May 12th, 2026 Budget Workshop

001go ahead and call tonight's uh study session for Summer County School Board uh to order. Uh before we do, uh we'll stand for a moment of silence followed by a pledge to our flag. Feel free to join us if you like. Pledge allegiance >> to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. you start with. >> All right. I called to order tonight's budget workshop May 12, 2026. Um, as I told the team, we've only got two items on the agenda, so it should be pretty quick tonight. >> That sound great. All right. Uh, no, we've got two items focused on budget. The first one is road construction, student support, preK updates. Uh, the second one

002is presentation, discussion of 2627 budget. So, uh, uh, we're waiting for director. As soon as he walks in, we will get started. Um, in the interim, Wade, you got any funny stories you want to share with us? >> Yeah, it is. Goofy. >> Oh, man. >> Uh, well, I will say this. Uh, just so just so you know, chairman, um, I will be late to the meeting next week. My daughter's preschool graduation is at 6:30 next Tuesday. So, uh, like I said before, we'll make sure that's a priority. I'll be there for that and then I'll come straight here. But I just want that on record like we'll be we'll be late to >> perfect directors here. Thanks for filling time for us. Appreciate it. Perfect timing. That's way to work. So, uh, >> Dr.

003Lford, we are ready to go. >> All right. Thank y'all. >> We are literally working to the last second on everything. So, lots of um exciting stuff to work through and as always um you know, budget is both exceptional and challenging. Um and so we'll just go ahead and jump in and get started. So, uh one of the things you know, as we talked about last month, um trying to work through what's best for students, keeping that in the forefront of everything, and then also looking at what's going on. You know, we know that we have a growing community. Uh we've done a good job all the way back to 2015 when we did the first run of bond money where we added on to schools, renovated schools, updated schools, and that really uh built

004uh completed Buris Elementary. Um added additions at Gallatin and Hendersonville, uh renovated Beach High School, White House High School, almost every elementary school in the county, across the county in some way capacity. and that really serve us well for growth. Uh but you know, we've continued to grow and so we've got to look at a couple things and uh start to have a serious conversation uh about how we do that to move forward. So uh first off, me a huge shout out to uh Mr. Johnson. He's done an outstanding job of pulling everything together uh managing four or five different uh proprietary systems that don't always like to communicate with each other uh between transportation, Google maps and everything else in our IT department's also been very helpful along with every other department up here

005from uh Miss Daniel with special education to um uh Miss Brown and her team with finance to try to uh pull everything together and and think through this. So, want to just go ahead and and start the conversation, then have plenty of time for any questions you would have. There we go. Okay. Uh, Beth Page Elementary Reszone. This one is pretty quick and easy. It does not affect It's not easy, but it's just it's um it doesn't affect a tremendous number of families and it's something that's kind of always been hanging out there. I know talking to uh former principal at talking to Dr. Hallelman. Uh it's something that he'd wondered the whole time he was at Schaefer why this hadn't happened a long time ago. So what we're talking about is beginning with the

00626 27th school year. All Beth Page Elementary students will attend West Morland Middle School and West Morland High School. All former Beth Page students currently enrolled at Schaefer Middle School and Gallatton High School may remain if they provide transportation. Rising sixth grade students may attend Schaefer and rising freshmen may attend Gallatin if parents provide transportation. We are basically running a bus uh to the southern part of Beth Page then all the way back into Gallatton for a handful it's about 11 kids 10 or 11 kids. So you know we're constricted if you see this allows best paid students to remain with their peers for middle and high schools. Out of 44 rising sixth graders last year nine were zoned for Schaefer and four of those students requested to attend West Morland Middle Zone. This year,

00711 of 31 rising sixth graders are zoned to Schaefer. Um, and it consolidates bus routes in the Beth Page area and reduces the number of bus routes for Gallatin. Uh, we have, you know, one of the problems we have in Gallatin is that's the uh cluster where we have the longest bus wait time. So, it helps lift a little bit of the burden off Gallatin. And I suspect that more kids would probably go to West Morland if transportation were an option instead of to Schaefer and Gallatin. Um but you know as as the slides say any kid that wants to continue to go to G because there are some kids that live in the southern part of Beth Page some families live in southern part of Beth Page that um work in Gallatton and they'd

008like their kids to stay in Gallatton. That's fine. We can do that through our regular out of zone. I would approve all those out of zones. Um that wouldn't be a problem. So do you have any questions about Beth Page? >> What about somebody asked what about siblings? Like say if they have a sibling already or coming up, would you allow the siblings also to go to Schaefer if they're they already had a kid going to shape? >> Yeah. As long as they're pride transportation that it's not a problem at all. >> Yeah. >> Even if the school was full, just say Schaer's. >> Yeah. That I think they would if if they've got like if they've got a kid at Beth Page that's in fifth grade going into sixth grade, we'd let them go

009ahead on. Yeah, that's not a problem. It would just be the transportation question. You mentioned the numbers about the elementary schools. Do you know how many I mean how many Schaefer middle school eighth graders might be reszoned to >> West Morland High School? >> Do you have that number, Jeremy? >> The number that I have is who's on the bus, which is 10 total. So we've got three. So there are 10 total that ride that bus route. Seven of them go to Gton High School and three of them are at Schaefer. >> Okay. So 13 that would be high school. >> Yeah. High school, middle school, >> assuming that they're not seniors. >> Yes. >> Gotcha. Um, and just for clarity, because I know somebody will ask this in regards to I know the TWSAA

010has um the new transfer rule >> um that >> depending on how that that's rolled out, but um when a student is resona thing, not to go too far that we'll have to have a separate meeting. It's going to take us a while to untangle all the one transfer. Right now, we are a closed county, which means that we don't have to change anything about what we're doing in terms of eligibility. We're to think long and hard, multiple meetings about how to handle one transfer because the moment that we start going down the one transfer route, it's going to it's going to be like what you see in college sports. Um, so because we're closed, we don't take out of counties right now. um you know, we've got a little bit of of control over

011what happens internally. We have to really think through because to me, the last thing that we want is to create a system where we're making our high schools adversarial with each other. >> Uh in terms of in terms of transferring back and forth, uh you know, Florida has a very loose transfer policy right now. If you come through two a days and you're not the starting quarterback, you can transfer anywhere else and be eligible immediately. You can play football at one school, play basketball at another. And I I don't think that's best for kids. It's definitely not best for our community. So, so that that would uh that would uh be something we'll have to tease out later. But Mr. Dan, to your point, um anytime a kid is moved because of a reszone. Um

012if they provide transportation and stay at Gallatton, they're eligible because you can live on the moon with TWSA as long wherever you started as a freshman. If your county allows you to stay, you can live anywhere as long as you started your eligibility there. But if you move to a different school and it was because of a district reszone, then you're automatically immediately eligible. >> Thank you, Mr. King. >> Yeah. So, the what is the current capacity of Schaefer Middle School is I I don't I'm trying to remember the >> Yeah, I'll um if you want to Yeah, I'll I'll look that up real quick, Mr. I just don't remember it being at capacity. Um I'm just curious and but the reasoning behind this is just to consolidate bus routes just to um because there's

013so few students going from Beth Page to Schaefer it's it would be better for our bus system. Is that is that the reasoning behind this? I >> I think that's more of a secondary thing. I think the thing is is you're doing resoning and cleaning up. We've looked at this for a number of years. If you're doing a reszone anywhere, it's just time to look at everything and there's there's always some little nuances. Um, I think this is one because what we were seeing is a significant number of the kids that were going, you know, the overwhelming majority of kids are going from Beth Page to West Morland. So, you're basically taking a very small number of Beth Page Elementary and sending them to Gallatin and a lot of times a lot of those kids

014would request to go out of zone to West Morland and we would always approve it. So, it it to me it's a it's a twofold thing. It's like one we're breaking apart kids that we don't necessarily have to. Most don't want to stay with their peers. So, we're providing transportation for them to stay with their peers. And then secondarily, it doesn't make sense, you know, in terms of fiscal stewardship to run a bus every day for 10 or 11 kids. >> Okay. >> I mean, you you can tell me about the >> Yeah, I'll I'm looking I'm I'm trying to find it right now and I I'll find it for you. But it wasn't really a capac school capacity decision, >> Miss Stewart. So, is this and I had a call today is something that

015would be phased out eventually where the ones that are in Beth Page will go to West Morland no matter what because of the where they are now. You're going to let them finish out or the parents may let them finish out because of friends and >> yeah, we would let everybody go like we would just basically say if you finish fifth grade at Beth Page Elementary, you're going to go to West Morland Middle. We'll provide transportation just like everywhere else. But in the interim, if you had started at Schaefer or you got siblings to Mr. If you got siblings at Schaefer or even if you've got like a parent that works in Gallatin that would prefer, we would let you stay at Schaefer and Gallatin. >> Well, that was the other question they had and

016they were comparing to like being grandfathered in or yeah, all that. >> And and part of it is I think part of the confusion and probably why you are getting so many questions is we used to run a lottery to West Morland Middle and West Morland High School. We go through all this application process and everything like that and we would take all the kids every year that applied to go. So, it doesn't seem to make any sense to me to make parents go through the steps of applying for a lottery when we approve it every time. Um, when we can just redo it and then we make it possible because I would suspect a high high percentage of those kids have always would have preferred to go to West Morland but didn't because of

017transportation. So, >> Mr. Lacy, >> yeah, I just want to ask some more quick questions. So, say you have a ninth gra ninth grader that's fixing to move to Gat High School. This wouldn't affect them in any way, shape, or form. It's just students that are at Beth Page currently. >> They have to provide transportation. As long as they provide transport, we wouldn't run a bus for them anymore to Gallatin. We would run to West >> High School students, too. I guess if they're riding a bus to >> If they were riding a bus, if they depending on a bus for transportation, they'd have to go to West Morland. Okay. But if they provided their own transportation, they could go to Gallatin or stay at Gallatin. Yeah. >> Any other questions? Uh, Mr. King, the

018capacity at Schaefer is 880. >> Okay. >> It's in the 600s right now. >> Okay. >> Can I have one more question? >> Yes. >> Do we have a map that we can share just to show families? >> Uh, we didn't do a map for it because it's such a small it's like a couple streets. Go ahead, Mr. Johnson. We can get transportation. I'll make one by the next board meeting. >> We can get that done. >> Thank you. >> All right. Burus Elementary School and Knox Dolls rezone. >> Okay. So, this is something where part of this is being good good citizens in the city of Andersonville and also addressing long-term growth. So, I'll uh run through this first part. I'm sure there will be some questions here. uh bridge road construction in Hendersonville,

019alleviating school drop off and pickup traffic, and then student enrollment growth at at William Verus in Knox DOSs, and then supporting student needs across the county. So, let me run through each slide a little bit uh individually. All right, so the stop 30 Gregs Creek Road improvement plan has been on the docket for Hendersonville for about 20 years. Uh it's very much needed if you ever driven through that intersection. Uh the only problem, the reason why it hasn't been done in 20 years is because it's expensive and very it's going to be very inconvenient for a while. I really commend the city of Hendersonville. I um I talked to an alderman. I talked to Mayor Clary. I said I really commend them for doing this because it's long overdue. Uh but there's going to be

020and I want to be real careful with our messaging so it doesn't look like we're we're blaming the city of Henderson for bill for this. It's um we want to help because you are talking about there is no good way to replace that bridge without it being inconvenient in some capacity in the short run while it's being repaired in that road. There's a lot of work that has to be done there and they're going to I talked to Mayor Clary last night and they're going to do a they're going to do everything in their power to minimize the impact on people but there's just you know it's like when you do a renovation of a school or do construction at home it's going to always be inconvenient and um you know and kind of a

021hassle. So, I I think the question for us is as good neighbors, what what can we do to help? Because they're going to elevate the bridge and intersection. They're going to, and this is all straight off the Inersonville website, add new traffic signalization with dedicated turn pockets, widen the roadway in the project area. Uh it'll provide much needed long-term support or help for Hendersonville, but for 12 to 18 months, it's going to it's going to be interesting through that intersection. Uh so, that's one piece. Another part is if you've ever been through the William Burus Elementary School drop off or pickup it is something else. Uh it jams that whole area and that's with that's with going we we flipped uh two years ago we flipped the pickup line drop off line to go behind

022the building instead of front and it's kind of already filled >> back up. So, this is something if you put the road traffic and the road renov or road construction project with this drop off pickup, it's going to be tough. Uh, and then student enrollment. Uh, we zoned Buris Elementary when Durham Farms was about 30% complete. Mayor Clary told me last night that they have started construction on the last house in Durham Farms, but there's other subdivisions around it that are growing. And so um you know it was zoned that way over 10 years ago when Durham Farms was just kind of in its infancy. And then supporting needs across summer camp just like last year when we consolidated um preK and Gallatin. We got some opportunities to do some of that here to lift

023burdens. You know Station Camp Elementary has a combination of behavior CDC prek. We have a number of other Hendersonville schools that are in the same boat. If we can consolidate some of those preks, it also helps us. So, here's enrollment at a glance. Currently, this these were August enrollment numbers. Beach Elementary has 348 kids. Burris Elementary has 807. If you look at a 10-year run, Beach Elementary is down 95 since 2015 16. Burris is up 331. And a significant number of those kids have come in in the last four years. So part of that is the build out of Durham, but part of that's growth in that whole in that whole area. And so what we are proposing to do is to move about 200 kids from Beach Elementary to Burus Elementary. So Beach would

024go to 548, Burst would go to about 607. And remember, both schools both schools feed Beach High School. So you're not changing you're not changing their high school. you're changing their feeder school. So the kids would go from Beach Elementary to TWW Hunter to Beach High School. Burus would go Burus Knox Beach High School. Uh so some of the staffing changes is it would be one assistant principal would move from Burus Elementary to Beach Elementary. Okay. To basically go with the kids and then nine teaching positions. There's no position cuts, but what we will have is there were three unfilled teaching positions currently at Burus. So, this would drop that number. We'll just move those three to elementary. Miss US will hire those. So, then only six people will have to move uh that are

025currently at Burus to Beach Elementary. And we're going to seek volunteers first. Our hope is, you know, because you always so many times when you have this, you've got kids that, you know, a parent may teach at may teach at Burus, but their kids are in Hunter and they'd like to be uh there in the same feeder pattern as their kids. So, guidelines for the resone for students, all of our students in the reszone area must go to Beach Elementary. Uh rising seventh and eighth graders currently enrolled at Knox can remain if they provide transportation. There will be a sibling exception for sixth grade at Knox if they provide their own transportation. So if you have like let's say an eighth grader or seventh grader or say you have both and you got a rising

026sixth grader, God bless you as a middle school parent with three. Uh but but um you know we wouldn't want you to have two kids at B at Knox and one kid at Hunter and have to try to figure that out. So we would give you an exception for that. any other uh we will also do we had rising sixth graders that had already tried out and made the cheer and dance team at Knox DOSs. So if they provide transportation they can roll on into Knox DOSs because they've ordered uniforms, pay for camp, everything like that. We've tried to think of every potential exception. There will be a couple of others that we haven't thought about and we'll just handle that through the regular out of zone hardship application process. Uh we will uh so

027the middle school it's significantly less kids. I believe it's like 95 or 100 kids that would move from Knox to Hunter. Uh so we could be a little bit, you know, plus you've got sports and extracurriculars and everything like that. So 7 we can kind of phase that one in a little bit over time, but we need to move the 200 kids uh from Burus to Beach Elementary if we can. And then um you can see this is the map. Jeremy, do you want to run through the areas? >> Which one you got? All right. You got my microphone. >> Okay. So, basically the area of Beach Elementary that we removed when we reszoned Burus a few years ago is what we're sending back. So, if you look up there, if you look up on

028the map, we when you get to the end of Stop 30 Road, we basically go down New Shackle on the borders. And you know the be the current burst zone goes down gotown road comes out Hunts Lane and touches center point. So the other side of Center Point is zone for Madison Creek. So this would this would bring up that side of center point subdivisions like Islandbrook, Willowbrook, Alexandria Place, uh everything on Oceantown Road, the apartments behind Target, they would all go to Beach Elementary. Now, now stop 30 road itself would stay in the current Burus zone because, you know, we kind of looked at bus routes and tried to figure out what made sense bus routewise. And uh the only other part to this is that the Mont Haven Park apartments would actually go

029to Gene Brown as part of this reszone because from busing standpoint, location standpoint and all that, it makes more sense to send them to Brown than all the way down Center Point to Beach. So, um, but yeah, that's basically that's basically it. Um, the only thing to note on New Shackle, pretty much everything on New Shackle up to stop 30 coming from Beach would now be in the Beach Elementary zone with the exception to the subdivision that's just past Durham on I don't know the name of it off the top of my head. It's on Old Shackle Road. Everybody knows where that utility district is and there's that turn. It's very difficult to get out there and so we're going to leave that in the Burus zone because it's a lot easier to get a

030bus from down there around and back out than to try to turn right or left. >> What's the name of it? >> Drake's Point. So Dre's Point will stay in the bur zone. >> Mr. Lancaster. >> So okay, I think that was what I one part of my question. So anything that's off of on Drake's Creek Road going to Durham Farm. >> Yes. >> Is staying >> staying in. So most importantly and a question we will get a lot. It's a question that we've gotten a lot at Burus is there's been a lot of rumors about splitting Durham. Durham will not be split. So Durham will stay entirely in the Burus zone. >> So nothing on Drex Creek Road would be part of this reszone. No. >> So this is just center point >> east

031forest retreat north. Basically Vietnam vets north. >> Yes. the and then up near Shackle and grab Island Brook and pretty much anything. >> Yeah. Island Brook and then the the subdivision right beside Island Brook is called Willoughbrook, I believe. >> Okay. I guess I didn't even realize those. Okay. >> Yeah. I didn't either until transportation was like, "Hey, there's two of them." >> But the one the the neighborhood across from Target or Glenro or Glen Oak. >> Yeah. When you It's a great question. That one would stay in the burst zone because that's the end of that bus route. So you go up stop 30, go through that neighborhood, that's that bus route. So it would stay in the bur zone. >> So the the 200 elementary Yes. >> said 95 to 100 middle school.

