001to promote encouragement and achievement for every student. To encourage achievement for every student in our district. service. service of America and to the One nation with liberty and justice for alliance to the Texas state. We appreciate you being here this evening. We always welcome communication from citizens of our district. This is an annual public meeting to discuss the proposed budget and tax rate. Individuals who wish to speak on the proposed budget and or tax rate must sign up on the sheet provided by Miss Branch. Speakers shall confine their remarks to the appropriation of funds as contained in the proposed budget and/or the tax rate and their comment shall not exceed three minutes. No officer or employee of the district shall be required to respond to questions from speakers at this meeting. So now we will
002move on to item 5 A and that is Mr. Wooten. Yes. Uh Mr. board uh president, our chief financial officer, Mr. William Wooten, will discuss the proposed uh budget tax rate. Uh the purpose of this meeting is uh to to definitely discuss the uh school district budget that will determine the tax rate that will be adopted. Uh this meeting will cover the three budgets slate for adoption. Our general fund, our child nutrition, and our debt services. Uh over the previous five months, staff and the board have collaborated to uh refine and have seen uh the budgets. On June 4th, however, two days after uh the district's budget workshop, Governor Abbott signed House Bill 2 into law. In light of this legislation, and like many districts, we are exercising caution in projecting revenue and expenditures. Uh
003going forward, we will partner with our financial consultant, Moesacase, uh which we have already spoke with them to schedule timely budget amendments that ensure alignment with our district strategic priorities, financial expectations, and of course, compliance with uh House Bill 2 or other uh laws. Uh by statute, the board must approve the budget at the function level. Your approval today will fulfill that budgetary requirement and set the tax rate for the coming year. So, uh, based on, uh, current law before House Bill Two is what we built the budget on and what Mr. uh, Wooten will be sharing with you tonight. And then do know that in July based on uh, this proposed budget, if it's adopted, we'll have to come back with amendments once we get more clarification uh, about House Bill Two. Thank you,
004sir. Well, thank you. Good evening, Mr. President, board of education superintendent. Thank you for allowing um us to present the public hearing. Next slide. So, the budget, we're here to discuss the budget and proposed tax rate. Uh the agenda is we're going to talk about the general fund budget assumptions, uh the general fund comparison, debt service budget, uh tax rate published. We published the tax rate the ceiling the tax ceiling which is the highest rate uh because we have July one start start year and I'll talk more about that later and tax compression because of our local property taxes uh have grown uh and then for the proposed budgets and then next steps. All right, let's talk about general fund. So these are the budget assumptions we built the budget on uh our student account.
005We anticipate growth incrementally by 34 students. uh our local property values uh for 2425 was about 1.4 billion. It's increased to 1.568 billion which is a upward trend. This is important for the public notice is that we grew we anticipate based on the chief appraisers uh uh estimate values to grow our property local property uh values by 5%. When that happens, it's by law that if tax growth is greater than two and a half percent, a local tax rate will will experience tax compression. And we anticipate uh that tax compression uh our tax rate drop in a penny and a half and we'll talk later about uh House Bill uh two. This budget is put up on the current law. Next slide. So, general fund budget comparison. Let me kind of slow down a little
006bit on these slides because there's a lot on them. U so let's look at the C category sources the the money that we collected. Uh these are audited numbers and 2324 we collected 44.6 million. Uh we spent 49.4 which uh which is a net change of 4.7 million. Uh this year we we were working on our amended budget didn't really change um we didn't go into the fund balance but the amended budget is 45.9 uh we budgeted to collect million budget [Music] 45.3 with the assumption that we're going to spend 100%. We're going to get into that later as to why the budget went over. Next slide, please. So, this slide compares the actual to actual. Now, these are audited numbers. Uh the last year's audit 2324, we collected about 44.6 million. We spent the
00744 49.4, which is net change in fund balance deficit uh uh spend of $4.7 million. Uh this year uh we've done a lot of things to the 2425 budget cuts, reductions, um deferred some things that need to be deferred that didn't impact the classroom. Uh we anticipate that change in fund balance being positive 9 $97,000. So this slide right here is very important. Um, this is us comparing the actuals to what we believe the budget will look like. So, we believe that we're going to collect about $43.5 million. Uh, I mean, I'm sorry, 2425. Our projected actuals is 43.5. Uh, this is the breakdown of it. Uh, this current year, we as of June 4th, we've collected 10.6 6 million of local property taxes. State share, we've received about 32.7 million. Uh in federal share,
