4.14.26 B.O.E. Budget Work Session & Business Meeting

001All right. Good afternoon. The April 14th budget and um or board budget work session is called to order. Uh just a little bit of housekeeping. Uh we are going to have a special called meeting uh right after the conclusion of the work session. So we'll probably take just a short break and then we'll come back and have a special called meeting uh to discuss ceiling tile and grid and bathrooms for Houston High. So none of that will be discussed in this work session. Uh the special called will be dedicated entirely to the discussion and to the vote on that. Uh, with that being said, we will start with item number one on the work session agenda, the GMSD FY2627 general fund budget summary highlights. Mr. Mayor. >> Okay, I'll jump us into um our budget

002presentation for you. We have an abbreviated um document in front of you, too. We'll make sure to post this also, but all this does is summarize the big budget document that can be found online if you if anyone watching wants to go see that budget document. But I'm going to talk about the highlights of what we have. We knew going into this fiscal year that this was going to be a challenging um budget season for us. So, I'm going to talk about those things that were challenges for us and what we did accomplish through this budget, but also some of the difficult decisions that we had to make through this budget process. So if you look at page two on this document, know that when we talk about the big categories, we're going to talk

003about our revenues. There is a slight increase in revenues. Textbooks, it is an expensive textbook adoption year. Health insurance, we've been talking about health insurance challenges, and you can see the things that were additions versus subtractions, the being in the black or being in the red. um the TCRS, which was one of those things that was more expensive for us, budget cuts that we made that had a positive variance on the budget, but then also salary increases that we're proposing for our staff. So, let's jump into each of these categories separately. So, first, when we look at our budget projections, if you look at um page two or actually page three and page four, I don't think they have page numbers. We are projecting a GMSD enrollment of about 5,800 students. That is reduced from

004what we've seen historically. We're about 160 students down. We've talked about this we um enrollment challenge that we faced. It's a national problem with the number of uh kindergarteners that we have. But we are concerned about the impact on vouchers. Maybe not uh directly to GMSD although we do think there are some families that are choosing to go to private school because of vouchers. but also too those students that would consider applying coming on transfer may be choosing to take advantage of of transfer. So what we've seen especially at the high school level are lower numbers of students who who are transferring in. So those are all challenges that we face. Um as I mentioned we did hit a hold harmless floor for the base funding uh for TISA but even with that we see

005uh increases in the weights and some of the numbers of students there was some increased revenue. This is not comparable to what we've seen in the past and it doesn't cover uh the cost of living a a cola or cost of living or it doesn't cover step increases. And as y'all are aware, this was supposed to be a year where we received more money than this because of the governor's plan to increase salaries for staff members. So 700,000 is a positive variance, but it's also not uh the amount of money the increases that we've seen in the past. So even though it's positive, it's it's not as strong as we we've seen years past. Now the next um challenge that we face um is textbook adoptions and I know that Miss Abel you have spoken

006about textbook adoptions before but talk us through why this is a challenging year for textbook adoptions. >> Okay. So textbook adoption cycles vary from year to year depending on whether we are doing a large textbook adoption for a core content area. Those would be ELA, math, science, and social studies. And so, next year is one of those. It is social studies. And we recently talked about the CTE textbook adoption and lifetime wellness. And I shared the textbook adoption cycle. Um, and you could see that it does eb and flow. Um, so the current year that we're in is really about $250,000 for the textbook adoption, but we are also in the midst of gap years for ELA, fine arts, uh, world language because the state transition from that six-year cycle with textbooks to eight years.

007So, we're in that that gap year already. So, the amount that we had budgeted this current fiscal year covers all of that. And then next year we have social studies and then we also have two CTE course programs the business management and administration along with human services and we have both of those programs. So when you combine that with another gap year thrown in because we will also have social stud not social studies actually we do have to pay for social studies next year because we're adopting social studies next year which means we will buy it for the following FY28. Um so that's for next year. The following year, we'll be back to more of a lean year as far as textbook adoption goes. And it'll be fine arts and world language and two CTE

008pathways. So, we won't have one of those core content areas. So, we'll drop back down to probably 500 600,000 during that year. So, >> so know that for us, this was a budget challenge because it is an $800,000 increase from the previous year's budget. So, when we're trying to make all the numbers um align, this was something that we knew was going to be a challenge. the this textbook adoption cycle. Thank you, Miss Ael. >> All right, if if people have y'all know if y'all have questions along the way, please feel free to stop and uh ask us questions as we cover each of the topics, but we may say hold on a second. We're going to get to that. >> So, dealing with the textbook adoption. Yeah, I knew social studies was coming up.

009So, we're going to pay for social studies in the in this upcoming fiscal year. Is that correct? >> Yes. So, do we ever have the option on that because of where the fiscal year falls? Do we ever have the option of kind of rolling some over and spending some of that in July versus June? Because I I'm wondering if that's a way to mitigate something. I I don't know. It might be on order. I just I feel like where the fiscal year falls right there during the middle of the summer, is that something that's even possible? >> It could. We have looked at that in the in the past, but the challenge is if we wait or postpone that textbook adoptions, we don't actually get get them. and our teachers and parents expectation is when

010we start school, we are starting learning with all of our supplies and materials. So, um I know that there are districts because they're really constrained by budget flow, don't order it until that next fiscal year. And in most of those systems, they don't have their materials when they start school. So, Miss I don't know if there was anything to add to that, but um but yes, you could do something like that, but delivery may be a problem. And just to make sure that anyone listening doesn't think that we didn't anticipate this, we we do earmark and and put in what I'll call like a reasonable placeholder anticipating these cycles. It's just the the flux of of what on any given year what that's going to look like. Um, so it's not like a gotcha like,

011oh my gosh, like we spend a lot of time annually preparing for future textbook adoptions and just like we do with devices. Um, it's not uh for the lack of planning. It's just that exact, you know, math and dollars. Um, we just heard uh recently about some um materials that have been approved or were recommended for approval. Um, and so that's part of the ongoing cycle. You know, it's not just like, oh my gosh, we didn't know we needed materials. No, it's actually a very thoughtful process. I just want to make sure that when people hear the increase, it it's about the exact anticipation. I mean, the exact versus the anticipated. >> Yeah. And and this is one of those challenges that we had when we first started as a district. We had the big

012discussion about should we budget um for those years, but all that money would do would be rolling into reserves. So, if we said this current fiscal year, if we'd said, "Hey, we're going to budget the highest amount that we would have for textbooks every single year, that wouldn't be a good use of the funds because we do want the funds for that year to go to the students that it's serving. And all that would be doing would be sitting there in an account and then rolling into reserve. So, it's better for us to plan for it, like you said, know that these we're going to have good years, we're going to have bad years with textbooks and and make sure that we have a plan to accommodate for those, but um making sure that we're

013also using every dollar that we can in that current fiscal year to serve students. So, that's the textbook challenge that we saw facing. Now, the next one that we're going to talk about really focuses on uh what we've done around health insurance. Um so um with us know that one of the things that we're we have two moves that we're doing around health insurance. So I asked them to pull our other funds budget. So y'all hopefully you'll this will refresh your memory. One of the things that we've listed each time in our other funds budget is that we are moving uh you know we were counting on using $1.2 million in reserves for our health insurance account each year to just to to shore it up. I don't think that's a good transparent way for

014us to budget. It's something we did, but we think it would be cleaner, which is what we're doing. Go ahead and let's account for that in this general fund budget. If we know we're going to do it, we're going to use that money for reserve. Go ahead and put it into the employer contributions line. So, that's one thing that you're going to see that we have done in this budget. We have moved that $1.2 million from reserve. It doesn't have a a change in what we're doing. We're still moving that money for reserve, but we're going ahead and counting it in the employer contributions. Um, I don't know how we got to that point, but we think this is a more transparent way to show it in the employer contributions. So, that is one increase

015that we see. Uh, when we look at the health insurance also, um, this isn't going to be except when we get to the other fund budgets, you're going to see it. This is going to be something that is spread throughout the budget. So if you look in every department where there are personnel which is almost every single one of these uh budgets there's a line that you see that um object code of 207 that medical insurance line item you can see the difference from the previous fiscal year to this year and that's because we have increased those employer contributions. So it's increasing 1.2 million that we're going ahead and saying we're moving from reserves but we are also budgeting an additional 1.25 25 million upfront uh to make sure that we know health insurance costs

016are increasing. So overall that health insurance budget is going up 2.45 million for for health insurance for us to to know that we think that's where we're going to land um as far as our expenditures and and what we're doing. But we think that we have done some things to get us in the the right position. So uh two things that help with um with that. Mr. I don't know if you had anything you wanted to add or um question. >> Yes. >> So I do have a question. Um the cost of health insurance only is going to continue to rise. Of course we know that. Are there any innovative things that you're seeing other districts doing to you know mitigate this rise that is just inevitable to keep happening? >> Yes. So, one of

017those things that we've been doing, um, and we presented this, and so there's the next page if anyone wants to go back and see like our presentations that we've done on health insurance, the the changes that we're making, they can go back and see that presentation that we just had on health insurance. But one of the things that we've learned um that the consortium is doing with the other municipal districts is they're doing a lot of direct negotiation in on two fronts. They're doing direct um payments with hospitals, but they're also doing it with pharmaceutical firms. So one of the things that we are exploring and talking um to to that group is using using their networks work. So what we would do is we would have agreements directly with a pharmaceutical provider and we

018are negotiating those rates and and we're cutting out the middleman. So we're not going through a Walgreens or a pharmacy. Um they're doing a lot of mail order things. But that's also how we can utilize our clinic too. So people can also pick up their prescriptions at the clinic. So there are other ways that we can directly negotiate with those people and that is what we've seen is is happening with that consortium of the the other districts. It's working for them to do that um direct pricing. Uh same thing too or direct negotiating. Same thing too that um they're seeing that with the network that they have. They're not on like a Sigma network like we are when they're doing the health insurance. They're actually doing that direct negotiations with the hospital and that's where

019their people are going. So you're cutting out the insurance companies and the amount of money that they got to get off of it. So, um, we are optimistic that as we get, like we said, it was too rushed for us to get ready for this enrollment period. Um, so we we think that as we get ready to move into this next year, um, we are going to be having those discussions about, hey, let's it's time for us to get on that network and and and make sure that we're taking advantage of some of those savings. Uh, we've also made changes internally to our current plan and we're seeing positive results with those. Mr. Stratton, I don't know if you want to talk briefly about that. >> Yeah. Um, just to piggy piggy back off what

020Mr. Emanuel was saying with that contractbased pricing, that's something that we're really excited to explore. Um, and we are talking to our thirdparty administrator for our health insurance plan to see if that's something they can help us with. But we had also mentioned that um, we're going to go out to RFP next year. Uh, and so we want to make sure that we have a third-party medical plan administrator that's going to work for us with that contractbased pricing, too. So, that's one thing that's on the the horizon for us that we're excited about exploring. Um, and so we have made a lot of changes to our health insurance plan for this past year. We increased our premium rates for the first time. We also increased our out-of- pocket maximums and the prescription co-pays. Um, so

021those were all changes for the 2526 school year. We have just let our staff know about our changes for the 2627 school year. We're increasing premium rates again by 5%. Um we are implementing a prescription out-of- pocket maximum and then we are also um adjusting the specialty brands co-pay for uh that's going to be 30% of the cost of the drug. So um but like Mr. Emanuel was saying some of the changes that we made this year to our prescription drug plan we've seen immediately with changing uh some of the formularies and uh we just had our Q2 meeting with um Weldine and we are still trending we're seeing like a 12% decrease in the cost of prescription drugs as of this time last year which is really encouraging too. We think that we are

022really attacking it from both sides. So, we're making sure that we're budging what we think is um conservatively to make sure, hey, we need to add more revenue. We know that these costs are going up for these services, but let's also look what we're doing on the expenditure side of things and working with our formulary, working with our plan, thinking about the providers for it. So, hope and we will have to continue to do that. That's just going to be the ongoing uh game that we do. >> Other questions? I agree with going ahead and moving it from reserves. We've had to go into reserves the last two years um on that. So, I'm I think it's appropriate to go ahead and budget for it. I'm hopeful, knock on wood, that we don't have to