032Is it because I mean I addressed a three versus six grade. So that does make sense. But I was just wondering if that was because we've seen more growth. I >> I think it's a little bit of both. I think that the people that have moved especially into Durham came in with younger children and it's we've seen this thing in Liberty Creek Elementary. We used to see it in um gosh, what's the subdivision right at the end of um the intersection long haul upper station for years? We had about 280 elementary kids in creekide and but it's starting as home values have gone up. It started to that that population started to age up. >> And how many students are in what is it? Mont Haven Green. >> Mont Haven Green >> that they will

033now go to >> they will now go to Beach Elementary. >> No, no, Mont Haven. You're think about Mont Haven Park. Mont Haven Park had Mont Haven Park Apartments. So there's two things. Mont Haven Green is a subdivision that's on Center Point and that will go to Burns. Mont Haven Park apartments >> is the apartment comment that will go to Beach. The Thank you. And Mont Haven Park Apartments will go to Gene Brown and that's about 30 students. >> So that would be the only thing that changes from a high school standard. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that would change. >> That's Gan Brown, Ellis. >> Yeah. They go to Hawkins and >> Hersville. >> Yeah, they would go to Hawkins. >> Yeah, cuz it just seems weird to me. It seems weird that they were

034going to Burus, but it seems stranger that you would come out, drive almost by Jean Brown, >> and then go all the way up to beach, >> right? From where that part I know. second part of my maybe it's third question I'm not keeping track of number questions but >> is the plan for this to be the zone going forward past this bridge being out that the bridge being out is a reason to go ahead and redo the resoning >> that was likely needed >> I need the burish numbers at some point I know we're every year we're adding about 50 or 60 kids there and I've heard parents say hey we're we seem kind So let's see. Yeah, Burus >> Burus was at >> in 2021 Burus was at 583 and then went 661,

035725, 774, 789, 807. >> Yeah, they didn't none of that got reszoned with like Liberty Creek or anything. That's just growth. >> That's growth. That's Durham Farms and others building out over there. >> And I they'll definitely back field. >> Yeah. you know, if we don't do something, we're going to be in three, four years, we're going to be at 900. >> The beginning of the like, hey, we're this bridge out 80 miles. That's going to be a question like, hey, bridges, are we going back? >> Yeah. No, I mean, it's just it's Yeah, >> cuz I think it would be hard. And I think one of the things we saw with Liberty Creek when we had to move Carolton early is it was a hard transition because they made the transition from station camp

036to Beach Elementary for two years and then they made the transition to Liberty Creek and everybody was fine but we did you know kids had to change schools twice. It's better if we can just do it once. >> So uh I understand we're kind of treating it kind of like Gallatin Heist or not Gallatin Heist but have a a prek where we centralize in Gallatin. >> Yeah. I had got to that yet. >> Okay. >> Got a slide on that. >> I thought that was on there. But anyway, >> it might have been. >> Was it was in the initial I'll ask that question when we get to it. >> Yeah, >> Mr. Evans. >> Uh I mean, obviously we know we're about to talk about You just mentioned it. >> I think from a

037parents perspective, I think we could all look at what you're trying to do with the prek. I think it's be really hard to explain to a parent that you on paper it looks like you're taking away a student and replacing them with a preschool student. In reality, we're not doing that. But I think some parents are going to have a hard time rationalizing that. So my a problem with that or my concern is adding in x amount of pre prek classrooms and students while that area is still growing. I mean we live we live in Norman Farms. I can tell you just what's being built around there. My concern is there's all these other neighborhoods that are about to be built around there. >> Are we just going to what's going to happen to that

038prek in four or five years when those houses are built? I I ideally we'd like to have a prek space like what we had with Gallatton Early Learning Center. >> So a separate a separate building. >> Okay, >> that'd be ideal. I think I think the the zoning part that Mr. Lancaster was asking about should be permanent. >> Yes. >> The prek thing is a stop gap until we can find a long way. >> Well, you know what? There is a building that is vacant in Durham Farms that used to be a pre that used to be a uh prek or whatever it was preschool. So >> yeah, we have uh actually >> maybe we should look into that. We don't want to mention that here because it drops the price up but >> sorry

039I think that's a terrible idea. >> Yeah, it's a terrible idea. >> Not a vacant building. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Mr. Was there anything you want to highlight on the blue map is that >> not unless anybody's got any questions for me. You know, Durham and everything down Drex Creek would stay in the Burus zone. >> Okay. All right. So, uh, I'll come back to pre-K, explain that in just a second, but wanted to share with you the process that we're going through. Uh, and this comes from learning when we've had a couple of other reszones and new schools and things like that. We want to try to manage this we don't create, uh, fruit basket turnover in our schools. Uh, so look at this. Six teachers from Bur will shift to Beach Elementary. Uh,

040Dr. Miller will work with the principles to determine the process for teacher selection from the transfer interest. So, we will open the internal transfer interest form uh tomorrow. Now, the reason won't be official until you approve it. If you vote no, then everybody stays where they are. But if you approve it, what we wanted to do is go ahead and start this part of the process because we don't want to get into the summer where teachers would then have to come at burn days in the summer to pack up or move their room to a different building. This way we can go ahead if the reszone is approved, we can go ahead and uh knock this out before the end of the year to provide the most amount of support for our teachers. Uh so

041that that would uh go from May 13th until May 19th, next Tuesday. And then on the 20th, Dr. Miller will meet with um Miss Liles and Miss Userie. And basically like we know the grade position, but what we're going to try to do is manage so that you don't lose like an entire fifth grade team or you don't lose like all your ELA teachers. So it's not going to it's not going to quite be like a draft, but there's going to be like no, you can't take three teachers out of fifth grade. You can't take, you know, because what we don't want to do is Bur went through this when Liberty Creek opened. They lost a lot of teachers. And so we want to manage that so it has the minimum amount of impact um

042on on the school, both schools. Miss Predict, >> I I recognize the the need for timing behind this, but do is that so is this enough time for our teachers to be able to make a good decision? I having not been through this before, I would think if I was looking at um I I would want more than a week to make a call. Uh and I I I get why. So, there's still classroom space, but are we do we have any concern over how quickly we're asking our teachers to make that decision? >> I mean, you'd always prefer more time. Um, I think that I mean, I can tell you that we have when positions open all the time in the summer with not involving a reszone. if you know you we typically most

043principles now send out a letter of intent in February to try to see if people are leaving so they can go ahead and hire early but you will still have some because the position will open at Hendersonville High School and you've taught at White House for years but you live in Hendersonville you've always wanted that so people make decisions at different rates I think we will I think we will know next Wednesday if we have two applicants for six positions then probably not but if we have 15 then there was plenty of time so I mean some of that will just be just be waiting And for some teachers, you know, it's even it's not even a matter of do I want to be a beach or I want to be a Burus. It's I'm

044teaching second grade at Burus. I've always wanted to teach fifth grade or, you know, and this could go either way. I've always wanted to work with Miss Usy. I've always wanted to work with Miss L. Or, you know, I went to Beach High School. I'd like to be at I'd like to be a Buccaneer again. You know, there's a lot of different and start time. Beach Elementary starts at 7:15. Burus starts at 8:30. There's some that would prefer that, you know, either way would prefer that start time. Yeah. >> Okay. I guess I did freeze out. Let me go back because I thought I had a whole slide on prek, but I don't. I skipped that one. So, let me uh what we were talking about doing is because we will we're shifting a significant

045200 students out. That's a significant number of classrooms. Um, part of this is a short-term solution because we got problems particularly at station camp elementary because station election camp elementary is catching the same growth pattern that Burus is. Um, but we're over a thousand at station camp elementary and they've got CDC behavior and prek. So, how do we lift some of that burden off station camp? At the same time, lifting some of the burden off the other Hendersonville schools was the same thing. What we saw with Gallatton Early Learning Center is when we centralize preK, one thing it does is, you know, one of the things as Dr. Miller's emphasized and the academics team when they presented is uh collaborative planning is a big initiative of ours. Teachers uh need support, want support, and they

046get that primarily from collaborating with each other. If you're one or two prek teachers in a building, it's, you know, it's one of the things like if you talk to Brian Brewer at Oakmont, it's easy to talk about collaborative planning, but if you have one third grade teacher, who do they collaborate with? And so pre-K teachers sometimes are in the school, but they're not of the school because it's different in terms of what they teach and how they teach and the the hours of the day and thing and student population and things like that. So if you have them together uh at a little bit larger scale, it lets us provide a whole lot more special education resources, literacy resources, things like that because they're they're in one place. That makes it um a lot

047better experience for the prek kids. If you had the opportunity, like I didn't get to go up to it last Friday, but we had a prek field day back here, and from what I hear, Katie, it was one of the most amazing things. >> So cute. >> Uh prek Halloween was pretty cool, too. Um, so you know, it it makes a better experience for our pre-K students as we welcome them in. To Mr. Evans point, it is ideally a short-term solution. Uh, but what one advantage that we do gain too is we can run prek at a different set of hours so it's not conflicting with the main drop off time at Burus. It wouldn't be an 8:30 start for preK. It' probably be the same time as Knox Dolls. uh you don't have interestingly

048uh parents are generally happier to put a middle school kid on a bus as opposed to uh close to a car. Um it's a special feature of middle school kids. Um um but uh no it I'll can decide we can work around the traffic uh part by starting prek earlier because they have an abbreviated day. Miss Barnes. >> Uh, yes. Coming back to the teachers, >> if you do not have enough teachers that actually volunteer to transfer, what's the process? >> Last in, first out. >> Okay. And will classified uh staff be impacted at all? >> So, Miss Daniel is working on that right now. There will probably be um enough openings between like Beach Elementary would get additional staffing because the number of kids coming with Burus having the prek moving in. So classified

049staff that wanted to stay at either building should be able to stay at either building. >> Okay. >> But if they wanted to move, there would also be opportunities there. Uh it will not uh we are leaving the staffing at Burus in the office and counselors and things like that the same. >> Okay. So there won't be uh they're not losing like half a counseling position or anything like that. >> Okay. Thank you, >> Mr. Hollis. >> So I got on the uh consolidating the prek. >> So if I understand it right, we're shifting students out of Burus over to >> Beach Elementary >> and that's going to open up 200 some odd student. So, and then we're going to take because Station Cap Elementary is over or near capacity, we're going to take that

050and shift it over to Burus in the interim. >> Mhm. >> Um I guess just trying to understand because some of the calls that I got were some of the parents would say, "Hey, we we tested in, you know, I work here. We tested for that location. students got in and now we're going to go somewhere else. >> Yeah. >> And I think I I don't know again I know anytime you do something like this it's going to be inconvenience to some people. It's not a perfect >> you can't do it but generally >> I'm trying to just think from a long-term solution. >> Mhm. What's the next step? What we we talk are what are your thoughts? Is it two years, six years at Burus and then move them somewhere else after that? If

051we can afford a standalone because I mean ideally you have something like Gallton Learning Center, but we own that. You know, if we had something like that in the Hendersonville area, we would absolutely use that. We were kind of getting that. We've kind of gotten that way in a couple places already like HB Williams has a number of preK. Beach Elementary's had a number of preks over the years. Um, but you know, if you can put say eight classrooms together, it gives you kind of an economy skill to make that pre-k experience better for the kids. You're running at a different time. You can put an administrator there. So that because what what you run into is like so if you think station camp, elementary with multiple CDC's, behavior class, and then multiple preks. So,

052those preks, you're talking 30, 40 IEPs. Uh, then you're talking about multiple IEP meetings for your behavior class uh students. This this is all a good thing, right? Because we want to serve our student population. So, I'm not talking about we want the services to be top-notch, which our principles do a good job. But when you have two or three very different programs like CDC behavior and preK, you're talking about um a significant amount of time away from the regular K6 um needs of your students. So if you can centralize some of those where you can put an administrator there with them, then you're lifting that burden of the IEPs off the principal. So like, you know, for instance, at Burus, Miss L will have someone that will take care of all that prek work

053for her. So then you're shifting that burden, you know, where she can then, you know, be more focused on um the kids that are there at Burus at K5. >> So the the staff for let's say Sha Kemp Elementary, the staff for the prek, speech therapy, what I don't know all the positions that would they all shift then over to Burus or would we >> it it would be kind of a hot based on need. So like the thing with special education, Julie, jump in here if I miss anything. the that already happens a lot with special education anyway because it's based on the needs of the kids. So like if you have a deaf student when they go from fifth to sixth grade there's personnel that shifts because we don't have a tremendous number

054of deaf students but so we move speech language pathology stuff like that like they tend to have more of a case load is that right Julie than a specific location so their case load >> they travel around already anyways. >> Yeah. Now some of our higher air like station camp would probably have somebody almost full-time there just because of the number but you know like we deal with this quite often uh you know just because of the movement of the students. >> Okay. >> Yeah. But I I I would I mean I would like it to be as short. We could find a space and we could afford to to to lease or purchase it. I would um you know I I think like um not to go too far into it only plenty of

055time for budget but child care if if you happen to be at the Grace Place Ministry presentation child care is going to become such an overwhelming need in the next few years that I think one of the things that we should look at is how do we how do we build a um preschool support that's prek plus preschool whatever that might be because it's a massive need. uh it would be a huge incentive for us for recruiting and retaining teachers and things like that. That's a that's a little bit down the road, but I mean I think there would be if we do that then that place that Mr. Evans didn't mention would become more of a more of a possibility and it it would be a great thing for us to be able to

056do. >> Mr. Evans. >> Um yeah. Okay. I think I think just for clarity because I feel like obviously this will be online and even the way he kind of Mr. Hall has mentioned it. Um you mentioned station camp elementary. >> We are talking about taking these preschool programs out of these other schools and centralizing it into one. What other schools are we talking about? >> It it's a majority. We're still kind of we're trying to figure out because we're not going to be able to move them all. Okay. >> When we met with Miss Law yesterday, one of the things that came up is if we use eight classrooms instead of 10. Yep. >> Then it makes it a whole lot easier on Burus to manage like so every grade has a bathroom and

057everything like that. So that's an easy decision for us to make. So I'll be able to tell you probably in a couple days into the week exactly, but it's most of the Hendersonville preks. >> Okay. All right, Mr. Link Cer. >> Uh yeah, when we talk prek, so uh I definitely think you know you got classroom space, but you're also each classroom is what three or four prek teachers usually. I know it's more than one because you got so many per >> teacher or assistants as well. >> One teacher, a couple assistants, >> two assistants typically >> one teacher, two assistant. >> Yeah. The reason I'm asking is like, hey, every time I've gone to Burus, >> can't park. Can't find a spot. >> Yeah. >> So, where are these people going to park? And

058have we thought about that? Because if you add my my I'm saying, "Hey, we're los losing nine teachers from Fergus, >> but we're going to backfill possibly 20 or 20 to 30." >> Yeah, we can get a count on the number. >> Yeah, I'm just Yeah, >> I just know there's not that many extra spaces anytime I've gone over there and that's something we need to think about. >> Yep, we can definitely think about that. >> Thank you. Mhm. >> Oh, and the other thing we will I know I'm going to get uh something besides cheer and dance. Obviously, those are the big ones because Lord knows you don't want to kick off a cheer mom or a dance mom. I'm married to one. I know that. But, uh >> that was the opinion of

059Mr. Lancaster. But for the record, >> that's that could be set in stone. Could be the 11th commandment. You don't tick off a cheer dance mom. But >> more Mr. like extra penny. >> Anyway, uh what other if there's another sport that comes up say, "Hey, my kids already tried out and made what >> do I just say, hey, I'm going to reach out to Dr. Lford. Tell y'all complain to me and I'll see if I can >> We're going to actually um uh Dr. Flood is going to send out a communication to his parents. We'll have like a Google form or something, okay, >> for them to request since they can already stay. It's pretty easy there. If they're providing their own transportation, they can stay. So, I think he can Dr. Flood will

060be best able to decide, you know, I mean, if if he has a question, he can certainly come to me and you could certainly if somebody contacts you, the easiest thing is say, "Talk to Dr. Flood or talk to me." >> Okay. And then when will this be communicated to like obviously it's online now, but you're going to have people that like, "Hey, nobody told me." And they'll be showing up at Burest registration night and said, "Nobody told me." But are we sending something? >> It's going to go out tonight. We've got a letter, a website. >> It went out at 6:30. >> We wanted to make sure we had accurate information to parents because we figured as he came on the board. >> Yeah. We figured without the board meeting, we needed to get

061something out to parents. And then to clarify on sports teams, the last time I talked to Dr. Flood, the only two teams that had tried out at DOS were the dance and cheer teams. But we did talk to him about if something else had tried out that he would reach out to them and get them in too. >> Thanks. >> Yeah. And I just just to wrap up, I think um you know, we will continue. I appreciate the conversation. If you think of anything else we need to address, if you can let me or Mr. Johnson know it, you know, it's just when we look at these we look at these numbers. We've needed to do this down like you know Henderson, you know, they've needed this bridge done for a long time in Hendersonville.