008we uh remember we we adopted a $900,000 bud budget. We're going to collect 151,000. uh for the next year 2526 the budget for which I'm asking you tonight to consider for adoption those uh we believe that a total collection will be 45.3 a local uh collection for property taxes will be 11.1 million we believe that we're going to collect about 33.9 from the state and then the federal share is 300,000 so I'm telling I'm I'm sharing with you that based on the data we have today. We believe that our collections is going to increase by 1.8 million and I'm going to show you why. Uh and so the net difference of those variances uh between uh projected actuals and projected collections for local uh private taxes about four about $500,000. Uh state share we believe
009it's we're going to collect about 1.1 million. Uh and then the federal share uh we were very conservative on that based on the data from we we have from different departments and from the state that we we're going to collect about $148,000. Next slide please. So here's the reasons why we believe that our collections are going to increase $1.8 million. uh local collections. The net change of all those accounts we have is chewing up about $478,000 because of the 5% uh the property taxes we believe are going to go up 676,000 and the reason is that the 5% property value growth and when that happens we experience tax compression because Texas education code the law says that if the local property values increase greater than 2 and a half% % the tax rate M tax
010rate will will decline and that's to to help the homeowners. Um investment income we've been very conservative uh because of what's going on right now. Mark market volatility uh lower than expected due to the market conditions uh miscellaneous uh collections we uh we believe that that's going to drop 168,000. Now, with that being said, uh it's hard to know what we're going to collect in gate fees. It's hard based on projections. Hard to know uh rentals or miscellaneous income. And so, uh that number will probably be be better than 168,000. But that's just the number that I felt safe uh projecting with the anticipation that we will receive more more money. Uh stay share. This is uh what we get when kids come to school. students. Uh for my total tier one and tier entitlement,
011those are the golden and copper pennies. Uh we believe that's going to increase 639,000 dollars. We anticipate an ad increase about 75 to 100 students. Uh teacher incentive aotment, that's that's fairly new. Uh in August, we're going to be paying teachers out um uh for their I forgot how how you say it. TIA, right? based on I guess uh performance based on different levels. Um I'm not a teacher, right? So my incentive I'll I'll know exactly what what it was for. Uh and then tier on behalf that's something that we can't get rid of. That's a necessary um u book entry. Right now we still have one more payroll left. And so this is based on the on with the one more payroll left that we uh are that that we have $151,000 left. Once
012this payroll is ended, those numbers are kind of true up. So these numbers change every day, I promise you. Uh so the federal share is what we really have been conservative. We believe that the federal share that we're going to collect is going to be $148,000. And primarily we believe that the variance of 23,000 what we're going to get um that we're going to collect from charge. So last year chars we budgeted 900,000. we received 151,000 and so uh we um we increased our uh collections here slightly above uh what we received this year. So indirect cost is a new collection stream. Uh we didn't we didn't um last year we didn't collect on indirect cost from the different grants that we operate. This year we are so this year and next year. So we
013believe next year we're going to collect about 125,000 So back one second. So I want to just read the disclaimer. All data is based on Senate Bill Two, House Bill 3. Based on the current law as of June 5th, as we learn more information, we will adjust the budget as required. So when somebody said last board meeting, when we know better, we do better. So that's kind of what we're going to do. Next one, please. So debt service uh so debt service funds pays back the district's principal interest on long-term debt obligations. Primary source of collection is property taxes. Proposed interest and syncing tax rate is 50 cents per $100 valuation. Uh this is primarily the same tax rate we had last year. Uh school board I'm going to come in August to ask you
014to adopt the uh the the INS tax rate. Um actually the total tax rate and then the the current bond rating right now we're Moody's A3 which is upper medium grade is a so it's not too bad. Next slide please. This is the the U service budget. So we amended the amended budget LA this year was 7.8 million. That's what we uh uh plan on collecting for this year. Uh expend we plan on expand expending 7.8 the proposed budget uh for this current of year 7.8 uh based on our obligation debt schedule. We're going to spend about 8.2 million and we're going to have a deficit fund balance, but we have about 4.6 million in the fund balance. So, we're pretty comfortable um with using the fund balance for that. I think we'll be okay.