023go back in this year. It sounds like the changes that we made. Uh the only thing I guess because we and it it'll come up, but just looking at the example here um in the book um we've gone up from around two to 2.2 million for employee contributions. Do we know about what that's going to be? Because I think there should be a little bit of an increase. So, we're probably still going to be for the employee contributions for this upcoming fiscal year, I'm guessing somewhere in the 2.3 to 2.4. Okay, >> Mr. Trenton, that 12% decrease, what does that equate to in a dollar amount roughly? >> Good question. And I have to I'd have to look at that. Um go back in my notes and look at that. But it's based upon per

024employee per m or per employee per month cost. >> Yeah. Just really trying to get a handle on what our prescription costs are running each month and how much that's really knocking us down with that reduction. >> So the anticipated for the formulary change, I remember it was about $101,000 in savings from that formulary change. Okay, I'm gonna move on to the next cloud. Um, one of the things that we also saw uh an increase in is 700 um,000 in employer contributions due to TCRS. So, know that there are different rates. Um, so the ten TCRS is the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System. uh it is in the top five in the nation for managed uh retirement funds. So it is a very strong uh retirement account. But uh in 2014 they changed um how that

025uh system works. So it was a defined benefit plan prior to that. So, we still have staff that if they were working prior to 2014, and I'm going to simplify things, but they take their highest five years, uh, and they do an average of those highest five years for that employee to determine, um, what they're what percentage they're going to receive in retirement. So, that's what they mean by defined benefit um, with employees hired after. So, those are called the legacy employees for employees hired after 2014 or enrolled in TCRS after that. uh those are called hybrid employees and it works more like a a 401k plan. Uh they're investing into the state uh system. Um but once again they're different rates. So when we look at uh the certificated staff and those are staff

026who have to have a degree for their position like our teachers, our nurses, our therapists, those are all certificated staff uh versus uh classified staff. Those are staff whose positions don't require that uh certification. uh know that that's why we've identified those different types of different groups of individuals and also to the difference between legacy and hybrid. So there are different rates but regardless of what we're looking at TCRs said hey there's an increase in rates and you see that reflected in in our employer contributions. Uh it's not going to appear as like one line item. Once again everywhere that you look that there are staff and you look at the contributions that are going to TCRS that amount is reflected in every single budget. it's spread throughout the entire um budget. So that's TCRS.

027Now we have also done um some changes when we talk about how have we planned for this, how we made reductions in what we're spending and what we're doing. Uh know that there have also been some budget reduction in operations. Um but it's also we think going to be some enhancements. So Mr. Kathy, you want to tell us a little bit about um ABM? >> Sure. So, as the board knows, we've had a 12-year relationship. Uh we started the district with was GCA. Uh ABM acquired GCA, but we've had some of those same maintenance folks who came over from Legacy Shelby County Schools and had a a wealth of expertise and trades and served us well. Um I can't thank Mr. Picoski enough for his work on this. As Mr. Emanuel stated this was a

028challenging budget year that required innovative solutions and ways to operate differently. And so as we looked at what we were getting out of that contract with ABM, uh we're going to run the grand experiment of running maintenance inhouse this next year. Uh as the board is aware, we have Kevin Smith who's fantastic. Um and he is an HVAC licensed HVAC technician and is working for us. We have Cesar Nahara who is a licensed electrician and is working for us. And uh we are requesting in this budget to add a plumber. Those are our main three trades that we have work orders on uh the most. So we're going to look at kind of an h a hybrid running it through in-house but also outsourcing when the work becomes too heavy. Kevin's one person. If we

029have 20 HVAC units out, we'll outsource that work because we don't want to uh sacrifice the quality of the service that we provide to our schools or have a disruption to the to the learning environment. And a point of clarification is even when we have that ABM contract, we were still having to outsource projects. So there when the project was too large of scope and and sequence, they would they wouldn't be able to do those larger projects and we're also sharing them with other districts or other uh groups businesses who are choosing to use them too. So response time isn't always is sometimes is a is a challenge for us too uh when we have a system. So, um the objective here is to we are going not renewing that contract with ABM. Um but

030we are going to bring a plumber in house and and plan for sometimes that we're going to have to go out uh to companies that we already have those companies that we're already using uh for those big events. >> So, we reduced the maintenance budget $150,000. You'll see that reflected in the maintenance portion of the budget. um with the idea of hiring that plumber and then still having a pretty comfortable amount left over to handle maintenance if we do need to outsource work. And when we have big projects, you know, we have to do that anyway. When we had the big uh crazy night at Farmington where we're out there till 5:00 a.m. working a pipe, those those happen and we have to outsource and bring outside contractors in for that anyway. So, this will

031be an experiment. Uh we're hopeful that in the long run this will improve service and save the save the district uh budget dollars. So, we're excited about uh trying this grand experiment and and seeing how it goes this next year. Okay. Questions on the operations reductions or uh enhancements depending on how you look at it. But it is positive a positive variance to our budget that we're looking at. Okay. the next thing that we were looking at. So, we knew once again, we have all these um things that are posing challenges for us, whether we're talking about TCRs or textbooks. Um all those things are posing problems. Uh we knew that we were going to have to um tighten up our our belts um and make sure that we were making some some reductions. Um

032I think when Mr. Mr. Ellis and I met and talked about this too. One of the things we talked about is we want to minimize and I think we've done a really good job of doing this the impact that we have in the schools and in the classrooms when we have to to tighten up. We want to make sure that that's the last groups that we are impacting. But what we've seen over the past 12 years as we've been doing this, we've had really positive years um and positive variances where we're adding programs, we're adding individuals. we had uh the period of time where we had additional money through ESSER funding and so we were able to add different types of interventions and programs to our district but now that that funding has has gone

033away uh we have been moving carefully and this board has been doing that every year we've been adding some positions from the ESSER funds into the general fund we've been taking on some of those but we knew that it was a time that we were going to have to essentially rightsize so the next page that you see here um shows you the the state average sizes So once again, when you look at a K3 band in a school, we're looking at an average class size of 1 to 20. Now, you can go over that 20 in individual classrooms. I think it's a one to it's five over what that averages. So you can have one classroom or a couple classrooms that are over 25 as long as your K3 average is that one um to

03420. So that that's what we are looking at. Now u previous boards had said that they wanted to be below that state um maximum size that we have that state average size and so we created what we call programmatic or optimal capacity when we were talking about our class sizes. So we're really trying to hit two below what that is. We're not always going to hit that but that was our objective was to get back to that staffing ratio that we had talked about. Um so we tried to do this too uh with the minimal amount of staff members in the district losing positions because we we do not like and we have never done this before had to uh reduce our force or reduce people or tell them that there's no longer a space

035for him to work here. We do have some individuals that that's going to impact. But for the majority of these in the schools we've accomplish accomplished this through attrition. So when people are telling us that uh oh they're moving or they're retiring we've just not backfilled those positions. So you can see um the fiscal year 26 teacher student ratios at the different grade bands and then you can see what we're proposing for the fiscal year 27. Uh one point of note and then I'll get to you. Um it's different for the elementary versus the um high school classes because the elementary and the middle school bands um those do not include the MAPS teachers. So when we talk about music, art, PE, those aren't included because what you see is you have a bunch of

036students that are in I'm making up a teacher Smith's class, that class then gets up when they have their lamp spirit and they go to that class as a group and all I did was switch the teacher that was off. That's not what happens at the high school. Your maps teacher, you don't have maps, you have fine arts teachers, you have electives for those teachers, but all those teachers are also home room teachers. So when we look at the high school and you look at any one period, they are spread across all. You don't have all your PE classes empty or all of your fine arts empty. There are classes throughout the day where students are taking those classes. So that's the difference when you look at how we're calculation calculating teacher student ratios high

037school versus the other grade bands. Um but this was one change that we made. Um and it is a reduction um of of staff that we have. We had 10 teaching positions that were reduced through this process when we right-sized our teacher student ratios. So we didn't hire uh new teachers to replace those. So that's one change that we have uh positive. We also have some additional savings because we've looked at uh how we are funding individuals. So know that um Miss Huffman uh really worked with how we are budgeting people and this may be something that we have to address in the future. Um but we're going to look at those. So first Mr. Mr. Gates, you had a question on the teachers and the >> um is that CTE requirement from the state

038and then also do we stay two below that requirement for CT class? >> So CTE we do not stay too below um for that but it is a 1:20 ratio for those classes and that is set by the state. So but a lot of our CTE are smaller smaller numbers when we look at those. So Missy I don't know if you had anything to add. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Okay. So we see it here in a variety of formats, but I want to point out that we're still looking at below the state average. >> Yes. In all these areas. >> Thank you. >> So um in terms of the reduction and and how that's uh being decided. >> Yes. >> Uh I think recently we might have received a uh communication from someone who

039was uh getting reduced. >> We're going to get to that. We're going to get to that one. So that's a different category. That wasn't one of these individuals. Okay. >> All of the elementary school teachers in these ratios were done through attrition. >> Okay. This is just natural attrition. >> Yes. For these. Now, we're going to get to those other ones and we'll talk about those. Yes. >> That's on the next page. So, or the next two pages, but I I'll hit that and then I'll make sure that I answer your questions. Um, so the the next piece that we're looking at are individuals or positions that we could move to pay for out of other funds. Um, so one of those uh when we look at our IDA or u uh our ESSE team

040is received this or we believe we're going to receive again the special education grant. Uh we're planning on paying for five pair professionals um moving from general fund to IDA that federal funds. You'll see that in the other funds budget. Eight part-time high impact tutors. Um Miss Abel and her team uh received a grant uh for high impact tutors. So those some of that salary is being paid out of those. Um, Miss Huffman, you can come on up. Um, one preschool grant program, preschool teacher, two preschool pair professionals. Uh, Miss Huffman, I don't know if you wanted to add anything else. I'm sorry if I stepped on. >> Should know if there were questions. >> Yes. So, are there questions about like how we're moving individuals or what we're doing? >> We just went through

041that super fast, which is fine. But, um, one preschool teacher existing, Yes. not added, >> is just moving over to state grant funded. >> Yes. Yes. So, we're just moving how we're funding those individuals. >> So, these aren't additional grant fundings. We're just using instead of using grant funding on other programs, we're using them on >> for for Miss Huffman's now for Miss Ables. We did not it's it's I don't believe we had the tutor grant last year. Did we in this fiscal year or did >> this is our first year that we received that. So, previously they had >> not had that. So, that would be semi- new. >> Um I mean I think Obviously, people is our biggest investment, but what what sort of programs or other things are we not going to

042be able to fund? >> So, um, when we're talking about user monies that I've been able to utilize over the past couple years, it's just kind of the great thing about IDA is that my money will roll over. So, I have a little chunk of money right now that's rolled over that I was planning on using for updates to preschool playgrounds or possible additions operationally. But when they, you know, like when we were considering the this budget season and how I can help, I really can't look at reducing um any of my current staff because the needs haven't changed. So that's why I tried to get creative like, hey, could this hold for a minute and let's look at that's what's kind of fun about my budget because my students needs and things change constantly

043depending on who's coming into preschool and then who's aging out, students that are moving in. Um, so this was my way at looking at how can I help support moving forward if that helped. made some cuts to uh professional development as well as some contract fees as well. >> All right. So, I want to talk enrollment. So, but I'll start with you because for the early childhood special education, are we send because at the elementary level we're seeing a lower trend overall? No. >> Is that number so that number is increasing despite the number of kindergarteners enrolling >> correct >> going down? >> Yes. >> Okay. I don't know if you want me to get into the political lens of that. >> No, but I think because I think kind of going back going back

044to like the you know the attrition, we didn't really I don't think we really talked about it but like the enrollment trends that we're seeing we we touched on just but like to talk more about at the elementary level. So I did a little research. It looks like after COVID birth rates across across the country, every school is seeing a decline. So, this is now two years in a row where they've seen a decline in kindergarten enrollment. So right now our cohort of first graders and kindergarteners is lower and but that's not that's not us and I think I want to point out on that because we are being negatively impacted by vouchers but I don't feel like in our community it's so much at the elementary level because we know on day one that

045we know when people walk in the doors for kindergarten like we know there are some that no matter what they're going to go to private school it's predestined they're they're going to elementary and they're they're they know they're leaving, they're going to Christian Brothers or wherever, but they absolutely are going to Dogwood or Forest Hill or whatever up until that time. So that's where I think for us that's just been the trend over the years. So I think at the high school level, middle and high school, we're probably seeing the impacts of vouchers more. But at the elementary level, I think it's a it's a just a overall trend. But it is interesting that the early childhood because you would think that those numbers should be declining as well because again the birth rates but