062We've needed to do this reszone for a while. The only reason that we haven't done it is when Liberty Creek opened, Burus took a substantial hit in terms of um teacher population and in terms of transitioning to a new principal and then after a year they had another principal transition and then Mr. Lrod was getting ready to retire after that. So generally we try not to do a reszone when you've got a firstear principal or substantial cuz just like you know just like anytime like in the environment if a if a piece of property takes a substantial hit you got to give it time to to grow back up in the culture to rebuild which which Burus and Beach Elementary you know I think the good thing and I would encourage anybody says this is

063is um both schools are reward schools both schools are STEM schools both schools are outstanding both schools have vibrant PTOs Um, Mr. Lancaster has a QR code you can scan if you'd like to become a Buccaneer PTO member. Mr. F probably get you connected with that Burus PTO. But, uh, but anyway, um, bus schools are outstanding and, you know, when this bridge construction starts, everybody will be thankful that we have, you know, yanked the band-aid off and gone ahead and done this because it's going to be best for both schools in the long run. Or that would be my recommendation. Okay. All right. Are we ready to switch to budget? >> And while he is doing that, I shared with everyone the communication. >> We're going to be voting on these zoning changes at our

064meeting next week. Is that right? >> Yep. >> Okay. >> All right. Budget. I'm going to go through the first part. You know, I think last year we were up against the 11th hour getting everything done. So, I'm going to try just so we have plenty of time for discussion. Um, I'm going to go ahead and get started while we're passing out the actual budget books. And if you notice, for the 14th consecutive year, Miss Brown does match the color of the budget book. Yeah, that's a good question. All right. So, just to run quickly, our one summer work that we've done a lot on this year talks about our core values. I'll share this slide with you and it'll be a part of the presentation, but this really is what we're trying to ground

065our um hiring decisions, everything else around. I actually, you know, it's not the purpose of tonight, but we need to do my evaluation at some point in the next month or two. I've actually got uh Dr. Miller and uh Dr. Mlard have been working on with the academics team have been working on uh something for our leadership conference for leaders to self assess uh themselves on core values, strategic anchors, things like that. And I actually am probably going to present that to y'all along with the strategic goals that we've been working on uh to build my evaluation around it because I think sometimes you need to revisit evaluation tools to make sure they match uh what's going on. Now I know there's been talk about what do we put in that evaluation. That's probably more

066of a that's more of a great June conversation. But um but anyway, I just want to give you a little heads up because it will feature it will feature this because you know Patrick Lynchion will tell you that if you hire you can teach skill and you can teach concepts. What you can't do is teach core values that align with your mission and vision. And if you hire if you hire in these areas or don't hire according to these areas, you're generally almost always right. Uh and similarly in our playbook through Patrick Luchion is why do we exist and what do we do? We exist to develop better people for a better world. That includes our kids, our staff, everybody that's connected to Sar County Schools and we prepare all students for their first and

067future career. Uh, so before we get started, you know, a lot of times when we get into budget discussions, the thing that I hate about budget discussions, the thing I hate about I don't hate school system, but I hate this aspect of it is different groups get pitted against each other in competition for resources. We don't do that as much in Sar County. It's pretty brutal in a lot of districts. But I want you to think like this is a picture on the left uh from Special Olympics a couple weeks ago. Another picture is a boy that was an early graduate at West Morland High School. Got a job the other day at uh at our uh draft day at Innovation Center. But I want you to think about for a minute as we get

068started. What What happens when a kid goes to school every day? So yes, a kid goes to school, they see their principal in the front, they wave at them, they walk into the school. I've seen Dr. Mason do this a million times at Lakeside Park, Station Camp Elementary, White House Intermediate. Um know know every kid by name. You know um Dr. Man knows not only all the kids, he knows all the parents, the grandparents if you're at Whitten. Our principles do this every day. Uh our teachers greet kids warmly as they come in the door. Um many have elaborate greeting rituals, fist bumps, hugs, handshakes, whatever it might be. They they welcome them into the school and then they get a great day of instruction. And but along with that requires a lot of times

069a bus ride, a breakfast, a lunch, a trip to see the counselor, a trip to see the nurse, uh hopefully not, but sometimes a crisis social worker. Um you know, a significant amount. All those people have to be background checked and hired formally and properly by HR. Uh we have to make sure that they get paid and supported. We have to pay the bills for the food, for the technology, for the curriculum, everything else that they use. So, uh, when you see a picture of kids being successful at school, there are the direct parts, the teachers and principles that directly connect with our kids each day, teaching assistants, lunch, things like that. And then there are those that stand alongside and behind them uh, supporting to make sure that that happens. So, I think it's

070important to remember that that you can't break these pieces apart. We can debate, you know, what needs to happen and how do we pay him and what else do we do, but it's important to remember that every COG, you know, it's one of the things we've really tried to work on because our payroll team works round the clock month after month after month. Uh it's been really neat to see them work on some of our cross departmental teams that you heard about at our retreat because they get to see directly uh some of the work that they do and it's not just payroll but across this uh across the district office. All right. So, budget goals for uh this budget year. All right. So, in our conversations at the board, in my conversation, in our

071conversation with principles out in the community, there's been and this is a nationwide thing, too, is uh what do we do for behavior and student support? Uh we have students that have faced significant trauma. We have an increasing number of kids that um have uh special needs. Uh we have a significant number of kids that have had all kinds of different experiences. They moved here from all over the world. You know, we've got uh 39 families that relocated here from Afghanistan, you know, in a 24 to 36-hour period when they were fleeing Afghanistan. Um you can imagine that their needs are very different than, you know, someone that grew up in 12stones. Um so how do we meet the needs of our students and families? And then uh CTE and innovation continues to be a

072big uh push for us. Uh continued support for our teachers and staff, continued investment in technology, and continued investment in small class sizes and school level support. So I wanted to go real quickly and give you an update on our previous big budget initiatives that we've done over the last three years. The first being teacher and staff compensation. If you remember January 2024, Mr. Aught did a presentation based on uh one of our really our first cross departmental teams that worked for months at studying and analyzing everything about our pay. Um and finding out that we had some real serious concerns. Uh here are some celebrations from what what's happened when we made the significant investment that we did in compensation in 2024 or excuse me for 2425. Um our certified uh turnover rate has

073dropped from 9.4 to 4.6. That's amazing. Our classified staff now this number is not for all classified staff. This is for classified staff in that range from 11. The bottom three uh the first three levels on our range system 11 to 13. These are the jobs that we used to have 27.3% turnover rate and that rate is now 11.2%. That's a 59% uh drop in two years, two budget years. That that's pretty remarkable. So we'll let that sit there for a second. uh teacher salary scale history in 2019 2020 a starting teacher in Sar County started at 36,100 today that teacher starts at 50,500. Uh to give you a little different look at it because it's more than just what you start. One of the things that we do at Sun County for a long

074time once you hit year 20 you didn't get a raise unless there was just a specific bonus or a specific addition made. Once you hit 20, you tapped out on the scale. We took that then initially to 24 years and then to 30 years. We're out, I believe, now because it just kind of moves with our people. Uh but I don't know that I don't know what we did with Mr. Aken. I don't know that we got to step 59, but um should have been a little bit of an outlier, but uh we continue to extend that so that people when we say that people get a step raise, everybody gets a step raise, not just those years 1 through 20 or whatever. So to show the impact of that, if you were a new

075teacher in 2019 2020, you started at 36,100. Uh if you stayed at the bachelor's level and didn't get a masters or a doctorate, you would be at 54,731 today. Uh if you had taught 20 years in 2019 20, you were at 54,441 on the old pay scale, you would now be at 76,219. That's a substantial improvement in our compensation package. Uh for classified, I didn't do the historical analysis because when we did so much work, Mr.'s team did so much work on the classified pay scale when we did the $4 raise that I don't, you know, I I'd be happy to share it with you if you want to see what we did before, but uh so two years ago, we did $4 plus a step. Last year, we did a two-step raise. So, if

076you remember, there was one slide in Mr.'s presentation where it showed that like 56 57% of our employees were in that little box of ranges 11 to 13 and the average salary then was $14.25. If you were in that box that year 2324 the average salaries increased from $1425 an hour to $1923 an hour. another substantial I mean if you want to talk over a longer period in 2011 2012 most of our people in that range were making $725 an hour okay uh to give a little bit different picture if you were a new teacher assistant at 2324 you started at $12 an hour you'd now be at 1698 an hour and you can see that for bookkeeper 1511 to maintenance staff 1673 to 2121 and bus driver 1926 to 2318. Uh so substantial increases

077across the board for our certified and classified staff. Now fill rate, if you remember, this was a huge deal. In 2223, we had a position that was advertised on average stayed open 80 days and then took 45 days to fill. Um now a classified position average time to fill is 27.45 45 days certified is 21.16 days. So, you know, about a quarter of the time that it used to take. All right. So, this is just to remind you through January 2024. You know, I showed you the averages, but this gives you a picture of especially some of the higher turnover jobs, how long they stayed open. Like some of those jobs were open for 589 days like Knox Dawson said. And it was weird because it was all over the county like a a position

078at Liberty Creek, a position at Knox Daws, a position at West Morland, Annie Berry. Um that's what that this is what we routinely saw in 2223 and we made the concerted effort because as we looked at the salary study, you know, our biggest thing was is you could make $12 and or even $14 working for us or you could go to Chick-fil-A and make 17 $18 an hour. And so we tried to we wanted to invest that we could have the best for our kids. So as of yesterday, we only had 23 elementary positions, full-time positions open in the county. We only had four middle school and six high school positions open. Uh 21 special education positions, a lot of which we, you know, we've got a lot of new positions that we're proposing to

079add and those are up. And then 65 classified positions. Sometimes we've been in the 2 250s in open positions right now. Uh we've had more open positions in one middle school, double or triple that at times than what we have open right now. Uh the coolest part is we had graduation for teacher last night. We had 25 uh graduate two firsttime cohorts, our second CTE cohort. Uh next year that number will go to 40. And Miss Brown I we found out today from Dr. Alexander that uh our cohort for this year is almost full but you know you can look at the numbers so too are our teaching jobs. So really really exciting. All right. So, that uh you remember when we did paid parental leave, uh we extended that not only just to certified

080staff, but to classified staff, too. Included foster care adoption. And you can see that that's been uh we've been reimbursed for 2 million, a little bit over $2 million, and non-reimbured for 220 about $221,000. And so you can see the information on um that's a big that's a big impact on families when they can take maternity paternity leave or paid parental leave. All right. Capital. So our athletic facility project should be done by May 31st. Uh our Melhyde community that includes lights on the tennis courts. Uh just so you know, Gallton High Track, Maryland High Tennis courts, the weather's been kind of dipping. We need 55 degree days to put the surface down so it doesn't mess up the curing process on it. So, uh usually by May, we got that pretty consistently, but we've

081had some cooler days. Um and so anyway, those projects should be done. Okay. I just want to give you kind of an update on where we've been. 24 we spent 15.2 million on capital projects. Then 2025 that's when we uh invested the bulk in our capital or in our athletic facilities 34.3 million and then 5.5 million this year. Uh so if you if you look at the breakdown that's this what I listed as phase one that's these projects that's 55.8% of the $50 million that we spent on capital projects. Okay. And then 44.2 to on other capital projects and those have been all over the county from the new roof at West Morland Middle School um to Portland High School's new roof, HVAC at Beth Page down to Gallatton High School, Little Gym, Station Camp

082Gym Floor, HVAC roof, uh pretty much uh annex gym at Beach High School, uh HVAC work at Beach High School. So, it's been spread pretty much over the whole county. I can put together, if you'd like to see, I can put together a list by cluster of all these different capital projects. Uh, but just wanted to give you kind of a a brief overview of that tonight. Uh, huge success. I mean, we've done $50 million in addition to 40 million plus in compensation in a couple years that have made a significant impact on our staffing and on our facilities. All right, technology. wanted to give you a little bit of an idea of um and I'm going to go real quickly through this school technology snapshot. So in 2020, schools were almost completely responsible for

083teacher devices. Uh so principles used their instruction money and they got a district device fund and they were so if you see schools uh were mostly Windows-based desktops with a small number of laptops. Average age of a device was about four years so mid to late cycle often times needing replacement. uh student devices. We had a a ratio of about one device for every four students largely dependent on Chromebooks, uh Windows desktop labs, and a limited number of Windows laptops. Uh you know, as you can see, the issues and concerns, you don't even hear anybody talk about carts that much anymore. Used to you'd have to sign up for the cart. You'd have a couple per hallway or a couple per school. You were limited. You lost instructional time waiting for the devices. was not

084equitable across schools and students. It was really hard for it to manage a wide array of devices and it did have a significant impact of uh on school instructional funds along with an aging and incomplete infrastructure. Currently, uh we have 2,300 MacBooks purchased for teachers, 200 iPads for teachers that we'll be replenishing this fall. We do provide PC devices where needed. If you're teaching engineering or uh accounting or something like that, you need a PC and not a Mac. Uh we're continuing to replenish devices for school office staff. This will be the second consecutive summer that every new teacher in S County uh their first day of uh when we get started, their first day they will receive their new MacBook and iPad to start off with and they'll be fully loaded with everything they

085need from their curriculum to access to the printer, everything else or copier, everything else. And so you can see, you know, there's a lot of talk today about device time. We have intentionally tried to limit the number of devices in elementary especially K2 to five per classroom. Uh and even within that a conversation you know one of the things I uh jump out of this for just a second you know when you look at course mojo the success we've had with it it's 20 to 25 minutes three times a week. So it's not replacing the teacher by taking 90 minutes of instruction time being on a device. It's very targeted and that that's what we're looking at. Not not kids sitting around on devices for hours. uh grades three through five about one device for

086four students and then grades 6 through 12 one to one iPads. Uh the state is moving to online testing next year for elementary school. So one of the things that we're going to do instead of selling back the uh all the high school iPads that we're pulling out this year, we're going to rotate those down. They're still in great shape. They work well. We're going to rotate those down into fourth and fifth grade to give us a little bit of time to figure out how we're going to manage uh fourth and fifth grade online testing. And that saves us a substantial amount of money this year. Uh our breakage rate uh was out of 22,000 iPads over three years, we had less than 400 break. So if you remember, we did not do Apple Care

087on this next run because it's cheaper to self-insure than it is to take on the the cost of of the Apple Care. All right. Innovation. Uh Tennessee is number one for K12 education in the South. This came from SCORE. based on uh the 2024 NAPE assessment. And yet, even with our number one status, if you look, 15 million young adults are unemployed, underemployed, or working below their education level. 85% of good jobs will require more than a high school diploma by 2031. I would argue most of them do now. And then 78% of Gen Z believe career planning matters before high school graduation, but only 13% feel ready. So only two out of 10 students currently in Tennessee complete a postsecondary program on time. That's a huge problem. If you look at the completion rates

088across the state, that that's a problem. And then durable skills are professional skills. I put this in more for you to uh look at later if you want to review the slide deck. Is durable skills are communication, leadership, collaboration. You know, I talked earlier about uh core values for us. These are kind of additional core values for students. You need to be able to look somebody in the eye. You need to be able to carry on a conversation, work on a team, and lead. And it's all stuff that we're trying to build out uh through the innovation center, but not just the innovation center. Uh because one of the things we've worked on this year, we're still building this out. We'll have a new high school team. Uh hired a new high school uh coordinator.

