School Board Swearing in 2020

001Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey [Music] everybody. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] We'll call this facility committee meeting to order. Uh, and if you'll do roll call for us. Facilities chairman Mr. King here. Finance chairman Mr. Dy here. Chairman Smith on his way. Mrs. Black here. Mr. Connor here. Mr. Gro here. Mrs. Haden here. Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Schaefer. Mr. Slater here. Miss Thomas here. Superintendent Dr. Roberts here. All right. and purpose of today. We've uh we passed a couple months by uh not having facility committee meetings. So, we're

002going to uh lump quite a bit in one and we're going to give you a let you know the progress of where we are both in uh phases one, two, and three with regards to the capital projects bond money. Uh also with our uh new custodial company and our continuing but new contract with our uh landscaping and grounds company. And uh then we will also present uh we do have a few million dollars left out of that bond money for phase 4 and we will uh put that out there today also. So, uh, I'll turn it over to Dr. Sharp and he's got some different things that both, uh, Mr. Wit and Mr. Coulter are going to be talking about, I think. So, Dr. Sharp. Thank you, Mr. King. Uh, as you, um, pointed out,

003uh, we got brought you an agenda tonight uh, with a somewhat detailed update on where we are with our new custodial vendor ABM. As you who all know, we spent the summer onboarding uh ABM back into the district and we've got some uh reports, some some data to share with you about the progress of ABM getting getting up and running in our schools. We'll also bring you the brief update on City Green with some information about our grounds and landscaping. Then as you as you mentioned the bond and capital maintenance projects, very uh fortunate in our district to have this $60 million uh to implement improvements uh for deferred maintenance and capital improvements. Justin Wit, his team have spent the better part of the last two and a half years doing incredible work in our

004district. We'll talk about the phase one spending of the funds and updates on those projects, phase two, phase three, and then some additional projects that will be coming to you in September for approval September, October, which we're calling phase four over. And just while while I've got the microphone, I want to brag on Justin Whit, his team. It's probably the largest investment in capital maintenance and deferred maintenance our district's seen ever and his team have done an incredible job managing all of those projects, keeping them on time and and in many cases under budget. So very proud of that work. Also some updates on our current building plans. You know, we opened up Tiner, of course, we'll talk more about that later, but we've got some other plans in the works for building projects that

005you've approved. will give you an update on that and then talk about some additional projects that we have our eye on and and we're already doing some preliminary work and consider to be prepared for the next opportunity we have for access with this type of funds. What are those projects we want to start thinking about now and then just some general updates about those those projects and uh Dr. Robertson is going to share with you some information about some work he's been doing with the local organization, CH Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprises. Very exciting opportunity for the district. And I'll save that for him to to share with you. And we'll get started. And if you have any questions uh for us along the way, please please let us know. We think we be able to answer

006most of them. Ben Coulter. He has been leading the custodial work and he's going to present to you our ABM information. Good afternoon board. So, we just want to give you a brief overview of how things are going. Um, as as you're aware, excuse me, microphone. Oh, sorry. We can hear you, but any viewing audience can't. Yeah. So, as you're aware, uh, ABM was awarded the was awarded a custodial contract on June 1st of this year. They've been at work for over 12 weeks now preparing our schools for the start of school. Uh, they're in process of fully staffing their team of 340 positions. Uh, they didn't get started till June 1st, so that's a heavy lift, trying to get to 340 from zero in 12 weeks. But they're I'll show you a line chart

007here in just a minute just to show you the progress they have made. Uh their focused efforts this summer were on completing critical summer projects including floor waxing and deep cleaning task. Uh we contracted with a company called Core America. They helped us do the RFP for this. They helped us build in the performance penalties that we have in the contract and we'll go over them later on in this presentation. Uh but they're also going to be uh we purchased the smart inspect software from them that does our inspections and that'll be part of the KPIs for the contract as well. Um and they're also doing our third party quarterly audit. So they'll come in and do about 20% of our schools and they'll do an independent audit, go all the way through it and

008tell you everything that's wrong with the buildings and score it and that gives us a good baseline for how our school should be and where we should go. Um, so anyways, uh, did the first Yeah. So we've already got uh information on the first audit. You should have it there in front of you. So they took uh so that last bullet line 5,185 items were identified and they just did a rough sampling of the school probably about 20% of the rooms and they took 1,467 photos and that was uh 14 different schools that they went to. U so they they they used something called a quality success percentage QSP and the QSP was 71.6 six for the buildings that they went to, which is not which is not satisfactory. 85% is what we have set

009up in our new contract. They have to be at 85% of all the rooms in the building, the average. Uh otherwise, they will have to reinspect it and if they fail two inspections, they will have to pay a 3% penalty for that particular school. So, here's some of the deficiencies. This is just a graph of the deficiencies that they found in those 14 schools. You can see fixtures in the restrooms was 185, lower corners was 81 181. I can let you guys study that. I'm not going to read it all off to you, but uh if you want to look further, you can view those. Um, one of the other things that that ABM has done is they did a summer uh cleaning report card that they sent out to all the schools and had

010them report back. So their score was uh 89.57 on the score. Now that doesn't translate to to inspection data. That's just a a score that they used in their survey. And could I interrupt for a second? Uh so the the core America did the photos and that preABM. Correct. Yeah. Well, the the week they started June 1st. It was the week of June 1st. I'm sorry I left that off. Yeah. Yes. They did it June 1st or the week of June 2nd. And I think the first was a Sunday, right? So they did it the second to the fourth and I was actually with them when they walked all the buildings. So And how often do they do it or will they do it? We're going to do it quarterly. Quarterly. Okay. Sorry if I

011missed that. So and if and if they fail on any of those then then there's a penalty that kicks in. The 3% penalty for each each school that's below the 85% threshold. Going forward. Uh they have a QR code complaint system. I don't know if any of you have heard of that, but it's they put QR codes in different parts of the building and then teachers, anybody staff-wise in the building, if they see something wrong, they just take a picture with their or go to the website through their phone and then they fill out the survey. They have to put their room number. That all goes to the regional management as well as the local management. And then we'll be getting copies of that, too. That starts today. Uh it started a little bit last

012week. Some of the schools got a little bit of a head start, but they're using it. Uh, so it's but but it's supposed to be fully operational all the schools today. Does that go to you all us or does that go to We have we will have access to it. They haven't given it to us yet because they're still getting it operational, but I want I want direct access to it and they said that they would. And then we'll also be getting weekly reports on it. Uh, weekly staffing reports. These are important to the schools. That tells them who is in the building. uh how many positions they have filled. Uh that part we're still getting going. Uh it's not been fully implemented. We hope to get all eight zone managers giving those reports uh

013by the end of this week. Uh the next is the staffing. So if you can see from that line chart, that's where they started at the very bottom in the 200 mark area. 200 210 somewhere. And now they're at 305. So, they're three out of five out of 340 positions. So, you can see a steady increase in the number of uh positions. And just to show you where they're at, they've had over 700 applications for those 340 positions. So, they've already gone through a little bit of turnover. Could I add one thing there? Yes. From what I understand, they've also on individuals that they have hired but didn't meet their standards. Uh they have released a few of those. Yes. Yes. There were there were there were SSC employees that we had employed that did

014not pass background checks. So those some of those didn't get rehired. And then they have so they have 305 they have 68 at various stages of uh in their pipeline. 11 have been sent offers. 31 have cleared the ABM background check but are are getting ready to go through ACS. 27 are going through ACS background checks. We have 43 schools staffed at 100% right now. Since they do have a shortage, they're using overtime to cover those hours at other schools that are underst staffed. So, they've they since June 1st, they have uh accumulated 4,300 hours of overtime. And uh we'll look at it in just a second, but the areas where they're understaffed, they're they just started increasing the pay by dollar to try to get uh those those schools staffed. So, you can see

015on here, the three in the red are the ones where they're struggling a little bit with staffing. That would be East Hamilton, Red Bank, Signal Mountain, and Saudi Daisy. Those are zones and those are zones that say schools I meant zones and so those are uh those were the same places that SSC struggle too. So but hopefully why do you think that is? I don't really know. uh they just that they have struggled finding people that would go there and I can speak to SSC so I I don't get necessarily East Hamilton UD I do understand Saudi Daisy and Signal Mountain if you think about just having to drive Nolan and Signal Mountain if you even live downtown it's still a 35 minute drive probably if you going to uh North Hamilton or uh North

016River Future Ready Institute the drive is just it's long for a lot of employees and they have started shuttle service. They're going to start shuttling workers like if they can find somebody downtown, they're going to shuttle those to some of those sites. So, they've already started that. Um, finally, we're going to look at the KPI performance, the things that they have to hit. One is just making sure all nightly tasks have been completed. Uh that was one of our issues that we had with SSC or with the previous provider is that there was there was not any not supervision uh service provider joint inspections. So uh they'll be doing inspections. They have to inspect half of our schools every month. So in the course of two months, every school will be inspected and if anyone

017fails, they have to reinspect it the next month. And then if they miss two, there's a three if they miss two months in a row. Then there's a 3% performance fee for the individual building. Third party inspections uh has the same penalty. Um they'll be coming in in September. We're trying to nail down the exact date right now. uh quality improvement plan. Uh we plan to meet with them uh quarterly or even more often on a improvement plan if they don't hit their marks. And then finally our staffing. The staffing is for 95% to 100%. And then uh if they don't meet that then they have to pay us for the difference between 95% whatever they are. I will say right now they're under a grace period, a 90-day gracing period until these penalties kick

018in. So, but that should be in the next week or two that they'll be at the 90 days. So, what's next for us? Uh, we'll be putting out our own district quarterly customer satisfaction survey. We were doing that last year. So, we've already kind of got a baseline with how SSC was. So, we'll be able to determine uh exactly where ABM is in relation. So they get asked the same questions and same evaluation. Uh the like I said the third party office are in September monthly quality improvement plan meetings. We've already scheduled continuous monitoring of inspection data. We own the software so it's our software. We don't have to worry about them giving us access. They have to use our software. So we we can look at it real time. Principles get an emailed copy

019whenever they complete one. So, if they disagree with how their building is, they have an opportunity to go meet up with the zone manager or or Dennis or even get myself involved and we can uh uh make sure that it's getting cleaned. Uh continuous monitoring monitoring of the QR code system, continuous monitoring of staffing data, uh creating project work for each school. That's a place that's been a little bit of a mess. Uh there was some stuff that didn't get uh that didn't get done completely during the summer. those go those got identified trying to make sure that those get done on breaks some of the stuff that wasn't done and then building a floor waxing schedule that's one of the big things this year they just really only was able to come in and

020wax over things they weren't able to strip it down all the way to the bare tile so just uh building a schedule out for the next two or three years and that's it from the custodial you guys have any questions uh the third party is that core America yes that's correct all And I was very impressed when I was with them. They were taking, like I said, they took 1500 pictures, identified 5,200 items. So, great job. Thank you. Okay, now going to our grounds. There's really not a whole lot here on grounds. Uh, City Green was awarded the contract. They had been subbing under SSC in the previous contract, but now it's a now it's a direct relationship. um mulching of the ground, school grounds. We included that in the RFP, so that had never

021been done before. Uh so they're doing 3 inches of mulch at every school. I'm sure you guys have already noticed when you went to your schools. I think it makes a big difference from what I've been able to see and and the principles seem to have really noticed as well. Yes, very much. They have completed 50 schools so far. So they had to pause it last week because of the rain and get and stay on the mowing schedule, but they're supposed to be completing 10 schools this week and then the remainder will be the next two weeks after that. Is that annually? Is that something they're going to do that annually? So they'll even come back. Uh we did it this first year in August. They'll be doing it in January and February on a

022on a revolving basis. Uh but obviously since they just put three inches down, they'll probably just be putting a top coat on in in February. Um, yeah, the remaining schools. So, we we did come up with a grounds concern form that schools can fill out whenever there's a issue. So, we've had 32 since July 1. Most of them had just been when's my yard being mowed or my yard needs to be mowed. And most of the time it was the next day or two days later. Uh, you know, we've had some raintorms kick up six inches of rain and it'll make the this time of year it just made the grass pop up. They have been very responsive. They have gotten it done either that day or the next. I don't know of anything that's

023taken more than a day. Um, so I I'll just give a kudos to them on that. Uh, we're going to put them under a quarterly customer satisfaction survey as well. And then one one thing that's not on these slides is we've done a lot of work to let the principles and even the teachers know in custodial exactly what's expected the scope of work for for the buildings the classrooms you know you know you're supposed to be spot mopped four times a week supposed to get a full mopping uh uh every week. So in that sense we expect a little bit more complaints this year but we expect the quality of work to be higher. So, but that that's the update I have from grounds and I'll turn it over to Justin. Well, just to just