046those are going up while the enrollment for kindergarten is going down. So it's just it's an interesting dynamic but unfortunately we're not getting funded and again I will say I will use the opportunity we are not getting any funding from the state for the TISA formula for our early childhood special education. They did vote yesterday to increase voucher funding uh to expand the vouchers uh which is not federally required and state required but for how you know so they've done that again but yet we here we are suffering again um I'm glad we provide the service but we get no funding on a recurring basis from the state and so I guess we're probably still in the whole probably what a good six or 700,000 for what we get from a grant grant funding for

047what it costs to actually run the program. I do find it interesting that our state representatives that represent our area continue to vote to fund vouchers but not fund special education which is federally and state required. And I will just leave it at that. >> Yes. And I am not seeing a decrease in students with disabilities in our enrollment because that count is done every December one. So that is not um the case with us. And as a reminder, our private schools don't have the requirement to educate those students. So we will see the majority of them. And if the private schools in our district or in our city do educate those kids, we're required to provide the services. So do we because are I guess are we still looking right now at two classrooms

048at each elementary school on average? So, are we are we good at that point? Or do we feel like we're running a chance of having to add a third? Because I guess that's where things will really get complicated for us if we have to go into that third classroom because again of state and federal mandates that are completely unfunded um that our general assembly continues to choose not to fund. Um if we are in that situation, I guess where's the where's the break point on that? Are we are we good for now or do we see as I look ahead you know for storm clouds on the horizon from a budget standpoint where are we on that? >> I am not looking at adding another classroom next year. I think if we had to look

049at any other options or our student with disability numbers increase, we would look at reducing the positive peers in classrooms, which then would upset what I'm measured on at the federal level and we might get dinged on some kind of compliance measure. But um that would be the direction we would go. I don't even know a physical space it would be an option to even find because there's also all these requirements with preschool about the size of the PLA classroom and could go on for hours about that. But I'm not looking at adding any additional programs at this moment. >> Yeah. And I appreciate that and know that we are continuing to advocate for that. Um, it's just that our uh our members of the general assembly see fit to fund vouchers and not the

050federally and state mandated early childhood special education. While we're all here, um, board member Ellis made mention of something that that we understand, I feel like, at this table, but I'm not sure that the greater community understands when we talk about providing services for students that aren't GMSD students and what that looks like. Could you and Mr. manual just give a a kind of high like if you were just talking to the to the crowd and you had a bunch of people from the community come in like hey just so you FYI fun fact oh yes I'm a lady of many words so I'm going to try really hard to explain that in a a small way okay so any student that attends a private school that someone in that child's team suspects a disability

051then GMSD is required to evaluate them and Then if they do qualify for an educational disability, the family, if they're Germantown residents, can choose to leave said private school, come to a GMSD school, and be offered an IEP. If they decide to stay at the private school, we offer what's called a service plan. So, it's not going to be as many services as one would get under an IEP. It's going to be a lot different. Um, but with that, to your point, if the child needs academic or behavior consultation, um, it might be speech therapy, occupational therapy, we've done vision services, there's, um, a certain amount in my budget every year in my federal budget I have to set aside for private school proportional funds. So, of the eight private schools within GMSD, you guys

052also are aware that some of those only serve students um who have a disability. So, um we have quite a challenge when it comes to maybe more um than maybe other districts like an Arlington who may not have a private school within their boundaries. We have eight and we have some that only serve but we are required to evaluate and provide services. >> So it's even if it's the school location, it's not necessarily where the students reside. Yes. >> Um we are supporting that school. >> Any student in that school? Okay. So, I'm just gonna say school A has a student school A is in the Germantown city limits has a student enrolled there that is not a Germantown resident but needs the services that they offer and then they may need additional services which

053they do not offer and then the opportunity for the service plan is run through the LEA which is us. >> Yes. And the funds to support those services come from where? >> Us. Um, IDEIDA funds. I have to set aside a certain amount to fun. >> That's federal funds that are sent to our district. Is there a way to >> um in the event that the service needs outweigh the funds? Are they are they attached to the services based off previous years or um kind of an approximate and then let's just say we got $50 but we spent $60. How do we reconcile that in our budget? >> Yes. So, are we getting more money because we have eight private schools compared to Arlington who may not have any? No, they're taking pieces of my

054budget away. So, out of my total money, they're just setting aside more of my funds that have to go >> to that. >> Oh, sorry. >> Um, which then are not available for our students. >> Thank you. So theoretically a uh a private school could have a student that receives a voucher and uses that voucher to pay the private school. >> Yes. >> And then if that student has a need for special services, uh it would come out of our budget. So we would be paying >> double >> additionally, but that private school would have received the voucher. Okay, >> you are correct. >> So, how about I guess a scenario where a Germantown resident attends a private school in unincorporated Shelby County. So, we have there are a number of private schools that are

055kind of out in the county or or even in another municipality. So, let's say there's a private school in Cerville, but they're a Germantown resident. at that point is it the respect county so they >> so we either has to evaluate but when it comes to implementing the service plan so we can't count any evaluation towards that money it's only whatever services are on a service plan so we would evaluate but then Cerville or Memphis Shelby would have to implement the service plan >> so they're not calculating the amount of money that our psychologists are spending about and it's hours and hours and hours of their time that they're spending evaluating these students and our OT PTP, all these people are spending their time um with these students >> and we we have at least

056we have at least two schools in our city limits that are dedicated to uh special needs students. So I think I I think that needs to be an understanding and it's taken me being involved in this to actually see that that we are having to provide no matter where they reside we have to provide services to be offered >> and it just so happens that having two private schools dedicated exclusively to special needs um that's probably we're probably the only school in or the only city in the state that has that scenario that's a that's a smaller outside of Nashville Memphis or maybe Knoxville. Um, so for us, I think that's uh I think it's unique to us and that's just another funding challenge that we have and I don't think that's well understood >>

057which again comes back to getting the funding that you know that we need. Um, and I I would say for those taking a voucher which again this is where the vouchers hurt us. They may have come to GMSD and if they had come then we would have received the TISA form funding with weights and we would have been paid to offer the services. As it stands if if a Germantown resident receives a voucher that goes to one of the private schools doesn't matter which one in the city then we're still having to take care of services even though we're not getting the funding for it which is just further putting us in the hole. >> Yes. All right. How many students do we currently have that qualify for this particular circumstance? Do we know that?

058>> Off the top of my head, I could pull it for you before the end of the meeting because I'm also required to do a report every year. And the way they measure that is 3 to 5 and then 3 to 21, but historically it's been 25 to 30. I know that sounds very low because in my mind at some of those schools anyone enrolled in those schools could be a count but if they don't reach out then I'm not I don't know if this makes sense. I'm not required to count them because they're not asking me for this service. >> Thank you very much. Okay, that moves us. Uh, >> just want to say like this isn't about who deserves what services or what not. This is a budget conversation and I just wanted

059to um ex just publicly get that out there from a funding standpoint. That's the purpose of this talk, not not about who's getting what services. And I think it just is really important as we're talking about it in this um impacts on funding in our community. Okay. So, this one is where you were heading, Mr. Hendricks, but we'll talk about this as we go through this. Um, when we look at the additional staff reductions that we have um across the district, we had 14 and a half positions across the district um that u we reduced. Uh so, we have four unfilled part-time lunch monitors that were in the budget, but this was an hourly position that the schools couldn't fill. I know HR had posted several years several years we did not have people in

060these positions we could not draw people because it was such a short period of time and the amount of money was not strong. So also to the schools have been functioning. So that was one reduction we made. We just got rid of that position. So there weren't people or humans attached to that u position. We had three general education assistance positions that were reduced. We had one HR professional position at central office um that was reduced. We had uh an instructional technology coach, one technology support, uh one medical records clerk um that retired at Riverdale uh and that we are not back filling because that was a a leftover position from Shelby County Schools and it was not comparable to the other schools. We had half an itinerant art uh teacher, but know that with

061that position, there's also a gain. So, um, we had, uh, an itinerant that was moving between Houston High School, uh, and I think middle schools, is it or Farmington and Farmington? And so, we moved that position fully based on student requests. They were denied people art at the high school. So, now they have three full-time art teachers at the high school. So, uh, that's how we came up with that half position. They're full-time. So, they're adding they have more room for art, uh, at Houston High School. Uh we had an itinerate strings uh teacher position that we reduced and two positions that were supporting goal. So Dr. Fischer, since you're here, I'm going to take a moment to brag on you. Um Dr. Fischer did incredible things with our online academy. And when we started

062this program, we didn't know what it was going to be. We didn't know how big this program was going to be. At one point, we really had a tough decision and we almost did it. We took this almost took the students from Rutherford County when they were folding um their online school and I think it was over a thousand students that could have been coming to our online school. But this decision um for our online academy was never about money. It was never about um you know offsetting the budget for us. It was always providing a service for our students, for Germantown students who may have be dealing with anxiety and depression and need an alternative to a brickandmortar school. And what we found too that there were also some professional ath or soon to

063be professional athletes, some professional, some soon to be professional who decided to enroll um in this program and take advantage of it. So we knew that it's something that helps students. Uh it's also an avenue for us that when we have students that maybe the al something happens and there's some bad decision or some bad decisions made for that student at the school and we're looking at an alternative school placement but maybe that brickandmortar alternative school depending on the situation that happened with that student may not be the best scenario for them. Goal was one of those options that we always had um when we started this too. Um, so we we had some decisions to make. The state though as everybody was expanding looking at virtual schools really honed in on incount that we

064have for students. We know this isn't the best form of instruction for all students. It doesn't meet all students need. There's nothing like especially with our elementary school students being in person with that student with their peers. This there has to be situations that this is something that's needed for that uh that family and for that student. Um but what we've seen is they don't perform as well on the state test uh as students who are in the brick-andmortar buildings. Um so this is was challenged with virtual schools I think across the state and something that we've made changes for and Dr. Fischer's really advocated for when we look at the interventionist. So it's not just the online platform that she's researched and found an incredible company village virtual that's working with us uh now

065to provide the service for our students but also how we're pairing that with interventionist. So they've worked with our own staff providing stipens for them to really meet with small groups and students that were struggling to provide intervention for them. And we also have interventionists that are at the district level with with her team that are working with those students to help with uh our RTI programming, our special education programming for students to look at how we're providing those services. Um but one of the challenges that we faced was that incount. So um and I think they just now reduced it to 20 is the isn't that the the most recent incount number? So if you have more than 20 students taking a TECAP in a grade band, now high school math gets a little

066different. I know they combine the high school math into to one group, then it generates its own data. So historically for us, we have not had enough students in one grade band to create an incount to generate that. So there was a cap on us. We couldn't do the Rutherford thing um because they are a standalone school. Otherwise, we could potentially have a failing school uh according to that state test and then it could impact our district accountability system. So that was a real challenge for us of how do we have this service versus the incount and the state testing. So we knew we had to keep our numbers low. But I think Dr. Fischer and I don't want to put you on the spot. I think when we started it was a whole lot

067easier to recruit. Would would you think that that was the the the case? People were were used to the virtual and that people still wanted that option for them. uh and a lot of what uh they do and their staff do is meet with prospective parents, talk to to families, really recruit those students, but recruiting has become harder and harder and harder uh for that virtual program. So, I think we're looking u we're 40 plus students predicted for this next year where we were at 60 and we were always looking at balancing this program with uh the amount of money so the money amount of money that we're investing into staff. So, Dr. Fisher and uh and I'm Rudy. It's bittersweet. She is moving on to greener pasture. She will be uh a new board

068member for us. Uh but also too, she knew that it was her time. She was ready for something different. Uh but we knew that that was probably the right time based on all these different factors of the incount, the size of the program, what we were looking at to to essentially still offer this program, but we were changing the structure of what we were doing. So, um we are not replacing Dr. Fischer's role in the same capacity as she was with the principal. Uh we are looking internally at staff who could pick up that responsibility uh to work with those students and also other staff members picking up pieces uh of that of that program to serve uh those students. So when we talk about how did we make that decision, we we looked at

