BOE Budget Meeting 4-15-25

001Would you join me in a moment of silence to pledge [Music] Thank you. Salute. Click to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Want to welcome everyone here tonight. Thanks for coming. I think I saw Colonel Maul here. Thank you for coming. Um, I don't have it on here, but let's approve the agenda. We got anything to add or talk about on that? Is there anything to add? Anything to take away? Motion to approve agenda. A second. Those in favor of the agenda say I. I. Those opposed say no. Eyes have. So the first item here is the budget draft one that we got talked about gone through. There any questions on it? I had

002a question just regarding the maintenance budget worksheet piece and I kind of just threw it out to Dr. Maddox on the way in today. Um, this afternoon we got an email from Mr. Steppp regarding the Stone Memorial High School track from the TSAA regarding different types of track surfaces um different costs associated with those. And so I was wondering um the cost for the track that we had under major projects for 790,000 where that fell into the different options is based on what TSAA sent us. But we don't know that answer yet, do we? No, we're not going to know that until we get start getting quotes. I just Where the 790 came from a rough estimate, right, from somebody? So, do we know what kind of surface material that was? Cuz the TSAA broke

003down by surface material. Well, it's actually something we had broken down from the research. They didn't they didn't send that to us. Uh it's the well the I think the poly urethane I believe it's the same type surface because uh when we looked at it before I think the one that Miss Gray has was a quote from was it baseline and baseline was one of the vendors that was uh that we had researched that provided that. So I believe it was the same same product. Okay. But now it did go from six lanes to eight lanes and it didn't I don't think it distinguished between the two. Um, no, it doesn't look like it. From what they were talking about, they didn't put a dollar amount on it, but they talked about full pore polyurethane

004sandwich system, which was base mat plus polyurethane, and then a spray coat system, which they were they noted as the lowest cost option. Now, why was that not done when we first um build the school? I mean, did we have the track up and running and and all that? It's been there the track's been there since the school was open, but it's I mean, it's, you know, almost 20 years old now. And, uh, there's a lot of the the the material that's on the track itself that is coming up. A lot of bare spots on the track. It's made as a rubberized little pellets that's coming up because it's there's a foundation of this asphalt and then that's on top of the asphalt. Yeah. And over time, and I think that, if I'm not mistaken,

005I believe the track itself has been painted, it was painted originally, and I think it's been painted two more times or three times all together in 20 years cuz you have to paint over those stripes. Yeah. In the lane choices. So, so what's there now is currently is the rubberized asphalt. Then the It's not rubberized asphalt. It's a It's a rubber coating that goes on top of the asphalt. I guess that was the E. Okay. So, the spray coat system was is what we currently have on there. I believe that's correct, but I'm not really sure. I wasn't involved in the when it was uh you know, which was built back in 2006. Okay. The gentleman at baseline told me what was put down originally is what was done for tracks at that time. At

006that time, needless to say, in 20 years, we've done some things. Sure. Sure. just if that's our lowest co cost option and if that's what we did originally um and it's lasted almost 20 years. I mean we've had to do a little repair and repainting, right? Yes. Um I guess just determining where our bid falls that we have and are we going to save any money making any adjustments to that um on the maintenance piece or the major project piece? So it would be going back to that bid and determining what kind of material is that what it's going to be. We have not officially bid. That is a lot of time. And then once we put it out the public bid, that would be something you would have to put include in that bid.

007The type surface that you're requesting. Okay. So that quote for them to give us that quote. Shouldn't it be some kind of surface though? We have it. We'd have an idea what kind of surface that I'm sure it's included in that quote. I just don't have that quote in front of me. So that' be something that we can find out. But or you could put the bid out that you wanted a quote on each side of these do it that way. Okay. Just for budgeting purposes to have an idea of, you know, where we fall since we're looking at the 790 now, right? Um would that come down any or go up? If you give me a second, believe I have that that baseline quote should have How old is the quote that we're looking

008at? Is it this school year? Yeah. And he did come back with me and do it again. Okay. taking three questions after the train. Thank you. That's something you want to come back to us with, Dr. Mad? Uh, well, I've got the the recommended range for the uh the track planning budget was 875 to 965, but there's a lot more details in the scope of work listed here. Okay. Uh, and it does state uh eight lanes as far as uh within these they says eight lines in in eight lanes in the heading, but in number two it said six lane running track, but it also includes a lot of other things that they're they would be doing to the track such as including, you know, having to do the the high jump area. I think

009moving the long jump to that that part of the field instead of being behind the bleachers, but it was the more extensive work. Okay. And than just the track itself. Okay. If you're want to get your copy of this, I'll be more than happy to. Okay. I think just getting a a ballpark if that 790 is accurate to which choice we'd want to move forward with from the um TSAA response on what we have to do to meet their criteria. And I think what they're looking at right there with that was just a ballpark figure of an average of of the of the new track. Well, there they quote the track. They're just talking about the track around it. But this quote from baseline had more to it. And I know there's some drainage um

010work that was included in that as well. So we don't run into the same issues again with track. The scope of work includes about 12 different things and it would be per it said TWA requirements. Okay. They give us a choice on some of them. So, I guess that would be where we fall dollar-wise, what we feel is going to be best best bang for the buck when we're looking at that. I'd like to have a copy of that. Dr. Max, if you don't care, you just You want a hard copy? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Okay. I'm good. That was my only question regarding that piece. Any other questions or discussion on the budget draft [Music] one? Okay. Number three, the executive summary. We got that and explained to us the other night detail. Any

011questions about it? [Music] Seeing none, we'll go on to the survey results. See on the screen. Survey was sent out about five different things to be rated. which was most important with number one in blue, number two in red, number three in orange, number four in green, number five in purple. And as I read that, I'm not sure. Dr. Farley, would you like to talk about it? Um, sure. Um, how I interpreted the results was the uh employees the most important thing to them was salary and hourly wages. Number two was medical benefits. Number three was paid time off. Number four was professional development promotional opportunities. And number five was recognition. Okay. The way I read it, but I wasn't sure that I could explain it that way. Thank you. Uhhuh. Only 562 employees completed

012the survey. It was sent out to everyone on the CCBOE survey. Okay, we got a little better than 50%. For most surveys, it's pretty good. Mhm. Y'all have any questions about that? My understanding was the survey is number one the least important and number five was the most. Right? Correct. No. No. No. Number one was the most important. Well, then I read it wrong. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Oh, this is the combined one. Yeah. Okay. That's right. We got this. We got this. I believe you've seen this before. Yeah. This was the combined one. Not I was thinking there was something separate just for the track itself. No. Yeah. We're We're busy working on the football field, getting everything squared away there. Yeah. No, I remember

013this one where they had everything. Yeah. Mhm. How's the field going? Is it going good? We got it uh got it sprayed on Monday. Yeah. Yesterday. Uh went back out and had another gentleman come out going to go and do the bidding of the removal of vegetation and then uh uh the side plus the the layout side. and uh Mary Kingston has her crew went ahead and replaced the three journeys as planned. Okay, thank you for the hard copy of any other questions about survey. Just a little idea as we move forward. Not a surprise. No based on what we're hearing. So we'll move to number five balance scale with 25 plus years added. Miss explain that to us. Basically I just took and went from year 25 and added [Music] $8525 in this particular

014this would be the bachelor level just to give everybody up through 30 years that same step between the steps. Now, what did you add for the bachelors? I added between the steps $525 which balances it. So, there will be the same difference between each step. Oh, okay. And this was just what Scott had asked for at the last meeting where we were instead of going to the 25 years, you were adding on from the 25 to the 30. used to top out at 25. Mhm. Yeah. I've analyzed this extensively and have some graphs I'd like to share. Okay. [Music] Before we go into your graphs, but go ahead and work your way down to Miss Diane. I just thought while we were right here, if Miss Bray wanted to finish her summary on that. So,

015we've got the five additional years that you added in there, Miss Bray. And that added how much extra dollar-wise just so everybody we can summarize that and then Scott can go into [Music] his bucks. Is that right? A little over 200,000 roughly. Mhm. Correct. Go ahead. Thank you. I just want to make sure everybody knew that before we went forward. [Music] Scott's bringing that up. Thank you again, Dr. probably for getting that survey out at the last minute on Friday. I know that was a quickie request, but I think it was good to at least get more than half the responses back in that short time. Absolutely. So, I just wanted to share first of all, this is like a model salary scale what if you because ideal this is what it would look like.

016You'd be evenly spaced between each degree level. Scott, can you move the microphone over in front of you so we're hearing you? You're talking away from us. That's a little hard. Yeah. Testing one, two. Awesome. All right. So, this is what a model scale would look like. Um you would you would have evenly spaced between each degree level and you would have a consistent step all the way up cuz the step is more for experience and cost of living is my understanding. Right. I think that's the way it's been set up previously. Yeah. Okay. Um so I just wanted to highlight just a just quickly a little bit of a comparison between some other counties. it. These are all blown up before I put them on this TV. So, so basically what this is is

017uh Bledsoe County 2425. It's Cumberland County 2425. So that's the green and the red. And you can see that currently this year, Leo County is actually paying right along with what we're paying. Uh, and if you look at year 26, Bitzo County is actually paying more from there on out from 26 to 30. That's for this is for a bachelor's degree. So, the Cland County Schools proposed balance scale uh 25 to 26 plus 525 per step is is this one right here. This was without doing the last five years. So, you can see it flatlined there. And I actually have a an option too that I've been working on. That would be this purple line. And then this is what Putnham County looks like for 2526. Uh this is their current scale plus 1,000. So

018they need they need 2,000 to get their scale to 50,000 by the same time frame that we do. So I just assume they would do 1,000 this year and 1,000 next year. So that's just a quick comparison. Um this is our current scale uh overall from bachelor's to doctorate. You can see we have u and I I think think this has been uh because of percentage raises over the years. So we have a larger gap between degrees at the start and then we increasingly get larger as as the years go on. I'm not talking any dollar amounts right now, just they're on here, but just just the visual of what our our salary scale looks like. And each year if you do a percentage raise, it'll do that. That's correct. It'll keep getting worse. Yep.

