have won prestigious Awards including the Newbery Award the prince award the Nobel Prize the national book award and more it also includes the Holy Bible fixating on this particular list is a slippery slope toward more and more restrictions and I think we know how that story ends because Ray Bradbury wrote it in Fahrenheit 451. if parents want to control what their students read let that be a family issue handled within the home it should not be an issue in the libraries of our Public Schools thank you routine approvals 5.1 through 5.3 may have a motion motion second question on emotion on the floor hearing no question roll call Michelle yes Mike yes Tim yes Ryan Yes Jeremy yes Amy Beth yes Timon yes and I vote Yes brings us to 6.1 uh
006nominate Lincoln Intermediate Unit number 12 board representative like we did in the past I opened four for nominations I I couldn't I'm sorry okay sorry I couldn't hear you Tim hearing no other nominations roll call timmin Amy Beth yes Jeremy yes Ryan Yes Tim yes Mike yes Michelle yes and I vote Yes Mr President may ask may I add some clarity to this particular action item if you don't mind yes go ahead this um action item is for the nomination and the Liu board would consider the nomination for myself in April in the meeting that would be placed on the ballot as far as serving I will complete my service in my term up until July 1st and then that nomination would be approved by the board and put on the ballot at that time
007so I just I just wanted to make sure that I gave you a little addition of additional information I I do represent not only our district but operatams and Fairfield you don't know if you know Jason maybe you do how's that switched around like how long is our representation like when would ours be done in like maybe Fairfield or how does that work it's there isn't a rotation it's uh just based on if somebody is um willing to represent the group um there are times within within the IU has 25 school districts so there are times within the IU for instance where their board meetings are on Tuesdays and they conflict with another District's meeting so so for instance like upper atoms might never have a representative um there so it's just uh yeah it's
008kind of ad hoc that's fine as of right now we have 13 full board members and do represent three districts but I also communicate directly with the three superintendents I think we've all worked together pretty well to make sure that information has gone out to their districts through me and we have open lines of communication and I did email each of my board members prior to the meeting to make sure that they knew that that line of communication was a positive one and I'm eager to serve and continue forward thank you thank you and Beth 6.2 again with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit that's their General operating budget may I have a motion so moved second question on 6.2 hearing no question roll call Ryan yes Jeremy yes Mike yes Amy Beth yes Tim yes Michelle
009yes timin yes and I vote Yes foreign speaker that we look forward to each year a good Intermediate Unit so it is on page 23 of the report so the 2324's contribution from Gettysburg is um six thousand seven hundred forty two dollars and Thirty One cents that is under thirty three dollars and forty eight cents from the prior Year's contribution so so uh Amy Beth representing the three districts greatly voting no didn't really cost us at the end of the day they still went through no matter how we voted okay yes thank you job of being able to provide services and I think that that is just as important as the Liu as we navigate through some challenges and some um positive things also that we're working on thank you all right I hope that
010wasn't some sarcasm in that little introduction there I know the audit is what you look for absolutely not but it is the odd it is is in its timing and the information always is a point of contention and and it and we'll wait and see okay so no that was not a slight towards you I know uh just uh to say hello to those that don't know me Krista Gardner I am a partner with sck the engagement partner on the district's audit I'm going to go through a presentation that just kind of gives you a quick overview of how the audit works as some reminders and then some high level results for the June 30 22 audit so I am going to skip ahead to page one of your presentation packet a couple reminders UH
011responsibilities we as your auditor are responsible for for performing our audit not only in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards but also it's called government auditing standards and uniform guidance those are additional requirements because of the federal grants that you receive so we have to look at internal controls and then also compliance with those grants we are also responsible for forming our audit opinion about whether the financial statements are materially correct fairly presented and conformed with the United States generally accepted accounting principles or what we like to call U.S Gap and then I am required to communicate significant matters to you which I'm doing right now a reminder an audit provides reasonable not absolute assurance that the financial statements are free from Material misstatement what that means is having an audit is not a control
012of the district it does not relieve you as those charged with governance or management of your responsibilities when it comes to the processes procedures and controls of all Financial activity of the school district the district then is responsible for preparing and fairly presenting the financial statements designing implementing evaluating and maintaining effective internal controls over again all aspects of financial reporting during the audit providing us with unrestricted access to any documentation we may need to gather to review or inquiries of any people that are on staff that we may need to talk with if there would be any fraud illegal acts material weaknesses or significant deficiencies making us aware of those and we were not made aware of any um during the the audit period uh after year end once we um sign off on the