069for some individuals if that program is changing that they were involved in um then they get to apply to other positions in the district but there's not a guarantee that they will be hired by those other hiring authorities. >> Okay. Okay. So, uh I guess the question about that like the applying to other positions within the district, >> I'm sure there's a hiring rubric that is in use when deciding to you know who to fill for that position. >> It depends on the the position, but yes, they create they look and see. Yes. >> Right. Is there or are there any um I guess points given for someone that is already a has already been in the GMSD district as an employee you know positive records etc you know >> yes I think we always

070we always want to look at our staff and you know when we say that the devil you know is that's not the best one but um the best analogy not necessarily the devil but the people that you know who are part of our family and part of our system. Obviously, those are people that we know um that we're looking at and and people are going to consider like we know their body of work and what they're going to do. So, um it's not necessarily a rubric factor. It's not like a priority when we look at our transfers, but know that when people work for us, uh that's something that the hiring people who who are hiring those people know them. So, obviously it helps them. >> Okay. Can you talk a little bit because I

071think >> I think we need to highlight it. >> Yes. Okay. First off, I do want to take the time to thank Dr. Fiser. You have poured your heart into goal and we have uh last year we have a uh a pro baseball player alum. Um and I'm I'm hopeful for yet another one. Um and so u the goal has really I think for the students that have been there and we go to the goal graduation every year and we see and we talk to the students and you can tell that it has made a significant impact on the students that attend and uh and it's not for everyone but the ones that are there I think have really benefited from it. And so I know the work that you've done just since we're discussing

072it and you're here just thank you for all that you've done for a goal and um you know I understand the the need for change and I understand it's just yeah it's just where we are but I yeah I don't I don't think we need to minimize the work that you've done there. >> So one go ahead. So, while we're talking about goal, I just want and and we use the term recruit and I understand what you mean. Recruit the product, not not recruit, recruits. And that's a funny word because we, you know, in the beginning it was that online learning was going to be a a red carpet for athletic recruiting. And we found that it was anything but, right? Yes. Um, and when I say anything, but it is the superintendent has maintained

073from day one and that we in GMSC in the city of Germantown, this board, previous boards really prioritize inperson learning. And what we found in the past six years is that the beauty and and the gift that goal has been um I mean when I tell you that parents say changed our famil family's lives, saved our students lives life um I mean these are the benefit of the alternative um setting has been transformational for families far and wide in our community. That is not to go minimized in any way. Um I think that that is something that we like to say loud because we understand the the reasoning and the want and and what you're saying makes perfect sense that the demand I feel like is is maybe plateaued and I think that if as

074we've gotten further away from that and watching the folks in Nashville uh the past few weeks, they have a lot to say about virtual schools right now. and I would like to tell them about our successes instead of what they perceive it to be. Um but that said, I just commend you and and to that end, um your support staff has really taken um something that no one knew like you don't have directions to to do this because it's like really never been done before. and to watch them in action um really adapt to this new way. Um it has just it's been it's been really positive experience to witness and observe and to promote which is one of our schools and and one of the things that our district has done well over the

075past few years is what we've been able to do through through your leadership and your support staff um and just to to benefit families. And so for that, I'll I'll always look back at that at this time. You know, nobody's saying we're putting it to bed, but I think that it shifted so much of what we're talking about today. Uh Chairman Curry just said, you know, there's always a time for change, not just personal change, but we have to stay in with what the demands and needs are of our community. And I just want to commend everybody in this room for using that lens uh week after week, month after month because we are we're still the best at what we do as things continue to change. So don't stop. Don't let up. Stay the

076course. Keep on. Thank you. >> So goal will no longer have a dedicated principal. One one person. There is one person who is is serving in that capacity and we haven't done an announcement but I'll go ahead and tell you it's Mr. Lagalt who has a passion for that. He's already working with Artisa funding and student services. Uh he is incredible. He's already a staff member. So we've just added those responsibilities onto his his position. But there there won't be a dedicated sole person who's doing that. He's doing that along with his current role. >> And he has quite a bit of Yes. >> administrative experience. Yes, he does. At elementary, high school level, student services, he he is he has done it all. Um, the next one I I think is is going to

077cause some angst. Um, this one for us was a difficult one uh decision, but we know philosophically how we this program started with us. Um, but uh we are going to move strings uh from we we're starting it in fifth grade to it starting in sixth grade. So that is um going to I know cause some families concern that it's a concern for us. But the reason that it started in the elementary school level because we do have general music that students go to. It's part of their lamp schedule was because we had enough uh staffing for strings teachers for a person and a half when we were starting as a district. We had one and a half strings teacher. So what do you do with half of a strings teacher? So the rationale was

078well let him go ahead and start moving to the fif to the fifth grade. So we did we expanded it to our three elementary schools at the time. Um but logistically that it has become a challenge for the the schools when they talk about when can they get an itinerant position. So we have people that are moving serving those schools. So they're teaching strings in multiple schools. It was locking up the schools schedules for us. We also had concerns from other fine arts teachers that it was the only fine arts program that started their program in the fifth grade. Um, so when you talk to band instructors and and band people, there was a concern of the fact that once I got someone embedded with strings and connected to strings, many of those people were

079not making the transition to go back to um band from the orchestra and we don't have choir. Uh we have an outside choir club with those groups but not during the day where we don't have choir meetings. So, uh, it didn't match all the other programs because once again, it wasn't a philosophical decision. Otherwise, we would have all of those programs in the fifth grade level. So, for us when we were looking at, um, things that are nice to have, but in in lean budget years, things that we were going to have to tighten on, that was one of those challenges for us. So, uh, we are moving uh, strings starting into sixth grade um, at our schools and we were reducing an itinerant strings position. >> Mr. Gates, if I might put you on

080the spot. What year did you begin your strings? >> Fifth grade. >> It was fifth grade. It was a great time. Uh we did have a special circumstance with our strings teachers to where, you know, we had time in the day to have a middle school teacher that would drive around to all the elementary schools and teach do, you know, we was a saint, but you know, circumstances have changed and people have shifted around. So, you know, this I was worried about this, but it is what it is. Um, you know, it's really hard for a teacher to go between three schools and schedule all of that. It was a it was hard the way it was before um with our special circumstances with where our teachers were and so where where we are now,

081it's just not it's not going to happen. >> I appreciate you recognizing the logistics of it now at this stage in your in your in your time. >> So for us, I will say again once again, we will we're still offering strings. It's still an important program to us. It's just starting a year later um than it was. >> And like you say, it puts it in alignment with the other fine arts um co-curricular things that begin at middle school. Um every elementary school does something unique, whether it be steel drum at Dogwood or guitar club at Farmington, you know, but again, those are part of their actual music uh curriculum course work with those teachers. So, uh, as a parent whose two children have done strings, I hate to hear this because I I

082do think it's a a great introduction >> to, uh, music and learning how to play an instrument. Um, I started in fifth grade, uh, not strings though, clarinet. >> Um, and then played all the way through high school. Uh, but is the steel drum going away as well? >> Yes. And once again, uh, no, steel drum is not going away. I thought you said, "Is it still going?" No, because once again, one of the things that Yeah. >> Good. >> One of the things we're going to talk about is they still are going to have general music. So, there's nothing that's stopping our general music teachers from having units on strings, on instruments, and and or steel drums if that's what they're passionate about. So, it is not going away. That that is still an

083option. But once again, that's the general music teacher who's teaching that program and doing something special through that position. I mean, correct, I did do this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the strings like when I the fifth graders do strings, they don't go to general music classes, >> right? So, they're doing that instead of their general music. >> You're not they're not losing any music instruction. >> That's right. >> Yeah. So, they're just instead of that strings, general music, they'll be taking general music where they can do strings units, they can do u music with steel drums, they can do those things. So, they're they're still getting their music. >> So, is the plan then for the middle school now? thought it would be the orchestra and the band to then go to the

084elementarymentaries to I wouldn't say recruit but to garner interest. >> We talk about the the instrument fittings where they go and try on the instruments and you do Yes. >> Because I do think our band and and if former board member O were here, I think she would tell you the same thing. I do think our band has suffered as a result of the strings. You got think to your point, they get in on strings and they don't that's their track. Um because I know at one point the Houston band was huge, you know, 200 plus, you know, and so um I think it's one's been at the expense of the other. So I I do I don't I think it's a you know I think our families I think you're going to you know

085I think there going to be some that are unhappy about it and I and I'm with them. I mean you know I I don't think in an ideal world we wouldn't make any cuts but that's not what's before us. Um, but I I do think that I'm trying to find a positive in this. And I think the positives would be that, hey, maybe there's a kid that was committed that they wanted to play violin and they got in on that. Well, now they might go and play drums or, you know, do um, you know, trumpet or something where they might not have considered that earlier. So, I I think I'm trying the positive for me is that I think maybe our band we'll we'll see an uptick in students that gravitate more towards a band

086instrument necessarily, you know, because they're not locked in from the beginning. But I again, I understand why people would would not be thrilled about this move. And again, I'm I'm not either. But you know the budget is what the budget is >> and we've really tried to to reduce all itinerant positions across the district because there is a loss when you have an itinerant position because we have to provide a travel time for that teacher. So so if we have six period days and we don't across all schools you got think you're losing one for planning but you're also losing one for travel as they're going between their schools that they have. So then that teacher is only available for those four periods. So there is some loss by having itinerant teachers. So it's not

087as practical as it seems. >> So to sum up the we we have the additional what's what will be the total staff reduction between um unfilled positions and then the >> I think 25 is that what we were looking at across across the board. Um but like I said probably I think four individuals that are actually losing positions out of that 25. But yet the others were done through retention or attritions. Yes. >> Um the tech support was that school specific where there was an extra or an additional one. >> So um one thing that yes one thing well one tech support that we were talking about was for the online academy um that individual had also moved so that was you know a challenge too. Um so we don't need as much support that

088we have for 40 students if you think about a full-time text person. >> You might want to hit on that. So that's a challenge with us too, but there was a tech position um at Forest Hill that we didn't fill. So we're going to share that Forest Hill. Now we have at all of our schools, you know, there historically have been two positions. There's been I always call them the fix it person uh the technology support versus the teaching person, the ITC's that are actually teaching people how to use programs, software, and working with teachers and students to make sure it's embedded uh in their program. So this was an ITC position that for the person left and we didn't backfill it. So that that spot is going to be shared between an individual staff

089member going serving that uh ITC position >> from the um what did you call it like kind of more the hardware spot or from a from district office >> from the coaching it's the ITC position. Yep. So someone would be coming from a different you doing >> so they'll do they'll do split days so that they don't do because you're thinking about an ITC isn't the same as itinerant art and the fact that they're not going to this school for this period or this school for this period. They can do days they can say I'm going to support these schools on these days. So they're sharing that school. >> Got it. Thank you. And and so just to clarify, of these additional 14 and a half staff reductions, all but approximately four are also through

090retirements or okay, which I that was one of our guiding principles this time. We were really trying to minimize that impact on on staff and we think we've done a great job uh doing that even though there's there's still people who are losing positions which is always a concern. Um but we did our once again we did our best it's just like the strings we did our best to minimize that impact. Okay that moves us to the next thing and before we go into understanding reserve I don't think we've really talked about it uh our one of the things that we saw as a budget reduction was the fact that we were have been on a three-year cycle for devices that we were purchasing we were purchasing devices every single year but if you think

091about one device was staying with with us for three years and then we were getting a new one. So this year we are not um buying devices. So that was one of the d reductions that we saw in that academics budget. So we're going to stretch that out and maybe get four years out of devices and and that'll help us especially during this textbook year where it's more expensive. >> So let's talk about the reserve. There is money that is budgeted um from our reserve. Yes. >> Sorry, can I ask on the device? Is that just for this year or do the increase in? So, that's what we're gonna No, I don't think we're not going to see an increase, but what we may do is like look at a four-year renewal for for devices,

092but that's something we're going to look at next next budget year. >> Okay. >> And a followup to that, um there's been a lot of uh I guess news and articles about um how effective devices are in learning. uh is that driving any of the >> that has been yes that has been a big focus for us uh I want to say the past three years that um Miss Abel's team has really been talking to her staff and also looking at our schools um I think that during co uh teachers became too relying or they relied too much on devices and we know that that's not the the best means of instruction. It's a good tool to supplement, but it should not be your primary means of instruction. And just like when with anything, you