089We'll have a new high school supervisor hired in the next few weeks. But beginning to see that high school team pair with our CTE innovation team to really get things aligned across the district is going to be very powerful. So, uh, one of the things we're looking at is Apex. Apex is a model that we're trying to figure out because we'd like to also share this around the state and country. Um, is how do we leverage, you know, how do we get kids to think again? How do we get adults to think again? How do we begin to bring students, educators, and community partners together to design a bold new vision for educators? And that's exactly what we're doing. Solving real world problems, discovering new technologies, figuring out how AI is integrated, gaining experience and

090confidence, collaborating. That's how you build those durable skills, not by sitting in a classroom, listening to them, but actually doing them and learning about them. Uh, so that's coming starting at the innovation center, but we're already doing a lot of this in our high schools. It's tying it all together. We've done a tremendous job over the last decade putting in place all the resources to have Topflight CTE, but now tying it together. And so if you look what Apex will represent is Sar County High Schools with the innovation center, uh, working with community partners, industry, charities, nonprofits, and then postsecary trades, apprenticeships, TCAT, community college and universities. First time in my life that I've ever seen everybody really wanting to work together. Uh I spoke with the superintendent of high schools in New York City

091last week. Uh and a superintendent from Aldine, Texas down in Houston. Uh the numbers in New York City are staggering. 900,000 students in New York City schools. They're running 200,000 paid internships with their high school students to get them on a career path for a good paying job so that they can live in New York City if they choose to. That's the future of where we're going to be heading is how do we get kids outside the school to work to get paid hopefully, but then to also find out what they like. Uh so this year uh just got statistics back from the draft day on Friday. Over 500 high school students, 50 plus companies. Uh six students received on the spot job offers. uh more than 70% of those that interviewed got uh some

092kind of follow-up step uh an application, a tour or an interview. You know, my my wife is the career coach at White House and uh she practically wrestled one kid to get him there. He apologized at the end of draft day and told her that he should have acted nicer, but he didn't want to do a resume. He didn't want to wear nice clothes. You he really didn't want to do an interview. And he was on fire at the end of it because he got to experience so much different stuff. And um we had Wood Grain, Bell Construction, Rogers Group all made direct hires that day. And so this is uh you'll be the first we have this first time we've shown this in public. This is something we partnered with Ford Sumner, our economic

093and community development arm. Uh they helped support us to do this, but uh this is the video that we put together for the innovation center. >> If you really want to do something like this with your future, do it. Don't be afraid to take the risk. It's been wonderful. Welcome to the Caroline Smith Innovation Center. >> I'm Grace. I go to Gallatton High School and I'm a senior. If I was to tell them anything about the Innovation Center, I would tell them it's a great experience. You meet new people. You learn about new things. You can apply all of it to your everyday life. The Carolyn Smith Innovation Center provides a unique learning environment for students that provides authentic experiences and partnerships. We are currently hosting dual enrollment courses here at the innovation center and

094are actively developing Apex, an exciting learning model that will challenge and empower students for years to come. >> My name is Will Bennett. I go to Station Camp High School and I'm a junior. I remember first day I walked in here and I saw that fireplace and I was like, "Wo, and this is a school. It's a great space because we get to meet other students from other schools as well that also have the same interest as us. You just really have to work hard for it. Especially if you take the aviation class, it's a great place to start. Raise your expectations from what they are. It's a beautiful space. And then you come in and you sit down and take that first class. It's not like your algebra class. That teacher that you're sitting

095with in class here, they're having a one-on-one conversation with you. And so I want to pull together I'll go through these quickly. These are student testimonies of students that are currently at the innovation center. This is Sawyer Slateon West Morland High School. Since I was in middle school, I've been interested in aviation and up until this semester, I wasn't set on where I wanted to attend. This dual enrollment opportunity has helped me seriously consider MTSU because of my experience. There are so many positive aspects of this program. The bus driver stays well informed of our schedule and is very dependable. I never have to worry about transportation. Simulators make the class very enjoyable, especially since I'm currently working towards a private license and will be taking my check ride this summer. A bonus has been

096my teacher who shares his experiences from his days of flying. Their teacher was a Top Gun pilot, so they they try to distract him from the aviation curriculum to talk about Top Gun stuff. But uh but yeah uh criminal justice White House High School Savannah Pearson my experience was very good and educational. It helped me to have a glimpse into the career I want to pursue after high school. Taking a dual enrollment class there gave me a lot of independence. It was fun and great to have points to go toward that career when I move into college. The criminal justice class was fun and I love the professor as well. Uh leadership, it was a new experience. It was really fun getting to connect with new people from other schools at a new space. I

097made so many connections outside of school from the opportunities from being at the innovation center. It was an amazing experience and honor to be one of the first sets of kids to learn there. And then lastly, got one more testimony from Lexi Hughes in aviation at Hendersonville High School. >> Hi, Alexa Hughes. I'm a senior at Hendersonville High School. I am currently in the aviation program at the innovation center and I'm planning to take University of Oklahoma in the fall. First off, I'd like to thank you guys for providing the fines for this innovation center. It is such a help for me and other students around the county who want to be aviation pilots. I am very pleased to say my experience at the innovation center was wonderful. Between playing on the simulators, having instructors

098for a real pilot really encouraged me my aviation journey. I'm very excited and hope for the best of this program in the future. And it's so nice to go and meet other students who are just as interested in aviation as I am. Thank you so much and I can't wait to watch the future of the aviation center. So, you know, just where we are right now, this was our first run. Uh, we started, it's kind of a a soft start this year, uh, this semester. Um, but some of the great work that's already come out. One is when you get to walk in there and you see before with aviation that before only kids at one high school could take aviation. Now we have every high school represented from every part of the county. And

099they're loving the aviation classes. It's amazing to watch them uh, you know, just learn. They're very interested in the same things. They built friendships across all the different schools. Uh one of the coolest things is the criminal justice kids went out to the emergency services building uh to see the lifeflight helicopter and everything and they took everybody on the Friday. So like the aviation kids were were fired up because they found out you could fly helicopters, you could uh you know you could work to save lives that way. Uh pretty pretty. Lexi actually uh found me at an event to tell me all about how cool it was to see the uh the lifellight helicopter and talk to the people that flew those choppers and did that service. So I I think seeing the kids

100come together from around the county, but I also wanted to show you we're going to be adding content in addition to leadership uh criminal justice and aviation. We will be adding uh content creation, entrepreneurship uh in the fall and we'll also begin to add of course additional dual enrollment classes and things like that. But then another thing that uh wanted to show you obviously you know we the G our kids from leadership presented last time for hands-on sum which is extending. It was started with students. Now it's going to be for everybody and they're just going to extend hand like they went out and basically recruited hands-on Nashville to expand into Sar County. Uh and can expand our partnership with the United Way of Greater Nashville in Summer County which is really exciting. Uh but

101what we found is that started as two students with an idea and it grew into something special. So, one of the things that we've been working on this year, I hope you can see this maybe on your computer if you if you squint, but uh we've been meeting with different community partners in industry. So, uh we met with uh with D from Grace Place. We've had some great meetings with her to talk about what could a team of Sar County students do to help Grace Place Ministries. And so one thing is is could you do content creation uh to create an empathy campaign so people understand what the what the women and children at Grace Place um what they're overcoming and to celebrate that or beyond just what they face like what it's like to

102be a working single parent uh when child care is $6 to $8,000 per student like how do we build awareness for that uh you know development and communication strategies if you spend any time with D you know someone's built a major nonprofit that's opening up 43 houses, uh, looking to solve the daycare problem, uh, everything else. Imagine having young people just spend time with her and learn, uh, to develop a passion and then to be able to to serve. So, this is this is one example. Uh, R.J. Young, uh, a number of R.J. Young's executives live in Sar County. They've always been strong supporters of Sar County Schools. They're really on fire to work with us at the innovation center. And so they do beyond just doing um a lot of digital devices and LED

103panels and all kinds of other uh communication equipment. They also uh uh they also spend a tremendous amount of time like on storytelling marketing and how is AI going to change the future of marketing. Right? It's going to be hard just to go in and do the traditional things that have taken place in marketing but there's going to be a new distinctive field of marketing that's going to emerge which I think is pretty exciting for kids. So this is just a snapshot. Uh we're trying to build these with all of our partners uh that are interested so that then we can recruit student teams. I I think one of the things that you're going to see in the future of high school education is a big experiential component because you've got to experience things to

104know if that's what lights your fire that you want to do for your life. You can't just read about it or watch a PowerPoint. You got to get in there and do it. Uh and it's good to find out what you want to do. It's good to find out what you're doing. And AI is going to um have such a huge impact. I I was at an event last week and they were talking about how it was a group of musicians and they said one of the problems is they love to just riff and jam together and sometimes they put something really cool together, but they didn't have sheet music for it. And it was an AI tool to capture those things and convert it to sheet music. Um I'm probably not getting that wording

105right. So Mr. Evans, Mr. King, I apologize. Probably didn't get that right at all. That's a pretty amazing pretty amazing way that things are going to change for kids. But the challenge is what the other thing that makes this important is entry level jobs are going to shift. They're not going to be where you get out of college or complete your certificate and you go in and you've got a couple years to learn everything about the business. You're going to start more in the middle because AI is going to take over a lot of those those entry level jobs. So, you're going to have to have analytical, strategic, other type skills to start more there. And we've got to start that in high school. Okay. Any questions about the past? We'll leave plenty of time

106for conversation. I know it's 7:20. This next part's faster, but um Okay. All right. So, looking at our revenue, our local funding went up 5.6 million, a little bit over 5.6 million, about 4%. very thankful and appreciative uh to the county commission to Mr. Schae and the budget team budget committee mayor Isbel our state funding uh went up 2.42%. And you can see that's an additional 5.1 million. We did include we took a hit on uh fiscal capacity. I'll show you in just a second. I'll explain that in just a second. We took a 1.85 million hit on April 28th. because that's real time. Uh so we did include 1.5 million out we get outcomes in December based on our academic performance. Uh we don't typically like I think in the past we've budgeted up

107to a million of that because you don't know what you're going to get until your test results come back and you don't really to be fiscally conservative you don't really want to project income that you don't know you're going to get. But we've never gotten less than 2.7 million. So, um, you know, we're comfortable going to 1.5 million, but understand that that fiscal capacity is a big problem, uh, for us. And I'll I'll explain that in just a second. So, hold that. Uh, so our outcomes on TISA are based on third grade ELA, eighth grade ELA and math, and then high school, college, and career readiness measures. I'll be happy at another time I can walk through all of Tissa. That's more that's more than I really want to do tonight, but I'd be happy

108if you have any if you want me to walk through all the TISA calculations, be happy to do that. Okay. So, this is uh basically an overview of where we are financially right now with this budget. So, as you can see, our uh fund balance available for budgeting. uh 21 million has to stay uh by state law in fund balance. That gives us 57.5 million available for budgeting. So you can see our total re revenue is 368 million, a little bit over 368 million. Our total expenditures 418 million, which leaves us about a $50 million revenue less operating expenditure gap. Um our budgeted capital is 5.12 million. Uh leaving us total budgeted reserves to balance of 55.6 million. Uh we have 57.45 up at the top that you can see that's available to budget. That

109leaves us an unbudgeted fund balance of 1.8 million. Just to give you a little different view of that, in 2023 we had an undesated fund balance of 63.3 million. Uh then that dropped to 26 million to 19 million now to 1.8 million. >> U can just just to clarify when we're talking about the undesated fund balance in 2023 was 63 million. Took that 63 million, plugged it into the budget for 2024. So after 2024, >> including that 63, we had 26 left. We added the 26 in in 25. Spending that money put us at 19. And now after 2025, that 63 is down to 1.8. >> Correct. >> Because it's been budgeted in year over year over year. >> That's correct. Yeah. Thank you. And it's because we made, you know, the reason to show

110what we did at the first part is is we made significant investments in compensation because you could see where we were. We were redlining in terms of employee retention and being able to deliver the services that we did. We also had with the stadium collapse at Beach High School, we had the need to do the first run of massive capital. So out of that money, it includes $50 million in capital plus 40 plus million in compensation that we've done. >> I got a quick question. Can we go back to the just >> this one? >> I want to make sure we got the revenue piece right first. Okay. >> Oh, I'm sorry. >> That's kind of like the out of our control stuff. >> State funding. uh this 5.1 and additional >> you know the

111all the talk is hey we've got the new you know we've expanded voucher all this stuff is this 5.1 we're pretty sure on that like is there >> it it usually changes a couple hundred thousand like they they continue to run until the end of the year >> anybody that any students that we lose from the formula that go that would be in next year's budget right >> from the expanded whatever. >> Well, and there's a hold harmless in that >> with some stipulations we got to figure out. >> So, we're pretty confident that the 5.1 is is going to hold. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> And what is the other revenues? I know that'll be one that somebody asked me. >> Yeah, that includes um Trevor Man, you want to explain what

112the other revenue includes? Yeah, miscellaneous grants and other um you can see it on your budget document. I'll give you a page number. You'll see that you'll see the other the uh the local taxes. Then you'll see like the other current charges on page four. Um >> file. Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. end of the day, all I'm really concerned about is like, hey, we're pretty confident. I mean, because anytime it's a tight window, tight. >> Yeah, we don't have a lot of changes between April and June. At the end of June, 1 of July, we'll get our final TIA number. We don't typically have a lot of fluctuation from that. Um, and that does include that outcomes based. >> The the biggest the biggest shift again, Mr. Lancaster that's perplexing to me why

113we do it. I've griped incessantly about it is we catch that fiscal capacity that I'll talk about in a second. We catch it this year. We got on April 28th. So we had probably 90 95% of the budget built >> and we take a $1.85 million hit real time. Um, and you know, then you have to go back and adjust everything to to cover for it. And that's that's a frustration. >> And have we I know I asked this I think last year, but you know, when they passed the whole voucher thing, >> all we heard was, "Oh, we've got this money that's going to go to capital." Have we ever seen any at least capital money? >> There there was additional money put in there this year. I checked the Department of Education. We

114were supposed to get information from TDOE last week about how to apply for that. Uh some of it comes out of sports betting. >> Well, that but there was al there was also when when originally it was like hey we're going to set aside all this this money for growth and and >> yeah the first run of it was tied to you had to have over 2% growth which we did not have so we didn't qualify. >> Okay. the sports betting money we are supposed to have some access to, but uh I I have I didn't check this week, but I'll check again with TDOE is supposed to be releasing the guidelines for that. >> I donated about $50 for the uh Kentucky Derby last week, so they ought to have a little bit extra.