019Right. Yeah. So, it's hard to fix. I know. I'm with you. Um, so this is the proposed balance scale that we're talking about without the uh and you just did that on the bachelors, right? Okay. So the bachelors, you can see that we're continually growing larger gaps between each of the of the uh degrees. and doing the 525 710 890 and then 900 is is going to exaggerate that. So I I don't necessarily think that's the best ideal at this point. I did notice the data that you gave me was just uh for doctor it was 900 stacked on what we currently have. It wasn't um it wasn't I guess the way you did these other three. It was just stacked on what we currently have. So I just graphed it the way you had

020it. So looking at that, I pulled in Putinham County and this is their 2526 projections versus our 2526 proposed balance scale. And as you can see, our uh are actually our EDS and this is just the first three degree levels. So, I'm going to do the doctor in a minute, but uh the EDS is actually paying more all the way up until year 29. And it' be a good idea for our teachers to go to Putnham County so they can get their five highest years up, right? Work work here with an EDS and then go there the last five. But anyway, so you can see that we're getting a larger gap and we're also paying more than Putham County for EDS. So now I'm going to go to the doctorate and this was interesting to

021me too. So uh graphing this out what we're proposing with the balance scale our EDS is actually making as much as Putnham County's doctorate degree is uh until you get to year 25 and then then we stop paying that out. And our doctorate is actually making more than Putnham County's doctorate until you get to year 29. So I I just left these on here for reference, the lighter ones, but I just wanted to show that doctor scale. So, I had a I've gone through these numbers and and obviously, like I said, I know it's difficult, but in order to uh balance this, there's a couple ways we can do it. we can freeze it at ED on the EDS and on the doctorate for a certain number of years in the middle. Um it's still

022because you can't pay less. You have to pay at least what they're already making. So even if you freeze it, you're not going to bring it back in to a to a consistent scale like that model was. The other option would be to put some type of smaller step increase in there like um like a 500 or something um as an annual step and then create a new scale for all new employees that have EDS and doctorates that is consistently aligned with the bachelors and the masters. That that's another option. Um, so going forward, you wouldn't have this balloon in the middle. You'd have more of a straight line, but anybody that's currently working in those areas would be Well, they would you could do it you could do a small step cuz you I

023mean, you don't want to I know you don't want to freeze it, but if if you have if that's the only way to bring it back is to freeze it. And it would take it would take up to six years to get those two back in line with these other two. So that would be you're you've identified those areas as being the ones that need to take the compression. Yeah. As we're balancing everything out. Yes. If you want if you want to balance scale, you have to take those higher areas and start freezing them and bringing them in. Um, so this was a projected doing the same thing in 26 27 and and this is more than just freezing them. This is minimizing those those pay raises to to actually the previous year. So basically

024I I can show you what I did that you're you're actually reducing the salary scale over time because you don't necessarily have to have that full amount to to step. You can step it smaller. That's what I'm getting at to to still meet the the previous year. So making it e easy for reference. Where I come from, we used to call those bands. So for each year it's a band. So you're talking about narrowing that band. That's correct. in order to rebalance things which I had talked with Mr. up about a little bit and I think Miss Bray you did some some of that with that balance scale I think from what was relayed to me but sounds like we need to do maybe a little more in those areas I wanted to do a

025phase in versus the balance just for the first two degrees so this is this is what I was proposing for 2526 you know on the first two scales bachelor's and masters ers versus the balanced proposal that we're looking at voting on. So, it's actually a little bit cheaper and it and it brings those two closer to that model cuz we're reducing where we need to reduce and we're raising where we need to raise rather than just raising everybody because that's still going to put us in an imbalanced situation. The only place that the only place that this master's freezes is on is on one year to do that. You know which year? Yeah, I've got it right here. I can show you. It would be that one right there. So you're 11 or year 12.

026Is that only for the um certified? That's for the VA system. Oh, that should be for certified. I was playing around with actually uh equalizing the systemwide versus the certified versus classified. No, no systemwide salary scale versus the regular scale. There's two different scales. Okay. I was bringing I was actually bringing this one back to the the other bachelor scale. So it would take two years to do that on the bachelor's and two years on the masters. But what I'm highlighting right now is just the regular certified scale, not not the systemwide. Did you check this again? I'm sure you did. Um yeah, it's still meeting the state. I didn't really reduce anything other than this step would be what the previous year's step was. Yeah, it's frozen at the previous year. And Scott, I

027don't know if you took a look at the salary studies that Mr. Stepp had sent out, but I thought I had remembered something along these lines from that and pulling it out and looking at it. That's one of the recommendations they had made. Increasing Yeah. All Yeah. for the bachelors and masters. and then lessening the increase for the higher degrees and that'll put us in the competitive level. Yeah. Reading that was why I went in and did started digging in with it. Yeah. So, if you look at the masters, you're going to have 5 years on that one. Then if you did the systemwide, you're going to have to freeze those. is the first year and these the second year. If you want to bring the system on back to the certified schedule this is

028EDS. It's a it's a little more difficult and I actually did did the five highest years on every scale. that proposal would actually this was the balance proposal here without the five years at the end. This would be what I've done with freezing salary sc. So, a little hard to see from here. What's the variance? That's just uh it's a little a little over 200,000. Well, it would be more than that with the the new 200,000. It' be about 400,000. Um you can't Um, I've looked at that, but I didn't tally it, but I I looked at So, it affects the higher scales affect less people, right? Um, as a matter of fact, I'm still in process on the systemwide doctorate because there's only four employees on that scale. You could actually go ahead and

029you could you could look at the salary scale early on up to the first employee on that list and just drop it back to what the current doctrine is if you wanted to cuz there's nobody on it. Um just to finish the graphs, this was um the adjusted versus the proposed balance scale. So you can see it just drops somewhat by freezing that. So overall that that option would would balance more balance the salary scale and save about $400,000 and bring us more in line with the recommendation from our evaluation that we had the salary study we had. Lord, what amount of time would it save us to 400 in year one? Year one. Yeah. And year two actually have that in there is what it year two overall with the freezing the scales for

030the second year. It would cost about 707,000 the next year or two go with this salary scale. So, if we were to say we're going to do this with the 25 year and not look at incurring that additional expense going up to the 30 this year, what would that difference be on the going to your balance? I didn't do that, but I can. Okay. Okay. There's not a whole lot of effect on it because uh there is on the first two pay scales because there's a lot of employees with bachelors and masters. So there would be that you could say quite a bit about doing that by reading the last five. Mhm. Yeah. in looking at the scales that Miss Bray sent out, it looked like it was going to be and and she gave

031us the dollar amount, too, but we had enough employees there that was enough of an impact that we would have to be coming up with additional money this year that we don't have in order to do something like that. Um, it's a nice thought to continue on. My other concern was if we continue them on to 30 years, what are we going to be doing in the supervisory rank so we don't have the leveling out between stepping from teacher to a supervisory position? You know, what's that going to look like if we go up to the 30 years? Is there going to be are we going to be able to build in enough of a difference stepping into the supervisory one or are we going to not have any gap there? Well, ain't that where

032just doing a flat rate supplement for supervisor supervisory ro wouldn't that kind of take care of that? I think we're going to have to look at that chart again. Not this one, but the percent. Mhm. That's on the agenda for tonight. So, so when we look at it, keep that in mind. Yeah. So something I just been bouncing around in my head was breezy in that salary scale, the supplement scale. I don't know how much that would that actually save. But then looking at splitting that in half, half this year and half next year. Yeah. So we create a median salary scale for one year. I'm talking about supervisor administrator, right? So, we'd have to look at that because again that compression factor since we have done less or prior boards have done less in

033those areas that's why we've compressed so much between there and that was one of the recommendations in the salary study too. We didn't we didn't step up enough going into the supervisory roles and we're looking at a between a 25 and 30 year cap. But we haven't talked are we putting like a we're not putting a monetary cap on the teacher position. We're just putting a year cap on there. So as raises continue, that position continues to get p get paid out, which then compresses more to the supervisory. So, you know, if we're looking at going to 25 or above 25 years, I mean, I don't think it's feasible this year, but if we're looking at doing it in the future, I would think we would have to put some kind of cap on it

034anyway, even if we went up to 30 and say it freezes at 30. But 30 years or this dollar amount for this particular position so we don't continue to have that compression factor into the supervisory piece. You can see what that does with the graphs that I showed. And I mean it's it's going to affect people's retirement for more five highest years going to be frozen at year 25. Mhm. Right. They are now anyway. Right. That's what they've had. Mhm. But in some in some cases in most counties that's not the case. Most of them have already converted to 30. Yeah. Most of them have already converted their insurance too. So, we're kind we're trying to, you know, balance things here with what we think is best from what we've heard in the survey. So,