024to end that I know almost every administrator in my district was they they were thanking the wrong individuals. They were saying, "Oh, we love ABM for putting that mulch out." and but uh they're used to the two being connected, but uh that was corrected them and told them that it was city green and so great start. Thank you, Ben. Um first of all, Dr. Sharp kind of stole my thunder there to begin, but uh just to say how proud I am of our staff and and I can confirm this is the largest uh capital campaign I've I've ever uh undertaken. So the second largest was 15 million. So this one is 60 million. So not only from the the office staff, from the pre-planning and the purchase orders, but our maintenance staff as well. So

025it's it's been a combination of of everybody on the team and and just to put it in perspective, I was looking at some numbers and and in eight weeks, so this summer in eight weeks, um our staff improved u almost a million square feet of HVAC space. So proud of all the hard work. Uh still have a long way to go. Um but uh the way I've I've broken it down, it's you know too much information for a for a slide. So you have a handout uh phase one uh phase one through phase three has been approved by the board and the commission and I've broken them down uh by district as well as uh uh the bud the original budget and just a status uh status update. So, uh, making making some headway. Uh,

026phase four, I've marked with, uh, phase four. It's a draft unapproved. These numbers are very rough budget numbers. We put together, uh, some some projects that we've discussed and had some discussion with multiple parties, schools, uh, Dr. Sharp, uh, Justin Robertson. So, and if you do the math, this phase four will put us uh around $54 million. So, uh 60 million sounds like a lot of money, but you start putting it to paper, it goes pretty quick. Um I will say I hope and I will emphasize hope in phase one, we've had some several projects with some savings. So I would like to what we're thinking is approve phase 4 maybe in September or October allow us to complete some of these projects and and definitely phase one look and see if we can shake

027out some savings and may produce another phase u on the back end of these projects. Do I have any questions on the district this the first page is the update that's this is phase one district four Franklin Roberts Clifton Hill sorry that's phase one it should marked on the upper right hand page very first so phase one uh phase two is on the second page and uh they should be labeled there are not in your presentation It's under the legal size paper. All right. If uh any any questions me you have a question. All right. Uh, Miss Black, um, for phase 4, um, do we already have these projects planned? Like the elevator at Ellen Lookout Mountain, is that something that's already been designed? Do we have space to do it or is it going

028to be like, is it already planned out in the building? I actually have I was going to do emergency approval, but Okay. Um, I've already have a quote um ready to go. It's it's replacing the existing elevator. Okay. So we don't have to build a new shaft or anything like that. It's it's replacing the existing. All right. And Miss Hatton. Yes. Um we've emailed uh I've been meeting with Udwahigh, you know, Mr. Mr. Mullins and Mr. Russ who's here with us today with the girls soccer program and we have been emailing about the potential restroom facilities there and maybe any other enhancements on the soccer field. Um I was hoping to maybe get these on phase four. I know this is pretty recent a pretty recent discussion um as far as emailing for I guess

029several weeks back or maybe the past month. But um I would really like I don't know if there's funding. I don't remember the cost involved or if we got a cost estimate for that restroom construction or not. Uh didn't get a cost estimate just looking at some historical cost. So um that's what we that's what I would discussed on the possibility of the savings from phase one. Try to pick that up. Um or we I mean we can look at we can look at phase four as well. Um, so we'll make note of that. Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Uh, central, it says that the 3.7 million February competition. Which phase? Phase two. Oh, yeah. The rooftop units. That's the rooftop units. We're replacing the rooftop units. It's supposed to be completion.

030That's just a typo, I say. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Has uh has that work begun or or are you having to order those? It bids um believe the middle of this month. Yeah. the size of that project. We had, you know, we have to uh have it designed by an engineer, go through the full board process. When it turns cold, you ain't got no heat up. I think you've got enough space in that building um to move classrooms if we have to. Uh we can also do some temporary heat. I think you're um you're typically about 8 to 10 weeks after you order after you order units. That's the lead time that I'm nearing now. Okay. So, it's being bid now. You said I I'll text you the actual bid date, but it should be middle

031of this month, middle of September. Well, that's not my school, but they're all my schools. I mean, they got a mess. They got a mess. Oh, yeah. The question was, how many do we are we are I think we installed four last uh winter. Yeah. In April. In April. Yeah. So, we in we installed four. Um, and this will take care of the the rest of us. Yep. All right, Miss Jones. So, um I don't see it on here, but and I know there's potential lookout in this other list about Dale Wood, but um Barger. I don't see anything on here, but I do the summer I got calls about Barger. When you say Barger, you talking about the roof? The roof. I mean, I was so shocked that they didn't call me when we

032had the Noah's Arc flood come through here a couple of weeks ago. I did get a couple of pictures about some things, but I just there's nothing on here and it's always something with that building. So, I know we were talking about looking at that in the uh the phase. Well, when we were talking about looking at Archon Middle and like I just want to know given if there is some extra because I mean you said there might be some uh residual funds. Nothing against a soccer field when I got kids getting rained on top of their heads. and they're already in portables. I mean, I wouldn't want anybody in any I mean, I wouldn't want if it was if Bargain was on the soccer field and it was raining at Udawa, I would be

033saying the same thing like that building until we figure out what to do with them. That is always going to be top, you know, I'm I'mma wear you out, Justin, on your nerves. I know. Yeah. I I'll I'll check on the roof. I mean, to your point, we did not have any infestations. We didn't have um we didn't have many complaints when the when the flood came through. So, I think we've uh we've been able to maintain, but we'll take a look at it. You know, just just thinking that like when we if there is some I'd like for us to make sure that we're thinking about anything that does come up cuz some I always happen, you know, something does come up over there a lot. Just because the building is probably 60 years

034old. But just wanted to make sure that we, you know, if you're able to do that and hold some off, I just I don't know. I just that's a big concern for me because if it ain't water, it's bugs. If it ain't bugs, it's heat. If it ain't heat, it's cold. Mold. It's always something. Well, we can't move into deal with Dewood and Dewood. Okay, great. And I, you know, I just got to make sure I leave that out there on the table for so we just can't forget that because it might be a while for that. And when just while we're talking to about roofs, if I remember going through the two main areas that were spending for this capital projects is roofs and heating and air. Do we do we get any kind

035I mean so as we bid those out are those different areas bid separate companies can win that or will this all be one? We'll we typically Yeah, we'll we'll bid uh basically each line will be I mean depending on the size of the job. If if we don't self-perform the work, we'll bid it out. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, if it's a roof, we'll bid a a separate roof project. If it's the rooftop unit, um it'll be a just replacing the rooftop units, a standalone bid. I guess where I'm going with this, you know, uh we have a lot that we're covering in phase one and two. Uh and uh I know in the painting the painting cost for the different buildings and stuff we had. We saved some money there. Is there uh a projected

036savings in the roof because there's so many different buildings we're getting roofs replaced on? I think we'll have to go project by project. That's what I was saying. If if um maybe approve phase four, let us complete Yeah. more of these projects and see. I mean, they all come in uh but totally different. Some roofs are if we've got some u you know, EPDM, TPO, different types of roof, different sizes, um different areas of town. We have more some contractors are more competitive depending on what side of town uh the project's on. So, um, as they as they bid and as we complete them, we can do a a final wrap-up, right? Looking at the o looking at the overall whatever what's phase one 30. Yeah, 31 million. We'll just look at that overall savings.

037I I just wasn't sure on something the scope of this size and how many roofs we're doing and how many total millions that is. I I was just curious how that worked, whether it was individuals or this district versus this, you know, I I was wondering how the bids went out for that. So, hoping that since we had so many, there was a way to save some there or sneak another building in there. Yeah. So, any other questions? I was I'm looking here. I'm I'm sure I'm just overlooking this Hon School gym. I know it's here somewhere. Just kidding. Mr. Slater, just uh point of reference, Saudi High School was torn down in 1937. It's Saudi Daisy High School. Oh, you always get me on that. Oh, he get on that team as well. That

038was short hand. It wouldn't fit in space. S DHS will be Miss Black. Okay. I know I've had several conversations with Dr. Sharp, and a few with you, Mr. Wit, as far as the issues at Howard with the HVAC system. I'm wondering is that project so large that we're going to have to fund it separately that it can't be in this money or because there's a real issue with temperature regulation. It's freezing in the when the during cold extreme cold it is burning up people pass out in extreme heat. So I just wanted to kind of get an update. Yeah, that's uh just we we forgot to to bring this. It's actually a separate item. uh that most likely will come um either in September or October. If you remember back the approval of the

039um the new lookouts stadium, there was uh money set aside specifically for Howard and so the county commission is working on a proposal to uh expend those funds. It includes HVAC. It includes tearing down the old gym, replacing the old gym with um some type of indoor athletic facility and then fencing the property. Uh Tucker is here. Uh is it is that Wednesday or next week and Mr. Dr. Mackey is here as well. County Commission is looking to consider that on Wednesday and then if they approve it, it'll come back uh to you guys to approve. I we'll send that to you tomorrow in a separate thing. that was supposed to be on here and it just got missed. But the HBAC is going to be part of that. The HVAC is part of it.

040Okay. Thank you. I just wanted like the public to know we're discussing all of these other projects that where that's how it's planned, where it's coming from. And I will say we we did it has been an improvement. Um we we did replace the chillers. It was they were $600,000 worth of chillers. Um and then also through uh CTE we put in the shop area where it did not have air conditioning that was another 400,000 I think we put in that shop area as well. So we we have seen some improvements. Thank you. And before we go on I would like to recognize Dr. Mackey here from our county commission. So nice to see you sir and also Tucker McClendon from the mayor's office. All right Miss Jones again. So to add to what Jill

041was asking, when we started this conversation about Howard a couple of years ago, the the students came and spoke to us, staff came and spoke to us and then we had the joint meeting with county commission and then we ended up adding a community meeting at Howard in which they provided us and I still have this document if anybody does not um a list of needs, things that they said were needs, not what anybody else said were needs, but the people that were in that building every day said were needs and HVAC was one of them. Um, with this, right? No, no, Hback was one of them. I just my I think my my concern is is that it's nice to make something look shiny and pretty on the outside for people to drive by

042and see the feel, the Reggie White feel. And little kids are like, "Who is Richie White? We probably should put Philadelphia Eagles or whatever. Green Bay or whatever. Probably should put something up there to say who he is." But you think ball would be better, huh? Ball. Yeah. I mean, all of those things, right? Most of all, a hustle tiger. Side note. But my question is I I just I'm really in a phase now like it's nice to make things look nice and shiny, but we want them to be warm and we want them to be cool and we don't want things spraying on their heads. And they gave us a list of needs. And so while the county commission we appreciate anything that they do to support our schools, I don't know if knocking

043the old gym down and putting an indoor athletic facility is what was a need on their list. And I'm just wondering if we're going to alloc if we're if they're going to allocate money like to make best use of the money or to go and refer back to that list. Tucker, do you have that list? I'll send you a picture tonight. You got it? Okay, I'll send you a picture tonight. But I think that's very important. Mr. M, you got that list? I'll send it to you tonight. Um, I just think it's really important to go back and look at that or maybe even have a conversation again with the staff and the kids there because once again, it's nice to make things look great for the people driving by, but if it's not effective

044for the student body that we're supporting and the staff that are that is teaching those and and pouring into those students, then while appreciative, I would just advocate for it to be effective. Yeah, I I remember that meeting well and asked Mr. McClennon didn't come up if he wants to offer any insight into this, but we we went back so he went there the whole meeting. He had a boot on his foot. I remember we went uh back and forth about these funds and how to best use them. What what I'll also uh recall back to that meeting um is that that was a time of overcrowding at Howard. Um if you remember the board's made decision about Howard Connect that opens up um basically room for another 500 kids which uh one of the

045biggest concerns was overcrowding and space for kids the cafeteria size. Now we're able to use both sides of the cafeteria. So we've we've addressed a lot of the concerns. The major concern that we have not addressed is HVAC which uh Tucker can attest to like we were adamant that had to be a part of this proposal. Yeah. So, the agreement with the south broad uh tip when we were in conversations with the city and with the developers, the language in the agreement is for community benefit at the campus. Um and the conversation at the um IDB meeting basically they didn't want us to go and supplant deferred maintenance funds with this 10 million. And so to your point, what we've done is we're going to do the indoor sports facility, but we've also tied the