093can take a good thing uh too far, which is why I see think the pendulum is swinging back now, especially when we talk about the elementary school level and engaging with devices and screen time that we see for students. So, yes, that is something that when we talk about our professional development that we have with our staffs, when we talk about our evaluations that we're going into the classrooms, making sure that students are not just sitting on devices, that's got that's a challenge for us. Do we have a contract with I guess Google for the Chromebooks or anything like that that we have to fulfill? >> Okay. So, um the next thing that we talk about is this budget once again still relies on pulling some money from the reserve or budgeting because I think

094that's a better way to say it, budgeting money from the reserve uh in our general budget. Um but know that what we have seen and you can see our reserve budgets for fiscal year 2223 sitting at 24,286,000 fiscal year 2324 look sitting at 24,499,000. Fiscal year 2425 and once again these are projections for uh current fiscal year looking at 24,000. So that historical balance over that that three years our reserve has stayed healthy. And when we look at uh the chart that you've seen when we project where we're going to be uh for this upcoming year, how we're going to end this upcoming fiscal year 26, uh know that we're projecting that it's going to be over 20 million uh once again. And we've talked about all the issues with cash flow and what we're

095doing. But every year that we've been doing this, we know um that it is our plan that the budget is going to stay the same or or grow that we are not going to uh continue to see that uh reserve drop and drop and drop. So, um, that's one of those things that we monitor, uh, as we're going through and when, uh, Mr. Record, uh, does his presentation, we talk the about the percentages expended in different our budget items. That's one of the ways that we are tracking our expenditure. So, know that we're projecting to be strong again um, in our reserve. >> And just to clarify, I know we've talked in previous meetings, we will be dipping into this reserve for some of our capital funding projects as they come up. That's correct. as

096they're prioritized, but as it stands today from I guess from general funds, >> this is where we're projecting that. >> Okay. >> Yep. >> So, I think it's good to know that yes, this was a difficult budget time. Um, but I think we do have great news and incredible things that we did to honor our staff. So, we're who else to do that better than Miss Fratton. Please tell us >> the good news. >> Yes. So GMSD is going to continue to remain competitive with our surrounding school districts by investing $1.7 million towards compensation for our staff. So for the 2627 school year, all eligible GMSD employees will receive a one-step increase on their current salary schedule, which positively impacts 445 GMSD employees. In addition, all 700 GMSD employees will see a 2% cost of

097living increase reflected in their salary schedule for the upcoming school year. And so when looking at our GMSD teacher salary schedule for 2627, GMSD is now able to offer a starting pay of $52,20 on the bachelor's salary lane. And our most experienced educators at the top of our salary schedule with advanced degrees have the opportunity to earn anywhere from $81,000 to $92,000 annually. So these compensation enhancements in addition to the increased employer contributions for our health insurance and the TCRS retirement funding will allow GMSD to continue to recruit and retain an exemplary staff. So, I think there's positive news that even during this fiscal year, we're able to stay once again stay competitive with our our neighbors and and provide benefits for our staff. >> Stratton, do we know where we rank among our peers

098going into next year? Have we seen their numbers? >> We haven't we haven't seen their um salary schedules for 26 27 just yet, >> but we're watching. >> Yeah. in early in early discuss in early discussions now it's like playing Texas Holde um in early discussions everyone was discussing a 2% um cost of living when we talked to the other municipalities but once again all fair and love in HR so um so we'll we'll see what comes up >> well to that end the um mandated uh entrylevel um starting pay we've had a period of time to get to that and and we've had, we know of other districts around the state that upon, you know, getting wind of the mandate, if you will, um, for that, you know, kind of did it quickly on

099the front end. and and we were very uh transparent upfront that we were from a financial and fiscal conservative standpoint. We were going to do it but do it, you know, in a calculated graduated way with the very public, you know, like, hey, this is we should be here by this time. And so, um, we're here and I I'm be very curious to your point. Um, I think we'll all stay tuned to see what other folks are doing because we saw people do that rapidly in the area or even in other parts of the state this comes up. Um, and great for people whose budgets allowed for that if that was the choice they made, but that was a direction that we wanted to do overtime. And um I think that given the fact that

100we're not bringing um a bunch of new people in, this will continue to invest in our existing staff in a way that I'm real proud of of y'all putting forth the effort to identify. >> And I I still think people are confused with affluence of a city uh versus the funding for a school system. Um there's not a direct correlation between >> Say it louder for the people in the back. >> I I think people are confused with the affluence of the city versus the funding of a school district. Um know that um all of the majority of our funding comes from state and and county funds and it's it's figured out through an we've talked about the average daily attendance of of our students and the enrollment of our staff that there's a calculation

101to do that. When we talk about the state funding of of what we receive, it's based on weights and needs of the student. Um, so because we don't have large numbers of students that are free and reduced, we don't have large numbers of students that are ELLL or ESL, although those students do come with increased needs, they also come with increased funding for those students. So, we don't have increased weight. So if we look at our um also our federal funds too when we talk about um those students that that they receive, we're not receiving those same same amounts of of funding. So I think people would be surprised. I think we've done and we'll do this again as we get ready to move into the new year. When we talked about our funding historically

102in the past, we were in the bottom third of the state uh for our per pupil uh funding. So know that that's that is a concern for us and people always think, oh, we're an affluent community. Uh I also think people don't understand that we receive zero money for extracurricular activities. So when we talk about athletics and when we talk about some of our co-curricular things that happen, we're not receiving additional funding for those things. Same thing's true for operations. When we talk about capital funding, big things we need to do to buildings, we're not seeing uh funding for those things. So how do we do that? We take that money from our per pupil expenditures out of the classroom to fix roofs um to deal with maintenance issues. So that's always a challenge for

103us and I thought I think we're I'm going to be singing that song for a every year as long as I'm doing this um to talk to educate people to think just because uh our some of our families are wealthy doesn't mean that our school system is. So, ending on the good news, that takes us to uh additional questions uh that the board may have on any of these topics or any of the specific items. Uh I think it's important to note that when we look at the things like TCRS, uh health insurance, u when we talk about the cola and those things, those things are sprinkled throughout every single uh budget. So, it's not going to be in one specific line item that you're going to be able to see those. Medical insurance is

104a little bit easier because you can go into each category. you could go into our budget and add them all up if you just take took each of those medical insurance lines. Um, but know that I think we have built a really strong budget that's uh fiscally conservative, but also taken into account our our current status and where we are with our challenges. So, any additional questions, my staff or myself would be glad to answer. Once again too, um you know, we have time before our next board meeting. If if you want to come in and meet with us or meet with me or my staff to look at specific budget, we are glad to do that and go through those with you. Uh just let us know before we have votes on this or

105if you get questions from the community about specific things. We're glad to sit down and talk about why do we do this versus this or what's the challenge with this way that we built the budget. So, um please please ask questions. >> Uh just looking at the reserve numbers. So 24 25 we were at 24 million I guess 25 26 we're looking at closer to 20 million. So are we pulling that approximate four and a half out of reserve for purposes of this budget or are those >> so if you think about what was the difference this fiscal year versus the previous years how did we sit at 24 I think this is a really good point the difference for us when we think about that meeting where we had to move 2 and a.5

106million from our reserve um for our health insurance plan this was the year that happened so really this was more about the the money that we plan to spend out of our general fund to balance the budget has has stayed consistently. That change has not caused a decrease in our reserve, but we have had one-off things that are and I know that we do have things that we want to accomplish um operationally um on our campuses and facilities that we do want to take some of that reserve and move that down. But it's not because of the budgeting of that that funding. It's when we had a situation where we this board had to get together to move additional funding. Well, I guess sort of just as a followup, I know we had planned for

107several capital improvements. >> Those are still on time. >> Well, that but that's what I guess I'm wondering. Are are we still at the level of reserves that we were expecting to be? >> Yes. >> When we were still looking at making those capital improvements or do we need to adjust plans going forward or or things along those lines? Um now the only one that I that we've we have postponed um and it's just for a period of time working with architects was when we were talking about the Farmington edition. Um so know that we were looking at not necessarily using reserves for that project, but we were talking about straddling two fiscal years. So you know we've talked about this before. We receive about two and a half million a year from county commission

108uh capital improvement dollars. And so we receive one year's funding. Uh that that year goes ends in June. Um, so know that we were going to straddle two fiscal years, essentially put together five million. So when we sat down and we were designing that project, we were talking about Mr. Pos saying about a $7 million project for um the addition at Farmington when they did a cost analysis for what they had designed. It came back at what they say 12 10 to 10 to 12 uh which was way over when we said hey here's what we are designing to here's what we want. So, we we were just going back to the drawing board and trying to do some some cost engineering in that project and and look at how can we reduce those costs.

109So, um that's something we're looking at right now. So, that project is still planned, but once again, that project's paid for out of county, but that's the one that's been pushed down and postponed. Everything else we're we're trying to move through. We're dealing with architects, engineers, we're dealing with approvals for other projects. And I think on that one specifically, again, if you look at the trend of enrollment, if we don't see an uptick, if we continue to see the lower numbers of kindergarten entries, you know, it's going to change the priority altogether on that, I think. So, I think this year coming up will be uh very interesting to see how the enrollment holds, but if you know, if we continue to see those lower numbers, quite frankly, we're not going to have a need

110for that back there. And so um or maybe hopeful that we see the growth like that's what I'm hopeful but you know we I think the trend analysis is very important there. >> Yes. >> So the um I wanted to ask about the uh operations uh bringing the maintenance in house. Um, as someone whose wife threatened to leave me because I brought maintenance in house before, um, I get kind of PTSD about situations like this and specifically plumbing. Um, and I just want to make sure that we're we're going to be monitoring like the volume and the complexities of the situations that pop up to to, you know, determine, hey, is this >> exactly what we should be doing or are we ultimately ending up like I have uh paying more money out than what

111we saved? >> We feel comfortable right now because like we said, we we're already having to outsource lots of projects based on the scope and sequence. So, if you think about when we have a major plumbing issue, um they weren't able to accomp do that for us anyway. So, they're doing general smaller fixes that that we have, if you're thinking about leaking sinks, toilets, um things like that, they're able to do those smaller repairs, but the big projects we were still having to outsource anyway and having to pay for that. But Mr. Kathy, you're welcome to answer any other questions. >> No, I think you answered it well. But at at the end of the day, this is going to be a new venture for us and we and uh we what we've done is

112and Mr. Pausky is really the the architect of this, but we've gone through and we've looked at our work orders. We've kind of analyzed what we need and we think we can accommodate it. Now, like I said earlier, if we get to a point where we have 20 HVAC units out, one human being is not going to be able to handle that. So, that's when we will call and u he's already working to get preferred contractors on call that understand when we call it can't be we'll get to you when we get to you. They've got to come and they've got to come running because we've got to operate school. So that um we feel we feel good about trying this and seeing um we're very proud of the fact and I'm going to knock

113on all the wood. We've never had to close school for an operational issue in the entire history of GMSD. Uh we've worked till 5:00 a.m. some mornings, but we've been able to keep schools open and keep them running. So um our staff understands that our core value is not to interrupt school and we're going to stick to that and in our maintenance and in all things facilities. Well, I've got a toilet snake that I'm willing to donate to the cause. Get it out of my house. >> Well, while Mr. Kathy's here or maybe Mr. Bosski, this just slight subtle jump in transportation with the um other districts that we work with, is that specific to something in particular or just kind of cost of increased? >> Which dump are you referring to? Is it the

114uh the if I recall the uh private one >> with other schools just went up slightly? >> Yes, that that's been standard each year. That's just cost of doing business. We we have shared services with Carterville. That is the one shared service that we still have left. Um and we get a transportation director. We share routers. Um and it's worked well. That's one that has continued to work well in sharing with the other municipalities and with Cerville. But every year, just like us, they have they have cost increases. Software goes up, things go up. So that's the modest increase that you see there. But that one for for for GMSD has continued to work pretty well. That's that's fantastic. >> I think Valerie had a good point. We have one more shared service besides transition.