035where do we fall with that? Yeah. You know, at this point, we're talking about spending money we don't have. So, where's the best place to spend what we do? Yeah, that's Yeah, I was just going to show this is I think what John was talking about the other day, but this is these are the proposed two different propo proposed salary scales that the one that that I did option two and the one that Miss Ray did with with the balance proposal. Mhm. Um if you look at in 2526 you're an assistant principal for prek that's this one here. This is this is just based on base salary. This is not um if you were a uh guidance counselor for a high school working the same number of days to 10. This would be this green

036line here. Mhm. And the only reason this one has has that bow in it is because it hasn't been adjusted. Mhm. So they would be running right along or less than if it's adjusted with a 210 day employee that teach that teaches on a daily rate. So a little bit less than actually. So when you add that supplement, what we've done is we've created a new salary scale that has reduced supervisors and AP's daily rate of pay, right? To make up for how much the supplement they're getting paid. I mean, we I mean the board has done that time. Yeah. We take from here to give there and we take from there to give here and then we're all out of Wow. This was the opposite of how it should have been. Exactly. So I

037just I just did this graphical representation just to visualize. I'm a visual person. So that's all I have. [Music] Thank you, Mr. Van Winkle. Thank you. [Music] [Applause] Can you um send that out to everybody? So, we've got a good able to look at a little closer. You'll give it to Miss Diane. She can put on the agenda for for everybody. I was working on right before I came here. Think I left you a milestone. You certainly did. Here. Thank you. I don't even have a paper. Yeah. Further discussion or questions on that part? A lot to consider and take in. [Music] Let's go ahead and look at these. Well, I have asked the board for years to, you know, try and figure out a different scale and I think that Mr. Van Winkles come

038up with a kind of a solution that we can consider. Mhm. Well, we're working towards one slowly but surely with the different steps that are being taken between Miss Gray and Mr. Danle. That's for sure. Which one thing we've been looking at is number six. be certified administrator to teacher scale being on the same scale. Mr. Bright, that's your charge. Basically all I did was I just took my one by one I took every admin, every supervisor, put them where they would be next year on the scale and apply their appropriate supplement as they are today. And this is the additional funds that would be required. Now what item is that? That's for your admin and your supervisors. If you were to take them and put them on the existing teacher scale, use the same

039supplements, the percentages that as they sit today, this would be the additional funds that would be required. And that's with taxes and TCRS. What would the raise be if we did 2% this year? Is that what they were going to do? Supervisors 2% 2%. And this was just putting them on the teacher scale and then doing away with the 2%. Correct. I just put them on the scale as they would be based on their years. And do you know how much the 2% would cost as well? It's okay if you don't. It's somewhere, but it's less than that. Right. So what if you did half this year and half next year? Would that be close to the 2%. So create a me mid point salary scale. I create a different scale, not put them on

040the teacher scale. Yeah. But do half this year and then half the next year and just plan for two years to so you're saving half of that money is what? But you would be just creating another scale. Yeah. Instead of putting them on the teachers for one year. So it' be a step up halfway point for this year and that put us on the but no pay increase no pay increase other than going to that scale planning on doing 2% with those right whether to be a 2% or not that would be the pay increase putting them on that scale% yeah 2% wait 2% put them on the same scale yeah which we want work towards having them all on the scale. That's what we've been saying. Um, and then smooth it out a dollar

041amount that supervisor position broke it out to two years to do start with a new half of that 2% take out. That's what I was getting. So, we wouldn't um we wouldn't have the step up to the supervisory or we would still do step up supervisory on top of you're saying no raise. So no step up to supervisory just the moving them to the scale. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Moving to the scale takes care of the 2% raise for this year. Yes, okay. But it gets them from there on on the same fix that percent scale. How would that work for compression? Because back on that same salary scale they would call in that scale, right? 26 27. They're still increasing. Mhm. But we can go back and look at that percentage scale.

042Fix that. Okay. Okay. I have to grandfather some people for a year or two. And get new people coming in on black. Yeah. Look at that supplement skills you're talking about. It's been needing fixed for a long time. That's the reason it's so divergent. Yes. Every time you add a percent to the raise, everybody's percent. Uhhuh. Straight up. Yeah. Yeah. We compressed in some areas and we've jumped up in others because we've been doing that percentage. And the reason it got out of whack is like Scott was saying Mhm. back when they fixed that percentage scale instead of switching it out and put them on a different scale. We're taking care of Mhm. since they didn't. It's been out of whack ever since and getting worse. So, we need to have I'm going to spray

043them. I'll go back to the drawing board on the I actually had it done the other night and my computer crashed. I found something so I lost it. A not recoverable, huh? Didn't recover. [Music] save and save often. Well, yeah, I've been saving every 5 minutes since it to save every time you click. You keep auto save. So, can we does everybody need to look at the new scales? I assume with uh with these a more balanced trajectory, is that something we want to look at doing at the work session on Thursday or what's what do y'all think? Yeah, if we that's got an option that we're all thinking about and it would help with, you know, we've been talking about this for years and we push it underneath the table, but but what are

044we doing with the uh non-classified like the the janitors and that kind of thing? Next one on the list. We haven't gotten there yet. [Music] I'm not tracking with what you're saying. Sorry, my brain is just So, so what I'm saying is maybe I can just email you. Yeah, that might be kind of like you. I need that whole fish. What do you think? Yeah, I just What I'm saying is just take half of that for this year. Create a scale where they all go up midway. Yeah, midway. So it' be a separate percentages or you could take the current scale that you have and just do the half the difference in what it would be if they went to the teacher scale. So that's the new scale for this year and then next year

045they would move into the full certified scale and then keep the percent for now. Well, you all were saying no on the percentages. I was saying I don't know how many employees fall that would actually get a percentage supplement increase this year. I don't know the answer to that. Three. Three. So it wouldn't affect it much then. But if you froze it until we can do [Music] something for the grand I mean we could if it's not a bunch extra work figuring out we could look at both. Yeah. Just need to know what line they're in. And of course you do too. Just what line they're in. What percentage? It's just 1% per year, right? buckets. It's in buckets. Sounds like you two need to schedule a pow-wow meeting and put your heads together to

046spit out the final thing for the work session so you can get Miss Bray's CFO side of it and merge it with what you've got. And again, I'm I'm concerned with being competitive to a certain extent, but keeping in mind that, you know, they do have different funding in different counties. Um, and keeping in mind our entire package. So, we have yet to talk about that, too. Um, and maybe we can come. We've stayed more than competitive doctor. Yeah. But we're not as competitive as bachelor's, masters. Yes. That's of course those are the bigger buckets of funding expenditure, right? Bigger groups of people, bigger people. Yeah. What that's kind of my question. What's what's our population difference between masters and the the masters and bachelors like citizens? Um, it's at the bottom of the added

047to the list of fewer people in those two groups. And although I appreciate the additional education for EDS and PhDs, um, what the teachers do in the classroom and the results that they drive can come from bachelors and masters as well. And, uh, we need to make sure that we're equally rewarding that. Mhm. 271 in the bachelor's. U standard. Systemwide there's 22. And if you go to the masters, there's 223 of the masters. Well, 25 systemwide masters. And when you get to the EDS, there's 45. And then EDS systemwide, there's only two. That made that sus go really easy to fix. Um and then the doctorate there's 15 regular and there's four system. Okay. So the bulk of our our teachers are in the bachelors and masters. Yeah. That's why you don't see a huge

048cost savings by fixing that scale. Yeah. Well, because they're kind of positioned where you would expect them to be positioned role-wise. And when they go to get those degrees, they're not free. They invest quite a bit of time, money themselves. Yes. The payback on some several years. Yeah. quite a few years sometimes with a difference in the play. Wouldn't it be nice if they were rewarded for just a bachelor's or masters and didn't feel like they had to put that money out to move on if they were going to stay in the teaching ranks? Well, a lot of people do it for different certifications. Sure. good for you look at different learning standards model that I showed the difference in bachelor's to EDS was I think $2,600 is the same from EDS I'm sorry for

049masters to EDS and same EDS doctor so no matter what level they're working at that pay difference was exactly the same 2600 it was that same way all the way up that Mhm. And the step increased varied some. I don't know why that was, but 600 to a,000, but if it was 600 at the bachelors, it was 600 at every level. And ours is not that way at all. Some of them there's like $2,000. If you look at jump one year $300, the next year 3,000. you get to year 25 the bachelor's to the next level is 7,000 and then from a mast's to EDS is another 8,000 then from an EDS to a doctorate 200 yeah and I don't know how many people get EDS with the doctor on top of it. Yeah. My

050understanding is they e either go one route or the other, the EDS or the It depends on what they're doing it in because if they can use their EDS time and credits for the doctor. That's right. And that's probably why there's there was a little bit of a less step there because it's a little bit of a less you're kind of merging over into it doing a little a little step up versus the bigger step. But right a lot. Yeah. Those doctor hours. Yes, they do. There's more involved. But if you're going from an EDS to a doctorate, which you were saying was only 2,000, that's why cuz I mean to Chris's point, if they can take a lot of that and apply that to actually stepping up that last little bit to the doctorate,

051there's not a huge difference between the two. Leon County, their their pay scale for EDS and doctor is the same. They don't have a separate face. Well, that's what I was saying. You know, it seems like at this level, particularly, you know, the K through 12, they tend to go one route or another for career trajectory educational wise versus level. They just pay for either bachelor's or advanced degree. Mhm. Yes. Yeah. They lump all that advanced degree together, right? Which probably explains where, as you said, bled. Yeah. Probably why they didn't do that. We want to pluck the best of everything and roll it together. So, we're setting a good standard in bar here. There anybody on the back row has something to say? We'd like to hear it. Have we said anything incorrect so