046AC, the theater, tearing down the old gym, some security fencing that Dr. Wear wants and stuff like that. So we it will be probably bigger than the amount that we were supposed to. We've done uh a million dollars of that 10 million through the softball and baseball lights. Um, but since we're doing it all together, you get a little cost savings on something as we talked about orchard knob, the engineering design, that stuff. Throwing it all together, um, with this project just makes sense. So, we can tackle the AC, the theater is in in need of Yeah, because I was going to ask about that because I remember the lighting in the theater. Okay. Yep. All right. Maybe I I'm still going to send you the list though. Do it. Thank you. All right. So,

047that looks like all the lights. Uh, just I'm going to give a shout out to District 9. It's great to see that Central High School is on that lift for list for a turf field. Uh, I know right now we've got some drastic concerns in District 9 about losing students. So, that's one thing that I hope will help to uh keep students in District 9. If uh if we have any other comments or questions about this uh we'll do that now. If not we will move on to uh updates on the building projects and the architectural companies. And just to recap, uh, I did add the Udawa soccer restroom facilities, Barger roof, and question mark Howard HVAC. So, as possible further discussions. All right, just a um quick update on on the u our larger

048building projects to the bond fund. Um, so the Franklin Roberts uh gateway, we've got Tinkerb architects under contract. Uh, big challenge there is is existing conditions. Uh, so that they're on they're on board now doing uh 3D scans, looking at um existing wall ratings, how we're going to separate that portions of that building for for educational use. So, they're underway with the design. Um, Clifton Hills, we received architect responses. We're waiting on proposal reviews and the next next piece of that uh process will be the the interviews and the final se or the selection of five and then five for interviews and then we'll select three um after the interview process. Uh sorry Daisy Middle MTA architects they're under contract uh in the programming phase. So, uh, we got a couple meetings set up actually

049next week to do do another site visit, continue the programming phase and and in, uh, parallel, we are working with, um, our purchasing department putting our Seymour RFP together. So, we have that very, very close. It just needs a few more details and some some final touches. Uh, North River, uh, Franklin Architects are under contract. Um, also I think through the um press release the the partnership that we have working with YMCA uh working on an agreement there to get the details of that ironed out. We'll send that back to the board. Uh working on schematic design work we're in programming and slowly moving into into uh more detailed schematic design and the same with North River. We're going to we're working on the uh the Seymar RFP Brainard HK Architects. they've been selected as

050the architect. I'm in and our team is in negotiations with the contract. So, we're we're trying to get have several questions there on just verifying scope and making sure everything's squared away with our contract. We I'm hoping to have that uh at the September board. Um, so as you remember, we did uh some early studies for future building projects. Those three were Thrasher, um, Orchard Knob, and Normal Park. So, uh, we'll hit on those first. Justin, you go back to that for a second. So, out of district 7 on here, Miss Schaefer and I have been talking about concerns in District 7 are going to put a committee together uh, to address this. One of the things that uh we talked about would be helpful is we haven't actually explored whether or not West View

051or Appison can be added on to. So, similar to what we've done at Thrasher Orchard Knob in Normal Park, we're going to recommend uh working with an architect to go in evaluate those buildings along with the um Sigma Annex building to see if we can add on to them. uh and then have a conversation with that committee in district 7 about what that might look like. So that's new to everyone to see. We haven't brought it to you, but we will bring it to you uh if not in September, probably in October to go about getting an architect to evaluate those three buildings. And that's a good point. What what you'll see here in the next slides will be similar to that those Westview and East Brandon NX studies. So it was interesting uh on

052these three we did with three different architects. So the formatting is a little bit different. These are not the full reports. We we can get the full reports to you. Um just for presentation sake it's a lot of information. So we've condensed those uh just for u like I said for presentation just hit the highlights. Uh so Thrasher Elementary just a site plan there. Uh existing project or existing site details. Um, so you know, some of the things that we've seen, the parking, the uh the drive area, this the different areas there of the the 1990 edition and of course we've added in I don't know the last what two years two portables there. So that's one, two, three, four classrooms now that we've got in in portables. Um, so the scope of work that

053we looked at with architect, uh, obviously site work, improving parking, remodeling a good bit of the existing space, looked at some areas that we could possibly with the increase in in enrollment, options of increasing that cafeteria size um, into the stage area and reworking some of that area. And then looking at new construction, we were looking back at the 1990 um, area there. So, I don't know if you can see, but really cleans up the parking in and drive in the front, increasing the parking in the in the rear. Um, obviously we'll we'll lose the portables and then that addition we landed uh in the rear of the 1990 edition there. So, um, also the architect looked at a phasing. You know, it it looks pretty on paper, but how do you build it? So

054did a good job here of a temporary construction entrance and really looking at a way to do an addition without interrupting school traffic, school operations. Um Orchard Middle actually sorry if you don't mind. Can I ask one quick question? Does does this take into account the um access for um children on a playground for We've actually addressed that already taken care of. Okay. Yes. We we put in a rubberized surface on two playgrounds and we um also put in a new sidewalk. Thank you. I have not seen it since I made a tour of the school. Make a trip up the mountain. And sorry to jump ahead, but do we have any questions on Thrasher? So, Orchard Knob. Um, this one he we actually had four options. Um, again, it was interesting to see different

055ideas, different views, three different firms. Um, I've only included option two. That's that's one that to me, I mean, this is very very early, but made the most sense. Um, so again, site plan. I'll walk through option two, but existing building. We also own the the football field across the street as well as the the parcel uh south of the building. And just an overall site view. So, just again blocking and how things fit. Um, again looking at existing structures, how the option of additions and the options of renovation. So the baseball field could fit. Again, just looking at all options. Um, don't know that that fits great, but just wanted to have a placeholder and see what our options were. So I like I liked phase two because we could phase the building to

056where you would not again interrupt school activities. you could keep the school operational. Uh the first phase would be a a classroom addition to the left where I think their CTE program is now or not CTE but a ELAB. Uh build a small classroom addition there. Um and also renovate the existing building with a new kitchen and cafeteria. Use the kitchen and cafeteria area as as additional classroom space. And then it looks different here, but um we would demo that f that whole front wing that faces the front door. So a new office space, new classrooms, and again having the architect engaged each section of the building and depending on the year that it was built, you know, which which se they're built differently, which one made sense to keep, which one made sense to

057renovate? and that portion did not make sense to renovate just the the amount of money that you would have to to spend to um to uh with all the improvements. So again, the good thing with this plan is it would give you a a brand new facade. You know, this opportunity to really clean up the front as well as um as well I didn't show the site plan, but this also cleans up the parking and and turnaround in the front area as well. When you say the front, are you talking about uh Third Street or No, I don't know if it's McDaniel. McDaniel building. Okay. Yeah. But where's the new addition? I mean, I'm trying to figure this out. So, um, basically everything that would face the McDaniel building, that would be a new wing.

058The old wing would be demoling this way towards Highland Park. Correct. Like to the front door, that whole wing to your left. We would de we would demo and build new and build new. But they're recommen [Music] Yes. Are you finished? I am finished. You are finished. Okay. I know he gave y'all phase uh recommendation option two uh uh being a representative for that district I'm totally against it. Uh the facade of just always patching orchard knob. It needs to be a brand new school. Uh they can exist in that school with that field right beside it. They can be a whole new school built there with them still going to school for the whole year. um to in my opinion to suggest that you renovate just the gym with all of these other areas

059getting brand new schools. The children in that district deserve new schools, a new school as well. And so I'm just putting it out there. I'm not just going to sit by and just settle because I think uh Orchin Middle School deserves a new school like everybody else. and to even suggest adding to all these other schools without even looking at what these children are going to uh school in and what the building looks like. And we're always renovating. We're always patching. They've been renovating and patching Orchard Knob for I don't know how long. So, in my opinion, I I just I number one was the the phase for me. I think one and four was both at 26 million, I think. Uh, I'm not sure what four was, but it just needs to, in my

060opinion, be a whole new school. Uh, so I'm not sure about the the uh tearing down because I think you told me you were still going to keep the auditorium and just renovate it and the cap cafeteria renovated. Certain parts you were going to renovate. I I would still part of that 1960 existing old building. Yeah. He what I would suggest is it would be anything remaining would be completely renovated as in we take it down to the almost to the structure but but again you know what we charged the architects with was to a multitude of options what makes sense as um you know trying to get a good dollars and cents options. We probably should have reminded everybody at the beginning, these are projects that would be for the next bond issue. Like

061these are the four that we're saying probably are the most pressing needs that would be part of the next bond issue. So what we're trying to do is is get a plan and get ahead so that uh when money does become available, we're not starting from scratch, but we're already ready to go. Um I I don't know T Tucker if you would have the the last bond issue uh before this previous one that was approved in it 22 or 23 23. So one previous to that was in uh 17. So six years so you know it's probably somewhere four to six years. Yeah. I'm sorry. The last one that was approved was in 2016. This one that we're currently doing, those other five projects was approved in early 23. So, if you go on that

062similar time frame, you know, working another four years. I I hate to ask you to go back if you go back to this slide. I want to go back. Can you go back there? And I I I won't hold you exactly to this, but help me help me remember the numbers on each one just and I I I don't expect you to give me exact numbers, but roughly in other words, the renovating of Gateway, renovating over Clifton Hills. You can just put a number on each one. Just a rough number. I know you can't get gateway was around 15. All right. So, Gateway was around 15. What was clicking? 36, I believe. How much? 36. Oh, here we go. Here we go. I carry that thing every time. So, uh, now wait a minute. Th

063This says gateway 50, though, then. And he's saying 15. That's a big deal. That's for the first floor. That was the that was back when we were going to put a state-of-the-art creative. Yeah, I understand that. But I mean that the but but we agreed to this this document, right? Okay. So So let me plug because these these numbers wouldn't be the right number then. So you said 15 on Gateway 36. You said you say 36 on Clifton. Correct. All right. So, Saudi Daisy, uh, 30 on Saudi Daisy. Yep. All right. Alpine Dupont River 50 52. Okay. And that was before the plan with All right. And then uh Brainer 6 through 12 campus on current site. Brainer's 36 36 169. How much? 169. Is that new male? Old mail. in this first round. I

064want to talk about Clifton Hills a little bit. So do I. Well, can I was in that building the other day and I first time I've been in there a long time and uh yeah, I want to understand what exactly the plans are for down there. So the the plan as that as approved was a a renovation to the existing building and an addition always renovate. So the addition the addition would be where um we've got one small addition on the front as you walk in front right and then the larger addition is on the rear of the building where the portables are. So, is there any addition for for that cafeteria? Because we were leaving there and them poor babies was still going to lunch in elementary school. And I was like, and Joe

065said, "No, they can't be going to lunch, Carissa." And I said, "Joe, looking at the size of that cafeteria, they're still going to lunch." And then the post gentleman said, "Yes, ma'am. They're going to lunch." So, is there any like what's happening in that, you know, I hate a cafeterium, gymnasium, whatever they called. Yeah. you know, the gym, cafeteria, everything, the allpurpose room. I hate those. Can we not no longer create that's bad. Can we uh remove those from any concept of build with that we're going to proceed with? We obviously haven't done any of those since 197 something. Right. But if we're not going to address it, we they still we are addressing it. But I mean we I understand we can keep going back to this conversation but at the beginning what we

066as a board were discussing is like how how do we how do we get more efficient and how do we use the resources that we have had and specifically with Clifton Hills we talked about getting efficient by adding on to East Side and East Lake and closing Clifton Hills. We went to that community. They didn't want that. They don't want it. Right. And so uh and and I'm not I don't want to go not trying to point out earlier comment but if you look at all these projects Saudi Daisy Middle is not a complete new building. It's a renovation and an add-on. Brainard and Delwood it's a add-on and a renovation. Clifton Hills is a renovation and add-on. So we're trying to use buildings um in a way that we're not spending $60 million every

067single time that we build a building. Now, this is a new build, right? But that's combining three schools into one. And so, um, Clton Hills, obviously, we said from the beginning, we said with the community, this is going to be a really tough project and it's going to take a lot of patience, uh, as we go through it, right? But we're trying to do it in a way that allows them to uh keep that community school, which is what they wanted, do it within budget, and do it really well, which we think that we can do. Uh otherwise, we wouldn't move forward with it. But it is going to be tough because it's not an easy site to build on, and that building does have some challenges like the cafeteria on the back of the

068gym. We do have plans to improve it. If you remember, since then, we've already uh fixed the ceiling and the roof. Is that right, Wood? in the cafeteria. Yeah. So, okay. I just was the only reason why for me with that was just like it was what 1:00 some was close to 1:00. Rachel, what time what time we left about 1:00 and they're in elementary school and they're going to lunch at 1:00. Like I'm like they're about to be out of school in 2 hours. Like I don't know. That was a that just kind of sat with me for the rest of that day. Um, so I just was wondering what's was with any any of the addition I mean the renovation piece going to be there to open that up or something or utilize