013audit which was February 13th that period of July 1 through February 13th is called the subsequent event period if there's anything that happened in that period that could affect someone reading your statements we have to consider whether or not to disclose that item in your financial statements and we were not aware of any based on our uh our audit procedures and our inquiries with management of anything that should be disclosed but we do also test subsequent activity to make sure it's recorded in the proper period and essentially all of this stuff is in a management representation letter which was signed off on February 13th audit scope so how do we do the audit so essentially where we have to start is we have to understand the internal controls of the district we then do what's
014called a risk assessment so that's where we kind of get to put our our hat on and say what could go wrong from there we develop our audit procedures it's our responsibility to do enough testing to be able to give that audit opinion and each year we have to change that up we have to have what's called an element of unpredictability so that's where we're going to add a new test in each year kind of switch that up just because then you know management or staff don't know exactly everything that we're going to look for they don't know the thresholds that we're looking at Etc we are required to test internal controls when it comes to those federal grants but we are not required to test the internal controls of the district however we do
015rely on control testing we do control testing on cash disbursements of the district and also payroll of the districts that's part of our testing and then other testing is going to be analytics and then actually pulling supporting documentation and also confirming with third parties outside the district to make sure what's been recorded is what that individual or that entity sent or received from the district audit adjustments are usually a part of almost every audit these are what we call journal entries they are attached to the back here those have been reviewed with management those have been um uh proposed and accepted and those can be based on our audit procedures or their adjustments that are provided to us by management once we've started the audit also there are what's called gasbi 34 entries that the
016district relies on us to assist in preparing so just a reminder there are several different uh financial statements in your big packet what you focus your time on a lot of a lot of your reading is going to be the fund level so that's your general fund your food service fund your Capital project fund Etc there is also that government-wide financial statements section so that is where all of the debt of the district goes on the books all of the capital assets of the district goes on the books the opeb liability the net pension liability those adjustments to take your fund level statements to what's called that full accrual government-wise financial statements we assist the district in preparing so that is a separate schedule of adjustments that are also attached here audit results so this
017is where we have two thumbs up no change from prior year it was an unmodified opinion or a clean opinion that is the best opinion that you can get for a financial audit as well as your compliance audit so we have to give two opinions to the normal financial piece but then also our testing of your federal programs there were no identified material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in internal control that is one of those legal terminology things where I can't stand here and say there are none but we are not aware of any based on our audit procedure so just a terminology thing to point out to you there I'm gonna go through the next couple slides very quickly this one talks about accounting policies or how you record your transactions there was actually a
018new accounting pronouncement that took effect for June 30 22. it is based on leases based on your schedule of leases we actually did not have to do an adjustment in fiscal year 22 but in fiscal year 23 we will have to make an adjustment it's really just kind of a capital lease it's a new terminology and a new way of putting things on the book so again a lot of that's going to be government-wide it does not affect your general fund accounting estimates there are estimates that go into your financial statements we as Auditors are required to assess those estimates for reasonableness and then we kind of test them each year to make sure that there's nothing that's coming in way off what was estimated um the year the next year those estimates can be
019useful lives for Capital asset depreciation a lot of the items that go into your net pension liability calculation opeb liability calculation and then your estimate for plan con receivables disclosures there's a lot of footnotes disclosures that are attached to the financial statements we always like to point out those that are really sensitive to the reader as far as those items that are kind of big changes this for you usually includes your long-term liabilities which also includes your defined benefit pension plan and your other post-employment benefit plan there were no difficulties encountered during the audit no disagreements and essentially everything that's required to be included in here has been included and again signed off by management I'm going to skip page 10 this talks about internal control deficiencies but as I've already shared with you we
020were not aware of any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies all right now we get to the fun stuff for what I like to think is the fun stuff so on page 11 we have some top level highlights for you as far as the financials if I can get to page 11. all right so what you're looking at here is the general fund budget versus actual the final budget again you do some budget transfers throughout the year so this is your final budget where you ended for fiscal year 22 is on the left actual is in the middle and then the variance is in the right hand column total revenues that reddish line item there you can see total revenues the actual was about 457 000 under budget total expenditures in that blue line item was