052far? Are you sure? I see some faces. Yeah. Really? We want input. If you have input, please. Come on, ladies. Be brave. We're trying to work this out. Best of everybody's interest here. Okay. So, the next item to go over is a classified scale of 2% raise. And this was what we we were going to give them, you know, whether we changed anything. I mean, that was normally 2%. Yeah, that's the normal 2%. This was the proposed original 2% raise for all of them. Still looks pretty low, but it is. Yeah, this is looks bad. We got to have 12 years of experience before they even get close to what starting out at working for the county makes. I think what probably should do is study this with a lean frog study and some other

053things. Look at what we're doing. Decide where we are and you know what's the goal for our fiveyear plan? Do we want to do $14 an hour, $11? And we got to develop a four or five year way to get there. Well, I think we've got we've got to get competitive at least with our own county or else we're training up employees for them and they'll quit us to go work for them cuz they make more money automatically. Yep. Um and that and that's what I was talking about, you know, how much does it cost us to hire someone each time, even for a mower or whatever. And I mean, if you just Google it, how much does it cost to hire an employee? It's $4,700 is the Google number. So, I mean, there's a

054cost involved with hiring even a lawnmower because it takes time from someone else to train them. So, if it's $4,700 every time we hire one person, if we do that two or three times a year for one position, we've paid their salary. We've paid a whole another person's salary. Mhm. So, we had some other options beside the 2% that Miss Bray had stepped out for us um with the dollar amount on it. Um keeping in mind that we're looking at the entire package which includes benefits, time off. So, we're not just comparing hourly pay. Um and we did have the Lean Frog study that had given us some suggestions. We took a big step, was it three years ago on hourly pay based on their recommendations. And Miss Bray, I'm trying to remember, did we

055do anything else within the scale? I know we stepped them up. Um, you're before last, but I'm trying to remember. Did we do anything else within the scale to bounce it out anymore at that time? No. I mean, it's always been balanced between the steps. What we did was there was different races given to different classifications to be market at that time. Mhm. different people got a different percentage at that point in time based on their recommendations. So we stepped them up with the raise. We changed the amount of the raise based on that study. And then last year we voted to allow the um additional experience to be counted so we could bring them in at a higher level rather than at the starting level. This would be happening in 5 years. So, how

056many people would you say, and I think this came up once before in our meetings, but just to reiterate for everybody, how many people would you say we actually bring in at that very bottom zero experience? The other day, someone asked, it's like we have like 20 people on that right now. So, the majority of the people are somewhere up higher, some level of experience. Okay. And I know we've talked about the fact that including benefits when we compare to other districts were very similar um for our classified because of that benefit package that we offer. Um your insurance with your medical and dental on your single coverage is right at $10,000 depending on the plan you get. So Scott, you had talked about doing the less than the 120 um a little bit more

057a higher percentage and then keep the other at the 2%. So we had looked at different amounts on that. Doing that's going to cost us more period. Um but if we wanted to bring it up a little bit, a breaking point was 6%. That put everybody at the starting rate of at least in a $12 range the minimum which was the custodial starting starting hourly rate in 127 for a custodian is 1277 and their benefits were 8020 I think there if I'm remembering correctly there 236 so mainting they didn't distinguish between learn [Music] mainto's got three schools we've got 12 not sure about that they pay pretty They're getting their money from somewhere. Yeah, they get it from the state. They still don't have to spread it out. So, one of the things I wanted

058to say to keep our perspective being one of the largest employees in the county, we want to pay a prevailing good wage. We can't be competing with private sector all the time for everything cuz then they just raise their prices to pay their people more. That's where we get into chasing our tail, right? Same for the county employees. We do have 80% of the budget, but we've got 80% of the people, too. Mhm. So it it's when you compare percentages of employees in the school versus the county or somewhere else, you kind of have to put on even kill somewhere. And if we need to raise it, then we need to raise it. We don't need to we don't. Well, that's that's kind of what I was saying, though. We're bringing people in and hiring

059them, giving them training. Um, and then 6 months or a year later then they get a job with the county or somewhere else. Then we're back to square one hiring someone else. By the time we do that three times, we've paid for a completely different person's an additional person's salary. If you do it once for three people, you've done that. Yeah. I don't I don't know that we're necessarily competing with the county for positions. And here's why I say that. So, like on step one, custodian mowers, there's only two county facilities that have people on payroll mowing. That's the complex and the health department. Everywhere else gets inmates to mow. So, And then again with maintenance custodians, I'm not sure what all is in their scope of work, but they might be getting closer to

060like the maint facilities maintenance department, but I'm just not sure that we're I know we're not training them and sending them to the county's workforce. I don't think we're I don't think we're necessarily comparing apples to apples here either. I'm not I'm not saying necessarily going to the county, but as soon as they become and I look at it like, you know, we get we're getting some young people in to start, you know, mowing and doing this and I mean because that's a that's more of a I don't know, a starting point, you know what I mean? Um for a lot of people and usually those folks honestly here that do that are retired people. We don't have in the classified realm a lot of what I would consider young people. You have to say

061yeah because that's not enough money for Yeah. Yeah. somebody like our bus drivers. A lot of these folks are folks that have been somewhere else like the mowing in the summer that's usually attractive to them that um the custodial work a lot of those folks are retired from another position. Yeah. Now your teacher assistants and people like that that's very different. But is that is that part of the reason why we can't why it's hard to ask our maintenance department to do certain tasks that we have to subcontract out? There's only 10 of them. Exactly. That's that's kind of two other locations. Yeah. We have one electrician, one plumber, and two HVAC people. And so a lot of those people are here mainly for the benefits. So, if we start cutting the benefits, then it's

062going to if we cut them back to the 8020, then we're going to start losing more of those people as well. You know, it's there's just Well, it's where we put the priorities. So, if they're saying in the survey number one's pay, if we're going to raise the pay, then something has to give. Exactly. we're saying we're raising the paid to an equal rate or higher than an equal rate, then we also have to make sure when we're looking at the entire package that we're adjusting that as well. So, where's the where's the priority with it? Well, where's where where is our what kind of staff are we looking for? Are we looking for more of the retired people to come in and work or are we looking for a younger generation to be able

063to do more work? You see what I mean? So, if we're looking for a younger generation to do more work, then we're going to have to really focus on the salary and getting that up some and they don't have kids and they probably aren't as concerned about the benefits at that age as when we if we have the older folks that are coming in that are working, they may want to be supplementing benefits because they don't have it as a retiree yet. and don't and don't necessarily, you know, then we we're not necessarily able to get the same amount of work. So, we're looking at the community, too, and what we're drawing from from the community. We do have a high retirement population here. Yeah. So, this starting custodian in Pleasant County is 1507. Yep.

064and ours is 11 58. Well, it depends on whether it's like your mower or your maintenance custod maintenance custodians at 1324. Substitute custodian in Button County is 1266. We don't even have that. Yeah, our maintenance custodian would be at 1407 with the 2%. Coming in with no experience whatsoever. That would be 1764. But they have a lot of money up there for the maintenance custodian. Yep. So I was just pledo county had more money than we did too. They get it from the state. Yeah. That's all they have. We have no resources down there at all. Yeah, we're below both of them. Oh, if we could give 10% that'd be awesome, Scott, from your recommendation, but I don't see that we're in position to do that. Um, we're going to just came up with $400,000

065in savings and salaries. 35, but we're over our budget by how much? That was over 600. Yeah. I mean, that helps to balance some things out, but we're still over. So, if we're taking little bites of things going all the way up to the 10% is not I don't see that as a little bite. If we're over budgeting 15%. Brought that up last night. Over budgeting. Mhm. Oh, fluff some extra built in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We usually come in under what we budget. Mhm. So, I still are there. Any other places we can cut? Well, the big bucket really would be benefits. And then if we're looking at the maintenance sheet, you know, we don't want to cut maintenance. Um the the project portion of the maintenance sheet, the tennis courts. Yep. Um personal

066at central office. Okay. Well, we've already got Miss Gray working two positions. Um I don't She has she has an assistant now. I don't get the attack on central office. I'll attack you. I just ask you. I said you should come hang out here for a day and see how how much these people work. I've been around this my whole life. I don't care about the rest of your life. I'm talking about today with these people. You're talking about cutting jobs. So, what do the teachers do in the classrooms if they don't have central office? They teach kids. But there but there's but and that's where I I guess that's that's where there's discrepancy is because there are ways to reorganize up here. Not necessarily cutting jobs but moving people back to the classrooms or

067wherever. It's not like you're you're firing people. You're just trying to reorganize to make it the most efficient. So who would you move? Tell me who you would move at what point. What department in here would you get rid of? Not getting rid of any department. But you're saying reassign them back into the classroom. So, who would you take away from this office to put back in the classroom again? I'm saying there's options out there that Well, what are they as we think about that and give me some answers to who you would take from the central office and put back in the classroom? I can do that. I've got start reading it. Go ahead. Tell us. We need a director of schools is what we need. Yes. Yeah, we had one. We had a