115Uh but none of that is in the this budget. >> That's correct. >> So that would be bonus. >> That'd be a bonus. >> Okay. >> Yeah. I'll talk Let me talk briefly. There's some, you know, there's an exciting new potential revenue source that they're still making rules in Washington, but the big beautiful bill included a provision for scholarship govern uh granting organizations to um collect $1,700 tax credits from people. So, basically, you could designate $1,700 of your federal taxes that you already paid. you can designate that to a nonprofit that funds things. Uh public schools are included in that. So, we are going to the Tennessee legislature passed this year, thanks to um thanks to um Leader Lambert, they passed for Tennessee to be a part of that. Uh so, it could be a

116significant way. You know, I'm at the point now when you look at this one, we've got to have additional sources of revenue. um you know and I would love to find as many of those that don't fall on the burden of you know taxpayers in Sar County. Uh if we can get a substantial amount investment from federal taxes that have already been paid so that Tennessee money that's now going to Washington comes back to Sar County, we're all in on that. But we're probably a year away from that. It kicks in in 2027. But that I don't know that they'll have all the rules and everything done to catch in fiscal year 27. It may be that we we're going to continue to work to to figure out how to get a how to work

117with a nonprofit to do that for us, but it's potentially a substantial amount of money for us, like in the 10 to 15 million a year range, which would be which would be nice. That would be our goal. Also, not reflected in here because it's not we're still, you know, 12 to 18 months away from that. Okay. So, key factors driving our costs, inflation in April was 3.8%. As you can see, our revenues are increasing at about 3%. Total and inflation is about 3.8% now, 3% for last year. Um remember we had it dropped in 23 24 it had been significantly higher before that up to up to even 6% before that. So inflation is uh tough diesel if you've driven by the gas station lately. Fuel costs are up. Uh utilities are up. Uh

118fiscal capacity 1.85 million this year. I got a slide I'll show you in just a second that shows the history of the trend of that increased pension rate. The pension rate is not anything that we have any control over. It's the state pension fund for TCRS. It's it's actuarily annual analyzed and they tell us the rate of increase and we have to pay it. So we took a million dollar hit this year uh on paying pensions, not you know they just look at it for the state and they say here's your part. Um increased insurance rates. Another thing that's going up across the state and country, workers comp, general liability, we went up 562,000. Uh increased medical and dental insurance. Uh medical and dental costs are going up. Ours are about four 4 million. Uh

119the resource authority, there was a shift at the c uh with the resource authority. In the past, the county had kicked in money and they let all uh Sar County governmental agencies use the resource authority. They are now passing that cost on to us. our portion will be about $150,000. And then uh enrollment, you know, obviously it's something that we're going to monitor. Uh birth rate, if you remember, birth rate dropped during COVID for kindergarteners, so it was down about half a point. So that worked out to about the drop in kindergarten we had last year. We'll be monitoring closely our kindergarten registration over the summer uh to see, you know, we've got a good number of how many have come in now, but you don't know how many are going to move out over

120the course of the summer. So, we'll be monitoring that with enrollment and just uh you know $100 you have you have to spend $126 to equal $100 in 2019. So, you know, inflation is eating away at our revenues also. So, I think it's important if people ask you like our enrollment has been roughly the same for the last two years. Why are we continuing to get more money? Well, when you have a budget the size of ours, when you look at things like step increases and things like that, 3% is not is barely a cost of living. >> I think Mr. King question. >> I'm sorry. >> Yeah, on the fund balance. Um this that Yeah, the one before the slide just um >> this one. >> No, the two before. Next one. >> This

121one. >> There you go. Yeah. Undesated fund balance 2023. I don't remember that being 63 million. I I have a record here for um is that is that the 2223 school year or is that 2324? >> Hang on one second. I'll get you an answer. >> It says 2023. I'm just wondering if that's like >> that should be the 23 tied directly back to the 23 audit report. >> Very close to it. Those are that's the that's the 22 23. No. >> Okay. >> The actuals >> actuals. Okay. I'm just I'm just looking at our I'm just our our undesated fund balance at our budget workshop was 43 million. Um I'm I'm just looking at these these were the old presentations. >> Yeah. I imagine that's a projected amount. And so we went back in

122and added some actual data to the slide for those those prior years. >> Okay. And then um and then that 1.8 for this year, is that undesated or is that unbudgeted? >> Well, it be the same. We don't have an unbudgeted. It's all the same now. >> Uh because in the past undesated was different than unbudgeted. >> Yeah, it's all the same now. >> If it's undesated, it's unbudgeted. Yeah, it's the same term just, you know, used interchangeably. >> Well, I think the undesated before was used for budgeting. It says available for budgeting. So, we have a if you go to the previous slide, we have um or I think you said 57 million was for for budgeting, right? >> Yeah, that's total. Yes. >> Okay. and that but in the past the undesated fund

123balance made up that available balance fund balance for budgeting. So I I'll look at it. I'm just I'm just seeing um so projected unbudgeted fund balance is I I feel like there's a difference there. I feel like the undesated is not the same as the unbudgeted because undesated includes the ava projected fund balance available for budgeting and then once everything's added in then you have the unbudgeted fund balance. So, I'm just wondering if that the next slide. Yeah, the 2026. I'm sure that number >> we can change that to unbudgeted. It should be the >> right but I'm just in the in the past those previous numbers were not unbudgeted. They were und designated. >> Well, it's the same thing. >> It's unbudgeted. It's undesated. >> So on on so on on these on these

124presentations we had undesated. This was 43 million on budget was three million. So those were different on here. So >> but I'm for >> Yeah. >> I'm just saying this this is the same undesated unbudgeted would be the same thing. >> Okay. >> Is it just being presented differently than what it was four years ago? >> Yeah. Let let me jump to Wade real quick while you're thinking through that and I'll come back to you real quick. >> Okay. Wade, you had a question real quick. >> I mean, yeah. I mean, obviously it looks like it was obviously y'all are presenting it differently than what it looked like four years ago. So, I think there needs you get that. Um, my question specifically looking at page 27 about diesel. Um, >> about what? I'm sorry.

125>> About page 27 is about diesel because >> yeah, >> working in the uh touring industry right now, I can tell you I've seen the receipts of what we're having to pay our drivers. I couldn't imagine. >> Um, I just I don't see an there's no proposed increase there. I'm worried about obviously I mean it can go down, it can fluctuate, but the reality is >> I don't I don't see that being sustainable. >> Yeah. >> And then what happens, you know, I don't want to take away from something else just to fund our buses. >> Yeah. She um Mr. Richardson had studied that we were running under pretty significantly on diesel this year. So she thinks that if you look at our actual spend that there's enough room in there. >> Now if it

126goes to like $7, then everybody's going to be amending money in, you know. So, do we have the actuals from this current year? Because I see the 2425, but we don't have 25. >> Oh, we're not done with this. >> Correct. You We'll have that. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Which is good for >> I mean, she's forecasting out based on >> same. I mean, we're having to do the same thing. It's becoming Yeah, definitely. >> Yeah. It's a It's a crazy time for that. >> Well, and you know, and it likewise like it pushes the cost of everything from Correct. >> like when Andy Brown goes to buy a part. I didn't list that in that list of stuff. It was in there earlier. I deleted it on accident. But, you know, parts are affected

127by the cost of shipping and everything like that. >> Okay. That was just something that stood out to me. >> I would like to see in a either in an email or a future meeting just the forecasted gas pricing from what we've done this year versus what we think is going to happen next year. >> Yeah. We we'll talk to Mr. Richardson. >> It can be an email. >> Yeah. >> Mr. Keep >> Yeah, just back to my my original question there. So, I was look, so we're talking about a projected amount, then we're talking about actuals that come in. So, this would mean that in 2022 23, we projected 43 million and that slide says that it was 63 million. So, that's a $20 million difference. I mean, do we really is our projection

128that off? like that was 43 million that was presented to the board and then you're you're saying the actuals came in and that was a $20 million increase. That just seems like a >> I I'd be happy for us to look into that, Mr. King, but I don't I mean I don't think it's a good use of our time tonight. I mean it >> I can't we would have to go back and look in ter you have an answer for that. >> Well I'll just say you know when we're forecasting fund balance at you know towards the end of the year we try to be very conservative with revenues. we pick up some revenue on the last couple of months that we didn't anticipate getting. Same thing with expenses. We do uh forecast it very

129conservatively, you know, going back to u because we don't want to get in a situation where we have less fund balance than we actually do and um it impacts, you know, next year's budget. >> Okay. So in in in that undesated fund balance, the 63 million was rolled into the budget for the next year. So that 63 million would have rolled into 2024, >> right? >> And then including that 63 with capital expenditures and everything else, the 50 million, the pay increase at the end of 2024, that undesated fund balance was down to 26. Mhm. >> And then that was rolled into 2025. >> Mhm. >> At the end of 2025, basically we had a decrease in about 7 million. And then this year, when you look at rolling the un designated fund balance, we're

130looking at uh 1.8. So when you go back to the previous slide and you're looking at the 57 million undesated, that's what our estimate is at the end of this calendar year that we would have left over from last year's budget to roll into this year's budget. Correct? So we're saying of that 57 million, without that 57 million, we're in a halt because our budgeted revenue is less than our budgeted um expenses. So rolling that additional 57 in allows us to budget for capital expenditures, um add the reserves in, but we're estimating at the end of this year, if everything follows the line items exactly, we'd have 1.8 left over to use this year. Uh but hopefully >> we hope it's substantially higher. >> Yeah, we we hope it's significantly higher than 1.8 it did

131this year. >> But you know, we're already catching, you know, to Mr. Evans point. We're already catching the impact of increased cost across the board. >> Mr. Evans. >> Oh, I'm I'm still on the mic. Can I go ahead? I'll come back. >> Oh, my my question is we have an hour and 18 minutes left for a study session. If we're going to talk about fund balance more and once that discussion that can happen later on, I would really like not to rush the rest of this meeting just because we're trying like there's other stuff I'd like to talk about and get to and if we have time obviously I think that the staff here can answer those questions. be >> yeah be happy be an answer on the fund balance. >> So I'll just

132leave it with this. What what you're talking about that 57 million here is on this sheet is what the 43 million is. Okay. >> And on this sheet it's the same thing. I understand that's from a previous year. So >> but it but it plugged the hole just like this is plugging the hole and what we ended up with here was 1.8 million. On here it was three million. That's what I'm saying. I think there's I think the 1.8 on that slide is not at I don't think it's It doesn't seem like that's that's something different than the undesated fund balance is what I'm saying. And so it's >> we'll get our team to provide that information. >> Okay. Okay. All right. I did want to let's see jump back here. I did want to

133point out um I need to m you refresh because I had some additional stuff I added. There we go. Okay. I did want to point out u if you've been to McDonald's, Wendy's anywhere lately, you've seen that the cost of a a meal has gone from 550 to like $11. We've caught those same uh constraints on school nutrition. So, your school nutrition budget does include a 75 cent increase in student lunches for next year. Um, because we have a lot of inflationary pressures in school nutrition. >> M, >> does that um how does that influence our students who are on free and reduced lunch? >> It it doesn't affect them. >> Uh, reduced lunch. >> Well, reduced it would it would just go whatever that percentage would be of 75 cents would be what it

134would go up. >> Okay. So, we don't have the ability to cover that 75 cents for all free days lunch students, >> right? Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Okay. All right. So, this is the fiscal capacity part. Um, so 20 fiscal capacity is a remnant or it's a residual thing from BEP. BP was the funding formula was used for about two decades, three decades in Tennessee. Um it was not a student focused funding formula like TISA is. It basically took the money in the state, divided it up and had a formula that was divided out to districts by uh and it was it had some odd components like it would cover 60% of a teacher but not all teachers, different things like that. And then districts had to supplement the rest of that money. The residual

135is is there was an equalization measure that was part of BEP where your wealthier counties uh caught more of the fiscal constraints of the educational system in Tennessee than smaller rural poor school districts. So it's a zero sum game. There's two different measures. Tasser uh calculates one and uh CASS calculates the other. They average them and they set a fiscal capacity. It changes every year. This is the number we get real time at the end of April. Um so what has happened as uh TISA has come into effect. The first year you know at the end of April we caught a $1.2 million decrease in our TISA funding. Uh last year it was $1.44 million. This year it's 1.85 million. Um so one number is one of the numbers is two variables the other is

136seven. They do a multiple multiple regression of it and they average those two numbers and tell you what your rate is. So like for instance if Rutherford County goes down 0.06 on fiscal capacity then somebody else has to go up or some combination have to go up because it has to equal out. It's a zero sum game. So some some have gone down we've gone up. So we went up 0.06 06 this year at our fiscal capacity and that equates to 1.85 million. Now this number lags 18 to 24 months in the way that they do the calculation. So um you know hopefully we have now caught all the growth and this thing will begin to but we thought that it would go down or stay the same this year and it it jumped up

137to 1.85 million. Uh it's a residual that I wish like if nothing else I wish they would lag it a year where we would get the number and then we could compensate for it next year instead of having to catch it all real time. But this is this is what we have. So I just wanted you to understand I can get you the formula. I get you more information or you can Google TISA fiscal capacity and it'll explain it. Okay. So what we're looking at um for raises this year is a certified step raise. That cost is 2.73 million. A classified step raise is right at a million. And then in addition, we've got about $4 million in u additional medical and dental increases. All right. Our other big expenditures, we've got student support, behavioral,

138and I'll I'll give you I'll break this down so you can see it in a second. Uh this is just an overview. Uh behavioral intervention, student support, the presentation that you heard from Miss Daniel, Dr. Halman a couple months ago, uh about addressing the behavior needs uh STARS counselors uh with student support. Uh 492,000 CTE teachers, career coaches, and innovation. 870,000. Miss >> Brittney Um, does this include bumping our minimum um of a professional school counselor from a half counselor in smaller schools to having the lowest number be one full-time counsel? >> Not not completely. I've got a solution for that. Um, let me It It involves some personnel shifting. So, let me let me talk to you about that after if we can. >> Wonderful. Thank you. >> So, are we I know you're

139doing step increases basically. Yeah. Are we for our staff with that medical and dental being $4 million? Are we anticipating if nothing else that our their portion of the insurance is not going to increase? >> Everybody in the state's insurance is going up this year. >> I guess what I'm trying to >> Yeah. >> is it going to increase any more than normal? >> Like I mean that mine goes up every year. Everybody's goes >> Yeah. We haven't had an increase in two years, so we will have an increase this year. >> Um, we're still in the negotiation stage of that >> because insurance runs January 1 to December 30th. So, we're only four months in, five months into this year. >> Okay, Mr. Pet. >> Yeah. So, the certified step raise, what does that

140what does that get our starting teachers to um starting salary? Starting would stay the same at 50,500. It's just everybody's currently a teacher would go up one step. Everybody's a current classified employee would go up one step. >> The starting would stay the same, but the step would Okay, >> right? You know, if you look around the state, you know, we would all prefer every year to do big raises. If you look around the state, like for instance, Knox County is cutting about 100 positions this year. Uh Williamson County sent uh Williamson County's mayor requested a 4% increase in salaries across the board for all county employees. That created a $22 million gap uh for Williamson County. So the Williamson County budget they sent over was 20 or $22 million out of balance. Um you

141know, if you saw Wilson County's got the $7 million in insurance for their insurance trust that they've got to resolve. uh you're just seeing um school districts across the state and across the country having to manage cuts or ask for more revenue. Um you know, I think one of the celebrations of this budget, even though it's tight, is that it does balance so we're not having to go and ask for additional funds from the commission? >> I think so. >> Oh, sorry. Mr. Lacy. >> So, are you intending to I guess to do starting pay increase or are we not doing that this year? Not this year. >> Yeah. Not this year. And if you look, let me go. >> Our kind of pattern has been is, you know, you'll see we went two years

142with the RA with the adjustment to the pay scale and then we did a step. We've now gone four consistent years with increasing the pay and we've got a you know, when you look at If sorry, you know, when you look at this number, we've got a we got to catch our breath because, you know, a $1,000 raise for classified employees, Miss Miss Brown, was $4 million. >> What's that? I'm sorry. for certified a $1,000 increase on the pay will be about $4 million. >> Because I know I did some research and the the counties that surround us, we're the second best paying um job for teachers to start out at. I'm just curious if you talk to other uh directors and see what they're going to do. Is that going to lose ground or

143is it everybody doing what kind of what we're going to do? I I think they're either doing what we're going to do or they're doing what Williamson is doing where they're saying we just got to have more revenue because I mean, you know, at the end of the day, you either increase revenue or you decrease expenditures. Um because, you know, what we don't want to do is add to the pay scale in a way that we can't pay it in a year or two. So then we have to cut a bunch of positions. That's a I would rather catch our breath, continue to look for other funding sources, especially like I I do think this big beautiful build piece is going to be very good for us. Um we could shift a substantial amount of