069maybe that well do they use that space under there? They use that for when it rains or something for play. What What do they do with that? Cuz I'm like that to me that's kind of wasted space. They do use it for play. Yeah. Okay. And you're above the um you're you're above the the uh flood plane as well. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Okay. Okay. Uh you said just a minute ago. I think I heard you say that when we we talked about uh looking at specifically I think east side and doing some expansion there and the the community just was not in favor of that. I get it. If you know if I if I can walk to school every day, I want to stay where I'm at. Uh we had

070the same issues I recall being help me here uh with specifically Alpine Crest. Same issues where I went to school, what was school that back in the 20s that but my I I guess what I'm trying to say is is Jill's not going to like what I'm about to say. uh but in in trying to be uh good stewards of the taxpayer dollars and and trying to come up with a a plan that that we can get the most bang for our buck, if you will. Uh, I think we really need to look at that and talk about uh would it not be best to at Clifton Hills get out in portables that they got to go uh and expand that school and clean it up, remodel it's awful. um and then invest money at

071the east side and and I know that that would mean have to do some reszoning, but to to me that makes the best business sense uh maybe I'm crazy here, but we we talked about that, right? And and where we ended uh what the board approved, you know, we even we even looked at East Lake, right? And and one of the things that kind of also played into this is adding on to East Lake and Justin you help me here was going to be super difficult. Um you were going to have to add a basically a separate building on the old building site which is caddy cornered across the street. Um and and so we when we talked about east side as well, we ended up where we are with Clifton Hills getting renovation and

072add-on and then recognizing that East Side is actually a good place to add on and if we continue to have some growth downtown in the future, we we may need that site. Um, what I can say about this year's numbers of downtown elementaryaries is you're actually starting to see like a plateauing of of numbers like we were seeing year after year more and more kids and it looks like it's kind of settled down. Um, and so I I think that to your point, yes, that is something possibly down the road that we would need. Uh but what the board has approved is adding on and renovating uh Clifton Hills. If we wanted to reconsider that, the board would have to go through that process. Yeah, I understand that, but it's going to get get extremely

073uh complicated. I think when you you start tearing those portables down and you start renovating Clifton Hills and and adding on to Clifton Hills and then keeping those kids in that same building, that's going to be a nightmare. I don't how you going to do that uh and expensive. Yeah. Well, I mean, the money that you that we were going to allocate to East Lake and East Side was actually 40 million. It was 20 million a piece. So, this is saving a little bit of money from that. But, yeah, we've said from the beginning, it's going to be by far the most complicated project. You know, the other thing, and this may sound crazy, too, what what if you made uh uh Clifton Hills like a K through three school or something like that. Thank

074my friend, Miss Schaper. What do you think, Joey? I love that idea. May I please speak? this is my district and my community. Um, if we're just tossing out ideas, um, our board went through a really extensive process of we received the suggestions from the mayor's office. We held community meetings, we listened to the community, and that's one of the things I'm actually really proud of because a lot of folks in district 11 have not felt listened to in the past. Um, and we understand that Clifton Hills is in the southside. It is growing. It has experienced this explosion of growth. The reason, one of the reasons that we abandoned the idea of closing Clifton Hills and expanding East Lake and East Side, not just because the renovation at East Lake was going to be

075a nightmare. Um but al also because those two schools would be immediately full if we did that and built it the way that we said it. There was no room for growth. The by expanding Clifton Hills, we will have room for growth and can absorb some of the overcrowding in those other two schools. Um, not to mention the fact that this particular community is trans public transportation dependent for the most part. They're a walking community. They ride the bus. They do not have their own personal cars. And if we ship their kids to East Lake and East Side, couple miles away, that you're going to have a drop in parent participation, but you're going to lose that community. Um, these there are only four buses that run to this school and we've already got what

076how many kids? 700 kids there, 800. Um, and there's only four buses that run. That's how many people walk to that school. That's why that community school needs to stay in place because it serves that community. Um, and I admit like we've always said that even though the renovated Clifton Hills is going to be able to absorb growth, should the downtown continue to grow and we continue to see folks move there and need space, East Side has a place for that expansion that can accommodate. But to say, "Hey, let's just go back and have this conversation over again and completely forget all of the input from the community that's being affected," I think is incredibly disrespectful. And it makes me angry because we decided on this plan. We have the money for this plan. There's

077no reason to change it and do something else that doesn't pay attention to the community that's affected. What's the trend behind in terms of growth because I don't I don't see any new housing construction going on down there. So what and when you say that community is growing, what what's what has been the trend in terms I mean I say that it it's like leveling off. So we projected Clifton Hills at 696, they're at 705. Uh East Lake projected at 631, they're at 603. East Side at 513, they're at 494. So they're right there within 10 of what was projected where if you remember several years ago is when I mean you know we'd see 50 kids show up. Um so over the last say four or five years what has the trend been? It's

078been ticking up and then you're seeing a lot of community you can't necessarily count rooftops. school enrollment gives us a better idea of what's happening in that community than rooftops because you have multiple families living together. Yeah. Yeah. I realize that. Miss Young, did you send me? Oh, okay. I I uh would like to say also when you're looking at Clifton Hills and the schools, uh Orchob a lot, we're losing students to some of these charter schools because of the conditions that they are. Um, I have a question for you. Um, Mr. uh, Wick. How many, just for my knowledge and for my history, how many schools were built new other than Hixon Middle School, Orchob, I mean not Orchin, Udawa Elementary in the past? I don't know how many schools were built brand new

079from an old existing school that was not renovated. Like there was a old existing school, but you didn't renovate it. You built a brand new school. How many schools were the How many of those? This is for my history because I don't know. I know I heard Dr. Robinson talk about other schools. Orchard Knob Elementary. Uh just did Tiner East Lake Academy. East Lake Elementary. East Side Elementary. Eastidge. Hardy. East Ridge. Got a new East Ridge Elementary. Yeah. Hixon and um but you combined schools in district when you did that. It was what? I'm sorry. What' you say? They combined schools in Eastridge when they did that. Like those two schools. I mean, if you if you look at the history of it, Miss Thomas, right after the merger, 1997, you would you could argue

080and and what helped me with this, but especially um in the urban core, the elementary schools were all getting like built new. I mean, almost every every school down except for Wardro Middle is 25 years maybe 30 years old. Um and then you started to see a trend after 2008 of like chasing growth and new buildings. That's where you see uh places like Middle Valley, East Hamilton, Udawa, um elementary schools like that. Signal Mountain Middle High School uh was built. And what we're trying to do now is like again plan around getting some of our most troublesome buildings offline. And we've made a lot of progress with that. Uh and and that's what this phase of this bond project with these five. It's reducing, you know, the number of roofs that we have. It's reducing

081the number of schools and it's taking deferred maintenance off of our books. All right. Go ahead, Mr. Whit. And final one, Normal Park. Um, again, addition renovation. Um, so again, just a little bit different format with the Franklin Architects, but going to roughly a thousand students, looking at a possibility of a K12. On the upper school, you've got existing uh 50,000 square feet. And again with the architect with and here with Normal Park and Ben can help me that it's it's a hub of that community. And I think that's one thing that we we looked at. Did it make sense uh for an addition or renovation and and you're kind of landlocked. It's it's uh it's a you know it's location location. And I was going to say I was absolutely going to say that

082I've already kind of thought about what I was going to say but first I just have to apologize to my other board members. I don't mean any disrespect when I say this, but that community wants the old school. They want to be added on to. They want everything to be beautiful and old and try to add on to the back. Um, and that this is an awesome plan. I've been telling when I've explained it to people. Basically, what we did was we gave them a bunch of puzzle pieces and a box and said, "Can you make this fit in this?" And and they did a great job of showing us that that can can happen. We've met with them multiple times and talked through all of the different um the nuances that you don't know

083unless you go to school there every day. Where the food's dropped off for the cafeteria, where they're picked up, where the lines go. Um and we've had some really great conversations throughout that. Um we even held a meeting to take in parental support. And u it was kind of interesting at that meeting we talked about, you know, needing to utilize portables to get to to attain this dream. And I was reminded that I actually went to middle school in portables at my school, you know, 100 years ago. Not not as old as Mr. Smith here, but pretty old still. But it came to us that they wanted to keep that community that Mr. Whit was talking about that it was more important to them to be there in the community than dispersed and and wait

084longer. And I was remembering this and thought the same thing. I if I hadn't wasn't talking about it, I don't think about being in fifth, sixth, seventh grade and affordable. I think about the school I went to and the friends that I had. So, it was a really awesome conversation about community. So, I just say that to say again, they're excited that we're going to take the existing building and take uh and add on to it instead of trying to spend a lot of money on something brand new somewhere else. And I do have to say that Dr. Sharp, I'm really happy and impressed that you found the details to make sure that this does state the correct build date. Uh because we had on all the other documentation that I had that Noral Park

085was built in the 30s, but I dropped my kids off there and on the front door it says established 1896. So it's in stone. This one's on Excel. I think the stone's probably right. So um Ben did a great job there. The background and where we are. I'll just run through uh just some site planning there. The more complicated obviously is the the upper school. So um increasing the parking and then going off the back of the building with a new gym, additional classroom space. One challenge that we still really haven't figured out is, as you can see, the parking is getting into the into the field. Um, so part of this plan and as the discussions move further, is the possibility of the the field that's down the hill from uh CCA. Um, yeah.

086So again, still in discussion. I was just noted a question that's I think also an important note here. At current, the upper school houses fourth through 8 and this plan would put the lower school becoming a true elementary of K5 and the upper school being 612. So that helps a little bit. 612. Yeah, that was that's the thing that's been in all the MGT reports and everything to be able to expand the seats. And as Mr. Whit was just saying there is already an existing field with a track around it um at the bottom. If you follow CCA's campus down to Hamilton Avenue, Hamilton County Schools owns that property all the way down to Hamilton Avenue. And there's a perfect site there with not not as much effort as you would need to build what

087Sale Creek has um that their high school goes to the elementary and utilizes that large piece of area to do um different sporting events. Um so that would be able to be soccer and middle school football. So there's and there's also already a giant field behind CCA that is for football. It was it was used for football for city high for however many years. Yeah. Did you play on that field? I I kept telling people it reminded me of Candlestick. The pictures I've seen from the 70s. Uh it's all burned up from baseball. So again, this this site plan is is more more complicated as you'll see compared to the lower but um again the the logistics of maintaining uh existing school operations and parking and that's that's it's a pretty challenging project. Uh normal

088the uh the lower school a little a little more straightforward uh just going off the the back of the school with new addition increasing some of the cafeteria space and then obviously picking up a good bit of uh of classroom space. And we went over district seven. So everything that you saw there looking at bringing something back to the board to uh do a similar study of uh what makes sense what fits and looking at the uh apps and west view and and east internet x just want to say I don't think we have four to six years before we have to make a decision of some sort with the amount of growth every week there is a new neighborhood bulldozed um coming and also established neighborhoods are turning over. We're getting new young families

089in older neighborhoods turning over. So I think there's concern there and Signal Mountain that we but I think that's why the argument that we've already talked about not argument the argument for us to move forward with this is so when it does happen like we're ready to go. It also may be that um you know an addition at a thrash or an addition at a west view or appent may not be such a big item that we've got to wait for the next bond. So I think that's why the importance of us having that conversation with the community and and seeing what it would look like is needs to happen now. I welcome all the conversations. I never infrastructure before those I I I have I have a question. Go ahead. I have a question.

090Like Jod just talked about uh the concern she have about the growth in the area and we all know in that area because it was mostly rural that it's it's growing rapid growing rapidly. Where does that stand when it comes to other schools that need to be rebuilt or remodeled before if if if if the growth continues and where are those schools if they're already on the list already studied is gone. How how do you who decides what school goes first? Uh uh I we we do right. So I guess and I don't know because it's just a history just to learn does some does that sometimes supersede if the board says okay east east Hamilton needs we're growing we need a new school a new addendum versus schools that have no air uh have

091other major issues structural issues that we've been dealing with. So I I was just wondering how does that looked at and I know you're saying we decide but I'm kind of confused and maybe it's just me because I'm I'm new on how the process works and I was just curious on how that process works. Ultimately the board decides so we bring recommendations. uh what we've been saying since uh 2020 and when I say we previous administrations and previous boards have been focused on uh I would say really three things. Number one trying to reduce the number of schools that we have. Number two trying to re reduce the number of square footage that we have and number three trying to reduce deferred maintenance. And so these decisions um have been made trying to do those.