015Next slide. Tax rate. Okay. So if you look at the public notice uh we had to in July start uh July one districts uh typically the ones that I know of they adopt the uh not adopt they actually set a tax rate at the previous year's tax rate because in July the certified values come in our tax rate is primarily set by the state techa is going to tell us what our tax rate will be and so the rule is is that tax ceiling is the highest tax rate the district can adopt. top before requiring a voter approval at the election. Um, and M pays for operations which is teachers, librarians, counselors, custodians, bus drivers, administrators. Uh, and then our INS pays for debt obligation. That's our 50 cents that pays for all our buildings
016and anything that we have uh uh tax supported debt on. Uh, as said before, TA approves our final M tax rate in August. uh that tax rate uh and we know it's going to drop because we we did our own calculation, but we need that confirmation from the Texas Education Agency to to to uh call it done. Um and then the Board of Education, uh we're going to actually adopt the tax rate no later than August, I guess September up there, but it's August 2025. But the the uh and that's when we that's when we do it. So that's when we adopt the tax rate. So, I want to compare the tax rates. Uh, basically, this is a chart that tells you the average market value of a house. Uh, last year was 246,000. This
017year, uh, it's 240. Uh, but remember that they didn't appraise houses this year. If it was new house, obviously, they did, but, uh, for the most part, it didn't. So, the change uh went down. I mean, the the market value went down by five five 6,000 changes to 2 and a half%. uh average taxable value of 100 is of of a house last year is 151,000. This year is 157,000. Um and then the change in taxable value went up about 5,500 which is three 3.6%. And this is where I really want to talk about tax rate. So for public notice uh notice a public notice we had to keep the tax rate steady. This is going to show you no change because it's the tax ceiling, the highest tax rate we can adopt before the
018voter election has to be triggered. Uh and taxes and which is always a good one to talk about. Uh taxes due last year was about $1,891 and then this year uh if the tax rate would be was a $12469 for the new year, you'll pay $ 1960 which is a $69 tax increase. But we know that next slide will tell us that um is that when you look at last year's uh data to this year's data last year we're going straight to tax rate the third bullet is this year last year's A124 we believe based on the models that financial tax models that we've ran with consultants and among myself is that we're going to we're going to experience compression which is which is a dollar I mean I'm sorry which is a p and
019a which is significant. And so your tax rate would have been 69, but it's going to be like it's going to drop to 46 additional to your bill. And I would note this is that these are a average uh market values. There's obviously some houses that are 200,000. There's also some that are a million. And so it takes the average of these houses and and uh math them up. Next slide, please. So proposed budget. So this is the proposed budget tonight. This legal requirement I'm asking uh you to consider these three uh budgets uh which are general fund budget, child nutrition budget and debt service budget. Um we we've uh discussed all three uh there's nothing material uh that we hadn't discussed uh within the last four or five months. And so next slide, this
020is the actual one pager adopted budget broken down by function. And as the superintendent said uh in the remarks is that this is the legal requirement the b the board has is to approve the budget at the function level. Uh my eyes are bad but uh the bottom line is that the general fund is a balanced budget. uh despite the um uh and there's a lot of things that we can talk about, but uh the superintendent when I first got here, her her direction was to chew up the the current year budgets before we move on to the next year's budget. In this budget, uh we worked really hard. Uh we've had a 10% increase in premiums. We've had a 10% increase in property uh uh insurance. Uh we have had a 3% increase in
021utilities. And we saw we also cut the actual departments and campuses by 10%. And so there's a lot to go into these budgets and so um it was a it was a team effort. And then child nutrition is pretty much uh is based on uh students and what they eat every day. That's how we get paid. Uh and then debt service um is is uh going to go on the deficit $388,000. And what's another legal requirement is that showing you the fund balance. We think that in our general fund balance is that we're not going to dip into the fund balance u based on the data we have as of June 14th. Uh child nutrition fund balance looks pretty good and debt service as you see we have a $4.7 million fund balance. Sorry, I'm
022sorry about that. Next slide. Uh here's the next steps in the budget timeline. Basically, u we're going to come back in July and uh talk about the July 25 20 July 2025 certified values. At that time, whatever those final numbers are, we go back to the budget. We true up the budget, make sure that what we believe is still accurate based on our estimates uh that we built the budget upon. And then in August, uh I come to you to ask you to adopt the tax rate. So, next slide. Mr. President, um any questions? Open public hearing for discussion. Sure. Thank you, Miss Branch. Do we have anyone who wishes to speak or signed up to speak on the tax rate or the budget? No, we do not. Do we have any questions for Mr.