068really good one till y'all got rid of him. I see that. Yep. I think that was going to be the point that I was going to bring up. I don't think reorganizing up here at this point is going to play a part right now and what we're trying to figure out that might be something we can look at going forward, but also we've got folks working at a certain level at a certain skill level here. And even if we say, you know, hey, we can dwindle down some, we're taking somebody at a higher pay with a certain skill level and we're plugging them back into a classroom. So, we have to look at whether that's the best use of resources as well. But I don't think we're at a point that we can be having

069that discussion right now. So, what all is actually funded by local money that is supporting federal programs? Does anybody know the answer to that? So again, local money going to a federal program. Yeah. So we have we have support personnel that are supporting federal programs. Mhm. That are being paid with local money. How much is that? So are you talking about the folks that work in the office doing all the filing for the federal money countyw? What? I'm not talking about central office. How many people that are supporting title funding are funded by local money? I don't think we've broken it out that way. I think we moved off the agenda just a little bit. Let's talk about the benefits on number eight. We'll come back and recap all this and spray This is just

070what was asked for prepared if we went to an 8020 split what the savings would be 7030 split and this just GP 141 that's with the current census I just used the last monthly bill that I Miss Gray, is that everybody going to 8020 that has full coverage? Yes, that's every 100%. So a thought there that comes to mind is if we did go to 8020 but increased salaries that salary increase actually supports a better TCS retirement. Correct. Yeah. It's actually better in the long run for compounding for the employees versus the out-of- pocket expense of benefits because it's going to be year-over-year when it goes into the salary for them. But on the flip side, as you were saying, on some classified pay 20% of what they currently have, would you get any payouts

071that they have? I think you did a chart up, Miss Bray, that I printed off here that looked at doing um making some changes rather than going like with a 8020 split or 7030 split, looking at the availability of the plans and the cost associated with the plans. and also doing a the 50 split on the dependent covers was and and yes also that as well. So if you talk about that a little bit basically I just took this is all the plans that we offer. This is basically shows total premium. If we continue to pay the single coverage and then if we just split whatever dependent coverage, this shows the savings, it would be with the current population, current people, number of people in these buckets, which is what you can see here. Uh

072be 160 $160,327 a month. And that's basically just splitting any kind of dependent coverage that they have. So the employee themselves would still be up% which is kind of what I was accustomed to in my previous life. Mhm. So this is you said it was about 10,000 per employee roughly. you know, if they take the best plan in their dental and their life and all of it rolls up. So, just high level, we go 8020. That means they're paying $2,000 a year for [Music] which for somebody that doesn't, like I said, doesn't make the regular and they don't get the benefit of the dependence now. Correct. Anyway, correct. They just get their own. That this full disclosure, this only impact. Mhm. Yeah. But we have two people that currently I think classified that pay for

073any other dependent. Mhm. Yeah. I don't quite understand why that got so out of whack where we're giving a certain segment the benefit of dependent coverage and not the entire employee population. Well, they get twice as much life insurance, too. There's some anomalies like that. Yeah, there are. And the digger you deep, the more or the dig the further you digger you the bigger you deep, the bigger you dig, the more you find those anomalies that have been set up for you previously. Does anybody know why it's like that? And I guess the reason it stands out so much to me is, you know, at my work as a department head for the county, I'm offered the same insurance as my one employee in my department has the same 10 employees at the fire department.

074Every county employee get the same benefits. Anybody? I mean, yeah, I did a lot of work. I've only been here six years. It was like this when I came here. So, hopefully the fifth on that one. I mean, I don't want to sit here and say there's not a good reason. I just like to know if there is a good reason. Well, there's some local war on that, but none of us, I think, were on the board at that time. So, okay, Scott, you've been around here a long time. Tell us about I mean, it's always been like this, has it not done the insurance? I don't know if you over time, I think it has gotten negotiated different ways. probably negotiated. It's been changed. Who knows which year it was 40 years ago, but

075it isn't part of the Was a time in my life that I didn't pay attention, right? Exactly. Yeah. I was too busy teaching. All right. Well, what are y'all's thoughts on the benefits piece? Looking at the entire compensation piece, if we're talking about coming up more on pay, it's tied together with the hourly rates for the nonarchs for sure. I mean, if if one place you get $14 an hour and no benefits, but here you get 12 in benefits, kind of have to balance out, which is more important. Mhm. What we should look at is what's the best we can do for our employees, not go over the line with the money. That's hard to do. The issue, the biggest issue on that, Chris, is that you're looking at 12 benefits, but you're only pay

076for 182 days. Yeah. So then you're only looking at 17,000 a year. say you pay 2,000 for insurance that Mhm. And so for every dollar, that's about $1,000 a year increase because it just have time. But year round be 40 to be exact. from the 17,000 they still got to pay taxes and to and this is a tax here. Well, we haven't seem to make much headway with this discussion though. I mean, what are we just saying? We've looked at the 8020 and 7030 50 split dependent coverage. Yep. Yeah. Insurance plan for new hires. Mhm. [Music] One of the things that we're hanging on here is that hanging might not be the right word, but until we can approve scales, everything stops. Yeah. We can't go ahead with budgets until we know what that is.

077Mhm. As we're going to see with number nine here, discussion of 142 and 143 budget presentations. Until we know what our non-serve pay scale is, they can't know what their budgets are. Mhm. Right. I think some of this it's all weaving hand to hand because of where we are budget-wise and because of some of the corrections we're trying to take in order to get things more balanced moving forward to get us out of the hole that we're in. Um, some of this is going to have to play in with some of the major projects that we started to go down the path with before we kind of came back to this piece. Benefits and salary and really those are the only big buckets. So, trying to balance those benefits and salary where we're doing right

078by our employees like you said and staying competitive with the entire package. And then if there's anything with those, we can't I think we've all pretty much agreed there's really no maintenance without getting in a bigger hole with that, but it would be if there's anything on that major project list. And I think that might kind of help us a little bit with what we can do cuz the salary and the and the benefits are the entire package to approve that salary scale. I think I saw a hand go a while ago. Stephen, my question, we're way past that, but we were talking about what is the turnaround we're experiencing right now. Yep. The turnover. The turnover. Yeah, the turnover, right? Yep. Less than 10%. Less than 10%. Yeah. For both teachers and all or

079just for just in general. I just did all of it. All of it. I just took the number of people hired people number and it really is retirement a driver for the retirees that you know benefits is that a driver for them to come and join work here? I would think so because we have a lot of people that once they get to the 30-year mark they get their insurance paid until they're 65. But a lot of people like you retired at what less than 30 2016 but if they work like even if they're 55 their insurance is paid until they're 65 and they go on Medicare. Yeah. That's for the teachers and then right I'm talking about the maintenance people that we're hiring that are retirees. They come back and work for us. No

080just somebody who's retired. Oh just for I mean I think they just do it for enjoyment and some of them need the insurance. Some of them don't. They just do it for enjoyment and to be out. They like being a lot of them will tell you I like being with kids. Yep. So the benefit package is not really a driver for them. Not so like someone with a family that's out there trying to get started [Music] because we don't we don't have a whole lot of those what you were saying earlier. [Music] Um, what the federal programs that are paid for in the central office is by federal money. Correct. Correct. So, it's a totally different budget. Correct. What happens when some of that federal money goes away and those positions? Okay. or do we

081still have ESRE positions in place right now that we're paying for out of local funds? I'm not in central office. We have 2.7 secretaries in federal programs. I'm not paying for anybody out of federal programs. All that's coming out of federal money, correct? They're not on anything in general. So, I guess that answers our question. Okay. So, how how many positions are we paying for at school now that federal money was supporting because of those positions? Only thing I can think of is the esser interventionist, the ladies that are the interventionist, whatever you want to call them, they took care of your what were those all four. They Yeah, they took off as the off board which was essent what what the board voted to do last year was to add 120 day of those

082people to help meet the third and the fourth grade tutoring. So we paying for that out that was Yes. Yes. And I think we need that the federal money went away. Yes. Yes. I think we need that those positions because they do small groups and they're mostly your retired teacher. So there's no benefits attached to would title one money support that. So if you took that, if you took title one money to pay for that, then you would be taking it from the individual schools because it's the title one budget is divided by the schools and the schools then would not be able to have the assistance that they used to pay their title one or the programs that they use. So what added benefits is title one giving us now? Well, I'm not sure

083I understand what you're asking. We've had title one for a long time. Yeah. I'm just asking where all that money is being spent and what benefits is it giving us right now. Is it is it adding is it helping with our test scores? Is it helping with classroom reduction? So, what happens is classroom reductions is gone. That's not even something that we can do anymore. we could years ago but I don't think that's anything we can do now. Uh but uh so the title one funds is divided among the schools. So the schools do a need needs assessment based on what they want to spend their title one budgets on and then they get to do that. So that would be, you know, you'd have to look at each individual school, look at their data

084and see. Does the LEA have uh the ability to pull that out of the school and use it elsewhere that I'm not sure of. What about the coaches that they come out of our tunnel? I think they come out of the coaches. I I don't that's not world, but I think that they come out of title one as well because years ago when the coaches went into place, the title one budget was used for professional development and a lot of the money was not being used. So Mr. Slafford was the federal programs person at that time and he u brought in the coaches. Right. You're fine. Um, and now are we using coaches in a different um, capacity now? Because I think you know when I was teaching the coaches were regular teachers and then