092What you've seen out of the 60 million that um was approved as part of that last bond fund is also us pressing in on HVAC's, on roofs, on all these things that are hitting at what you've said. Uh we're in a lot better shape. Uh we've got a goal um of reducing and I can't tell you off the top of my head I should know this of how many schools that we have that were rated under 70% by MGT we can get that number but we are taking those buildings offline as fast as we can. Um I think the one big issue or the one next one that we've got to plan for is Barger. You're not seeing that here, but once Dellwood is completed and goes over, plan is to move Barter into Delwood's

093building, which would take Barter offline. So, we've made a lot of progress in those three areas. So, have and it's just a question. So, for instance, say in East Brainer School, there is growth. Yes. And and they and they do need an expansion. What about do have you all ever possibly considered busing those students to those schools that that do have availability or and I know every parent wants their child to be in their area. I I know that but cost effectiveness uh when we're talking about that I guess that's just my question. Has that ever been done uh for the school system? I want to say that I have another cost-effective measure before we went there. It's called re restructuring my buildings. So that was for the public to know. That is why I

094wanted to come up with another cost-effective measure because other schools need things. Miss Jackie's school needs things. And I came up with another plan where we didn't have to bust our kids or reszone our kids out of district 7, but we could do a gradeband reconfiguration to be costeffective and not take away from what Miss Jackie said. But we've received a lot of community input and they want us to at least explore can we add on. So we're bringing the exploring conversation because the public asked for it. But that is before we went to a busing. Miss Jackie I would ask for reband restructure. Actually I need to answer this because it's out in public. There's never been conversation about reszoning district 7 because there is no space. I mean to to get to space

095on you know the south what would that be the southeast end you would think okay we'll go to wolfever well where there's not space at wolfver then you go to waw smith well there's not space at waw smith either on you know the the north side uh you know go to eastard well there's no then you're going to have to push easter up to barter which there's no space at bar so there's it there's not space to reszone to in district 7 it's very similar situation to what you have on Signal Mountain, right? The to me it's a more not more pressing, but you hear what I'm saying. There there's a bigger uh issue around growth and kids coming to elementaryaries on Signal Mountain. Where do you reszone Signal Mountain to? Well, didn't they used

096to originally go to Red Bank before they high school kids did, but not the elementary kids. Just one one piece to that. Our elementary schools are almost at 100% capacity districtwide. Ben, do you have an exact? It's I don't have it, but it's right at 100%. Is that correct? Between when you factor in the overcrowded ones. When you factor in the overcrowded ones, it it ends up being in the 90 95 or 96 percentile. I can get you the number in just a minute. And that's the segue I needed. Uh, so we're going to wrap this part up. I know Dr. Robertson's got something he's going to talk about. Uh, and Miss Jones is going to just give a brief share of the thing, but it all ties both of those two things tie into

097what I'm about to say. So, uh, Mr. Coulter, Dr. Sharp gave us growth, uh, two months ago, gave us the growth image for Hamilton County, uh, over the next 10 to 15 years. Uh we had a rough budget season. Uh we have Dr. Mackey sitting here. Uh Dr. Highlander and I have been talking. We're going to try to get a board and commission meeting held at the Harrison Center that uh had been cancelled a few months back. Uh they want hopefully we can do that late September into October with the purpose of becoming uh friends not adversaries. and also uh talk about these growth areas that are needed uh for more projects, new buildings, but what would really be our next bond issue that we would look at in uh three or four years from

098now. So, uh we do have that on the horizon. Olivia Ross is going to put together uh a nice slideshow of all the different things we've already done so that we can take that to the commission and let them see what the capital projects money has been doing, but also the uh phase one and into phase two what everything has been doing. We're going to put it there. Uh a good example, one of the commissioners didn't understand or didn't realize how much money was already being utilized. And uh so we're going to put together a uh a good visual so that they can see what all is being done. But we're going to leave this particular part now. And uh do you want to go first or do you want Miss Mosley to I know

099you we have on here just uh so the commission and school board uh joint venture of opening Tiner Middle high it's after this I I didn't tell me I'm not prepared. Oh but I can't you know I can speak on the cuff. No worries. Say less. Go ahead. So, uh, we'll update the board. Uh, back to the very beginning of the summer, uh, and a couple members of our team met with CNE's, Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise. You don't need know about that group. They build affordable housing all over the city trying to see if we could partner with them to open up um, a number of units that would be specific for uh, our employees. So, we were doing it. What we recognized is that their guidelines and stuff make it really hard for our employees

100because even though we don't pay them enough, most of our teachers make uh more money than would qualify. So, um one in that conversation, one of the things they talked about is what they struggle with is finding land uh to uh make this work and and it's really difficult for them to do that. So what uh we've been talking to them about and we'll come back to uh the board to explore is possible partnership with them u where we would lease land to them. Um they would build units uh they would manage the units, operate the units uh and there's funding for these type of projects uh to where it wouldn't cost the board uh to invest in them but the the rent towards the units would pay for them. you're looking at rent that

101could be below um what is typical in Chattanooga uh aiming for around $1,000 per person. So these are rough numbers maybe 950 for a one-bedroom apartment 1450 for a twobedroom 1950 for a threebedroom. This would be for any employee uh in Hamilton County schools. We talked to the the uh county mayor's office and the city mayor's office about even the possibility of first responders uh down the road being a part of this. Um so what we have talked to them about and we would need to bring back to you guys is looking at West 40th. So West 40 if you haven't been to this property is the old city um school system school board. That's the building in the background that you see there. It kind of sits between Alton Park and um and St.

102Elmo. And we own the land that is around the building. So that that's highlighted kind of in the teal green. Uh we own what what we would need to uh get to kind of explore some due diligence is an initialou agreement for them to start looking at uh financing options and what rent rates might look like. But eventually uh would be putting in and this is a a rough drawing of it units around uh that West 40th pro property which is about 70 units uh initially and then long-term the possibility of renovating that existing building to turn it into um apartments. Again that would be available to our employees. So our cafeteria workers, our educational assistants, teachers, so on and so forth. again, uh, talk to the county mayor, city mayor, possibility of if this

103is successful, we're moving down the road, possibly um, including first responders, police, um, fire department, EMT, so on so forth. So, we bring more information back to uh, this board, but I want to put it in front of you initially uh, just to let you know that we're having these conversations. Uh we have sent uh some paperwork to uh county mayor's office and to uh Scott to review to see if it's a possibility. There are some red tapes, things that we may or may not be able to get through before uh we go obviously too far. I wanted you to be aware of it. Any questions? I I do. So when you say uh cafeteria workers, just anyone other than teachers, I I I looked at the Saturday. I mean at the pricing and I

104know affordable is not affordable for those incomes of of people and trying to make sure so when you all are considering the rent and I don't know if you can can't make landlords do whatever but 30% is the average of a person's income that you try to make sure their rent is not over. Are you all looking at that at what what the what Hamilton County School pays all of its employees and what that 30% would look like of their salary? Yeah. And and it the the rents obviously would be dependent on how much it costs because I mean essentially CE is looking to cover you know the cost of the construction and so it could be a little bit lower. There's also a possibility uh depending on how some of the financing goes of

105where you could set some aside that would be lower than you know the 900 so it would capture you know an educational assistant or something like that. But again when you look at rent rates in Chattanooga uh on average compared to what we're trying to get to uh that those rents are you know are are lower than what what's going on uh in around the city. Miss Black. Um I just had the question of uh 40th Street isn't empty. Like there's the graduation success program. There's McKini Vento. There's our um welcome school uh for newcomers that where we get all the paperwork process and then they they're told which school to go to. Um where are we putting that stuff? No nowhere. Right now that building still stays there. So the initial phase is what

106you kind of see around the outskirts those units um in West 40th still stays there in operational the if it's successful longterm you could look at renovating that into more which then we would have to decide where that goes but the first part is really just putting the the units in and around the property. I just want to kind of be on record for like if we move towards that um the population served by pretty much everything in that building um heavily relies on public transportation. So bringing it out some like out here uh is not going to work. Yeah. Um so I just wanted to put that out there um and make sure I just want to clarify. Thank you. But this looks great. I you know I think having more affordable housing for

107our employees is wonderful. I agree um with Miss Thomas that um we do need to look at the rates and figure out how we can help um our employees who are who are lowest paid and see what we can do to help them. Thank you. And even new teachers, this will help them. Uh Mr. Doy. Yeah, thank you. Uh a really interesting concept and um you know, shame on me for not knowing about it. I guess maybe was spoken about prior to me getting on the board. Um I'm sure Dr. Brown's excited because obviously it's a great opportunity to help with recruiting. Um this area what like in theory what schools are zoned for this area. So this west 40th and and it's not on this idea started of us not giving any land. They

108they already have units across Chattanooga and like Miltown um off of MLK and some other areas that we were just trying to get them to set aside like 20 units. that was going to be impossible for them to do. And so we started talking about this. So it's this is brand new, not anything that um has gone before. So you've got Calvin Donaldson Elementary School that's zoned for here. Uh high school uh different parts of it would either be Howard or some going to uh Lookout Valley Middle School. Yeah. I guess kind of where I'm going at it, and I'm sure you've thought about it. I mean, when I think about quote unquote assets, like I think land's probably one of our biggest assets, particularly when you manage growth. So, you know, I wouldn't want

109us to be in a position where we have something then we use it for something else, albeit something very worthwhile and then 10 years down the road all these schools are at capacity and, you know, market rates are where they are at and you know. Yeah. So when we initially started talking to them and and I'm on the same page with you. So if you see the back part of the property, uh it's leaving space and everything that they would do is kind of on this front end of it. Uh which would allow us that that if that happened, uh we would, you know, we would have space to actually put a school there if we actually needed to. Okay. Thank you, Miss First. Thank you very much for bringing this to to our attention.

110It's I think it was mentioned once before, so I appreciate that. Um I'll just be honest, it's something that you know, unless I'm really convinced otherwise that I just don't think it's within the school's systems um perview to be working on a h housing. I'd rather us give the teachers a raise or siphons for hard to fill areas than invest in this. And you have to worry about billing buildings managing. It just seems like, you know, and what about other government employees, teachers would be getting the benefits over others. Um it's just um unless I'm convinced otherwise strongly. I'm just being honest with my point of view there. Well, I I need to be clear. So, our our investment in this would be leasing the land to CE. CNA CE would be uh in charge

111of building and then also managing uh the property. So it other than us leasing the land, there's no investment from from the board. That's that's all the questions there. All right. Thank you. And our last thing will be uh a to hear from Miss Jones. And uh I know there were four or five of us there, but she's was in uh this process for a couple years with any to the end. So I can leave today now. Thought it'd be fitting that she gave us a good little summary of what all happened. So really quickly, uh thank you Mr. King. Um, really quickly, um, we celebrated the with the with the official ribbon cutting for the new Tiner Middle High Academy located right over here in Tiner, um, in the fabulous District 5. And, um,

112it it was a really momentous occasion. Um, Tiner, like I said, at at the ribbon cutting, is a very resilient community. I um it's grown the way Chattanooga has grown, it's grown right along with it and when you walk into that building um Tiner um Academy is to me just as diverse as as as what Chattanooga is. Um when when you think about what it looks like around there, but it's on the cutting edge. Um I take pride in knowing that Tiner now continues to be a model school here in Hamilton County, but also in the state of Tennessee. And I believe in our region and even across our nation. Um, it shows what blended partnerships look like from county government, city government, partner, uh, stakeholders, philanthropy. I mean, it just shows how everybody comes

113together for community and what it can look like and what can come out of the um, come out of the school. Um, there is a school-based child care site there. So, teachers from um, Tiner Academy and we um, allow we we welcome our Ramly family that's not in five. we should be um up the street. They're able to bring their families um their children as well. So parents are able to work with ease and know their children are being cared for, students, you know, all the uh future readies that are in there. And I'm really excited because they come like our future ready representatives come to everything. So like EPB has been at like everything from groundbreaking to ribbon cutting to football games, uh UTC teaching and learning, just when you think about um all

114all the partnerships there. So just really really exciting times and I just want to take the time here because they are not here and I just really um it's bittersweet because they are away doing great things with the two student leaders that led this work. Kaylee Moore who is a senior at Howard University and Jaylen Sims who is um Jaylen Jaylen's a senior at Vanderbilt. Um y'all be on the lookout for Kaylee and Jaylen because they going they're going to be in the public eye, okay? They're movers and shakers and they're going to be making moves and that class is as well. but just really proud of them and them um being a voice. And I feel like that's what Hamilton County Schools is all about, teaching our kids what the world looks like, what