023Yes, ma'am. I think that's what are we taking care of our children in the classroom are they safe and of course in Texas football but we won't go there but anyway so I think that those were some key things that you said and so um this recommendation would cover that that the impact in the classroom is not effective that's a great point uh uh superintendent we've actually balanced the budget uh based on uh we we know we got some guaranteed tier one entitlement funding coming in by law and so we balance the budget uh by impacting 50 function 51 and 52 not 11 12 13 and 21 so instructional uh leadership instructional students uh funding was protected. Okay. And um just a another one more thing. Well, a couple more things. Um make sure that
024I understand this that so although that we're going to be asking getting a tax compression, the average homeowner will have a 46 an average about a $46 increase in their taxes. Yes, ma'am. Okay. So, that was that's what I understood that correctly. Yes, ma'am. Even though we have a compression property rate. So, make sure everybody understands that. Good point. If July 25th certifies come in, it could be lower or it could be higher. Uh but the data uh we received was from the chief appraiser that it would go up about 5%. And so we feel pretty comfortable that uh the $46 is a good uh target for increase. I think that's digestible. And I do want to add that with the new homestead exemption, we will get more guidance on that also because that's problems
025now as well. Okay. Um and one more thing on slide 23 is talks about on under revenue revenue co-curricular is that our sports and what all is that what is included in revenues from co-curricular is that um $11,500. Yes, ma'am. That's the Mr. Lane's revenue. That's also the uh rentals. That's also the um athletic gate fees. Okay. So, I've been I was very conservative. Um I'm confident that we're going to get more and uh I I just thought that number was a little small, 11,500, but um I don't know how the same expensive are they. Yeah, my boss thought the same thing too today. So, she she says they're gonna ask that question. I saw it and I answer this question. I think we'll all be selling season tickets this year. Yes. So, I'm and
026I'm excited. I'm I'm conservatively excited about what you're showing us tonight and um I think that um that I'm encouraged and so thank you for all your hard work. I know that everybody has done so a lot of hard work and I know that we've asked some tough questions and so um it's coming full circle. So, thank you so much and that's all I have right now. Thank you. I have a quick question. Um, first of all, thank you. Thank you for the the overview. I think the one thing that kind of struck me was on slide 11 when you talked about the share the state share revenue and the tier the total tier one and two entitlement and an anticipated ADA increase of 75 to 100 students. I think I'm just wondering like how
027do we how how do we how do we judge that or or gauge that and how do vouchers um imp how will how could vouchers impact that? So so basically that's a great question. Um over the last two years we increased our enrollment 100 students uh each year for the last two years and so we anticipate 34 students but we actually did not uh really put a lot of weight on that but we are because we we have increased 200 students over two years that we we do feel that we're going to continue to uh increase just because of the interest in some of the programs. programs that we have that other surrounding uh districts do not have. Um as a matter of fact, I'll say that as far as enrollment, I have parents calling
028my office wanting to transfer, you know, some of their students uh to our district. And so, you know, we have to look at are we able to provide um room uh in our school. So I do feel that because of uh and and they're coming because some of the programming that we put in place afterchool programs the uh summer programs. So I feel that um it is a good estimate and uh just as uh Mr. Wooten said this isn't something that you just look at once a once a year like I think previously. noticed that every month. I want to commend y'all because we're taking a piece out. You we're setting aside a a time in each board meeting to look at um where are we on our revenues and in my board updates I
029give you the enrollment. If we so every week u we actually take the snapshot of the enrollment and if we see that the enrollment is not where we are, we go ahead and we begin to make adjustments. So I think that um just by us looking at that as a board each month and then those weekly updates and I also work with the uh ALT when we have our monthly meetings it is always at the very be uh top of the agenda is to look at enrollment and uh not only enrollment but our attendance rate and so the one thing that we could increase we took a conservative number because we feel that uh next year one of our focuses is going to be to try to increase our attendance rate and lower our chronic
030absenteeism uh because we haven't recovered from COVID with attendance. And I think that uh not only enrollment is going to be one of our goals, but how do we how do we get kids here every day and how are we engaging them so that they want to uh come to school every day uh so that so that we are meeting what our projections are. That's a great question. And then just to piggyback on that, I know we early on you talked about when we were talking about advocacy and we talked about secondary um ADA, right? Additional days funding. Has that have we heard anything on that? Yes. And I have some very exciting news. Um when I go over the calendar, I'll be able to go in depth on that and I'll think that um