115>> Well, I don't even think it is a shared service, but yes. >> Yes. >> That's that's >> and it >> that's next >> and it's going well, >> right? >> I >> Well, I know that they've had increased expenses in Cerville that have impacted the service that we share with them. >> We understand we share Valerie, but we think of her as a member of our GMSD family. I don't think of her as a shared service. to that on transportation. I just thought about it um just glancing down there. Um diesel obviously is extremely high right now. Do we um do we anticipate or is there some wiggle room because I I think it's reasonable to assume that diesel is not going to go back down any in the near term. So I mean

116like I think we're at one where we at 175 there. Uh so do we think that we might need to make an adjustment on the diesel just um >> not right now. Um but also talked about and discussed and we've cut that transportation budget down pretty heavily over the past few years. The real is Mr. Pausski and Miss uh Crystal Epsine do a fantastic job of monitoring our invoices every month. And the truth is that uh every year we have penalties that we assess to Durham. If they combine a route, if they're running late, they do a really good job of staying on top of that. And so if we got in a if we ever got a pinch on our diesel budget, then we absolutely could just just say, "Hey, um the at the

117end of the at the end of the day, we could move money from another object code within that to cover it." And now we are not diesel fuel speculators. So we will we will we will play that as it comes. But we think that within the transportation budget we would be able to accommodate it. And Mr. Picassi, you just handed me this. Right now we're at roughly 56% of that budget spent and we're pretty close to the end of the fiscal year. So we're we're doing okay there. >> Okay. Yeah. Because I think right now I'm seeing it's uh in a lot of places diesel is over five a gallon right now. So it's up there. We're gonna hope it goes back down by the start of the next year. >> All right, good to

118know. So, that would be a positive variance. So, yes, we will take those. All right. Any other discussions on the budget? All right. So, I'll just say on behalf of the board, thank you uh to all the staff, thank you to the principles, thank you to Mr. Emanuel. Um I know this was not easy. This is probably the toughest budget we've ever had in the history of the district. Um, but I think one thing that we all pride ourselves on is fiscal responsibility and we also pride ourselves on a quality product for our families and for our students. And so I don't at no point do I ever want to compromise quality, but we also have to operate in the the fiscal realities that are in front of us. So while it was a very

119difficult budget, um I know that our staff will rise to the occasion and I know that uh we will support uh in every which way possible and we will you know hope for um better budgets ahead I think. So without any further discussion we'll go ahead and move on to item number two on our agenda revision of policies. First reading Mr. Manuel, >> Miss Ael, >> good evening again. Um, this is a revision that we're bringing for consideration for policy 4.605 graduation requirements. With the transition to a 4x4 block schedule at the high school next year, students have the opportunity to earn eight credits a year, as we've heard a lot about in the past year, uh, which could allow for more students to graduate early through a district defined pathway. We've also found that

120other districts across the state who have 4x4 block schedules offer a similar early graduation pathway. So our current graduation requirements policy only identifies the state defined move on when ready act and we want to make sure that we clearly define procedures for our local district defined early graduation. So there are two t let me just go and break down the two types of early graduation. The state defined move and ready act can be as early as the end of their junior year that they can request uh that they can graduate at the end of their junior year and it requires approval through an intent form available through the state department of education. So it's a state process and then early graduation defined by a local education association or a district which for us would be

121at the end of the first semester of the fourth year of high school. So basically December of their senior year. It requires approval through a district intent form available from the high school. So, Tennessee code annotated and the state board high school policy 2.103 allow for students to graduate earlier than the end of their senior year of high school, provided that the student meets all traditional diploma graduation requirements and any additional requirements for early graduation set by the LEA. We have actually allowed students to graduate a semester early in the past. We've had a hand maybe two students a year, five up to five maybe. Um, primarily for sports related reasons if they needed to get on to their spring practice for soccer or for football. Um, with the 4x4 block schedule, we do anticipate

122more students having interest. In fact, we've had close to 20 juniors who've already expressed interest for next year because they're the first group that would be eligible for this. And so, we wanted to go ahead and bring this policy for uh consideration for revision. Um, and the recommen recommended changes begin on page five and the posted policy. So, the first few pages just go through our traditional diploma pathway, our special ed diploma pathway, occupational and alternative. But when you get to page five is where you get to any of the recommended changes. So, we are defining more clearly the Move On and Ready Act on lines one through six on page five. And then when you skip down to lines 24, we get into the GMSD early graduation pathway. And so the requirements I do

123want to go ahead and call out here beginning with line 28 that the student must be in the fourth year of high school. They must meet the minimum standards established by the state board of education, meet the traditional high school diploma requirements, and those are listed on page one of this policy. Submit an intent to graduate early form to their respective counselors prior to their senior year. So that'll be a form that they complete and they must meet the qualifications for the state definition of college and career readiness and these things are spelled out on the intent form that students will complete. Um some more details to consider that we wanted to add into the policy. Um the students official date of graduation will be the last day of the term in which he she

124meets all graduation requirements because we do need an official date on their diploma. And as a graduate, he or she will forfeit the right to participate in school activities, including participation in athletics and extracurriculars with the caveat that they can attend prom as a guest if they go through the form to, you know, to go as a guest to prom. And of course, they will they can attend graduation if they attend the practice also. Um, so they just can't do other activities all throughout because they have graduated. The students will be permitted to participate in graduation. Oh, I just said that anyway, but that's in the policy. um as long as they participate in practices. So, those those are the main changes that we're recommending for this policy. And I do have a copy of

125the intent form if anybody is interested in seeing what it looks like for the high school. And I can go ahead and spell out what college and career readiness is because that's one of the requirements they have to meet. And we thought, well, if you're going to graduate early, we need to make sure that you are a ready graduate. So, the form um has that outlined as, of course, we've talked about this a lot. They must earn an ACT composite score of 21 or higher or earn one or more early post-secary opportunity credits, whether that's AP, dual enrollment or statewide dual credit, or earn a tier three preferred industry credential or a tier 2 plus one other industry credential or achieve a qualifying score on the ASVAB. So, if a student meets any one of

126those, they are considered college and career ready by the state definition. And so that was one of the requirements that we wanted to also consider for early graduation. And then of course the the credits listed are the traditional diploma requirements there. And then a student and a parent would sign off on the statements of understanding. So that's all spelled out very clearly on the intent form. So I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Yes. >> Okay. Um, one question I had about is this um would this GMSD early graduation be one that you'd have to do same with the in May of your sophomore year because it does say be in the fourth year of high school? >> Yeah, that's a great question. So, the Move On and Ready Act is the one that you

127have to do by the end of your sophomore year. >> This one has to be completed by the end of their junior year. >> So, the different path both leaving early but different paths. as far as as far as declaring it. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Just because um you know with applying to college, you can sub starting you can start to submit um college applications on August 1. And so you can't really know. I was just worried that, you know, you wouldn't know if you were going to be able to graduate early in August because you won't be able to tell a college on August 1st that you are going to graduate in December or May, which can be a little confusing. >> So, they'll know by the end of their junior year. >>

128Yeah. Okay. >> Is that there's always there's always that caveat because you got to think about even with the seniors who are going on their traditional path, you could not pass a class and so it's your projected date. So with these, they could list their projected date um when they're starting to apply. >> So you mentioned the just interest in 20 juniors. What are they signaling that they want to do? >> I I don't have that information. >> I know some anecdotal stories. Um, so I'm not encouraging everyone to do this, but I know that there are some schools that people want to go to that they are thinking about the size of the pool that are applying that time to go to that school and so they may not get into one of their

129higher schools of choice. Um, anecdotally, from what I've heard of people, it is easier to get in at Christmas time or at semester starting that spring semester than it is when you're starting in the fall semester because the mass enrollments. So, for some individuals who may think that they could get to that, reach school or get to that uh I I have heard that that is a a practice that is beneficial. Yeah. For the other ones, a lot of it is related to activities like we talked about. We have collegiate athletes who are going on in there participating in their spring semesters. >> Yeah, I was aware of those and that's typically what you see and that's become a recent phenomenon even with football players and soccer. We've seen it with soccer um last two

130years actually. Um but you know typically they're there for the the fall semester of their senior year and then they go on it. But it sounds like we have some that want to forego or the 20 Oh, are they >> the 20 juniors are for graduating in December. >> Gotcha. Okay. I just want to make sure because Yeah. And I I want to make sure too that I think there's value and I think Mr. Gates would would hopefully validate this. There's value to being there for your senior year. It's a really special year and I don't want to encourage students, hey, you can graduate early and get out of here. like I think there's something special to be there for, you know, you know, prom and being there and then, you know, next week at

131the high school, the whole graduation, you know, all the the ceremonies and all the stuff, all the fun stuff they do. I don't want to I don't want to encourage students, hey, you know, you can graduate. I think if they want to do it, great. But I don't want us to be promoting that, hey, you can get out of here early because because I there's so much that they can miss out on. I get it if you're going to, you know, going to play, you know, D1 baseball or or I guess it wouldn't be baseball, but it' be soccer or whatever. I get that. >> Yeah, those are unique circumstances. But just just, you know, you know, I guess you say your typical student, I don't want them I don't want us to be encouraging

132them to miss out because there is so much like I said, Mr. Gates can probably chime in, but as I'm saying with my own kid, senior year is pretty special. >> I Yeah, you I you're totally right. Um there's just maturity level of it. Like I wouldn't let myself go to college six months ago or you know skipping senior year like totally like becoming an adult things. You know there's one thing about the senior year experience but also just like there's a reason why kids graduate high school when they do is because they're all mostly adults and they're ready to go out into the world. So graduating early is I think great for >> some >> for some but um there is a reason for having four-year program. So >> absolutely and there has not

133been an influx in other schools of 4x4 block. Um I would not say it's just a ton of students who are choosing this pathway and I will say that the 20 that have expressed interest have not necessarily they have not been approved yet. So they do have to actually meet all of the requirements to do so and we don't anticipate many more than that because it's been advertised at the high school and so we feel like the ones who were going to want to do it have come forward. So, >> I was hoping to get this question out before we talked about the philosophical stuff, but I'm going to go back because I don't know much about the the states uh move on when ready and kind of the the reasoning or or justification of

134even really having to have that. I've heard the term just recently, but I have a feeling it it comes from maybe rural communities or people looking for with the CTE uh focus that the state of Tennessee's recently uh ramped up or even for folks I appreciate the one of the metrics being the ASBA. You know, maybe somebody's just ready to go that they've wanted to enlist since they were eight and they were like, I'm old enough and I can go in December, January instead of June. Okay, that's again that's a one-off unique, but but from the state of Tennessee prescribes this already as an option. So what and I'm glad that that the superintendent kind of showed and clarified that there are two different pathways, but based on just the history from like the department,

135what do you feel like was kind of the the logic or rationale for this alternative, you know, exit from high school prior to say May of your senior year. um and kind of the precipice of that that then is now expanding or giving us the ability to expand um option for others. >> So the movement ready act has been around for many years. Um and I don't know exactly what brought it about. I don't know if you remember but what you're speaking to as far as rural community communities, students ready to go to work, that kind of thing. We >> Yeah. Yeah. We've had very few students take advantage of that. Not even one every year. like maybe we might have one one year who graduates at the end of their junior year, but they've

136they plan it out from their sophomore year forward. Um, so it's an option for students. >> That's and to your point, I've just heard about it kind of knowing that it wasn't something super active in our community, but that it had been around. And that makes perfect sense. Obviously, in the past few weeks, month or so since course selection has been happening here locally, I've heard more about it in the past six weeks than I have in the past six years. So, I think that being able to to speak to that, you know, this has always been the thing. We didn't just dream this up. Um, and then but now because of uh other pathways and really trying to be mindful that everybody's not the same, uh, to Chairman Curry's point, I don't think anybody's

137ready to move on when ready until they're like 30. But that's not the way it's set up. Um, you know, and I I strongly don't want to encourage people, but I want to let make sure people know the the reasoning that that we're even letting the kids know about it. Um, and that it may be a fit, but you have to one, your parents, they still ultimately have the decision to how they're going to set you up for where you're going, you know, while you're still in this school age kind of K through 12 age range. Um, but that it's an option >> and so I appreciate learning more about it and reading more about it. Um, I've done a little, you know, recon on what other folks are doing across the state. And I

138I do think that it it to me it's just as similar in vain with the conversation about goal. It's like we're we're we have a variety of needs and we're able to provide a variety of options. Um, and with the new schedule coming up, I think, you know, people still aren't don't realize all the new um, requirements for graduation that have been added recently in the past couple years, and they're like, "Wait, when did this pop up?" You know, while we talk about it here a lot, um, keeping families informed and just making sure that we can speak to it, that we're not just encouraging everybody to leave us early because that is not the case. If a child turns 18 before the start of their senior year, does their parent still have to sign