115society looks like, and how to be an advocate for one another. So, if you have not, well, y'all will be there coming up soon. If you have not been by Yeah, I know Fel and and Jackie, a couple people have been there. Um Joe, um a couple people, but if if you have not been, I would encourage you to go by, but if not, you will see it when we have um fall district meeting there. But it is um stellar. Jod um I she don't think I heard her one day, but I heard her call it the Tina Mahal. And we will take that. We'll take it a million times over because that district and those kids deserve it. And so um that's what I feel like when you go into that building. Uh I

116know we've had a lot of conversation today about facilities, but we when you go into Tiner, um I think all 11 of us will agree that that is what all schools in Hamilton County should strive to be, look like, and provide educational opportunities to children. So, thank you to the county commission. Thank you to county mayor. Thank you to um Dr. Robertson and his team and their leadership. All the previous superintendents who have been on this role with us. Um Johnson, uh Kelly, all of them, everybody that's been on this role with us. Thank you to everyone, the community, um everybody, uh city government, thank you for everybody that made this possible for the children of Hamilton County. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I promise you, you will not

117be disappointed. So stay on the lookout for when they play their first game on the field coming up. When is that? When will that be done? Will that be done before football? Cuz I'm getting a lot of calls about that. They're getting nervous. You are happy. Let's keep that going. And I keep telling them from my understanding, y'all supposed to play a game on that field. We're shooting for um shooting for that before that's over with. But thank you, thank you, thank you all so much. Um because it is truly a dream deferred now realized. And I am very excited to um to see those students get to um to walk in that building. And that's a wrap for our facility meeting. We are now heading into the finance meeting. Yeah. Thanks, Gary. Um, apologize

118everybody for going along, but that's why we get paid the big bucks here. Mr. Mack, here's um here here's my goal though. I'm going to have a hard stop at 8:00 p.m. Just I know everybody's got family, so the reality is we may not get everything in. Uh, I do know we have some guests here. So, I want to prioritize Penny your thing. Um, and before I begin, um, okay, official beginning. I just kind of want to lay out kind of the way I'm thinking about this year, obviously last year was far from ideal. So, in my mind, and talking with Dr. Robertson. I think part of the strategy is to have a lot of these conversations earlier in the year, have a little more conversations around it. Um, so that, you know, we feel

119we're all on the same page going into things when we have to start making some decisions later in the year. Um, and then, you know, candidly from my perspective, and I and I'm I'm confident this is a shared sentiment across the board is, you know, we really need to be in a position this year to prioritize raises and step. Um, so that's in my mind that's something we got to make sure we're trying to keep our eye on and how we build it in as kind of a cornerstone piece. Um, so with that, I'm going to let Penny kick it off. Um, I know we got some special guests here. So, thank you you guys for coming tonight and uh, we'll kick it off, but again, I'm going to try to do a hard stop

120at 8 just out of respect for everybody's time. So, if we don't get anything in everything in tonight, we'll we'll find another time down the road. All right. Thank you. Um, I'd like to introduce uh Brent Wick and Austin Jet from the Baldwin Group. I will say that they have been instrumental in guiding us through all the complex benefit issues and what we need to do in order to become and be sustainable um but still offer the most effective and competitive benefits for our employees. Um, I'll also say that we're fortunate they are also uh the brokers for county government and so we have recently leveraged that with some of our contracts and they're going to talk about that tonight as well. Um, and we are just excited about um informing you of some of

121the changes that we're looking forward to next year and then to let you know that open enrollment does start October 1st and so we will bring to you some decisions in September. Thanks Penny. Just real quick before before you guys go, just to add a little more context to this, the intent with Penny coming in and and bringing the Baldwin group in was health insurance is so complex. Um, I'll be the first to say it's it's I have a decent understanding of it, but it's incredibly complex. The reality is is like when we look at our budget, it's one of our largest single line items and and it's probably our most variable cost component that's at risk, meaning that it's can fluctuate year over year and and with the nature of our business, you know,

122we're our funding is, you know, somewhat confined and since we only have so much revenue, so we've got to back into that. So my point being is this is something that's so critical to us kind of managing as best we can, as best anybody can, health insurance. Um, so that's just so everybody has a little context. I just I wanted us to try to be as on the same page as much as we could. It's a complex system, something we got to try to manage best we can because anytime it goes up that's dollars away from teachers or anything else. So anyway, sorry Penny, go ahead. Great. So I will try to be uh as brief as I can on a pretty complicated you'll see a lot of information in front of you. My goal

123is really to try to give you some key points that I think help with so that when you walk out of here, you have at least some grasp of where things have been from a health plan perspective, directionally where things are headed um and things that are really um going to impact the next really three-year period of time as we look forward. So the first just to level set kind of how's the health plan ran run historically this is looking at cost uh on a per employee basis to say where how has the school uh health plan run compared to national averages using Price Waterhouse Coopers they publish annual trend numbers on a national basis. If you look at where we've been the last uh seven years, the plans actually outperformed the national trend by

1242.3%. If you annualize or if you take that on a cumulative basis, that's $38 million. So, a very significant um difference even though it's a small percentage when you compound that it becomes a major impact. Ultimately, the goal is how do we continue to drive that trend down? um and what's what avenues we have to be able to do that. Um I did want to provide you with just dollars spent historically. So we've actually increased the expense in the health plan by 56% over that same 7-year period. However, we increased the number of people covered by 17% during that same time period. So, I at least wanted you to be able to see the historical total spend. Um, keep in mind this is total cost. So, part of this is paid by employees through their

125payroll deductions and the other part is paid by uh the schools. So, what's represented is actually the total cost. You know, I'll give you a breakdown of the schools versus employee portion as well. Um, the best way this kind of gives you a lot of the same information. And I just didn't want you to have to try to calculate or go find this is just per employee per month cost comparisons historically. This is kind of the way we track things just so you're always looking at things on an apples apples basis. And really this is where you would see total cost have increased from 2019 full year 2019 or fiscal year 2019 33.4%. Um we've actually started to see some of that stabilize. we had a big jump in 22. Um, and then you think

126about time frame, that's when a lot of the resources were implemented as far as on-site clinic, on-site pharmacy. Uh, starting to see those trends improve since that time. If we look at it from a standpoint of what has been spent uh for 25, what was the actual budget amount? What what was the actual result? So the budget um in total was $84 million looking at u 25 and the actual expense was 86.3 million. So we were 2.3 million above um the ex the act the actual was 2.3 million above uh the budget amount. Um and you'll see in the light blue uh in the graph that is actually the full year 26 budget uh the 91 almost 6 million. Keep in mind that budget number does assume a lot of the action items that have

127already been presented one you all had recently passed with the PBM change that savings is already included uh as well as the ones that are we'll review at the end. So just want to make sure that that's already included in that projected change. Uh the pharmacy benefit management company. So that was the RFP that was Yeah. I think two weeks ago. It was last week. Okay. Was approved. The um other in the center of this page you see is the actual Hamilton County Department of Education cost. So that's what the schools are actually paying towards the insurance. Um and that on the far right are the employee cost. Um so the schools are actually paying 78.3% of the of the total costs of the health plan currently. How that translates um from a internal service

128fund perspective. So the end result was 1334,000 surplus. that oh 160 I'm sorry yeah that was um you may have to chime in the uh so the the big thing key points we had the $2.3 million deficit on the health plan there was actually a surplus on the dental cost perspective of 1.2 2 million when you take there's other insuranceances and coverages my understanding in internal service fund that also had a surplus of $229,000 and then an additional contribution from GP into the internal service fund which of a million dollars which is what the net result is the 160. So real quick just just so the board's on the same page keep me on super but we basically have two fun two fund balances right we've got a regular GP fund balance we've got I

129don't know 29 something million then we've got health insurance fund balance right in in your experience what what's the what do you what should what's a healthy amount in there three three months worth of Yeah so you would definitely want to have some established uh portion from a percentage three months would be um a good number. I see those actually vary. I've worked with a lot of public sector and have my entire career across the state including the state. Um and and so you see a lot of variation um and and even if you look in the community you'll see pretty big fluctuation but having at least if you think about it in terms of one to two months um just because of the eb and flow and I think maybe it helpful to uh

130just to remind everybody that the health plan is self-insured right so the schools are actually funding claims as they come through we do have some insurance to protect on claims they're significant in size over 425,000, but everything else is paid by the comes right through the bank account and funded. Well, that's obviously going to fluctuate year-over-year. Um, and so having that allows to kind of manage that eb and flow some if need be. So, right now we don't have enough in there for but historically at one point in time we did. Yeah, we did. Yeah, we had built up I think it was 21 around 57 million and Yeah. Yeah. And because we basically didn't push open enough, we we used it for a while. We started clinic and then co hit. I mean, there

131was a lot of timing differences and not raising premiums for 10 years. So, you know, we opted not to put more in and then we've been slowly over the years charging all of GP and all of our funds for what we're contributing. Uh but trying to get that that right balance. So, we've you again when we make that decision is kind of 18 months ahead of what it actually starts impacting. And again, the changes we've been talking about, you know, that'll start in January, but it takes a while to kind of turn the ship on on to do that. So, we've we've stopped the bleeding, so we're, you know, we put in an extra million um after we did a mid-year assessment this year. Um, and so that's going to get us, you know, positive

132at the end of the year. uh we feel like the changes we did in our budget, the 26 budget where we approved um an increase considering the cost savings, we feel like that'll keep us, you know, adding a little bit, but that's why we got to you can't just take those savings to decrease it because there's just there's no cushion to do that. So, we hope to get it up and that's what we got to kind of decide is what's what's the right number of, you know, keeping a balance to let us uh manage those flows. Right now, it's 300. It's 167 or 375. projected at the end. My reason I Yeah, one heart. But to Marion's point, I mean, not raising premiums for 10 to 10 years, I mean, it was really the only

133way to keep up with it. So, it just it just overemphasizes the complexity of the system while trying to maintain healthy insurance and as you guys can see how expensive it is. So, anyway, So one other component um and this is impacts the um internal service fund. I think Mary Ellen made this adjustment is made annually for incurred but not reported. So if the health plan were to stop um at the end of June, there's still claims that have to be paid from all the doctor's visits, hospital visits, all those things that happen. And so this is the liability that needs to be maintained to cover those costs should the health plan end. Um and so it's right at $6.9 million. And so we update that um really annually at minimum and then we provide

134it uh at any point as needed throughout the year. So the going a little deeper into costs and there's a lot of information here and I won't bore you with a couple of things I want to point out. So the fixed cost here at the top of this is you'll see in the gray boxes that is the actual cost to administer the health plan. So we pay Blue Cross um and Sigma to administer pay claims, answer the telephone, those things. Uh we also that is the cost to where we purchase reinsurance um to cover our large claim protection. So that cost has trended at 3.7% uh over the past six years. Um, if you look right below that, that's our pharmacy claims. And I I stress claims because that does not include the rebates we

135get back from manufacturers. Uh, that's part of the pharmacy benefit management uh, bid that was done. And one of the key components that comes in are those rebates. Um, when you factor those in, we've actually done pretty well with pharmacy cost um, as far as nearly a flat trend the last three years. uh really ties into um the expansion and I'll show demonstrate that with the on-site pharmacy. Um so we'll talk about that but also just to give you an idea 72% of our population is enrolled in Sigma. Um I also included the cost broke down broken down by Sigma and Blue Cross. I just want to be care be cautious with that as you look at the difference the because there's such a big disparity in populations enrolled in both the actual cost of

136those plans is not indicative of what the cost is in general. So if we move everybody from one to the other that's not what the actual cost would be. It's the fact that the blue cross population is smaller also happens to be a lot of the retirees that live out out of the area those types of things. So just be mindful of that. So what you're saying is if I know Penny, you you guys we talked about this. If we consolidate right now there's two options. You got Signal Blue Cross Blue Shield, right? And on paper you could say okay we can consolidate to one carrier maximize you know leverage that volume drive down cost in theory right but what you're saying is that due to the differences with Blue Cross Blue Shield with some

137of the retirees if you were to put them on a Sigma account that cost probably be higher than Blue Cross Blue Shield. Is that what you're saying? So it actually it they would be very very close. So when we do like in the last bid we do unit cost analysis to determine like so what does it cost to go to the hospital if you're with Sigma what's it cost under blue cross and those analysis the cost are very very similar so there's not a big advantage the real leverage becomes just the administrative cost uh which is a very small part I mean we're paying 40ome dollars per employee per month so you there's not big savings uh to be gained the big savings is what you just approved was consolidating the pharmacy benefit management company

138and leveraging the whole population. That was the opportunity where you really had significant savings. If I can I'm going to jump in with one just a little tidbit from kind of I look at it a little bit differently just the timing of when it hits. Um but you know we really pushed participation in the pharmacy and the clinics and that that you know would tip and it did. So we look at 23 like the net cost of the pharmacy and the clinics less the rebates was like 5.5 million. It grew in 24 to 7.5. It's now 4.2 million. So it actually net costs us less because we've gotten so much participation in the pharmacy. So that was when we originally started that was the plan, but co sort of put us behind and getting the

139benefits from having the pharmacy and clinic. But now we've seen that it's it is really you and then you also consider the net cost of the services that we're getting within within those versus straight through the claim. So, it's it's it's gotten there and you know, I think the again work we've done to get participation up in using the pharmacy and the clinics has really helped and and just so everybody know the rationale behind encouraging employees to utilize our own clinics is we are able to better mitigate cost prescriptions, right? That's that's the main one. Okay. And some wellness perspective. Yeah. And I I'll actually review kind of we track and kind of the performance of the on-site pharmacy. We also track the the performance of the on-site clinic. So, I can give you financial

140numbers. uh behind that as well like of the actual performance. Um so large claims I mentioned uh earlier buying reinsurance um that we have insurance to cover any claim claimment that has claims in excess of $425,000 in a single year which seems like a really big number. Um and uh but if you uh have in front of you the the actual page nine the large claim report you'll see in um fiscal year uh 24 we actually had a claimment at $3.2 million in 12 months. That is not uncommon. The largest I've seen over the last few years is about 12 million. Um and so to manage that we if that we didn't have reinsurance think about what that would have done that one claim it how much impact it has on a bud a budget.