085they did some extra work after school for that extra money with the children. So it's different. We have an ELA coach, we have a math coach, and we have an instructional technology coach. They are stationed in a school every day and they provide additional support to teachers. And that's paid on top. Yes. Based on the direction of the principal, the principal tells them what they need for them to do that. And so any teacher can access their uh you know, their uh expertise. Absolutely. If they ask. Yeah. And a lot of times the coaches will send an email. I'm going to be in your building tomorrow. You know, if you need something, let me know. This is where I'll be. Uh they check in with the principles. Um they're supposed to be doing walkthroughs in

086classrooms. How do you think that's working out? Uh, well, we changed their schedule this year. So, two years ago, we changed their schedule. They did a rotation. They were at a school a week. Then we changed that up. And then they it's been changed up again. And we have uh a new technology coach. He came on board in January, February, um because our technology coach took another job. And so and and and are teachers making use of these coaches to my understanding. Yes. Is there palable differences that you're seeing improvements because of them? I mean, are they really I guess it's that like she said, are the teachers? What's the response from these coaches? I think it depends upon the school and you know, you've got lots of new teachers. they may be providing more

087support to the new teachers than they are some of the veteran teachers. Um, and that, you know, but I mean there's like improvement in test scores and things like that. That's kind of what I'm getting. Are the physicians driving results is what? Yes. Is there a way to measure that? Well, you know, if if a school's test course goes up, that that could be a factor of many things. And I could say, "Sure, it's the coaches." Yeah. They've caused every bit of that to happen. Yeah. I mean, you could survey the principles to see their their thoughts on the effectiveness of the coaches. We typically do that before the end of the school year. It just hasn't happened yet. So, it's teacher discretion. I mean, they're there for everybody to use, but if the teacher

088doesn't use them, I mean, we can't force him to use it. And some teachers don't want them. Are they is there a situation where they may be assigned to work with the teacher because of certain results what they see is happening in the classroom. They know that this teacher could use coaching in a certain area and so they asked that would be based on the principal description. Yeah. Okay. So it is it's not just by teacher request. It's also by need basis. Mhm. Well, are these coaches certified teachers? Yes. Okay. Okay. most cases better teachers. And at the end of this year, we'll be reooking again at the interventionists and seeing where our results fall for those positions for moving forward into the following year. That was a request by the principles that they asked

089for that. Good. And all these people 120day contract, right? And it's a little less in my view population, but they're 120 and they are all certified teachers. But do they work with the children? The coaches work with the children. No, coaches do not work with the children. They work with the teachers. Ah, the interventionist work with the children. The interventionist that he was asking about work with the children. Okay. Small groups like what you said earlier. Okay. 120day contract. Okay. Yes. In this plan, we're receiving about $21,000 in funding from the government, from the federal government for title three. So, how are we funding title three? Title three is um ESL, right? Um [Music] I'm know we get some for unique learning needs through TISA, right? I don't think it's enough to cover that whole

090program. So your ESL teachers are paid out of general purpose budget. We do get TE for that as well. That falls under a deep learning need. I'm not real familiar with that aspect, but my assumption probably not going to assume, but my assumption would be that maybe part of the title three director salary is out of that. I'm not sure. Uh there's a few programs that we have to have like transact and that is where you can take a document in English and convert it to a different language. Um because some of our eels are different language other than Spanish. So I think maybe that would come in there. Um, there was another program that we bought, I think, called Elevate. I'm not sure of the name for EL students to use and I think

091that maybe came out of that money. Although transacted, so that's something that had to be approved because I asked that question. It has to be approved by whoever approves translation. Okay. No Google Doc translation. We're getting done with the deadline here, but I'd really like to see us start going more toward looking at our funding at a school level and seeing how we're actually spending that money for the schools. I've been asking for that since August of last year. Actually calculated some of it out, but I didn't ran into some roadblocks there, some time issues, but Okay. So, are you saying they're title budgets or I'm saying our whole TISA funding budget and our federal funding budget, how we're what we're receiving and how we're spending it so that we can do a better job

092at breaking this budget whenever it comes time. Right now, it's we don't it's all in one big bucket and you guys are telling us where you're spending it at. I just like to see how it's being out. from a personnel perspective, every perspective. So you're you're what you're let me make sure and see if I'm understanding what you're saying. So per school, you're wanting to know the money that comes in based on TISA and that's for like their ADM money and their unique learning needs and all of that and then their title monies each school how much they get. Okay. So then are you then also our local funding for each school for each school how are we so that would be based on what we say that we spend per student correct yes but

093that's a little bit different based on the different schools because size demographic and size and so I know you've heard me say this for the last three or four months but cookie cutter a lot of areas like the RTI for instance for one of these schools, right? And some schools, and I've said this in meetings before, some schools have 90 students that they need support and some some schools have 20 students need support, right? And so we're we're not supporting some students as well as other students with that cookie cutter approach. So the only time that you're well, one example of a not of a cookie cutter is going to be pine because a lot of times like they're 120day interventions is only an 80-day interventions. Um, and they have some other librarian they librarian

094with another position. They don't have a full. So, so that would be the only example of that. But I see what you're saying. And I sent some information on our cost. Yes, she did. And it was not as much as I. So I still have that email sent back to the ask for that to be to me. Okay. I guess because I understand and I don't understand Scott's math, Ed, because I know that that's way beyond mine, but whenever we're trying to find maybe things that we're we're paying for repetitively or whatever, you know, things that are we're trying to break down a a budget to where's all of our money going. It's hard to see where all of our money is going and making sure we're not double paying or whatever else or double

095budgeting or something like that by by getting these just buckets of here's the teachers, here's the this and it and we're not we're not asking to try to eliminate anything. We're trying to see where where are our inefficiencies, where are those things that we can help fix. I think what Scott's asking because this goes back to my previous life. We had 12 locations, two countries. I budgeted by location, everything, and it all rolled up into consolidated financial. Everybody had a labor budget, they had a maintenance budget, they had a supplies budget, blah blah blah blah blah. And the manager at that location was responsible for that. And that's more what you're talking about. Now, cuz I thought about that, the accounting system is in no way set up to even accommodate that. But the one

096thing I think you would get into is you could say, "Okay, I'm going to give the principal at SMHS this much for labor." But then you're tying their hands by saying based on the way we pay, well, I can't hire this person because they're going to cost me more money because they've got an EDS. Now, this may be the best qualified person, but I've only got enough less for You see what I'm saying? Yeah, I know exactly that. I know that it can't be it can't be dollar for dollar. I know it can't be, but I'm what what I'm wondering is percentage-wise, how far off are we at those schools that have a higher need versus those schools that don't percentage- wise? And is there any way we can work to balance that out? So,

097for instance, this is a question I asked last year about the ELL or ESL. So, we have a high population of students that need that support at a couple schools. We have now nine teachers to teach that. We have one school with three students and we have another school with 40 students. And I know we have those teachers tracked, right? Can we consolidate the number of teachers down to four if we have those students at a school on one side and a school on the other side? So, I I was I was told that could be an issue with um some some civil rights. Correct. Because you can't deny that student not to go to their zone school. But we do that with we do that with CDC. Yes. because it's it's and the reason

098we did that is because we couldn't support in our community. We couldn't build schools that supported those needs in every zoned area. Right? So Martin's one of the if we can't afford nine ESL teachers, why can we not consolidate that to four and have it at two schools or six and have it at two schools and save three certified salaries? And I'm not trying to get rid of anybody. I'm just trying to find ways to be more efficient with the money we have. So I think just to summarize all the discussion that we're having is when we bring the new director on, we'd like to charge the new director to look at efficiencies across the district. We did this director working with the administration so that he can come back or she can come back

099to us and tell us these are the areas and the department heads. These are the areas that we found that maybe we can make some adjustment. this is what we need from the board because really as a board we shouldn't be digging into this detail and micromanaging this detail managing I know where we're being we're being asked to cut $7 million out this budget and every penny I get where you're coming from on it. I do. But um I'm thinking that that needs to be an ask that's going to roll down to everybody involved and then a report back to us. And it's not just going to be important for us, it's going to be important for the commission, too, right? We're going to them saying we need a reset. We're going to have to

100work as partners going forward for the expense and we're going to need business case. So, this is all business case that we would So, you have you have community members and commissioners that want to know where we're going to cut this budget at, right? They want to know that. And and basically, we don't have the board doesn't have the potential to do that. We're talking about things that are penny that that are not going to make a huge difference in this budget right now. Mhm. 10% 6% on a salary increase is not going to make a difference in a $7 million deficit. Well, part of the problem that has gotten us here in the past over however many compounding years is it's always been just kind of shifting the money from here to there to

101here to there and not really digging into where can we see some actual gains on things. So, I think that needs to be something that when we're interviewing, right, we're talking about and that we're working with everybody on going forward because we do have to be careful with as a board crossing over into what needs to be managed from that side and then reported to us versus what we're trying to manage as I guess what I'm having issues with is like with trying to cut $7 million out of the budget and we're sitting here looking at the big bucket. I don't see where we can cut $7 million. I mean, I just don't If you want to push maintenance off for another year, then next year it's going to be we're going to double that

102maintenance thing. Um, every time you push maintenance and all this other stuff off, it only gets more expensive. It only gets more expensive. It only costs more money. Well, there's no clear-cut easy solution here. There's not. That we're going to have to make some tough decisions. And I'm kind of just looking at how we can blend some things. So, we were we kind of veered off from the benefits piece to look at some other areas that we could um I've been thinking of somewhat of a blended version with the benefits piece that Miss Bray has provided us with some information on. um you know if we could to everybody's point not cut the employees take away where they're just taking their although I've had it happen to me year after year in the private sector