139off on it? >> Yes. >> Okay. Okay. And for the record, I think that anybody uh wanting to do this should watch that Cosby Show episode when Theo wanted to leave and get an idea of what it's like in the real world before you go. >> That's That's great. And I do want to point out Move on when Ready does have fewer graduation requirements. it as a reduced number of credits. So, it's not a traditional diploma. So, that's why it's not for those who are necessarily going to go to college unless the college will accept them with those reduced uh credits. >> All right. >> So, yeah. So, uh on the work session agenda, you're going to see revision of policy second reading. That's actually not going to apply. That's going to apply to the

140business meeting uh in two weeks. Um, so our next item on the agenda is going to be miscellaneous FY2526 budget amendment number 10, civic seal grant allocation. >> What does that mean? It's not going to apply. We're going to >> there there we we've already covered the policies that are there for second reading. We've already covered those and we've already voted for those changes. It's just it's going to be on the business agenda that we have those policies that we talked about the time before >> it shouldn't have been on the agenda. >> Okay. Y >> that was what I was asking about the other day. Got it. Thank you. >> All right. Mr. Manuel. >> Okay. I'm presenting budget amendment number 10. This is the civics the governor civic seal grant and this was

141available for schools or districts who earned the governor's civic seal. and they released the information in January and it was similar to that tutoring grant where it was a quick turnaround of when it was due and it did not even have on there that the funds had to be spent this fiscal year but when we applied for it we thought the funds were for next fiscal year. Um but we went ahead and accepted it because we got it. It's $20,000 and you can see how it's broken down um itemized there for enriching civics education K through 12. We do intend to buy um the great visuals, the uh permanent civic learning exhibits through the Gilder Leman Institute panels. Um those have been spoken of very highly for a great way to visualize what's gone on

142over time in history. Um we have field trips. We have this year we cannot do the field trips. We do anticipate being able to apply for the grant next year again and we hope to do the field trips. So instead we're going to be investing more in teacher professional development. going to actually pull the social studies teachers to begin planning project based learning all the things for next year. So that is our grant. If you have any questions I'm happy to answer. Happy birthday America. Um I appreciate the effort and focus that has gone into um not only making us eligible for for these funds because we're able to take them put them right back in. I don't know where we're going on a field trip next year, but I hope I get the chaperon

143is all I'll say. So, um I look forward to learning more about how these are going to impa impact student uh experiences. Um again, it's just in a world where all we hear is that um civics's education is not a focus. I'm here to tell you that it is. And um I really appreciate everyone who has made that. It's always been but has made a an ex ex I guess a further investment in the time and our um our staff members that teach these courses. um the passion that they bring is uh is I mean the kids pick up on that and I hear it I've seen it recently at the school where um some of these um whether it be government, civics, the like and and just the kids are really um excited about

144it and I think that there's an just a perception that that's not the reality. So, I like to tell people as often as humanly possible that civics's education is not only alive and well in the state of Tennessee and in Germantown, but it is a um it's a focus and our students are really excited about it. >> And as I look up on the wall here and I see that we're proudly displaying our civic seal, does that I guess does our certification, I guess for lack of a better term, does that allow us to get the grant money or would we be receiving this otherwise? any school who received the governor civic seal or district which of course we were only one of two districts who received it across the state. Uh but we could

145have applied just because one of our schools got the governor civic seal also but those are the only ones who could apply but just because you applied you didn't necessarily get the grant but >> no so I just think that our commitment to civics's education allowed us to get this absolutely needs to be noted. So um all right thank you. Any other questions or comments on this item? All right, I think you're going to uh stay here. >> All right, so item number five on the agenda, approval of the 2728 GMSD instructional calendar, Mrs. Ael. >> Okay, I'll give a little bit of background information on how we developed our 2728 instructional calendar draft. Um, first of all, just to review what is required through the state, uh, Tennessee code annotated 49630004. We must have

146180 days of instruction. However, because we have our seven and a half minutes extra time, we develop 13 stockpiled days because we do attend school longer through the day. Um, so that allows us to, as a district, we've decided that we our goal is for students to go 175 instructional days and teachers must fulfill a 200 day contract. That is defined by the state. So we break that down into inservice professional development days. We have also administrative days. These are defined as well by the state. We also must have one parent conference day over sometime over the entire year as defined by the state and 10 paid teacher vacation days. That's what gets them up to the 200 day contract. Um so all the days that we have in here are intentional and meet the

147requirement of the state. So, the GMSD 2728 instructional calendar committee convened in person March 26th, consisting of one staff member from each school, one parent from each school, seven Houston High School 10th through 12th grade students, district office staff from various departments, and one board member. Thank you to board member Ellis who who took the took the took one for the team and participated in our committee. Committee members interacted with their social with their school communities to gather feedback regarding the first and last days of school, the breaks and other considerations. So, we did receive great feedback from the school communities and from parents reaching out to their cohorts. We came back together April 9th for a virtual meeting to discuss the feedback. We noted common preferences and new ideas to consider. We examined two

148drafts at that time. The committee went into breakout rooms. We discussed the pros and cons of each draft. we all came to a consensus on draft A which is what you have um posted in the the notes for the the work session. So um from that I will just point out that is very very similar to our 2627 calendar. Uh we kept the half days for the students before each quarter break. So that's something that's new for next year's calendar which the the large majority were like let's keep that again for the 2728 calendar. Um the big conversation that we had was around parent teacher conference day and how it is a full day of teaching typically and then a half day of parent conferences and then teachers turn around and start teaching the next

149morning right after that. and we kept brainstorming on how could we get that during the school day knowing that it also has to count as one of their days of service. So we were able to work in the parent conference days into two half days during school um moves the half days to occur during the school day. Students will be out for those that full day and the other half day would be a professional development PLC time for the teachers. So the teachers are working a full day and half the time would be for parent conferences and half the time would be for PLC's twice a year. So they're meeting that one full day of parent conference requirement and splitting it up into a half each semester. Um they're not going to have to stay

150late and then turn right around and teach the next morning. So that was um strongly favored from parents and students who were on the committee. So that was a probably the biggest change that we have in this calendar. We don't have the calendars from the surrounding municipals yet other than Arlington. I know they're all kind of in the works right now with with Barlington and Bartlett and Caerville and Lakeland. Um but we've kind of talked behind the scenes and we're we're looking at Arlington's winter and and um fall winter and spring breaks and all looking at the same breaks because they're pretty cut and dry this year. So we do have the same breaks in this calendar that Arlington already has and what we anticipate the other municipals would have. So that was important for

151our committee members. And then um I will point out that we will have three flex PD days instead of four. Like right now this year we have four flex professional development days. For 2728 we're looking at three flex professional development days. Um so those are the overall changes. Um I do have a I know you have it posted in your uh platform there, but I also have a copy of both the 26 27 and 2728. If anybody would like a copy, you're welcome to take one. And I'm I'm open up for questions. >> I think my only question. So the parent teacher conferences will be from noon to three or whatever it is, not in the evenings. >> So correct. It'd be during the school day. So we what we could look at is either

152looking at the morning block for parent conferences and then the afternoon block like 12 to 3 would be teacher PLC time or vice versa. So like 8 to 11 shift and then a 12 to 3 shift. If parents aren't able to attend during the day for work reasons or or that thing, they can schedule something outside of that time. >> Absolutely. Because that's always something that teachers are required to do as part of their job as a teacher. So, we still do parent conferences at any time that a parent would like to request a conference whether that's virtual, coming in person, over the over the phone. So, that's a requirement that we do anytime a teacher want I mean a parent wants a conference. I know there've been some discussion in the past and I

153guess I'm really looking at staff here that um there were concerns about coming back. I know we've talked about this in previous calendars about coming back in July >> and I I guess I didn't think about it for the 26 27 calendar. I should have looked uh because it's the same situation, but it it does seem that we're getting it getting out a little earlier than normal. Uh, normally we're out the week the week before Memorial Day is usually a half week and then we're out that Wednesday at noon the week before Memorial Day. >> I guess in the 2627 and now in the 2728 we're actually going to be out the Friday before the week before Memorial Day. Was there any consideration of maybe starting a little later in August and then going a

154little bit further, you know, to that Wednesday before that way staff isn't necessarily having to start in July. I know that came up previously. So, I just wonder what, you know, what the thought process was there. And I should have asked this about the TW I think when I was looking at the 26 27 I didn't I didn't realize but when I flipped through my phone and went to 28 which is hard to believe we're looking that far ahead I saw it and just it was something that came to mind for me. >> Yes, we had two draft options that the committee looked at and one of them did begin the following week in August and ended May 24th and the committee looked at everything else and decided they wanted to do the earlier option.

155When we did the later option, it caused a a difference in the first semester days. I believe it was 80. There was about a seven-day difference in the first semester and second semester days, which on a block schedule for students earning credits in courses was a huge difference. Um, when you look at seven days because every day is like two days of typical instruction that we're used to. Um, so that was one talking point for why we wanted to go ahead and stick to the earlier start and also following what the other districts are more likely going to do. So we we considered the other option of pushing it back a week and I'm sure at some point we will end up getting back on that cycle where it's pushed back a little bit. >>

156Okay. Yeah. I just I think it's just the way it's falling and because this year I think this current academic year we're going to be out I believe it's the Wednesday before Memorial Day >> and then like I guess in 27 it'll be the Friday before the week. >> So I guess as long as it all works out I just I I just wanted to be mindful. Well, I know that staff had brought that up in the past about starting in July and so um but if if the staff on the committee if they were fine with it then that that alleviates my concerns. Well, and um you know, child care, especially for our elementary age student families, has been an something expressed um that we've seen on survey results and heard from community members

157with that earlier uh go back and a return start to school and also the which the earlier um get out of school in May. And I appreciate you pointing out that this is the first time we've had a calendar committee that's had to take into consideration the block schedule >> impacts because that's certainly something that's new. And um I again want to thank board member Ellis for participating in the committee work and the students, staff and and parents. I will say I had multiple people approach me as they do every time that we have this exercise and they're so proud to serve in this capacity. um particularly a student at the high school was like, "Miss Angela, Miss Angela, I'm on the counter committee." I was like, "That is so awesome. Thank you. I look

158forward to hearing what y'all come up with." Um so, thank you for the outreach there and the participation for all involved. This is a team effort with Miss Crowder and Mr. Gillespie. And um we did a great job of dividing the the groups up in the inerson meeting so that the schools uh the students, the parents, the teachers were combined at a table. So, we got multiple viewpoints at one table. Um, but they were all gave great ideas. >> Appreciate y'all being mindful of that. Um, everybody comes at it from a different lens and we're trying to to make it the best for um, learning but also teachers and their professional development and the time that they're spending um, and preparation. So, thank you. >> And I am curious, I should have pointed this out

159earlier. Um, I'm really curious. We have a really nice experiment going here because November 1st is going to be out for the students and so that's the day after Halloween and so for those that have experience uh in elementary so I'm looking at Mr. Picausski and Dr. Fisher, I would assume that that day is usually um it's not good. And so I'm so I'm thinking that we might actually see a benefit here uh in in the learning process by them not having to come back in the day after. Um and then I I also do want to see the impact for staff that um because that is that is a lot for staff uh to um you know teach the whole day and then stay for parent teacher conferences just from a mental engagement standpoint

160that's tough after a long day. So I'm I'm curious to see the results of that. But there are there are two experiments here that I'm really interested to see how they play out. The day after Halloween was very popular with the committee um especially the teachers and also um the Super Bowl idea came up again um which we looked at. It was February 14th or the 15th right after Valentine's Day but >> that did not make it through. >> Did not make it through. >> Any other questions? >> All right. Thank you, Mrs. I appreciate that. >> And that is a we need to scratch that. >> Yeah. So item number six uh is not uh that's that's not on the agenda. So >> we yeah we had already approved the textbook adoption uh in

161March. So >> it was going to be for the purchase but the CTE textbooks are not they don't meet the threshold of a board approval. They're they're less than we anticipated. So >> So we are removing item number six. So that gets us just to Yeah. Item number seven. Any further business? I've already proactively um put board member strain on notice that we need that he needs to get his TSBA um transcript up to date. I'm confident that it's where it should be, but he just needs to turn in his times um and events. uh as a result or as um we look to try to achieve our board of distinction status once again this year. Um I just wanted to let everybody know that I'm working to get um with board members from around

162that may participate in our um meeting um observing our meeting and reporting back on our behalf. And also I will um be getting with board member or excuse me chairman Curry about our um participating in a board self-evaluation u again and with the hopes of achieving that through our May meeting and um I will publish some of the criteria to the board via email. I just wanted to let you all know that it's top of mind for me and our board and we've been able to achieve that status in the past. I'm confident we will be able to do so again. >> I'll work on the uh TSBA board things. Although I got to say even Miss V gave up on me after a while, so that that tells you. >> Thank you, Vice Chair.