031you guys will be very excited about what I'll be able to share with you. I have one quick question. Yes, ma'am. Also on slide 11, the indirect cost collection. You what I understood was that you said it wasn't collected last year. Is that money we left sitting on the table or could you explain that? Yeah, I mean I'm I'm a country boy so absolutely we left money on the table. Um this year the superintendent made sure that we did the the draw downs on a monthly basis and we communicate to the budget owners in terms of uh making sure that we get the district is uh can collect money based on how much money the grant uh budget owner spends. Right? So if it's a if it's a $100,000 and you know whatever that is
03210% of that if the grant allows 10% of that then if they spend exactly $100,000 we get 10% of that grant to go back to our general fund. And so the key is that the federal funds are saying because we have people working in payroll, we have electricity where uh uh 211 fund 211 which is Whitney or Claudine, they're they're grant supported but the electricity is paid out our general fund. So what we do is that we collect a portion of the that indirect uh uh money back to our general fund. So we pay ourselves back based on uh the allocation that they spent per month. Hope that makes sense. And and just to add to that, so um we now everyone that's over a federal grant, we look at how much of that federal
033grant can we earmark for indirect cost. I don't think there was a focus on in ensuring that the federal grants earmarked the amount based on the formula that we have for indirect cost. And so we're taking every advantage uh that we can of our federal grants to be sure that we have earmarked that question. I move we adjourn. Hearing no objection, we stand adjourned at 6:31 p.m. Thank you guys. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Now I call this meeting of the Casper Independent School District Board of Education to order. Let the record show that a quorum of board members is present, that this meeting has been duly called, and that notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code Chapter 551. And
034as a reminder, we are here for what is best to promote and encourage achievement for every student in our district. Um, item two, line two. Um, we appreciate you being here this evening. We always welcome communication from citizens of our district. Individuals who wish to participate during the this portion of the meeting designated for public comment shall sign up with the presiding officer or designate no later than 1 p.m. of the day of the board meeting and shall indicate the agenda item or topic for which they wish to address the board. Miss Branch, do we have anyone who wishes to speak to the board tonight? No, we do not. Thank you, ma'am. Miss Smith Faulner, were there any questions called in regarding the consent agenda? Um, no, Mr. board president, but I do want to
035uh point out uh item 6B, consider approval of the 2526 compensation plan because like our budget um we are working with our consultant Mo Casey who we were on the phone with earlier today in which we'll have to we'll get more direction on what the uh teacher um uh incentive allotment looks like because we do qualify for teachers that have three have completed three years and four years of service for $4,000. And we also know that um we're qualifying for teachers with uh five years of service and more for $8,000. So that's more than our u larger districts. And so that's very exciting. However, TEA is slowly rolling out how uh we can pass that through to our teachers and uh they're still giving us guidance and they have a FAQ page. And so as
036more guidance is coming out, you're going to see that on July 14th, we will have a revised employee uh compensation plan uh based because we have to redo our teacher pay payment schedule because we do not have um clear guidance yet. Uh it's slowly coming out on what that can look like. For example, we do know it cannot be a stipen. It must be in the base budget uh in the base pay. So, we're learning uh how how must we pay that out. And so, we want to be sure we understand fully what uh the intent and what the law is so that when we present it to you and we we don't want to tell our teachers until we find out exactly what that will look like and come back to you. So you're
037you're again when you do the consent agenda, it is the same employee compensation plan based on law prior to House Bill Two. If it's not a stipend, is that money can that money ever be taken away from us? So, we're still getting um we're still getting some uh clarification and that is why we're we're waiting. But uh we did uh we did see that uh TEA provided direction that it must be in the base pay and that's all that we know right now. On to item 4 A, discussion on House Bill Two. Mr. Wooten. Yes. Uh Mr. Board uh President um Mr. Wooten, our chief financial officer, will review the differences between um the current proposed uh budget with under uh law prior to House Bill Two provisions that was signed by uh Governor Abbott
038on June 4th. Uh and um our proposals there are some very limited ways that we can utilize our funding and we also have um some proposed uh numbers that have been given to us from our consultant and u Mr. Wooten will share uh what we know so far based on the proposed budget. Thank you Mr. President. Board of Education Superintendent. Uh, basically what the superintendent said, there's not a lot that uh that we know other than the FAQs just came out this past weekend. Um, we did talk to Mo Casey, the consultants, and they recommended that uh we wait for more guidance from TEA and so we're still waiting on the guidance, but what we do know is that we do know basically an estimate of what our allocation looks like. I'm going to pull