103but take away the pay to supplement insurance that we're taking away if we did some sort of blended version where we still covered the employee which is better than most of the districts and other companies right but did a split cost with the employee be with their children, their dependents. Maybe we look at the plans and reduce what we offer planwise. So that helps to reduce the cost. And Miss Gray worked some of that up for us. And then at the last meeting, we also talked about grandfathering and starting with the new folks that we hire, maybe doing like an 8020 with them, but the current employees are at the 100%. And if we did some kind of blended version with that, then we could have some more money to put into the pay category

104that has been rated the number one priority from the survey that we sent out. Right. Half of our employ. So, but again, without really whacking at the benefits and did a little blended because if they still get 100%, they just don't have as many coverage options. that saves the district. Um, it still gives them the benefits at the 100%. And you know, again, most places aren't covering in the 100% for the employee. So, if we looked at doing something with the dependence, that's another big bucket area. So, I see I see that that's going to help employees are certified employees because it's going to we're going to bump their salaries which is going to help their their retirement. Mhm. I just don't I don't see that being a huge help. I mean, it's actually a

105hindrance to the to the hourly classified. How do you see that as a hindrance? We're still paying 100%. they might just maybe not have the top package available across those. Oh, bringing on uh for the grandfathering piece. Okay. And you know, we could make that decision next year depending where we are on the budget if we need to say we're going to grandfather and from here on out we're going to um depending on where our savings is in relation to where our raises are this year, where we fall overall budget wise, then next year we could revisit that piece. Um, I think if we do that, like to me, my biggest fear with touching the benefits is not the certified pay scale. It's in the classified where we might have a single mother or father

106that's got their kids on the policy. No, they don't. No, classified doesn't have dependable. No, only the teachers have that. That's they'd be they'd be paying us to come to work. Well, no, I get that. I just, you know, that's been my fear with it the whole time is, you know, we're all trying to buy $300 worth of groceries on a $100 bill and it ain't working. They don't get that and that's kind of Yeah. Now, what I would love what I would love to do is say use Miss Braves 50/50 here and say we do it across the district, right? So then the classified could go ahead and put their dependence on and pay 50%. But if we don't have that many that would be in that category, they couldn't afford then they wouldn't.

107Yeah. Can you break that down for us? How many classified versus certified that is? Is that something you could tell us? I'll have to count it cuz if they come on this is just what I had up there was like the grand total of the whole bill and then I'll just I'll have to count it just for the reason that I hate saying that a certain segment gets this and the rest of the industry doesn't get that people that have any kind of family or employee they're certified. Yeah. It's no it's not the classified anybody taking any of the extra because they can't afford it. Right. Well because it's at a 100% they have to pay now. I mean the majority of that is going to be your certified. Yeah. Especially the employ children because

108it's 100% pay. Yeah. I mean look at the I mean you can see where the big bucket is here. Blue Cross Blue Shield premium the S neck or that's where the bulk of the people. Mhm. And that's the highest cost premium as far as dependent covers because I didn't include the same but that's where the bulk of the people are. So, we were to offer the local, limited, and standard as options. I'd be curious to find out what kind of savings we would have to the district. We We don't pay anything on employee spouse. Oh, yeah. Yeah. For the spouse. I thought it was just the dependence. Boys, no. Just dependent children. We do not. They did that when all of this started. I hate you. When all of this started, there was about five

109or six people that they found out that you were here, Mr. T. There's about five or six different people that they found out and that came out in a board meeting and at that moment that was cut. So, just bear with me, guys. We used to pay for the spouse. It doesn't even matter for the system. That's the only way. Okay. Employee plus spouse. It says for certified that the DOE pays $1,179.35 and they pay $518.65. I wouldn't have came back, but I know Sher Chapel. Yeah, I know. She was up here raising about it when they cut it out because there was about five or six since I've been here. I promise you I've got the sheep. It's been like this. I mean, that's on the website. It's been like that ever since I've

110been here. Now, I don't know about all of the other, but it used to be I think probably at a higher percentage. I thought it was cut completely. No, that's what we were led to believe that there was that was just the children. Yeah. the Yeah. employee and the children is what we understand. If you go to if you go to the website and go on the HR portal, you can see this sheet. Yeah. So, how many of you paying attention to that? Cuz I didn't think it was there. How many of them How many do we pay like that for the employee and spouse? Well, you can see on the spreadsheet. It's on the spreadsheet. The right side. 34. Well, they're different plans. 34. There's 37. That's 40. 48. Yeah, there's 51 52 people.

111Mhm. Yeah. If we go 8020,000. [Music] Yeah, annual's 2 million. You're talking 8020 for the spouse and dependence versus the 50/50 that she's got on this sheet here. Say that again. 50/50 you're saying would be close to a million. 50/50 is close to 2 million for the year and that's at these current rates and they will go up in January. Mhm. So that just gives us an idea keeping the employee at 100%. And having the spouse independence at the 50% contributo from the Can we send another specific poll out asking employees feel about 100% versus 50/50 versus 8020? Well, of course they'll pick 100%. Come on. when you're cutting their pay, this is a Google, right? Google form. It's the the survey monkey, but I don't I mean% is what it's at. So, we want

112to survey them on the actual proposed changes, right? So, but again, we've got the two categories of pay and benefits. So, they ranked pay number one. So, if we're going to keep the benefits higher, that's going to impact the pay. So if we were to send that survey out, what would you what would you hope to derive from that? Because just to understand how we spoke about just So the question would need to be phrased in a way of keeping in mind that this impacts the pay scales. Where do you want to lose money at? Because we have to meet the state requirements. We do. And because if you cut the if you're cutting the benefits, you may as well be saying, you know, where would you rather lose money? On the pay or on

113your insurance? They're still going to lose money out of their pocket. If it's insurance that that we're cutting, then that's more that they're going to have to pay for doctor bills, for everything else. So, and that's that's where that survey that's why that survey initially went out. What was the priority to them? Do they want more in their pocket or do they want the 100% benefits? Right? So that's what that pockets for. Where do you want cut at in their pay and they're coming in their paycheck. So salary, you know, in their in their pay. So that's what that survey told us. But at some point there's going to have to be some adjustment. We're talking about adjusting the pay scales here. So we're coming into a balanced range that's going to cost us more

114in a lot of areas. We're talking about being competitive, right? Choice in pay to bring the pay skills up. just to a certain extent. I mean, we could we could just lower the lowest point to 50,000, leave the rest of it the same, but really doesn't make any sense. And that's actually something that I had talked to Mr. Ste about just to see where we would be with the compression factor and Mr. Bray reworked the scales with the compression factor and that's where we found out we could go to a balanced without being too crazy. The balance is and even more so with what you're you were showing with yours. Yeah. So, but it's there's got to be a breaking point here somewhere. I mean, I guess, you know, other districts are paying a little

115more, but the people have had to take the bite on the benefits. Um, over and ask for the money and see what comes back. Yeah. Well, we've got to we've got to we've got to come with something that we've figured out from this end here. um we can't keep raising the pay and getting to the point where we are competitive, but yet we are paying more for benefits than other districts are. So again, we got to look at that whole point. You're cutting their pay. If you're if you're if you're cutting their benefits, you're cutting their pay. They're having to contribute to the benefits more. So that's cutting their pay. However, that's cutting their out-ofpocket pay. However, their pay does build on itself every year for raises and for retirement. So, that is benefiting them

116every year. All other districts have had to take the hit at some point cuz they've gone to 80 20 30 60 40. So, at some point they had to take the hits in order to make sure that they were able to raise that pay and stay competitive. So, it's it's a balance. I keep saying it's a balance. So, I understand where you're coming from. I mean, every year I got a not I shouldn't even say that. I didn't even get a raise every year in the private sector and the and my insurance went up every single year. I never had 100% insurance. And I think that's you know the way it goes in the private sector, but we're seeing in the government non-private sector that it's the same way. 80 20 30 60 40. Um,

117so I'm telling you, going to the commissioners right now and saying we need this much money because this is the situation we're in, but we're more competitive and what they're doing as a county and then what other districts are doing to get them to pony up any money. I think it's sad that our greatest resource in in our school district, our teachers, our employees, and the first place we're trying to cut money from is their pockets. Well, we're trying to correct the trajectory that all that was on. So, there's some correction that has to happen here. But that's the that's our first cut is to cut money out of their pocket. No, there was other areas where they've made adjustments before even bringing the budget to us. And then there's areas that we've talked about

118with projects, but this is the biggest bulk of our expenses. So, it's been said from the beginning, if we're going to make any impact on where we are with our budget, this is the area we need to be analyzing. And we've spent a lot of time analyzing it in order to make some adjustments. And there's no there and I think I mean honestly I just don't nobody wants to take anything away from anybody but we've got some corrections here that we have to make. Well I mean one way that we and this is not going to be a very popular opinion and people are going to hate on me for a while over this but one thing we don't have to provide is transportation. We do not have to provide transportation to our schools. If

119you want to cut somewhere, there's one place we can cut. It's a deep and hard cut that no one's going to like, but rather than taking money out of people's pockets, our employees pockets, that doesn't leave our students, which are at the the student is what we're here doing. You're exactly right. And that's that's what I'm trying to get to is we don't have money to cut like that. I mean, you're talking minimal cuts anyway. Well, two two Go ahead. Yes, please. Am I supposed to send out a survey after the survey? Don't worry about it. I've already already know what I need to know. Yeah, I'm not I'm not sure what we derive from that other than if we had some specific. Put it on the agenda. Um, I was just trying to look