144our technology instructional materials and things like that into that line, but we free that up for other things. Um, but you know, I mean, it is a it is a very real thing. Um, that this budget is very tight and I would love more than anybody to continue to to continue to give substantial raises each year because I think our wholeheartedly believe our our folks um deserve it. Um, you know, one of the things looking at, uh, part of the reason not that our fund balances are dropping is one of the areas that we used to catch a lot of, uh, extra funding is that we had a low fill rate on some positions. You know, when we had 10% turnover rates, we were saving substantial amounts. You know, we had 27% turnover rate in

145in a significant number of classified staff jobs. We budgeted that money, but we never spent it because we didn't have people in those positions. We caught that in fund bounce. Now we're at a little bit over 4% turnover for teachers and about 11% for our largest number of classified employees and 10% overall. So when you combine all that like u you know the good news is is our schools are close to fully staffed. You know, the downside is is we're not catching that fund balance that allowed us to continue to expand uh pay and stuff like that because, you know, if a step raise is, you know, a step raise cost $2.7 million for classified. A step raise for I was for certified step raise for classified is about a million. So if you look

146at that you know that is you know 3.7 million of our 11.6 million of new dollars >> insurance >> and an insurance. Yeah. our budget. >> It's eating us up and that's that's the inflationary pressure >> on the four million for the the medical and dental. Is that are we paying some of that or is our employees going to be playing paying all of that? >> Well, that four million is our is our >> what we're paying for. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So going to um let me start running through. So this was what we proposed to address our behavior and support needs. Uh so this isn't this is mostly the program that Dr. Halman and Miss Daniel presented to you two months ago. It does include some other things because we've really got to

147expand some services like in CDC because we're getting an increasing number of CDC students and we desperately want to meet their needs and those are areas where we need small classrooms. Uh and classrooms where you're not having to travel 30 40 minutes to get there. Um you know our IBI teachers, we're adding three IBI teachers. Those are our behavior classes. Like right now we have a class at uh Beach Elementary. We have one at Station Camp. There's nothing else around Hendersonville for behavior. Um similarly, we have one at Beach High School, but nothing for the rest of the northern part of the county. So, we've got to begin and continue to expand our behavior support for our kids. Uh and all of those, the classroom management coordinator position is grantf funded. put it up here

148so you could see it. Uh but it um that person is out in schools 90% of the time working with teachers uh to help understand, you know, how how do I manage student behavior more effectively? >> Okay, any questions? Yeah, >> I think the a question we'll get and I think most of us probably realize it from the emails and things that we have gotten, but behavior. Do we track like the number of students that are needing those services like over the past like I know that that has consistently gotten larger >> and will and continues to grow but you know the I don't know that people understand that like just by saying well behavior you know they hear like behavior is getting worse but they think it's like kids are just acting up. It's

149not this is this >> these students >> that need this >> inter intervention service. Mhm. >> My question is the students that are in this these IBI classrooms or these type things, do we track or have we any kind of data saying hey like >> five years ago we had X number this year we you know >> so that we can say hey look we have a >> there is a need a growth or whatever here >> a pattern of of >> yes >> increased need there. So I I think it's it it's interesting. It's about three things. So the first one is is that our overall discipline has declined like our number of suspensions, our number of alternative schools, things like that has declined over the last couple years. At the same time, the

150extremity of behavior has increased. So it may even be a smaller number of students in some ways, but it's a more profound set of needs because of generally we have kind of and Miss Daniel, correct me if I'm wrong, we have two big pockets where we're seeing support needs for students or pro I would say let's say three kids coming into kindergarten that are having trouble making that transition. um kids that are autistic or other special needs that are in the process of learning um verbal processing skills, communication skills, they get frustrated as they try to do that. And then kids that are suffering from profound trauma and they are working through the trauma while they're at school and they require a substantial amount of support. So uh sh to your point it's like it

151may actually in some ways be a smaller number of kids but it's more extreme and a larger need for support. So for instance like with IBI one of the problems that we've had over the last couple years and it's why we've churned so many IBI teachers is is we haven't had an option for kids that don't progress in right because everything we do is based on progression and improvement. We hope everybody that's in an IBI class progresses out of that and goes back into um goes back into the classroom full-time 100% all the time. Uh just like with EL sped, everything else. The the problem that we're seeing is we get or the challenge that we're seeing is we see some kids that have such profound needs usually because of trauma. We can't meet their

152needs in our existing IBI classroom, but we have nowhere else for them to go. We have some kids that like right now our only option is an outofcount uh outpatient program. Those programs like it's not even about the money. They're usually about 70 or 75 $80,000. But even with the money, you can't get accepted. We've had some kids that we've been waiting eight or nine months. And it's not because we're wanting to move these kids on. It's that we can't meet the the needs that they have with the resources that we have. and they they need the support. It's it's tragic. Uh so what we are trying to do um with our nest and renew program is build our own structure internally to provide that because what happens is and I m this may catch

153what you were to catch that we've got at the top of those IBI classes we got kids that have extreme behaviors that are not progressing and they stay in that class. So that pulls the teacher and teaching assistance um resources and then the kids that are underneath there that could progress and could have their needs met there aren't getting as much of the attention of the teachers and staff be because of that. So our answer is to is to um you know consolidate some of that so that because the other thing is if you have a teaching assistant out or a teacher out it's really hard on those days at those schools when you have a teacher and a couple of assistants or two teachers and a couple of assistants. So being able to consolidate

154that so that we got more streamlined support. Uh but then also to you know like a classic example I would say is for the last couple years we had a behavior class at or an IBI class at Schaefer that caught Schaefer students and Rucker Stewart students and it was up around 12 13 students and that was a lot of middle school IBI students in one classroom. Last year we added an IBI program at Rucker and an IBI program at Schaefer and split it. So the Rucker kids were at Rucker and the Schaefer kids were at Schaefer and the overall satisfaction of the program, the the satisfaction of the teacher, the satisfaction of the students, satisfaction of the parents has increased tremendously and the classroom is much at both schools is much better as a result

155of that. So one of the things that's reflected in this is um having an uh we've right now got our IBI classes at Venus Stewart. We would now have class at Venus Stewart and then um Guild. So it would spread it would kind of accomplish the same thing that we saw at Rucker and um and Schaefer. >> Yeah. I think the when when we and I know that's what you call but when you when it's just called behavioral >> Yeah. >> It's like >> Yeah. It's hard to explain to people who are not >> I guess in the know of things as as we are >> and I don't know anything either. But um you know I think people think oh those are just >> kids that acting bad. >> Yeah. No. >> Yeah. To

156a certain extent maybe but it's not. It's more to it than just that. We we've gotten really good with the kids that are, you know, that we just historically said were bad. >> You know, like when I was a middle school AP, we had a lot of kids that we called willful and persistent. We don't see a whole lot of those anymore. Um, if we could get rid of THC vapes, we would have almost eliminated high school alternative school. Um, you know, that's the main, you know, um, but at the same time, yeah, and it's really it's really tragic, Mr. because it's when you get to know some of the kids that are involved, it's trauma >> and it's acting out of that trauma. And I wish there was another word and maybe there is

157and Miss Brown pushes on this a lot. It's it's not just behavior, it's it behavior is the outcome, but there's a lot of other things feeding into it. And I'm hoping that also what we can see from this is better outcomes for those student like like hey what is the result of this >> you know right now >> with it being so sporadic around the county and all like that it's hard to know. I'm not saying we're not. I'm just saying I would like to see some data behind like, hey, we had these kids that went into this behavior classroom. >> Yeah. >> And the next year or the next year, whatever. >> Yeah. Oh, I 100% >> we graduated out or what whatever that term is. But >> I 100% agree. I I think

158you know what I don't know. It's just it's it's tragic on multiple level. one for the kid, two for staff members that we pat them on the back and say, "Hey, go back in there and do the best you can." I'm not comfortable doing that. Like, we've all pushed really hard for this program before you because we've had to I've had to sit there too many times and say, "I can't imagine what you're going through, but I need you to go back in there one more day." >> And I hate that, you know, because those te our IBI teachers, bless you, are called to do that. like they love the kids that they work with and they want the best for them and if you work with the kids you'll see you'll see the same

159thing. It's just it it's a tragedy operating on multiple levels. But I'm also like we innovate here in Summer County and just saying that's just the way it is after COVID is not acceptable. And I think that like, you know, also included in here are five kinder bridge teachers where we're working a little bit of a pilot this year to have five areas in the county to have somebody work like if we know a kindergarter comes in and can work for 20 minutes without melting down. But about minute 22, it's going to get interesting. Let's pull that child out, not in school suspension. Let's pull that child out and have somebody work with them on the skills so that then they can stretch that 20 to 25 and 25 to 30. And by the end

160of probably by Christmas, probably by the end of the first nine weeks, they're going to be acclimated and then we can use that person to begin to work with some other in first grade, second grade, third grade, uh to support them as well. >> Mr. Ley, >> um on the Nest program, when will that be in effect? >> In the fall, it will be. >> Yes, sir. So, and I want to clarify when we're looking at the budget and you're talking about these positions and you're talking about the 2.7 million increase step raise that includes these positions and that but I I mean obviously I mean not step increase but includes the hiring of these positions. >> That would be that 1.1 right there. >> Gotcha. >> Okay. So, okay. I'm sorry. >> Call back

161to your back. >> I'm sorry, Miss. >> Yes. Fine. Thank you, chairman. Um, with the addition here, um, of these new positions, >> what can you give me the totals we'll have in the county with the two renewed teachers? Are some of these starting positions or are these additional teachers to the sped intervention teacher, the three IBI? I know the answer to some of those, but so >> these are new additional >> new. So, what what will that be plus these? What what will that make our county have? >> We can get those numbers for you. >> I just across the county. I'd like to know. And just by you saying a minute ago about having that IBA teacher work come when that kindergarter gets about 20 minutes in, but they know at 21. That's

162the kind of information then when that child's assimilated >> into the regular setting that that's the kind of thing that's like, hey, look at the outcome. Look at the outcomes. So, um, oh, I know this would be a great that I'd like to get what that is across the county with these additions >> and and this is step one once we get this base work because I agree with Mr. Lancaster. So, this is experimenting and hypothetical hypothesis testing to see what's really going to work. We spent this year figuring out what to do and where to add it. This year is the real test year. Step two is going to be, you know, if you um you know, we've got um Jay in the back back there. Uh you know, one he'll tell you he's

163one of the one of our just a phenomenal principal. >> If you've been to Hunter, >> uh you know what a great principal he is. Um but can also tell you because of his love for the kids that are in his school, there's equally a need to provide the same type support for some of our CDC students that have ongoing needs. And that'll be step two because there's not an answer for what we're adding this year. There's absolutely not an answer for that, too. So, we will learn a lot this year and then begin to try next year hopefully to take on and tackle that that next problem or not problem but just challenge. Oh, and it's hard because I want to I want to be really careful that we don't use the language of

164multigree behavior but also problem. This is challenge faced by our kids. Okay. Uh similarly along the mental health lines, we are adding um we have a STARS counselor at half of our middle schools and all of our high schools. STARS counselors work every day at their school with kids, helping them identify problems, helping them solve problems, being a friendly ear, helping them set goals, connecting them to other mental health resources that are available if they need them. And so we have that in all of our high school and middle schools. It's just that half of the middle school is funded through a different through a grant called volunteer behavioral health counselor. Uh a volunteer behavioral health counselor is similar to a STARS counselor. It's just a different different funding source and program. So, you know,

165I did want you to see that we are Miss Brenn to your point, we are continuing to try to find, you know, increased and more mental health support and uh counseling support for our kids. And we do of course have our partnership with Centerstone, too. It's just that you know what we're finding is is that child care is a problem in this country. Mental health care is also a problem. Okay. Uh innovation and CTE uh nine career coaches. Um we have those in each of our high schools. The we funded these we started funding these out of the ISM the innovative school model grant. There was a requirement in there that we gradually what they didn't want to do is have districts create staffing which is happen which happened to a lot of districts with

166esser with co money is they had all this all these people in in that and then they had to eat them 100% in GP so they just cut a bunch of positions when they funded this money the million dollars to each high school 500,000 to each middle school they wanted any staffing to be stairstepped so that the positions could be assumed into a GP budget so this is our last 25%. So after this, our career coaches will be completely in our budget. And if you see like uh you know those 500 kids that were at the innovation center on Friday for draft day were done largely by our career coaches. If you don't think career coaches are good, imagine getting seniors on their last day of school to an event. uh getting last month seniors

167to anything was a challenge, but getting them uh there uh to interview for a job and to have a great experience all the way around. But that that's one of the things they do. They they've conducted over four or five,000 one-to-one meetings with our kids. They've taken them to um trade schools, colleges, industry partners, uh everything. So, they're they're really doing tremendous work to connect our kids to uh what's next for them. uh three new CTE teachers, cosmetology at Gallatton High School. We added a cosmetology teacher a couple years ago at Gallton High School. That program has absolutely exploded. Uh so much so that uh there's huge demand to add a second teacher which we're going, you know, our recommendation is that that we're going to do that and that will dramatically expand. You know

168what's amazing about this is that by having that second teacher, we can get more and more higher level classes for them. uh one hand that generates for us you know on the fiscal side that generates money in Tissa because higher level CTE classes get funded at a different rate but most importantly for the kids um it gives them the opportunity to get close to all their cosmetology hours before they graduate if they work really hard and have the availability in their schedule they can complete all their hours for their cosmetology degree that saves them 10 $15,000. Um, you know, it's funny. We were uh lead leader Lambert and I were at White House at a career technical day and we were in the cosmetology room. Neither one of us really require a whole lot of

169William actually needs more cosmetology help than I do, but uh but yeah, I could just shave mine, but uh but um the girl that was doing the tour, uh she gets in trouble frequently and you couldn't have hired a tour guide to do a better job around the uh around the cosmetology room. She told leader Lamer everything positive about White House cosmetology. I was laughing as we walked off. I looked at the principal that there's zero chance she's not getting in trouble by the end of the day. But she just expended every she expended everything good that she had in her for that. But uh those those positions are very vital. Entrepreneurship and content creation. These are at the innovation center. But remember they will be building programming that will benefit all nine of our

170traditional high schools. Our goal at the innovation center is not to add programming that steps on current programming at high schools. It's to accentuate or expand it uh just like we see with aviation. A lot of it we can run with through dual enrollment in the short term uh to help us as we're we're building out. But entrepreneurship and content creation are two that are going to be very popular and are also ones we can have our teachers do. Um entrepreneurship we're using the same curriculum that Williamson County is doing. Williamson County has, I believe, two national champions in entrepreneurship. Uh, one young woman built a uh testing strip uh on a bracelet so that if you're out at a at a restaurant, you can test to see if your drink has been drugged. Uh,

171on the other extreme, the boy this year that I think will probably win built a lawn chair with a drink attachment on the back that 3A has already bought a thousand of for the summer in Florida. So, uh, but they're running some really amaz pretty amazing pretty amazing entrepreneurship projects in Williamson County. Uh, the innovation center program director, that position will primarily work, you know, I mentioned earlier when we're talking about CTE and innovation. We've built all these great programmings across the county. Our scheduling APs, principles, guys, counselors do a tremendous job. We need work done to tie everything together. I also mentioned earlier 200,000 paid internships in New York City. We want to move more towards opportunity getting our kids into paying jobs, internships, things like that. That requires some organization and coordination and

172that's what this position uh will spend most of their time doing. Uh and then I wanted to remind like I wanted to close, we haven't shown this slide in a long time. I did not include on here there is money that we send to middle school and high school band. Uh, I didn't put that on the slide, but um I can share that those numbers with you. We haven't changed this number in a long time. But basically, for every kid, a school gets $75. Uh, that that's board allocated money that goes directly to the school for instructional money. The difference is, and this is where our technology has kicked in, what we have done at the district level. Like when I was a principal, I would spend a significant portion of my instruction money on

173Chromebook carts, iPad minis at the time for my faculty, plus my district device fund. Now, we have shifted the cost of the new teacher devices and the student devices away from the school so that they're able to employ this money. So, it's the same money as say 2017, 2018, but before it was allocated mainly to try to just catch up on technology and we had four-year-old teacher computers and we had one device for every four kids. Now, we're now we're able to uh spend that money at the school on stuff that other than technology that directly impacts our kids. So that could be some CTE equipment, it could be dissections, it could be um you know books, materials, STEM activities, 3D printing. There's a million things that they spend that on. >> All right. And

174I think I missed in the update. I want to talk about >> Can I ask a quick question on the the school funding, the slot you're just on? >> Back. Yep. Uh, no. The >> on the very end. >> Yep. Right here. The allocated student funds. Um, I I know I've had um a couple different individuals. I say individuals staff members reach out. Um, library the 750. >> Um, the cost of books has gone up >> a significant amount. Yeah. >> Um I know I was talking to one librarian. She said she purchased a book of uh or she p purchased a set of um books for 32 32 NFL teams. Um and another set for all the Major League Baseball teams. And the cost of that was more than the fund allocation per student.