141So we have we have that protection to keep that from really um impacting the budget. But I think the other key thing that's important here is just how much large claims have grown. So this is one of the fastest areas that have expanded in healthcare ever since healthcare reform. uh we've seen significant increase in cost of high dollar claimments. Um so in 20 if we look at it in 22 12% of the cost came from people with claims of $100,000 or more in the year. If we compare that to this this past year claimments that had $100,000 or more represented 22.4% of our cost. Um so significant increase that also is impacting the cost of reinsurance. um and and we will continue to see um pretty significant cost pressures. I'll highlight the actual trend. The

142financial impact of inflation itself is now really starting to come through in healthcare. Um and I'll highlight that. But reinsurance is one of the specific areas you'll see that come through. What do we what do we what do we pay reinsurance right now? So the reinsurance cost uh on a per employee uh basis is right at $40 per employee per month. So annually roughly 2 um 2.4 2.5 million. And one point you're saying is any every time we have higher claims that insurance cost goes up. Yeah. As well, right? Okay. Thank you. Yeah. and and the the hard part and that's we try to manage kind of our actuary and underwriting team does a constant every year we look at what's the optimal pooling point the the threshold to buy insurance based on historical and

143what we see going forward uh that's why you see the big change from 375 to 425 obviously that lowers premium but we take more risk and actually it's going to work out well because we'll get a refund uh from from the stop loss this this coming year based on the financial performance. So a lot of moving parts there. So kind of switch gears a little bit to uh looking at just some general things about the health plan and and specific cost drivers areas that we pay a lot of attention to. And this you know this could be 50 pages. Um, so I in a lot of ways we won't do it justice, but at least hopefully give you some information to to walk away with. Thought it just helpful to see who who we cover,

144who's under covered under the health plan. So there's 5,000 uh in the last 12 months, we had 5,188 employees on average covered, 4,000 children, 1,039 spouses. Uh, so 10,230 total average covered members. Um, the risk scores that are listed below that. So, one would be kind of your if you assume one's your norm, obviously below one is a favorable risk score. Above one is a is an unfavorable risk score. Um don't be alarmed when you see 1.61. Those aren't terrible numbers. Um we get real concerned when you start seeing fives, tens, twelves, and 18s. Um as people progress usually in some for disease state. Um but the key in that is we track all the members within the whole plan are tracked with risk scores. We a and that's all aggregated. Obviously we're we're looking

145at everything on an aggregate basis of the population. Um you see that spouses and employees are the same. I'm going to give you some financial data that goes with that. Actually spouses do cost more. So um there is an impact even though the risk score uh is the same. The other thing by tracking the risk scores and and being able to look at it by populations um and and looking at those that utilize the clinic, we can actually see that those members that have been using the on-site clinic, their risk scores have actually decreased over the last two years. Um and decreased risk score correlates directly to decreased cost. Um so some good results, but just a a big picture kind of perspective. switch gears to where the dollars actually go. Um, this doesn't tell

146us a lot except a lot of people like to know where's the actual money uh go. And if you look at inpatient services, outpatient is the fastest growing on the hospital side. Most things moving. Many of us probably experienced go from inpatient go to outpatient services. Um, the one key uh that I do want to point out and this highlights the need uh for the action that was taken on the pharmacy benefit management uh RFP is the one area we're really out of line is pharmacy cost. Um literally double what we would expect from a benchmark standpoint. Even though we've trended well, we're still paying a lot. Um there's some reason behind that I that I want to show you, but it does uh kind of support the need to look for the best and

147most efficient way we can purchase uh and and drive cost on the pharmacy side of the equation. And to clarify, this is all pharmacy plans, not just right. Yeah, that is looking at every everything that was every prescription from the on-site as well as the retail or mail order. So here's the the big one of the things to that correlates with the pharmacy cost. And so first, if we look at the total health plan as a whole, that the pie chart on the left there. So if you look at this, from every dollar of claims that that happen, employees are paying only five cents of that dollar, the health plan picks up 95 cents of every dollar. So that's looking at whether you went to the doctor, hospital, pharmacy, all combined. If we break that

148down though and look just at pharmacy, employees are paying less than three cents of every dollar when they pick up their prescriptions. And so the plan itself is an extremely rich benefit. So when we compare the cost in pharmacy and the fact that we're double benchmark, well our benefits are exponentially richer than what you would see from a a benchmark as well. And that correlates to costs in and is always going to mean we're higher just because it more is picked up by the plan versus the employee paying a higher percentage. to give you kind of a comparison the benchmark. So total plan the school's plan's paying 95 cents of every dollar. Benchmarking that would be closer to 88 cents of every dollar. Um the state plan is actually close to the 88% if you

149take obviously they have multiple plans and you try to you extract that. So just a very rich benefit al has an impact to cost. the um we talked about large claims and I'm just going to there's a lot of information here to keep it really simple. So just to give you an idea how fluctuation happens this is really maybe a key point to the idea of having funds a fund balance and different things because the fluctuation does happen. So last year we had 110 uh large claims over 100,000 prior that's 13 more than the prior year. But when you factor in the size of those large ca claims the amount we got back from the reinsurance policy the net impact. So we actually had lower claims in total paid but it cost the health plan

1502.1 million more. think about our miss the budget's 2.3 and this this alone actually makes up the the difference in what budget was. So it just large claims have a really big impact in in fluctuation and that's what we try to to price for. Also it's accounted for in the budget number that we referenced the 90 um um 91.6 million number we talked about earlier. It's just trying to make sure we have some margin there. couple of key two other key uh cost drivers. So, when we talk about chronic conditions, these are things we're constantly tracking. We have a uh nurses on staff here in our Chattanooga office um that work with us uh actually work with onetoone making sure they have good information and helping them uh identify opportunities to be more effective. Um,

151but chronic conditions drive a significant amount of the cost of the health plan. So, in essence, we're over 70% of the spend comes from members that have at least one chronic condition. Um, so the impact of that, if you think, I've got the average member cost is $8,400 there, but someone with at least one chronic condition is at least double that number and as much as three times that number. Um, the key when you think about the importance of like the wellness plan that was launched, the access to on-site services through the clinic, uh, the pharmacy, the key for folks that have chronic conditions is how do you give them access and resources to manage their condition? Uh, how do you make sure they're compliant taking their medications um, and regularly? They obviously they can

152there should be shouldn't be a cost issue because of the the plan, but that can happen. And so how do you uh take away those barriers and access to care? But those resources are critical and just get making sure to manage this uh population which has twofold. It's going to give allow them to live a much healthier life but it's also going to impact the plan financially. And so really important aspect when you think uh just in two 17% of the population has hypertension diagnosis 7 and a half% diabetic almost 6% pre-diabetic and those are significant uh lifestyle impacts and so how can we alter that last mentioned spouses uh have a significant cost so they're currently costing 21% more than an employee and so As we look at contribution strategies, this is always something

153that that we look at is just what's where does the cost actually come from. Um, more importantly, here I want to point out the unit cost trend. So, I talked about what's happening. So, our analytics can look we look at it and say for the same services, what do we pay this year versus the prior 12 months? That unit cost, which is just inflation, represented $5.8 million in additional cost. And so you think about you look at the historical cost increases like this is what we have to offset. So as we look at ways we can drive save money decrease cost we're starting with a an inflated starting point because we have to cover the increase that happened year-over-year. Um key thing here is to understand this is not we are seeing trends continue. This

154isn't going to stop healthc care inflation actually lags normal inflation because you have long-term health care contracts. Um all those are start are now coming up from what we've seen over the last the inflation that happened over the last three to five years. And so now you're seeing I mean you see a lot of it play out publicly with the uh hospitals terming contracts and trying to renegotiate. Um just about every major insurance company in the state's been through multiple battles at this point. Um but that's going to continue. So that puts a lot of pressure on the cost of the health plan. So So why do spouses cost more than employees? So I would say not uncommon from what we would see across the board. Um especially in the public sector, but even in

155the private sector, you will see it uh commonly. Um, a lot of times that can just be not so it's not in all cases, but when you're looking at averages, so you may have spouses that aren't a able to work. Um, especially with the incentives that have been in place, a lot of times they they don't have insurance elsewhere elsewhere. Pardon me. I I hate to interrupt, but I've had someone someone say that you're not close enough to the speaker for those online. Is that better? Yes. Sorry. Raise up a bit. the um yeah, so it's a it it's really kind of a ma a nature of just the spouses that are covered. So uh people that are working have access to other coverage um are typically probably taking it especially with how the contributions

156are set up for the schools that would would be the case. So more than likely you have your older spouses potentially that are don't have other coverage um maybe early retiree from somewhere else. Um, so you just have a a more expensive demographic that you're actually insuring. But it does I mean it's consistent like we see that all the time. It's I would say it's one of the top three conversations we have with clients is just their strategy and in trying to handle spouse cost. Thank you. We got one question from Mrs. Jones. Not really a question. I wanted to kind of support what he was saying. So, um, back in the day when I in 2014 when I first got here, the district had a what what everybody was calling the Cadillac plan. Like,

157you probably would have passed out being if you saw it. I mean, it was very much all things Cadillac. Well, I'm just No, I'm saying like it was a very like people was wanting to work at Hamilton County Schools because of the benefits. It was very rich in benefit. So like you could have been make not making a lot in salary but your fringe was clearly superseded mean it was helping you to be here. And so um the boards that we sat on throughout the years as we've looked at insurance we've gotten it down to here which is why when you look at the sustaining of the not increasing the premium even when we did have to increase the premium. We talked about it. You remember a few years ago when we talked about Penny

158was here. Now, some of y'all be here with me. I ain't the only one old over here. But when we talked about that, it was it was a whole big conversation. But I do remember when we took out spouses um unless they had if we I remember us removing them from the pol um from being able to seek benefits if their employer provided benefits because of the amount of money. Yeah. We were spending. We still do that, right? And so I just wanted to share that being like although this may seem a certain way in a number for you, it was drastically more, right? We still do that and they are required to complete that affidavit. So yes, but they can cover them. It's at a search charge currently. So yes, good perspective, Kita. Thank

159you. Uh we've got another question from uh Gary. I was just curious. Uh who so one thing that my wife and I talked about that could possibly lower things is how they police office visits. Uh I went through I'm probably actually your top one of your top things this year. Uh but uh every time I had something wrong, I had to go back to my general doctor for him to make a recommendation to go see one of the specialists. I went to four different specialists for four different health related things. A and some of them were related. They were all in the same hospital association. Why can a heart doctor not make a recommendation to go see the lung doctor or to the uh kidney doctor or to the oncologist? I mean, every time I

160had to go to a worthless visit, in my opinion, and they charged insurance for that visit, and then I turned around and went to the same person that those doctors told me would be good to go see, but they could not make the recommendation. Yeah. I think so. What you get at is really the inefficiencies that are built into our system. So if you look at big picture, we have a great health care system. I mean there the the technology, the resources, the care that you can get. Um I actually personally my parents live with me. So my wife and I kind of my wife's a nurse practitioner. Uh we help them navigate the system. If it wasn't for my wife, I don't know how they either one would make it because it's very complicated.