163I have no other um items or for further business. Uh we will adjourn the work session at 607. We will take a 10-minute break. Uh give everyone 10 minutes to stretch. We'll just do the special called meeting here at the table. I don't think there's any need to go to the DAS. So we'll just we'll conduct the the special called meeting here. Uh so we will uh reconvene in 10 minutes for the special call. All right, our um special called board meeting is called to order. The time is 6:18 p.m. Um, item on our agenda is going to be the approval of the Houston High School ceiling tile grid and light replacement as the loan item on our agenda. Uh, the chair moves approval of the agenda as presented. Is there a second? >> Second.

164>> There is a motion and a second on the item. All in favor of approving the agenda say I. >> I. Those opposed, no. The agenda item passes. Now to the item on the agenda. >> Wait, where is it? >> Kathy. >> Mr. Kathy. >> Yeah. >> Good. Okay. First off, I do want to thank the board for having this special called meeting uh to hopefully approve this item. the um two weeks does matter at this point. So, we didn't want to wait until the business meeting because we're we're hoping to start work in one month and one week and there's lead time on materials. We want to secure labor and we want to go ahead and plan. So, I thank the board for having this be a special called meeting. Uh the recommendation before

165you is to award bid number GMSDF FY2026-2 for the ceiling tile grid LED lighting upgrades and bathroom renovations phase 2 at Houston High School to AMB Construction in the amount of 1,999,500. AMB Construction was the low bidder uh for this project. They were also the low bidder for phase one of the ceiling tile and grid project last summer and they did complete that work in the summer of 2025. They have also completed bathroom renovations for GMSD in the summer of 2019 in Dogwood and Farmington Dogwood and Farmington Elementary School. Phase one of the ceiling tile and grid and LED lighting upgrade project was completed in the summer of 2025 on the second floor in the main building, the entire annex building, the main lobby of the main building, and in the gym and auditorium lobby

166of the main building at Houston High School. Completing phase two of this project will finish the Houston High campus and pause for celebration. will also compre complete the upgrade of ceiling tile grid and LED lighting cabling above ceiling at all campuses in GMSD and for for this board um that is that is the product of the administration and our board's careful methodical planning budgeting and and doing this to get to this point and that is cause for celebration so I did not want that moment to pass about saying this has been a lot of work and a lot of years and a lot of investment to upgrade our facilities in that regard. Um and so completing phase two that will get us to all campuses and um this board has already approved phase two of

167the data cabling and intercom replacement portion of the project because those are elements of that of this project and we brought that to the board earlier in this year for approval. The board has approved that for completion in the summer of 2026. Uh phase one of the bathroom renovations took place at Houston High School in the summer of 2020. Um to refresh everyone's memory, this phase included full renovation of two bathroom banks. You had the bathroom banks outside the cafeteria uh near the main hall and the main lobby and then the bathroom banks uh outside the gym and the auditorium. So those were renovated. Uh phase two of this project uh if approved will include the full renovation of four additional bathroom banks and will complete the main building. uh for all student restrooms. So

168that includes the two sets of restrooms on the first and second floor near the tea and those are probably the ones that get the most student traffic just because of the location that they're in. Um the BA that will also complete the bathroom bank on the southern portion of the second floor and the bathroom bank on the first floor outside the cafeteria/strings room near the TV studio um in that area of the and near the STEM lab um on the campus. So, if approved, that's eight bathrooms, four banks, however you want to cut it. All uh ba all bathrooms would be updated to Houston High School. Renovation includes the full upgrade, including but not limiting to flooring, fixtures, sinks, toilets, countertops, stalls, partitions, tile, lighting, mirrors, and other elements in those bathrooms. Um if approved,

169um as mentioned earlier, the ceiling tile and grid will be complete. The only student restrooms that we would have remaining in the district would be in the kindergarten building at Riverdale and the annex building at Houston High School. And then we would, if we get those later in our master facility plan, we will be finished renovating student restrooms for GMSD. These projects will be funded using revenue from the Shelby County Commission for capital improvement projects. If approved, these projects will begin May 21st, 2026 with a scheduled completion date of July 17th, 2026. Both of these projects are part of our 2026 master facilities plan. GMSD was fortunate enough to have a very competitive bid environment. You have the bid tabulation attached to your agenda. We received seven bids in total. Uh the bids did come

170in within budget and cost projections and actually the bathrooms came in a little bit lower than projected. So we highly recommend proceeding with this project. Be happy to answer any questions the board may have. >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Kathy. Are any questions for Mr. Kathy on this item? Mr. Kathy, this these two particular um items that you brought tonight were though Can and and excuse me, just for purposes of five-year master plan, uh Houston High master plan since these are Houston High, can you um kind of just walk through the You did a great job with the history on the bathrooms, by the way. I would like to point out that that's the number one thing we continue to hear about in the world when we talk to students from Houston High School.

171And I'm really excited to um hopefully get this project, assuming it passes here in a moment, underway so that we can wrap that up. Um there's a few folks I'm going to call personally at the conclusion of this meeting. And so you might be graduating, but um the folks right behind you are really going to benefit from something that you advocated strongly for. Um but again, as we Right. Right. >> No, >> I would like to note that um my fifth grade class at Dogwood, which is also the 2026 class, missed out on the new bathrooms that came in the year after. So, >> y'all have been on that cycle of renovations at every school you've attended between elementary, middle, and high school. And it's not lost on me. Um, and the four of us

172up here that um have uh students that are seniors this year that experience that same pattern of the new things happen right when we leave our previous school. Um, Mr. Cathy, the Houston High Master plan um, these items could have could have been in that plan or and so or I should say were in that plan. So, I just want to point out again that this is something that we have prioritized and are spending our funds on. Yes. And and board member Ellis has always done a good job of pointing this out and and so have our other board members. We are taking bites out of the plans with the funds that are available to us, but we can't take big bites. We can't uh with the money we get from the Shelby County Commission

173and our general fund. We can take bites like this. This is a $2 million bite. And it will have a big impact on the campus, no doubt. Uh but we can't do we we can't take the big bites and do some of the big things that are in the Houston high master plan with the funds we have. We just can't with the money the money is not there. >> But we are good stewards and are continuing to prioritize uh the long range uh plans that we identified with um input from our community and stakeholders and this is another example of that. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you for your work. >> Mr. Kathy, on that topic, would you could you give me a rough summary of how much we have spent towards the master plan renovations,

174including this project? >> Off the top of my head, I don't want to spitball that, but I will get you that number. Uh, but Mr. Mr. Emanuel may have a better estimate. Uh, I will get you guys an exact number of what we've spent out of our own funds to to make progress towards the Houston High Master Plan. 3 million on the track and field and bleacher renovation certainly comes to mind. Of course, we did a million and a half last summer on the uh ceiling tile and grid project. We did the bathroom renovations back in 2020. So, um I'll get you guys an exact number. It's pro >> roughing at seven or eight is kind of what I had in my head >> at a minimum. Yes. Um that that's exactly what I was

175going to say is we've been taking those bites, the smaller bites out that project, but there's also a savings too. Uh so for example when we looked at that big dreaming that we talked about what we could do with the the football field uh we added the additional lane but remember when we had first had the early renderings uh they were moving the field 50 ft in order to center it on the building and that was an additional couple million. So we did cost engineering to say how can we do this project to reduce cost. So, not only is it uh $3.5 million that we spent on track and um on the bleachers and on the press box, but there's also savings because the original plan figured it that that project was going to come

176in at $7 million, $8 million when you go back and look at what they were predicting. So, we're doing two things. Cutting what it was, but also we're taking care of projects. >> Uh when it comes to the LED lighting, what are we anticipating uh savings from that uh over traditional I will be happy to take the board members on a tour of what we have now and walk in every closet of lights that get left on all night every night because we have old school light switches and we don't have sensors on those lights and there are so many lights that are left on at that high school that burn 24/7. So just having the motion sensors that have an automatic shutoff feature is going to be a big savings. Um I can't give

177you an exact number. What I can say is in a ballpark we've we've realized roughly 10 to 15% of savings on our utility bills after we have done this install. The bigger savings has actually been on HVAC controls where we when we started the district, we just had thermostats that you could ram up, ram down, didn't have setback points, didn't have shut down points. And so >> for uh for a frame of reference, when we opened Forest Hill, before we got the energy management system in place and it was just running wide open, our utility bills the first few months hit around 14 to 16,000. When we got the HVAC controls in, they went down to 8 to 10,000 a month. So between that and the LED lights, we have saved a tremendous amount. But

178to answer your question, roughly 10 to 15% what what we've been seeing on average on the on the utilities. It'll probably be a bit more at Houston High School just because of the size and space. >> Gotcha. Thank you for that. Also want to uh commend you and the team for uh what made Houston High's track uh amazing this past weekend at the Houston uh Classic. um nothing but rave reviews. Uh having eight lanes uh really has changed uh you know the game when it comes to us hosting uh not only the Houston High Classic but also NYA uh meets and everything as well. So uh great job with that >> and those events and the parents are getting home a lot sooner than they did in the previous years. Are there any other questions

179or comments on the item? All right. Seeing Well, I guess so, Mr. Kathy, I was over there yesterday. Um, and I had the opportunity to go uh for schoolboard appreciation, you know, missed out on my visit due to the ice. So, I just got over there yesterday and I was just even noticing in the library uh that hasn't been done yet. uh the difference just in the light quality there. I think the lights are going to make a huge difference and I was also thinking too about how how many fluorescent bulbs we have. I think just from an expense standpoint just on the bulbs alone and the ballast and all that. So I think I think just change everything out. Um I know Mr. Gates you're living it now. You know when you go upstairs

180it's a different lighting experience than downstairs um for the most part. But I I I think it's going to make a huge difference. And I did joke with them. Well, really, it's not joking. I mean, I think it's truth that 12:01 um on the last day of school, you know, the dumpsters are going to get outside the door and and they're going to get to work on it. But they have to, but there's a lot of work that has to be done. And >> Yeah. We don't we we we joke, but it's really not a joke that we fit six months of construction into two months in the summer, and we so we as soon as we get an opportunity, we get we go. >> Yeah. And I remember seeing it out there last summer.

181It's going to look just the same. uh they'll have the dumpsters outside the doors and you know they'll be filling it up. But it it it is transformational for inside that building. So I'm glad that we're getting to do it and I'm glad um that from the bid standpoint everything came in the way it did. So thanks to you and your team for that work. Is there a motion? I move to approve GMSD bid number FY226-00002 in the amount of 1,999,500 for Houston High School ceiling tile grid light replacement and bathroom renovations phase 2 project and award the bid to A&B Construction Company Incorporated. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Motion made by Vice Chair Griffith, second by Mr. Hendricks. Vice Chair, would you like to speak to your motion? >> Um, no, I

182appreciate um Mr. Kathy and staff bringing this to us. I appreciate everybody's willingness to stay for the special called because the timing is of the essence. again, as you said, glad that the bid was uh and we had great participation. Um, and I'm just look forward to getting to work, assuming this passes, because I truly believe that these renovations will continue to transform uh our um flagship high school campus. >> Would any other member wish to speak to the item? Seeing none, Madam Secretary, please call the role. >> Mr. Ellis, >> yes. >> Miss Griffith, >> yes. >> Mr. Hendricks, >> yes. >> Mr. Strain, >> yes. >> Chair Curry, >> yes. >> The motion passes. >> The meeting is adjourned at 6:34 p.m. agenda. >> I don't know what I don't know. Is that

183a >> I'm head for a soccer game. I'll see y Go change. >> Yes. >> I'm not going to sit out there and >> y'all can rest if I if I'm in these clothes.