175Um, I think she said it was I'd have to go back and look, but um, it comes out to I mean I think it was like $10 plus a book per kid or something. I I don't know the numbers. I'll have to go back and look, but there's questions about additional funding for libraries and purchase the books. The second one was we've got a lot more students um, in schools that from a fine arts standpoint um, theater, musicals, things like that. And when you look at, you know, the we've got guidance, we've got library, we've got office, we've got instruction. There's a question about can we get funds? I know you mentioned ban, but can we get funds designated um specifically from these dollar amounts or an increased allocation for those programs because the cost

176of purchasing um the musical books themselves um the cost of the stages, the cost of the equipment that they're having to rent uh to run sound, especially in some of the gyms and stuff, that cost continues to raise as well. So, um, I would love if we could look at that from an allocation standpoint to see is there any room or any opportunity there. I know from an instruction standpoint, you know, that that the the administration has a little bit of discretion and they push some money towards that, but from an allocation standpoint, those are areas where I've seen um some needs requested. >> Yeah. And I would also I I agree, we can always look at those numbers. I would also encourage um you know before my wife became a career coach, she was

177an art teacher and she would have a lot of conversations with art teachers about materials and supplies and I would always remind her hey first like if you're an art student you're a student at that school and we're giving that big instructional allocation for that purpose. So I think you know we can I think we can try to hit it from both ways. Um we do need to look at the allocation. We've talked about that before like we did that when we did the athletic facilities, one of the things that we also did was we did a run of funding for a band for uh equipment and you know everything every capital thing they could possibly use. Uh and that that was really beneficial especially in middle school. So I do think we need to

178we do need to look at that. Um, you know, one of the things that we've talked about is talking, um, at the state level even is, you know, innovative school model grant money is about to run out this year. Could we get from the state another run of something like that with a few less strings attached to it because the ISM had a lot of things tied to it that limited what we could do. Would there be a way for us to get a run like that and then include some of that? You know, we've taken STEM to steam. uh you know if we because fine arts and everything else are part of that overall curriculum. So I think like I think we'd have need to hit it from multiple directions. I guess would be

179my answer. >> Mr. Evans uh real quick I want to make sure because I know I'll get a question about this. Um Apex is not something we are buying. Apex is our own thing that we have created. >> We're trying to create like >> but that the the brand and what that looks like that is something that we are creating. It's not something we're purchasing. >> No no it is a good-look slide but but it's not a >> Yeah. No, we're I would say that's what I what I was saying that we're trying to tie everything together so that every kid benefits from it. >> Um, secondly on that, this is just for clarification again for I'm very weird about this. My wife's probably laugh at this, but there was a a different Sunny County

180Schools logo. Is that is that a new logo that we're going to start using? >> No, that's that I I just showed you a real time like that's still a draft. >> Okay. >> Yeah. No, it'll be the same logo. I didn't want, you know, again, it's consistency thing. Making sure. Okay. Sorry. I just >> that's the things that stick out in my ADHD brain. I see those things. So, all right. Cool. Thanks. >> I I I did have you mentioned steam. I know we every year we get a question about steam teachers in elementary schools. Can you kind of walk through the reason why those are typically PTO funded? Yeah, I think that if you look um if you look at a school like Howard, what they've done that's been so successful with STEM

181is they've integrated into everything. Um so I I think the thing is is we could always allocate those positions. We would have to cut other places. Um, you know, I I I think that the the you know, the power of STEM in some ways is that it's integrated across the problem solving techniques and everything are integrated across. I do think, you know, as we get as our revenues tick up, it's something for us to look at in terms of how do we make sure that that's equitable across the board for all schools. Uh but you know, we've got enough training and support now with um with our CT and innovation team and everything to provide support for schools to find the best way to integrate that into their current related arts. And I think what

182you'll start to see too is related arts will start to shift like we've seen that I know in Portland East Middle School. They've started aligning some of their related arts more to the CT and career path in the high schools. They're with art. They're also looking at digital art and things like that. So I think that there's a again it'll probably be like a multiple tier strategy on that. >> Miss Hayes >> to your point I had that question asked today one of the elementary schools I was in um about the having the um paid by the PTO position. So is that being communicated through the leadership of the school among the instructional leaders that they are to be incorporating this in to their units to what they're studying across I >> I think it's

183a mix of you know I don't want to step on what our schools are doing that's great and schools that have PTO's that want to generate those funds to me that's a classic case where they're doing an extra thing for their students out of choice you can like Howard will prove to you that you can do it fully integrating it into or like I could say like Beth Page Elementary next year uh Miss Manning uh they were using PTO to pay someone to do STEM part-time and she's integrating it by putting you know her librarian is going to become part of the related arts schedule and run STEM through the library along with reading and things like that. So sometimes it's a question of resource allocation, but we also give our principles the autonomy at

184their at their level to look and see what's best. And if you can if you can generate the money to have that extra person, then that's I mean I think it's a great thing for PTOs to raise money for. Um I think long-term it's something that we want to look at, but I think we also have to look at so I don't know it's necessarily even just the individual school leadership. It's some of it is district decision making, but then it's also some of us change management as you have >> related arts positions change. It gives you the flexibility to look at it a little bit differently or to or to reassign things and it's probably somewhere in the middle of all those different things. Um, you know, STEM, we've had them for a long

185time in a certain school, but it's really started to expand in the last five or seven years and still trying to figure out what's the sweet spot for, you know, because I mean, it's really, if you see what Howard does, it's really pretty amazing to see the way that, you know, they tie their their ELA curriculum. So, you know, when they're reading about space, they're doing STEM activities that are connected to space, and then they're doing that in science, they're doing that in math, and all that ties together really nicely. And you know what we have tried to do is because you know at the same time we want to respect the time. We have some longtime schools that are very successful that do have a PTO paid person and they're phenomenal programs. I don't

186want to in any way say that I'm against that or opposed to that because I think that's great too. >> Over and above. >> Yeah. It's over and above that, >> right? But I do think that there's ways, you know, for us to to do a little bit of both to help everybody out. And we provided that as examples and models for them to look at. And previously in the previous funding model BEP the stint was not an allocated position. >> Correct. >> Wait. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. I I think that you know I as longterm if we can get out of this dip that we're in now and our revenues start to climb again. >> I I do think with you know some of the outcomes money and stuff like that that's where we

187can start to look at some of these other needs because that in a sense that be almost the same thing as like the PTO. >> Sure. Let me go back because when we updated I had added some capital things. >> Sorry, Michael. So um I have communicated with um I'll have a little bit better picture of capital next week and this is something that we can carry on into June if we need to. Um I think there's a willingness with the budget committee and the county commission to look at giving us additional capital. And so I think one of the things um that we can look at I just I just put down a list of traditional things that we've done with capital used to for years until 2022. We did have we had a

188SCS in our budget book. We had a capital allocation and then we had an allocation of capital over at the county and they would approve our projects and have some input. We bought buses and we bought textbooks and we bought all kinds of different stuff over there. Um, I would like to put in addition to our budget to put an additional program or excuse me some suggested capital projects to go over and they can fund them or not, but it would give us because you know we are really really tight this year and it would be beneficial to us uh if we could do that. And so what I'd like to do because it's 8:30 now, we've got about 30 more minutes. I'd like to work on some of that this week and get it

189to you and we can include that in our conversation next week because I do think we can carry on the capital conversation. We need to pass our budget in May, but we don't necessarily have to pass everything capital until then. Um, we got really favorable um initial run on our special education playground. I think everybody was excited to to see the mockup. Uh we got Jin Brown in. Uh we'll have station camp uh by Tuesday next week that we can vote on. So we can What's that? >> Yeah. The 19th. >> The 19th. Yeah. >> So we'll be able to vote on our first two special education playgrounds which are big win. Also give us kind of an idea of what that looks like because station camps is more massive and Jean Browns is more

190on the smaller side. So give us kind of a good cross-section of what those projects are going to cost. >> So So question on the playgrounds because I I heard this a couple times is last year we allocated Well, this year we allocated >> 750,000 I think. Um, did we spend all of that this year? Did any of it roll over? >> Well, and then >> we it ended up being over a million with the commission the commission's money. So, we will know. We'll get the other bids for station camp to look at. So, we'll know where we are because remember we spent money on the master plan >> and then we've got Jean Brown and we have station camp. So, we'll know. One of the things that we're going to request from the county

191is they can hold that money that's allocated into next year so we won't lose that capital money for that. I would think that they will earmark that and just roll it over. >> Do do we So um as far as additional playgrounds >> um outside of the run of these first two, I know we talked about expanding it to other other schools that need the same resources. Um there's no additional funding right now in the budget for that. Our plan is to look at uh going back to the county from a capital project standpoint and rolling it into some of the other needs that we have, the roofing, the building upgrades and saying, "Hey, here's our master plan of large capital projects that we're looking at for the next one, three, five, seven years." Um,

192and then working with them to figure out the funding around that so that we can move forward with with additional >> Yeah. And is that is that the plan? Well, I think what we'd want to do is like we would want some skin in the game capital-wise and then ask for I think the partnership worked really well last year and we can look to partner on capital again for special ed playgrounds. I I just think it's hard to say exactly what that is until, you know, Gene Brown was one of the smaller jobs that we'll do. When we get that station camp bid, we'll have an idea of what a larger job will be and it'll give us an idea of what we want to allocate. That would be another reason I would say I

193would prefer to roll you know to discuss capital next week when you know we've been through this process uh and the reasoning conversation and we can hit that one a little bit fresh because I think we can you know for what we're asking anything additional that we'd be asking the county for. We don't necessarily have to you know we could extend that vote to our June budget meeting if we or excuse me board meeting if we needed to. >> Mr. Let me go to Mr. Lacy first and then I'll come back to Mr. L. >> Ask on the career coaches. Is that one for every high school? >> Yes, sir. >> Yeah, >> Mr. Lancaster. >> They're they're already there. Mr. Lacy, this is like we're catching like we could use the ISM money to

194pay it and so we had to phase it in. So, this is that last 25% of that. >> Mr. Lancaster. >> Yeah. Uh I always get this except we got what 55 schools >> 53 was something in there. Uh, and this is not a an at anybody because I know we got can only squeeze so much blood out of a tournament, but uh, when you look at the capital out for next year, you know, it's $5 million somewhere, black and white, you know, we got 53 school. >> I mean, hell, that just ain't sustainable. >> Yeah, >> cuz stuff breaks, you know, and it's that's just reality. There's no better there. I mean, I don't know where else there's more reality in in this entire thing is right there. It's like you can't have 53

195schools and $55 million. I mean, that >> but anyway, that's >> Yeah, I think that as I put on the bottom of this slide, the need for a bond to cover large scale capital projects is important. And I hopeully appreciate what y'all put together. I ain't saying that. I'm just saying. >> No, we feel the same way. >> I think that's got the message that, you know, if anybody has >> Okay. >> Well, and I think Dr. Langford's point is that, you know, all of these capital projects, you know, it's likely that we're going to need to tap into the bond in some form or fashion, working with the commission, and it makes sense to put the master plan together, and we can have that conversation after we've gone through the budget, say, "Hey, here's

196here the the building upgrades, whether it's Merryill Hyde, Gallatton High School, the paving, the sped playgrounds." we can roll out and say, "Hey, here's our master plan. Catch as much of it as we can and then work with commission to figure out um over the next year, three years, five years, where can we start tapping into that to to roll it out?" >> Yeah. I'm going back to that. >> Yep. >> Hey, we're talking upgrades. >> Yes. Yeah. I'm talking with >> Yes. >> Yep. >> Miss Pring. Um, I know I'm going to sound a little bit like a broken record, but do we have an update on the process for um getting presentations and architects? >> We have now that we have done this. >> Yeah, >> we have a little more time. >>

197Yeah. >> Yes, Mr. Ke. >> Yeah. I mean, I I think we can cover some of this with our reserves. Um when I'm looking at our reserves, I mean um and that's why I was questioning earlier some of the things because like I was looking on here this number, this 26 million number is on here. The 63 million number seems to be a discrepancy to this same report from the previous year which said 30 million. So I don't know what's going on with that. But I do know that uh our reserves as of fiscal year 25 was uh 131 million and um I don't I don't see why we can't allocate. We >> I'm sorry. >> What? >> Point of order. We've already had this conversation. We're repeating ourselves now. >> I'm It's not a

198point of It's I'm talking about reserves. >> Do Do we have 131 million in reserves? >> No, no. I That was from last year. I'm I'm I'm asking you're saying that we had 131 reserves at the end of fiscal year 25. >> Did we have 131 in reserves at the end of 2025 fiscal year? >> So according to our audit report, our total fund balance for FY25 was 131 million, but as we've kind of talked about in the past, not all that money is available for us to budget. There's monies in the internal schools that we can't budget. There's money in school nutrition we can't budget for any purpose. um money at the state for TCRS. Um there's money in federal projects that we can't budget in GP. So the total fund balance for the

199FY25 audit was 131 million, but there are some pieces in there that we can't budget. And so what we've done in this process is start with that and then we budget for next we take all that money out that we can't budget. We project the money at year end and we budget that money for the next year is is the exercise that's been done. >> Thank you. >> So what what is the projection of our what do we project will be audited? >> So let me let me just clarify something again. So Andy's tried to explain it. So >> it would not be prudent to budget a forecasted revenue and forecasted expense that we've not finished this year forward and fully budget that into next year's budget. That would not be fiscally prudent, meaning that

200would not be smart or wise. And so you would be budgeting money that you are not guaranteed and is not is not actually um received yet. And so, and also as Andy tried to explain, as those reserves close in at the end of this year, as we close out our revenue and our expenditures this year, that reserve balance, you see, is budgeted back into the next year. It's not like we just take it and we add it up. It goes into the next year. We've explained this. I'm I'm I don't I don't know how to make you understand it, but if you would like to have a real conversation, you're welcome to make an appointment with myself and my team and Dr. Langford and have a discussion, but every year we go through this. I

201I don't understand I don't I don't know how to explain this in a meeting to you for you to understand it. So, if you'd like to sit down and we can go through it and we can explain it. But it is never prudent for us to budget every anticipated possibility of saving money because if that money never c comes in at the end of the year, we don't save that penny that you want us to budget then our budget is not balanced. You you cannot do that. So, I I don't understand what you don't understand. I mean, I'm I'm looking at the reports and yeah, every year we have a surplus that rolls into that fund balance and and uh gives us a new total. Right now, it's my understanding that and in the past

202there's been a projection of what that would be and >> every year. >> Right. And we budget quite a bit of reserves based on that projection. So for example for this year by my calculation for 2526 83 million of reserves was budgeted uh previous year 84 million was budgeted before that 85 million in 2022 23 108 million of reserves were budgeted now that money was never spent because we don't show a decrease in our fund balance so what I'm saying is >> we clearly show a decrease in our fund balance >> yeah we had this yeah we did have one this year we we um it went down by 11.9 million. Okay. So, what I'm saying is we have a um the mandatory amount you said was 21 million. We have >> point of order.