021about 2.5 million under budget and so what that gives us as far as an excess deficit or sorry an excess of revenues over expenses of about 911 000 and then we add in these other financing sources and uses so transfers and other kind of things about 1.3 million so in that middle column you see you actually had a decrease in your general fund balance of about 342 000 for fiscal year 22. you had a budgeted decrease of 4.2 million so that was a positive variance of about 3.85 million for the year I'll pause there for any questions because I know I just threw a lot of numbers at you okay moving on to the next page talking about that fun balance you have different categories of your general fund fund balance the top section is
022what's called non-spendable we can't pay the bills with these amounts these are going to be inventories and prepaid expenses so it's about 310 000 of your general fund fund balance that is considered non-spendable you then have what's called restricted restricted means someone from the outside is restricting those funds so you have about 2.65 million in Lincoln benefit trust that it can that again you can't really use to pay the general bills of the general fund so that's restricted by an outside party you then have about 9.5 million of what's called committed committed is when there's board action involved kind of that earmarking but at the board level and you have Capital Improvements of about 6.5 million and then items set aside for future retirement and pieces funding needs of about 3 million so that gets
023you to about 9.5 million of what's called committed fund balance of the general fund the last piece then before unassigned is your assigned fund balance this is where management can earmark fund balance for future needs and you'll see there's a list there of budgetary Reserve cyber school Capital Improvements Etc of items that have been earmarked for future use or initiatives that's a total of 5.7 million that has been assigned and then what is left over is about 5 million of unassigned fund balance for the general fund and that's a total of 23.3 million general fund fund balance at June 30 22. just a reminder this will change the very next stay on July 1 it is one day in time for it to slide 13 just a little bit more perspective on the general fund
024total revenues of the general fund were about 68.5 million and you can see about 67 percent of that Revenue comes from local sources about 28 comes from State sources and about five percent comes from federal sources that Federal number did go up a little bit from has gone up the past couple years with the additional Esser funding that's been out there due to covet 19. so just to kind of point that out that that percentage has been up a little bit the past couple years your expenditures then total expenditures of about 67.6 million about 61 percent of that is instruction related 29 of that support services two percent of that non-instructional services and then about eight percent Debt Service expenses total excess of revenues over expenses nine hundred and eleven thousand and then we bring
025in those other items so there's some miscellaneous income and then interfund transfers out of the general fund when we add those in that brings us down to again a net decrease in the general fund for fiscal year 22 of about 342 000. slide 14 I just wanted to point out there was kind of a wonky item here related to Esser funding in about November late November of 2021 you actually got your Esser II funding approval what that allowed you to do at that time was to retroactively go back to the prior year and apply that funding to expenses that had happened before fiscal year 22. so in fiscal year 21. the district elected to do that to the tune of about 560 000. what that does for the financials is you had 560 000 of
026expenses in fiscal year 21 but you had Revenue that covered that or kind of re you reimburse yourself for that in fiscal year 22. normally in government accounting we like to have apples versus apples we like everything to be in the same time period but just because the West the way the SR contract happened it was not approved until way after the fiscal year 21 was over you essentially had those expenses in one year and the revenue to cover it in another all I did on this page is just kind of re-show you what fiscal year 21 would have looked like if we took that Revenue out of fiscal year 22 and put it in the year where you had expenses this is just for analysis it is recorded properly in the two different years
027but just so you could see what that meant for the two years if they were matched up I'll say properly but they are actually properly recorded as they are in the statements all right I didn't want to forget the other funds page 15 it talks about the operations of the Food Service fund this one's a little wonky as well where you're operating revenues do not cover your operating expenses but that's because you get a bunch of what's considered non-operating Revenue so that's state and federal sources that you get in order to help cover the operations of the Food Service fund and a lot of that comes with free and reduced lunches which all have been free the past two years because of coven 19. so you can see your net change in position of the
028Food Service fund is about 818 000 for the year a couple other reminders for Food Service fund this is a proprietary fund meaning it operates like a business and therefore it is full accrual you have non-cash items recorded here like depreciation you have Capital assets on the books the net pension and opeb liabilities related to the Food Service fund are booked here and there is no debt for a food service so you don't have that but there are non-cash transactions that are included and also those full accrual type items page 16 I don't want to leave out the other funds you've got your capital projects fund your capital capital projects Reserve fund capital projects bond fund and then a little bit of activity in The Debt Service fund this year as you can see on