161You get in those circles just like you're describing. I mean that's what our older adults are faced with on a regular basis. all of us are probably faced with at one point in time. I think that's the big key when you think about the things that you all have supported as a board for employees through the on-site clinic um text care that's done because those are just resources that help people try to navigate that and and at least have a place you can go. Um and it's very difficult but it's the efficiency within the system is a big part of cost and there's not a simple way to take take it out because that's the pattern of care who polices that so at this point so HMOs used to I mean the true HMO from

162the 19 late 80s 90s uh time frame um as the backlash kind of took place of of a true HMO world where you had to have the gatekeeper and all um insurance companies were looking at that. Now it's as far as access to physicians whether you go through your primary care or not. A lot of times it's just the specialist will have those policies that they they don't just take an open referral like you can't just call and come. They want to know you need to come see them. So that's where it gets complicated. Right. Thank you. We got one last question. U Mr. Schlater from district one. Okay. Um, as somebody who was in the insurance business for 34 years, we were always concerned with cost per claim. Have you got that information like

163from 2020 when we started with COVID to now the cost per claim? So, not in in total. I I would typically we we're not looking at at cost per claim just because you'd have it you have to get down to what every service like a cost per claim based on service because CPT code dictates you know even though it's same doctor same process depending on the complexity of that office visit there's going to be potentially 10 different CPT codes that that are to us I'd like to see that well I can show it to you on on aggregate I mean I can give you the per claim just a pure claim number. We can definitely poll what that looks like. It um it it'll be pretty broad. I don't know if it it gives a

164lot of insight, but we can absolutely get it. Yeah, it I'm sorry. It it' give me a good idea because I'm looking at from COVID to now that cost per claim I I would bet has gone up significantly since 2020. Yeah. I think from a a an inflation standpoint if we're if we are looking at same procedures I mean there those costs are anywhere from 12 to probably 18% higher uh from if we look postcoid covid but that number is growing quickly because of what's happening in the increases for reimbursements to the hospitals physicians that are taking place now so you would see even greater uh over the next 12 months of what that total is but we can definitely provide multiple things and just let us know if you'd like to see it different

165we can pull it. So just a couple things and I know we're we're pushing time so I'm going to skip a couple of things but just at least touch a couple of highlights. I mentioned we do track the pharmacy performance just high level 39 if you look at cost of 30-day script coming through on-site versus retail it's 39% less so there's a reason to use the pharmacy good statistics around the use of the pharmacy same with if we look at the on-site clinic and I'm going to skip a couple here and just go to the financial so the summary of this is really easy if you close the on-site clinic the health plan goes up by $640,000 a year and you're the employees pay another $431,000 in additional co-pays. So the both are being very

166effective in helping control cost and creating a platform to to make changes um that can last have a a long-term impact when it comes to trend. There are a couple of the historical plan information we gave you. So I'm not going to spend time going over that. But the key thing that is important for y'all to see are the opportunities the saving opportunities that are um included in the budget process. So we already the PE the pharmacy benefit management RP has already been approved. So that's already listed. The summation of these um Mary Ellen talked about the budget cycle. So for full year 26, all these changes represent an impact to the budget of 3.57 million. Even though the annualized savings is 8.3 because not all these things will go into place right away. Some

167of the contributions are January benefit changes have a lag claims. So claims don't represent those benefit changes for several months down the road. So trying to take into account what the real impact is from a budget standpoint. So, I just want to review some of these with you so you have them. Um, if you look at the benefit changes, so this is an annual savings of 1.3 million gives you what is changing to the P to the Sigma plan as well as the Blue Cross plan. I just think the key thing here to point out is so I mentioned 95 cents of every dollar is paid by the insurance. Uh, currently you make once all these changes are made, the insurance plan still pays 93.6 6% of all claims. So benchmark was 88. So you're

168you're still have an extremely rich benefit um compared to uh what you would benchmark against as well as even the state. We have a quick question from uh Mr. Connor. Sorry, just about the pharmacies. Would it be good for us, we have the two correct here and access road. Would it be good for us to open like one or two more of those to try to Can you tell where people are getting prescriptions from elsewhere? Like is there probably down in Jod's district, they're probably not driving all the way up here cuz I know just driving here this afternoon. It's really hard to get here. Um and I've also driven past my pharmacy twice coming here and not picked up my stupid prescriptions. Uh but would it be better for us to have one at

169a site to to save costs too? Open more I guess. Yeah. So potentially it's just the expense of opening another one you start eating into your actual savings. So you end up with a net cost if you're not careful. Um one of the things that we talked about so it's Hamilton County government actually uses the same on-site pharmacy company. They have a pharmacy downtown. So, one of the things that we've already had initial discussions between both the the u folks with Penny's team uh from the schools as well as Hamilton County government's administrative team uh is can we leverage those two contracts? So, not only the pharmacy but the on-site clinics. It would also be huge because another cost is is restocking because I've had three different prescriptions called in to Hamilton County instead of

170Hamilton County schools uh over the course of just the last year. Um, okay. Well, that would be really awesome. We also have mail order. So, right, that is totally free to do you know also if we could incur any cost savings if we allowed like the spouses that are on a different plan to use our pharmacy. Would that be better for us? Would we be able to make money off of that? Yeah. So, it's actually it gets kind of complicated because of how the pharmacy actually the claims work. So, they actually contract with all the PBM. So like the new pharmacy benefit management company that was just approved, they'll actually contract with the network and all, but it's isolated to the schools. So when the claim comes in, it won't recognize other insurance, which means

171you'd be pay buying a turn a buck. Just looking at a turn a buck. Yeah. Um the retire just I'm going to kind of go through these. Stop me if you have questions as to go through, but retiree contributions. So big picture retiree the cost is nearly $8.7 million to cover retirees. That's $26,55 a year um per retiree. They're currently paying 1.14 million. If we look at what the contracted rate what they should be paying so their their contributions hadn't changed the same period the activives weren't changing. Um they should be paying 1.85. So the recommendation and and proposed is to increase that to 1.54 million which would be a cost reduction of $400,000. It's still starting to move them to what the actual contract rate is but trying to make it a little more

172palatable. Um those changes are included in your packet. I'm not going to go through the details. It's a lot of small numbers but I did want to make sure you had that information so you could see the impact. um the employee contributions. So, this is looking at the changes. So, back when this was presented, the the it was outlined to have a $25 per employee per month increase to employee cost. This is kind of the breakout of what that looks like. Obviously, it's not equal for those that cover more than just themselves. If you're covering your family, you're going to pick up more portion of that. So you can see on the far right, this is the increase per covered person based on the tier they select, the plan design or the benefit that they

173select. Um, and that's the monthly increase on the far right. We do have a question from Jill Black. I wanted to go back to the retiree contribution. Um, so do are our retirey costs primarily supplemental plans for Medicare, replacement plans, part C? No. So coverage actually ends at Medicare. So these are all premedare. So it's full coverage. Everybody between retirement age and 65. Correct. Great. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. All right. The the next item is the um dental contribution. And so we've had a strategy in place now for multiple years to um move dental to a voluntary benefit where employees would pay for that if they want it. Um Hamilton County government's plan has been voluntary actually for quite some time. Um there's a pretty consistent move both public sector, private sector to offer dental

174on more voluntary driven mainly by the increase in cost in healthcare. This is the next phase in that. You can see the impact per pay difference. This is on a 26 pay period basis. Um the schools would still be paying part of the premium but it's just making another step towards that contribution. Two other things. One is provider um steerage. So we have an opportunity with members that are in Sigma um to use freestanding pro uh high-tech imaging. So CT scans, MRIs, PET scans. Currently employees if they're covered under Sigma pay $100 co-pay. So, this opportunity would allow the member not to have to pay the co-pay. So, it saves all the employees, their family members money. Um, but it also represents an opportunity to decrease the school's cost for each of those scans by

175as much as 70%. So, the total of that opportunity is $250,000 in additional savings. Um, this is it's a matter of how Sigma contracts and funds that. It's a kind of a fixed expense that's built into the the claim side of the contract. And so this is a way we we uh can really actually give the employee a benefit, reduce their cost, and actually save money for the schools as well. Behavioral health is a an opportunity again that's really funded by those members that are covered by Sigma. So this is an opportunity to save another $350,000. uh one to one currently is providing behavioral health visits um in the on-site clinics and those contract those providers are now going to be contracted through Sigma. Sigma has for a long uh period of time with the

176schools uh predating us uh provided behavioral health on a fixed cost basis. And so because of that and now we're adding those clinicians to the Sigma network, we're actually going to get reimbursed for that cost. right now that's all built into the cost of the clinic and so that reimbursement now is about $350,000 based on the volume of visits. Um so just an opportunity I think not only the key here is this is a big cost impact obviously but it's equally as important as members still have access because in in our community it is not easy to get into with a behavioral health clinician. You can be waiting for three to six months um if they will take you um unless you pay cash right. So by providing this to the employees through the clinic,

177it's a significant impact to their lives uh and a great benefit. Last item we talked about and we already talked about negotiating kind of what we can do on the clinics and pharmacies leveraging the schools and the county. We actually already did this with Sigma and this was just kind of sitting down and walking through what the opportunity is because Sigma obviously has a lot of membership between the schools and the county. Um, by doing that, the net was a $437,000 savings. Some of that's fixed cost, some of that's claims. Um, $87,000 of that was represented by just them waving one month's fee um that we pay them. That's the administrative fee. Uh they also provided a dedicated case manager. Typically, they would they that's a $100,000 cost. Um we don't have to pay that

178$100,000. Uh this dollars there, the savings are what we expect to save in claims. that's just providing more access to people that are really ill, going through cancer, different kinds of significant health crisis. They now have a there's a dedicated resource to all the Hamilton County School employees. Um, so a great uh opportunity and then we also were able to get an enhanced level of service. So when employees are calling customer service with Sigma, they're now going to have a different service model. um that model focuses more on touching uh the member looking for gaps in care. They haven't been they've missed medications, those types of things. Um so an opportunity really just for a more experienced service team u that they're contacting and trying to help them facilitate gaps in their healthcare as well.

179And that was uh that's already something that they've agreed to and and will be implemented um and recognize those savings. Last item was the life and disability. So we did we've already made an extension to that based on the county having Symmetra as well as the schools. Um and and so the opportunity then and we still need to work through that process because obviously there's multiple moving parts, but how can we leverage that relationship when it's time to look at those coverages in a another be about 15 months when that contract ends? Any any questions? I know we're pushing. Yeah, I didn't know about this free YMCA thing. Who can talk to me about that? So, um, gentlemen, thank you guys for coming. I know we're leaning on you guys a lot for for guidance

180and wisdom because this is incredibly complex. I I I really do want to take a moment and thank Penny and Mary Ellen for their work. I know Justin will agree with me on this. Um, Penny in particular has really taken this on and um, you know, was trying to get a hold of it because it it does represent such a risk to the overall budget. Um, so, thank you guys both for coming on on a on a Monday. Last thing real quick, Marielle will get mad at me. Um, but I do just want to allow her to provide just a quick update and then we will adjourn after that. Yeah. So, we're not going to go into this real quick, but I did kind of want to kind of show some of the other slides

181that we've got just so you have some context around them. Um, the next thing after the presentation is kind of a snapshot of FY25 today. There's we still got some big numbers outstanding. So, this this couldn't be could move some. Um, I mean the good news, we originally thinking our deficit at the end of the year, you said fund balance would be around 12 million. We're around seven right now. Again, there's still some outstanding numbers, but but that puts us in a better place than we were kind of projecting when we were looking at our healthcare costs. Um, you know, part of that was we talked about we put a million in. We thought we'd put in more than that. So, yeah, we'll we'll do an update on this as we get numbers finalized, but

182we did want to kind of give you the general area of where we are. Um, and I know there's some other information. Enrollments in here from Shannon. Um, the very last page I do want to call your attention to is kind of a quick high level of the 27 budget process, some of the key items. Um, so obviously benefits will go into that looking at all our other factors, but just kind of wanted to give context that this is not final numbers on the 25. We will and it could, you know, still be off a few million here or there based on because property tax might still don't have the final June sales tax. So, there's still movement in there, but we're in the the ballpark. Better than we expected. Um, but you know, let's

183keep let's keep it up. We're getting there. So, thank you. Wonderful. Thank you for the update. Thank Thank you board members for all coming tonight. Um, this is going to be a recurring conversation, so obviously keep this packet and um appreciate everybody coming this evening. Thank you. Earlier, I thought