120at a way that we could take a blended approach with some of this so it wouldn't be a deep cut. You know, it would be something where we could still provide that 100% benefit and not take that away, but align a little bit more with what everybody else is doing with the dependence and the and the spouse. And then also, you know, by changing the plans, we're not, you know, we're still offering good insurance plans. We're just not offering the top dollar one that costs so much. So, those were just some of my suggestions, but if somebody else has a better idea, please. I'd like to move on to number nine, discuss it, then take a short recess and come back. Let's look at number nine. discussion of the 142 and 143 budget presentations. Like

121Ed said earlier, they can't nail that down until we decide salaries and stuff. So anyway, we've got a proposed where it would be so we can see a look at what we're talking about on 142 and 143. So, let's look at 143. Were you over here at the podium? Wherever you're most comfortable with the microphone. Yeah. [Music] Okay. Luckily, 143 is only three pages. And I don't know if you want me to just sort of quickly go because the first page is uh revenues, the second page is expenditure, and then the third page is the fund balance. So, I don't know. Do you want me to sort of just go down through the lines sort of briefly and then just take questions? Yes, that would be great. Okay. Uh, looking at this, I want to

122start by um, of course, my dilemma is I I don't know because all my employees are classified. So, I wasn't real sure, you know, what percentage to give them. And we try to follow the lead. So, whatever, you know, give custodians, teachers assistance, we try to follow the lead with the cafeteria staff. So you'll see in the budget uh the last green column is uh proposed with 2% and then over on the far right hand side is in the blue is with 10%. Of course that doesn't affect the revenues on the first page any at all. And just looking through the the first two sections is local revenue. The one uh 4,300400 about the first half of the page that's about $400,000 is all that we get from local. Now since students eat at no

123charge for breakfast and lunch and that's what we're proposing for next school year as well. Um you'll see we get lunch payments from and breakfast payments from adults. The teachers we have some allocart sales and that has gone down some. Um, I just I think families are tightening their budgets. And then also, you got to remember looking at where we're ending this year as we're as far as what was budgeted and what we're budgeting for the next year. We had what 16 inclement weather days. So, uh, if there's no school, we have no revenue because we operate 100% on reimbursement or payments from teachers and kids while in school. So that that's the only way we get our money is from reimbursement and what meals we serve and what we sell. Then looking on down

124you'll see there's banquet that is our meal catering. There is also uh looking on down investment income. That's just bank in uh bank interest. what we have in the bank, miscellaneous refunds. That's cookie trays, sandwich trays, and we separate that out from the meal catering because meal catering actually has labor in it for the other things they do within the school day. And that's all our local funds. Like I said, that's approximately about $300,000. Then if you go on down the state of Tennessee, that's the only money we actually get from the state. It's a onetime payment. The state figures that that amount. it uh ranges somewhere around uh somewhere around $40,000. Okay. Then the rest of that, the bottom section is federal and that's where our money comes from. I mean around 8 $8

125million and that is reimbursement from the meals that we actually serve breakfast, lunch, after school snack and our summer meals. And you'll see too there's a USDA foods commodity account 47112. you'll see that is a wash account. That is the the commodity uh dollar amount associated with the commodity foods we receive. And back several years ago, the auditors wanted to see that in our budget. So, the same amounts in revenues and expenditures. So, it just washes out. And then we get a couple little grants that is in there. And you'll see uh just for this year, I put down our February and March USDA receivable. That money is finally flowing in. There was a little bit of pause on our federal dollars for for a short time. Uh but that money is flowing in. But

126we were about two months late getting in our February money or I should say maybe a month and a half late. Are there questions on the revenues? Okay. Page two, expenditures. And um looking at this, the first part is is all wages. Um of course, I'm on the non-certified supervisor scale. And then in my office, we have two bookkeepers, both full-time, 260. Then you'll see the cafeteria personnel. And it looks like we're giving them a pay decrease uh from what was proposed or what was budgeted last year to this year. And it's really not that. Last year whenever we budgeted, we tried to budget in extra because we were going countywide C all kids eating free. Not sure exactly how that would look. We wanted the money there in case we had to add positions

127at schools. Okay. And also a bunch of that is just the summer work. um ever since co every school nutrition employee who wants to work the summer gets to work the summer and uh last year there's just a lot of families have so many other obligation their parents their grandparents and they work the school schedule because of that. So when it comes to the summer their kids are home their grandkids are home and they really can't work the summer. So, uh, we had about 40 about 40 employees that worked last summer that served the 300,000 meals over the summer. That's amazing. It they are amazing. And we're trying to make it easier this year. Last year, I know they killed theirelves. They really do. Trying to prepare and and wrap and distribute. So, we are

128going for the summer more individual wrapped items that comes individual. So, that way it's going to make it easier for them to bag and distribute. And then too, it makes it easier. Some families, they know exactly what that is. So if there's concerns with food allergies, they have the labels on that. So we're going to do that to try to help out some this summer. They love what they do. They do. You do an awesome job. They do such a great job. Then you'll see the uh maintenance personnel. This is for kitchen m They work on kitchen equipment. There's two and a half positions. The one position is a 120 day. And then two in the cafeteria personnel. I did not point out all those employees are 2 and 210 days of course with the

129option to work the summer if they want. Okay. And just then you have your matching lines with and then your insurance lines and we we have um uh the no increase except for health insurance. And then going on down, you see there's communication, there's copier service, pest control, transportation, that's our commodity delivery, and that has gone down because we do a lot of DoD fresh produce, and they don't charge us delivery fees on that. So that line has went down quite a bit over the years. Then there's incount travel, garbage pickup and disposal, other contracted services. This is our fire suppression inspections and all our software. We have a point of sale software. We have back of the house software where we do nutrition analysis on all the menus. And then two, we're joining in

130on some new HR software, the equipment and machinery parts for the kitchen equipment. And then food supplies, which is the biggest bucket of our budget. And food supplies keep going up and up and up and it's going up further than the what we're getting reimbursed. And I will say this year has been a challenging one between some grants not happening because for the last several years they the USDA has not raised our reimbursement rates to match how much food cost has increased but they've given us some like one-time grants. There was the local foods grant supply chain assisted grants that's equated to about $300,000. Well that's not going to happen this year. we've got the official notice. They don't see that happen again. And then also with the 16 in Clement weather days cuz essentially

131we're a restaurant and uh we we saw over well close to a $200,000 loss. Yeah. Yeah. We getting sort of nervous with that cuz we were still paying wages. Our employees still got paid for those days, but we had no income. Luckily, the end of March we we were back in the black for the year, but uh January and February was ugly and then here and we're not getting the supply chain assisted grants and the local food grants. But it's just back I mean just sort of trying to buckle down and see where we can save for the rest of the school year. So, um we do end the year in the black. Then just going on Gypsy office supplies. Uh, all employees get a $85 uniform allotment. Then there's the USDA foods. That's that

132wash account I was talking about. That's the same amount. And it says yearto date nothing in that line, but it's a one-time journal uh entry at the end of the year when we close the books. Then other supplies and materials is everything they use in the cafeteria besides food. Whether it's uh janitorial supplies, plates, whatever is in that line, inservice training and out of county travel. The other charges is broken down on the third page. And then food service equipment. And I will say uh Stone Memorial High School is our next our next and our last cafeteria renovation where we've been uh replacing all the tables, doing the wall graphics, and but they're our most expensive um re uh renovation just because of how that cafeteria is laid out. I was hoping that would happen

133this year, but with the losing the grants, the ugly January, February, we're having to push that back. But anything we can put into fund balance, we're hoping to save. And then that's going I mean that's still top priority is the SMHS cafeteria renovation. Are there any questions on expenditures? Okay. And just looking on the the last page if you want to see what's in that other charges cuz I know sometimes I mean it breaks it down uh just with different things help permits pay different things that's in the other charges line and then looking which the fund balance if we go with the 2% then we're looking at at least $150,000 rolling into the fund balance. which hopefully will go to fund the SMHS renovation. But also going with the 10% that way we could

134figure, you know, if we knew where we were at 2% and we know where we're at at 10%, we know we can make anything in the middle work. And at 10% we would end up with a negative fund balance, but we do have some rolling in there. We are over a little over our twomon and there's a few things I mean we could possibly if it came down to it's safe and I mean because that's really close to balance and I know um one person in my office is retiring and she's at 26 plus years so the chances of hiring someone back with that experience isn't going to be likely and in that case we could save some money in that line but just a few things like that but we're unsure who we're going

135to hire because it's not she's not made it official official, but we're pretty sure they. So, anyways, are there any questions? If not, I'm just going to put a plug. Tomorrow is Easter dinner at all the schools. Turkey dressing, gravy, sweet potato casserole, all that good stuff. So, if you're at a school, $5, you can't get a cheaper dinner. And uh thank you. We need the extra revenue even though we don't make a whole lot on that. But that's right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Ke. Thank you. You do a great job. Thank you, Andy. Thank you. So, there's a little more to it than just serving lunch. Amen. There's a lot. And I did not know that. Whenever I got called for the interview surprise was my oldest daughter, which was Little Biddy, and I

136really thought they just serve food. I had no idea more to it, isn't there? Amen. Thank you, Miss Thank you. Thank you. All right. Y'all have any other questions? We're going to take a short break. Want you to look at special call meeting and see if there's items that we can or can't vote on. We'll come back and discuss it. So we'll stand back.