029the left hand side the capital projects Reserve fund had a net change imbalance of 642 000 the capital projects bond fund had a net change in fund balance of 15 million that's because of your 22 debt that you received and that is sitting there to be spent and then you did have a decrease of about 3 800 in The Debt Service fund and that was just activity that carried over and finished out in fiscal year 22. that is all I have the rest of the presentation is the journal entries that are attached any questions for me I'm just giving them a moment to digest that's fine I threw a lot at you I know well I've been holding off on glasses but I'm pretty sure I need them now this is the smallest one I
030have ever seen in my whole life we try to fit on there as best as possible foreign I just want to remind the board I know we got this this evening but they're always available as questions arise as we go through the budget process with the material you've been given this evening so I mean if you have a question this evening feel free but the door's open now throughout the budget process would you um would you mind on page 13 if we could scroll back um would you be able to describe as we move further down on that page 13 the other Financial sources could you explain the interfund transfer out I can so that was to the capital hold on memory let me make sure I've got the right side here so that was
031a transfer out of the general fund to the capital projects yes so it was a transfer of money out of the general fund to the capital projects Reserve fund that entire amount thank you very much sure any additional questions from a board member no I'll have mine as soon as she leaves and I'll sing a question that's the way it always works well I know you're just gonna go home and study you had the financial statements they helped you get to sleep when you couldn't sleep well I I'll just thank you um for the continued relationship I always have to thank Belinda and Tom and their staff you know part of being an auditor is being a pain in the butt and asking for lots of stuff so I really appreciate their organization and getting
032us everything that we need um and if anything does come up they they know how to find me so well thank you so much sure thank you the the next informational item for this evening is 7.2 policy 109 library media and resource material selection a reminder board it's this is the first read so if you have a question on please please feel free Mr President Tim I just uh I was going over that and I know that some of this is probably should be common sense maybe I guess but some of the stuff that I was reading on it was um the weeding out part where we're I don't know who I'm directing this to specifically um but we do not books and it just says reading dated books so if for instance a book
033that we have that children are using for a book report or whatever and it's a data book or it's wore out or whatever the case are we replacing said book or not um and then um and then the information like almanacs yearbooks uh it says that they're going to be deleted when new Publications come out and I'm assuming that we'd want to have old atlases for research the way it reads is we would only have the newest edition of an atlas or the newest edition of a yearbook or so on and so forth and then books on medications inventions economic science they're going after five years are we not keeping books from 40 years ago to go back and research on for inventions and medicine and economics it's just the questions I have the way
034that policy reads that's what it's asking me I would think that we'd want to keep that stuff in there for so the only change the only change to the policy is the red statement at the very very bottom policy 109 they do we weed the collection and we try to make sure that the uh the books that are weeded either due to the fact that might be outdated or um you know if 25 copies of something or whatever um we we tend to do that either through uh auction or through providing them to non-profits that can that can utilize that can utilize the text but we try to keep they try to keep most of the collections um up to date just because we want we want certainly people doing research to to utilize the
035most recent information on whatever topic um that they might they might have but um but the uh but all of that is it would still be the same um with uh with this policy the only change being the addition of uh that last uh the last statement that's in red all right I just uh I just thought it was odd I mean and maybe I was reading it wrong was my thing it just seemed like you were just the book's five years old it's gone so we don't have a resource that's four years old to go back to research they tend to be General guidelines um you know we certainly the Librarians take a look at their Collections and um and uh so one year that might be accurate next year that might not be
036um specifically the way it works and it might be different building to build depending upon what they yeah not what they have yeah there's money questions on yeah no they're good questions thanks uh actually Mike um I know from emails to the school board I shouldn't say emails email or email there's there's been a couple we've had public speaking from time to time throughout um over the course of the last month or two uh being the chairman of that I mean can you elaborate as to where the board's at with this particular policy out of your committee yeah so I guess over the past maybe three to four policy committee meetings there there has been discussion on what policy if any policy should be adopted um in terms of addressing the the most challenged books
037or the books that have been the topics for discussion and really just to clarify based based on an email that we received and and also so from previous board comments or comments from the public the board has not discussed or debated um any of these items has come to the policy committee meeting and the policy committee make are made up of members of the administration school board members that wish to attend administrators and support staff of the district and really what was determined is that that based on the policies that we have in place that the administration can can do their job and we trust them to do their job to to effectively manage um the concerns of all the stakeholders involved so that's that's really all I can clarify um that they just made