203We've already requested to move on from this topic. I think most of us have heard this from Amanda multiple years in a row and can understand it and she's offered to sit down with you and teach you again how this works. But you're talking about money we don't have access to spend. So let's talk about the money we do have access to spend. >> Well, we don't know if we don't have a if we don't know what the audit is going to tell us, how can we make >> because it's not the year is not complete. >> Yeah, I know. But we how can we make a projection on the 57 million or the 21 million? See, we're projecting based on something that has not yet been an audit that has not yet happened. So

204we know there's money otherwise you wouldn't be able to put reserves into this budget. So what I'm saying is >> and and like I've explained we do a conservative projection. >> So yes, we are projecting savings but it is a conservative projection. Every year our reserve if it does not come in higher than I projected we have a problem a big problem. So every year I expect our reserve to come in a little bit better but you can't spend that money right now. It is not smart. It is not fiscally prudent. I would not be doing my job if I if I stood up here and said, "Yes, go ahead and budget that." >> But aren't we spending and budgeting capital? >> So c can we go back to the slide that shows the uh

205the totals for this year? So when you look at this slide, the the your conservative projection of a fund balance available for budgeting is 57458419. Correct. That that's your conservative estimate. >> That's correct. And typically we're seeing based on savings that number comes in a little bit higher. So while we say 1.8 right now it could be 2 2.5 or three. We just don't know until our books are closed. So conservatively we feel comfortable saying 57. We're not comfortable saying any more than that. And so when do you can you walk through the process for when you close your books? >> Yes. So, we start closing. So, we start closing our books on June 30th, the year ends. And so, over the next month and a half, we're actively closing our books, reconciling all of

206our accounts, reconciling all our cash accounts, all our liabilities, um project uh getting our final revenue in from the county, which typically is at the end of July. Um getting our final expenditures in. You know, you have delayed billing. You want to make sure you're uh accounting for those appropriately back into the current fiscal year. closing out our POSs that are not are are liquidating any encumbrances that are no longer needed, rolling forward those POS. And so we tip we are required to close by the end of August. We depending on when we get our final revenue from the county and a couple other um numbers that we have to have from them to close our books. We usually uh close like August 15th to the 18th. I mean ideally sooner, but it just depends.

207And we also are usually waiting on an actuarial determined value for our um insurance trust funds. >> So in the numbers that you showed on the slide that had the 63 I think or 63 2619 those are official I mean outside of 2026 those are official year end August September October when we were able to close the books. Those are the the final numbers. Yeah, Trevor pulled those from our audit report >> and everything on the report, the spreadsheet that you've shown to us in previous years when we've had this budget meeting is just projected. Correct. All right, Mr. King, I've got other people that have questions. If you got >> I I'll just say this and and I will get with you on that, but the 26,98 that was on this report that was

208given to us, the same report that was 2024, the same report that we received for 2023 was not 63 million. It was 30 million. So that's where my confusion is coming from. >> And that's fine. And I think Miss Brown said she's more than happy to clarify one. I I don't see why we cannot say, "Hey, let's fund something out of our reserves >> when we are clearly funding capital. We're funding >> all this other budget stuff." And tr the trend is we budget reserves and they're never spent. So that's all I'm going to say. That's the that's the history. We have not the the 11.9 million decrease. >> Okay, you're incorrect. Let's move on. Let's move on. That's enough. Can I finish my >> No, let's move on. We've reduced this a ton. We've

209got other people. We got a couple minutes and we can come back. Mr. Lacy 12 years. >> Mr. Lacy, go ahead. >> I was just saying could we have a study session dedicated to budget or the reserves to educate all of us that >> I mean it should be this is our budget workshop. >> No, I think Miss Brown's made it clear anybody can come and speak to her and she'll walk through the detail. I mean, we would be happy and you know, in after it closes August 18th, when we get it back in September, be happy to do a reserve announcement. >> You stole my thumb, Mr. >> That would be my suggestion. I hear your frustration and I've heard it for, you know, the last two years obviously, too. And I feel like

210I get it. There's a lot of like tension about that. And honestly, I feel like we're just throwing around a bunch of numbers that people people are just going to see this and get so confused about what we're really talking about. My suggestion would be that I would think we take some time in September that once everything is closed. I would like to see that. For me personally, I think I'd have a better understanding and be able to answer questions. So, when we're talking about this stuff, I think right now it is hard to look at. It's it's not done. Like you guys have said, my suggestion would be that there's time set aside in September that we actually do discuss this. I think that that would help us not only plan for what the

211midyear looks like next year, um, but also to prepare for the budget for next year as well. Um I think it's pretty I mean this year was a unique timing of we basically have a meeting tonight and then we turn around look to vote on it next Tuesday. Um I mean that's just it's so fast on such a large amount and so much to wrap our head around. Um my suggestion would be that we have a lot of our board that's going to be the same obviously like we have one new new person coming on. I think that'd be very beneficial come September. So that' be my suggestion >> and I would if I could speak to second Mr. Evans. I think that >> so I understand Mr. Evans about the timing. You know the

212problem is is that the legislative session doesn't end until >> No, I know. I just want to I just want to explain because I do I agree with you that lots of numbers are thrown around. I'll just make a couple of points because you as I've said in the past our finance team is hands above the best in the state. Um they are dealing we have one of the most transparent systems. these reports. I 100% agree that we can do a better job of walking through that and explaining it, but the reports are available every month online. You you can, you know, I'm not >> No, I I think I want to be clear. I don't I do not want to act like I am a professional and what you guys do as a team.

213I think that's somewhat of my frustration in my time being on the board is that I feel like personally we we sit up here and act like we're the better professionals of what you guys do. I think we should provide the resources for you to provide us with those answers and clarity. >> But um I think anything that can be brought to us to be able to explain it to the normal person on the street. That's what I expect. >> No, I I 100% I agree with everything you said, Mr. I'm saying like there's been a lot of other stuff thrown around that I would like to respond to for a second because I do think that the way it's thrown around impuges the integrity of my team and I think that >> some questions.

214This is back to what we're doing. Questions about trying to get the information. There are discrepancies on here that I don't see on these reports that you guys provided us. I'm trying to get the information. I'm sad that it's gotten to this that it's gotten to this end. >> Go and sit down with Miss Brown and she can explain it to you. >> Mr. It's not It's not an insult against the team. I'm asking questions. We're right back to this whole thing. I'm asking questions about the information. I see a discrepancy here. I don't understand. Excuse me. I'm talking point of order >> outside the meeting. >> Point of order. Point of order. >> I'm asking questions about this. It does not add up to what we have been provided previously. >> And Miss made

215it clear that you can walk by and she'll explain exactly what those discrepancies are and you can get the details. >> That's fine. But we should not have I'm I'm degrading the integrity of the team. I that is not what's happening. >> Dr. Linker. >> Okay. The simple answer is is we're given at the start of the meeting. It's the difference between projected and audited. And it was very simply the thing that this is a big ship. It's a 400 plus million dollar operation. We're talking those differences are relatively small. >> It's a $20 million difference here. >> Okay. I'd like to finish without interrupting, but thank you, Mr. King. Um, you know, the thing is we'll be happy to walk through because I agree with Mr. Evans. you know, this is an incredibly, you

216know, I can remember a commissioner asking me the first uh year I was up here in central office uh to explain school financing to him. And I was like, come when you got three or four hours. It's complicated because you got a mix of federal, state, and local money. We've changed funding systems. We get money, you know, we get money at the last minute and then we get cut money at the last last minute, which then makes it almost impossible for us to do the budget. I would love for us to be able to have two weeks in between a study session and a budget vote because I agree we're asking board members to vote on something very quickly that impacts a lot of lives and it is it is very frustrating. Uh and I

217understand that but you know we are up against the gun ourselves. We put in hundreds of hours over the last couple months to get this to get to this stage today. And um you know I just don't want it you know I don't want it out there that my team is giving incorrect numbers or incorrect information. They are doing the very best they can to provide the most transparent clear and relevant information. It's put on the website each month under the financial statements. We are always available for conversations and meetings. And I do agree. I love the idea of some budget workshops throughout the year. I believe Miss Brennan, you suggested that last year. Mr. Evans, you suggested that. That's something that we can do in the future. We can just look and see where

218we are quarterly or something like that and and work on that. And that's something that we can do better. >> Mr. Just completely different. I just I I do I know we have like 10 minutes. I would like to um just looking through here. >> Yeah. A little bit of our paving plan just you know the reality is a lot more people drive driving driving. Not even more cars, but I mean I've been in a couple of these parking lots recently. It's not that it's it's just we're at a point where obviously some drastically need redone and restriving. So, um >> I know I can think of a couple schools in my district, but I'm sure everybody else probably has some schools, too. But, uh um and I mean, yeah, if you want to share

219some more if you want to share some of your data with everybody else, you're looking at stuff from 22 and 23. We don't I don't have that data, send it to me. That's But yes, it's ridiculous. But we would like to we like to know about Absolutely. >> Thank you, Chairman. Um, Miss Brown, on our uh audit findings, in the 12 years I've been on the school board, have we ever had a reserved dollar discrepancy in our audit by our professional auditors? >> Correct. >> Does the state and you all audit inhouse >> in this county? >> Yeah, we have an internal audit department. They mostly do our internal school funds, but if we ever have any kind of issue, we also can have them in. >> But on this big book, >> our comproller

220audited. Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you. >> And and the state >> and the state department of education and our federal for our federal dollars >> to three agencies audit this. Thank you. >> Did Did you have any feedback on the paving? No, I just what what I mean I I think that there's I was going to jump back real quick. I think that part of you know one of the things that we put in money for to go to Miss Brennick's point about master planning but I think one of the we put in money for was for architect to uh in choosing that firm I would say that that's one of the things that that we look at. I think that we got some immediate things we need to look at like uh Beach Elementary

221desperately needs some desperately need some paving. that would be up at the top of the list. There's a couple others that are that are up there, but so I mean I think it'll need to be a little bit of a both and like what do we need to put a band-aid on right now and address versus what's our long-term plan? And I mean the reality is is y'all we've funded over $50 million in capital projects in the last three years. >> Um when we did the first in 2015, the bond that we did was for $72 million to address long needs of the county. We're just in a position where we can't continue to fund out of our reserves. To Mr. Lancaster's point, you know, if we're spending five, let's say 5 to 8 million

222a year on capital, we can't we can't keep up to your point with the paving, much less HVAC and roofing and the other things that comes from over 6 million square feet of heated and cooled space. And and and I would say just from a capital project standpoint, um it you know, as we continue to build this list out, um as as Dr. Linkford said, we'll jump back into this in June. Um Mr. Lacy, you sent a a a massive list from your district. So, um if you've got those, I mean, we've got some big items. I know we've got Mel Hyde on the list. We've got uh uh Gallatin High School. We've got um the sped playgrounds. We've got HVAC systems across the community. So, we've got a lot of things that are included.

223If there are other needs that as you're out in the community, teachers, I know our staff talks to principles all the time and they probably have a lot of those on their list, but the bigger capital projects that we need to look at, continue to send those in so that as we put this list together, we're not missing anything. And that way, we're better off. We go to the county commission say, "Hey, here's everything that we're looking at." um and we can get a better idea of, you know, from a capital standpoint what we need so that we can work on on making those improvements over the next couple of years. So, um Mr. Lancaster. >> Yeah. Can I uh this may be kind of go with our study session which we had really had

224on goals, but um I would like to see if we can't do this a little bit better in the future. And I know it's Hey, we're trying to budget. We're trying to get a revenue number nailed down before we actually see a budget. But we can somewhat take pieces and kind of know beforehand. When I say pieces, I mean, hey, we can have a capital idea what we need that we could talk about like in a March meeting like, hey, here's the we don't know what the revenue is going to be, but we know these are the capital things we need to look at. And then in April, say these are the expense things that we would like to do. Again, nothing would be final. >> Yeah. >> Until you have a actual >> number

225on a page like for the It's kind of going in backwards order, but it's how >> you have to budget and have some of these conversations over the course of a couple of months or a couple of meetings. Uh, and also we could probably get a I mean a projection of our our where we're going to stand at. I mean a end of March projection. You've only got another quarter left. You should have some idea of what your that your fund balance and all is as well. Again, knowing that those numbers are not final. It's just a it's just a hey, here's a projection as of March. Here's a projection as of April. We don't have to devote three full meetings to it, but just at least sit down, have a conversation. Here's what we

226want to do. We want to spend >> we want to be able to do a salary increase or a step increase this year. Whichever the two are, this is what that's going to cost us. >> Yeah. >> And then if those revenue don't come in for it, then we got to say, all right, well, we wanted to do this, but and I'm not saying we're going to send out to people like, hey, we're giving up 15, you know. Yeah. Just have a line like, hey, we're thinking of three or four million dollars extra on salary, whatever. >> Yeah. My my only concern about the salary part is once we announce in this room that we're going to do that people expect it and we >> that's why you would have to do it from a

227from a overall like different operating you you would have to consolidate you couldn't say teachers >> right >> but at the same time you yeah like hey we expect our operating expenses >> and bullet point like hey this this this don't you know obviously you can't say announce >> yeah and I would say without >> Yeah. And I would say the challenging part because I think part of it is is the reason that we made the recommendation for you know for the architect and master plan. You Mr. Evans started the conversation this time last year about it. Half tip. >> I appreciate that. >> Thank you. Um, but I think that we can um, you know, we're at a place where we need that master plan to be able to do what you're talking about

228because I think the I think the thing now is is like, you know, it it's so tight it's hard to say, you know, now I think if we're looking at if there's movement or consideration at the commission level to look at a bond and if interest rates come down or something like that, then I think that that's when we can get into like a big long-term kind of capital projects. But I I 100% agree with you like doing some things to catch what we can. The hard part this year just in terms of revenue was is it was kind of a perfect storm of um you know with Mr. Lawing retiring and not having a finance director. Beth did a tremendous job on the county side, but we got our revenue numbers a month, month

229and a half later than normal, you know. So it's like you're sitting here x plus y plus z equals q, you know, where do we start? I personally I hate to throw things out that we can do if we can't do them but I 100% agree anything that we can do ahead of time we should that's why I kind of think if nothing else doing some quarterly updates on where we like we start getting TE estimates in January now you know part of the problem there has been is the state data thing has been so bad that that migration has been so bad that I didn't feel confident you know when we got the January estimate it was way off on economically disadvantaged students and things like that and you know then you look at

230it It's like, hey, we got a two or three million dollar gap that we're going to have to make up. And that, you know, that's a concern. >> The issue, I mean, like I said, I went to TSBA training >> participated one and some other districts were talking about like they had two months. >> Yeah. >> I just think we've got to get something where we're one week and not that's not a hey a >> y got to do better, you know. I'm just >> right. No, I agree. >> It's hard. It's hard to receive feedback and communicate and ask questions and you know >> get a get a good feeling about a >> 400page budget in a week and >> that's just we got to do something better. >> Hey Mr. Lancaster can I

231jump over to Miss Barnes we've got just a couple minutes left. Yes, thank you. Uh just a quick question for my own understanding when we look at like preventative preventative maintenance for schools for facilities let's say HVAC annual prevention >> who has the responsibility for that is it the administrators at the school level or is it all district supported >> the budget and and I'm talking about do they have money's allocated. >> Yeah. So, we have HVAC team in maintenance. And so, typically what the administration the administration's role is if they come in the air's off, they put in a work order. We have a team that goes around and changes all the filters. We have a team that goes around and does the routine maintenance. So, we try to do that as best. The

232problem that we hit more is is we've got some units that are 50 years old. Uh, and we've got some units that are eight years old that aren't built like the 50 year old units. And so, you know, it's really it it kind of goes to the thing of we've got some deferred maintenance that stretches out over 30, 40 years that we're still kind of catching up on. And some of that is even automation is replacing some of these older units. The problem is some of these older units are astronomically expensive and it's more than we can do, you know, without like a bond or something like that, >> right? So, so it is allocated through the dis district district like money set aside for preventative calls. >> Yeah. We just instead of having service

233contracts with outside companies, right, our maintenance team does does the majority of that. >> And is that the same thing for like paving like you know sealing, resurfacing? The reason I'm asking this is thinking about are we allocating monies that that long-term prevent us from capital >> expenditures. >> Yeah. So if you look one of the big increases >> real quick we're at 9:00 so we need to wrap. So if you want to finish answering this and then I know we still got some lights on. If you've got any questions uh feel free to reach out to me staff u Miss Brown whoever uh in this next week um they're more than happy to sit down with you and answer those questions. So, Dr. Linkford, if you'll finish answering this question, then we'll close. >>

234Yeah. Yeah. I think uh Miss Barnes, I think so. We have not gone the route of doing a lot of con like service contracts. We do some, but for like paving, uh we can we've got the equipment to fill potholes and do small paving jobs. We can't do like an entire parking lot. So, uh we usually uh in the past we would work with the highway super road superintendent and they would do some in the summer. Mr. Ellis has come in and he's paved almost every road in Sar County. Not quite, but he's working hard at it. He's done a tremendous job. So, he hasn't been to that, but he has helped us with um he's helped us with Rogers Group and some other paving companies, and we've gotten like when we did Merl Hyde,

235we got a phenomenal price on that. When we did central office paving, that was another bad one. Um we got a great price on that. So, that's a that's one that we typically outsource. >> Thank you, meeting a journ.