038an amendment to 109 so they can use the technology that we have in place with the like the library software and the other existing policies to to make sure that that everyone is served equitably it was so and I I just say it's for clarification because ultimately over the years the topic keeps coming up and I don't know if it's miscommunication from me or from the board itself or from the community we're not Banning books that's never been on the table it's not on the table today correct no it's not on the table in fact we don't we don't want to get in the business of labeling books rating books discussing who should or should not have access to it we just want to let the the parents make informed consent decisions and and do
039what's best for their families I also think it's important for I mean it may not be all of us but I have full faith in our Librarians in fact they are the professionals and I respect them tremendously one of my mentors is a librarian and I don't want them to not feel supported by this board and I feel like a lot you know aren't really in a limbo State and feel as though this board maybe is trying to um control what is and is not viewed within the libraries I just personally wanted to kind of break out to make sure that at least from me that the Librarians felt supported by someone on the board I appreciate that and having attended the policy meeting um I never got that impression I think the board supports
040the uh all the staff here I think that you know this will get worked out again in policy and come for a second read um I don't know how else better my take was is that what Mike just said we're gonna we're looking to streamline everything I'm not looking to burden down any staff whether it's from the library system to the mathematics Department I don't think it's the goal of this board to do that at least that's my personal opinion anything additional on 109 on the first read brings us to 7.3 policy 610 purchase subjects purchases subject to bid or quotation all three of the policies that are Finance related are simply changes to uh Financial amounts that are driven by the Department of Labor so those are the only changes so seven three and
041seven four seven three seven four seven six the AG yeah are there any questions on seven three seven four seven six hearing none we'll go back to 7.5 uh 7.5 policy eight zero five are there any questions on that hearing on 7.7 the guideline 906 says in complaints that's just an updated uh AG that would align with the change to policy 109. are there any questions hearing on board committee reports I'll start to my left Amy Beth um February 7th there are resignations retirements and terminations I'm happy to announce that they're far less than when I first um took oath on this board as we move forward within our meeting we went over job descriptions and adoptions we went through a list of jobs and descriptions they range from executive assistant director to custodians there
042were quite a few which I will not detail but let you know that we um were very thorough as we reviewed we had one action item at our meeting which was a request to conduct a dissertation study that recommendation was for a motion to Grant approval for Mr Holtzman of the Waynesboro Area he will be doing a dissertation on the teacher's view of compensation factors when choosing an employer um to complete we had board reports um president report is always enjoyable we had our executive director report which is Dr West he talked about our Wellness Center and the potential of a Franklin County location to be set up and we will have our next board meeting soon which we'll be going over some important things we did have an extensive executive session which was prior
043to our meeting and it has been a pleasure to work on that board thank you to my right Tim sorry ability finance committee will be meeting this Thursday at four o'clock and here at the admin building Jeremy uh nothing at this time our meeting was canceled last month due to inclement weather we actually have one tomorrow so hopefully next meeting thank you Mike yep and just a quick update um we did have a policy committee meeting on 14 February and policies 109 610 611 and 805 were first reads and they will be up for board action on our next board meeting March 6th and the next policy meeting will be March 7th at 4 pm here at the administration office programmer program reports Jason sure winners officially two-thirds over well you saw your Shadow we'll
044take it um we'll take what we can get um hopefully it holds for another month or so um and then uh second meeting in in March um group of admin plans to do a brief presentation as we do each winter it's basically just an achievement update using some of the benchmarks assessments and growth data and those types of things so you know a lot a lot of our focus at times especially at these meetings is around things like finance and audits so I think it's important to to take that time and spend time you know discussing uh kind of the the meat of why we're why we're here in terms of uh educating the kids so look forward to that on March 20th thank you Jason Kenny I have something for our program reports oh
045I'm sorry go ahead um I just want to let everybody know that the High School Musical will be March 3rd and 4th that's not this coming weekend but the following weekend um so on Fridays at seven and show on Saturdays at two and seven um this year's musical is Pippin the kids have been working hard and they would appreciate the community support thank you before we uh take a motion to recess the board's going to go into the executive session in an administrative conference after that immediately following the meeting our next board meeting scheduled for March 6th at the same location I have a motion to adjourn some of we stand adjourned