039up this budget here. This is the House bill uh to budget based on allege is that uh when we look at the general fund, we look at the uh local sources, we still scheduled to get 11.1 million. Uh let me just get down to what we're going to the actual new revenue is House Bill 2, new M collections above current law. It's about three $3,65,000. Uh now, what is that $3,65,000 true up to? If we scroll down to the bottom, it says other sources and uses House Bill Two. We know that we're we're estimated to receive for the teacher a lotment about 1.4 million. Uh and then the the support staff retention is about 134,000 and as as relates to the uh uh a lotment for TRS because when you increase uh staff compensation, TRS
040also increases. That's gonna that's guaranteed funding of 188,000 and the uh net required compensation uh that's the compensation that superintendent and has a little more flexibility to to implement the district priorities budget priorities is about 1.2 million. Um board opinion any questions? I can just say that we talked to Mo Casey. Uh Mo Casey was adamant about Tasbo TASA. There's not a lot of information out there. Last week it was like everybody was crickets, right? And so they what districts are doing I've talked to Houston CFO. I've talked to Leander CFO and they're waiting until July until they get more guidance to do amendments to the actual budget. So, some places are giving raises. Some of them are saying, "Hey, we're gonna find out if we're gonna truly get this money." Number one, we know
041it's law, but it's almost like if it's not in the the bank account, it's not the check's not written, we we kind of put a pause on it, right? And so, uh, the superintendent has decided to be, uh, optimistically cautious, which most superintendents out there are doing because we don't want to move too fast until we get the right guidance. And so, truthfully, that's all we can say about about the House Bill 2 until we get more guidance. Can I clarify something to Mr. Wooten? Is that in the 1.2 2 million. Uh there are also certain aotments we we uh provided. You know, the teacher retention aotment is over half of the funding and then the support staff aotment. But in addition to that, uh net required compensation that's left over is the 1.2 million.
042We do know that some of it is earmarked towards safety and some of it is an aotment for facilities. Uh facilities about 400,000. So, that is going to help us with um our facility as far as replacement plan, our I'm sorry, our utilities, things like that. And so, um even though we're it looks uh like we're getting $3 million, uh what has happened is they have it is very specific in how we can spend it. And so that's why we worked very hard on the proposed budget uh that you're getting tonight and where we wanted to balance it and where we know that we should anticipate some additional funding uh to help in some of the areas where we cut uh the budget. Just to clarify, you said part of the $400,000 for the facility
043money would go towards um utilities. Yeah, it so it's a facility aotment that can go through uh through improving our facilities like HVAC um insurance util uh utilities for the facility. So we're still again looking at exactly how we generated that and um uh that's part of the 1.2 million. So again uh very specific how we generated that for that and for safety uh funding. So that doesn't leave much because think about who's left in the room. Think about not everyone is earmarked an increase and and so anyway when you get the compensation plan we will uh have to look at what's left and uh the propose it to you in Jula. And the TIA money is in the teacher retention a lotment. Is that where that that's not even here? No, we've already the
044teachers have already generated uh the TIF funds on their desk uh on their designations and we'll get it and settle up uh in September and it's about $400,000 uh for teachers. So, they will get the they'll get the allotment plus they will get the TF. Okay, I think that was my question. Thank you. No. And then we also have the longevity uh plan. The TIA is based on student performance and if they're a designated uh teacher and it's based on uh different campuses can um they can generate more money depending on uh the campus and what are uh economically disadvantaged statuses for each campus. Any other questions? One more question. No. Again, we want to commend the board and the work of uh Mr. Wooten and the budget managers because we cannot uh go into
045a deficit budget because we need to build back our fund balance. You won't see a Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. We'll move on to item 4B 2020. Now on to item 4B 2025 2026 district calendar draft 175 days. This is uh very exciting uh to me because we have been uh working in this. So, you should have a paper copy of um the adopted budget that has 180 cal uh calendared instructional days and then you should have one at the top that says 175 instructional days. So, what's exciting about this is that being an additional day school year uh district, we uh in order to uh receive the add uh ADA funding for summer and Saturday schools, we had to have 180 instructional days. And what happened is that meant that some of
046the professional learning at the beginning of the year days had to be uh eliminated. and we didn't have as many days throughout the year that we could be flexible with because our teachers are 189 uh work days and our kids are coming 180 days. And so one thing that I spoke with uh to the commissioner is when when asked how do we um how can we improve this? One suggestion is if we could uh if they could change the amount of days that we were mandated and it be 175 that would give us time for professional learning and with our teachers. Uh the other thing is because we we only get funding for our um up through fifth grade. We said but our sixth, seventh, and eighth graders need acceleration too. As a matter of
047fact, if you look at most middle schools, that's where te uh students need the most acceleration. So, I said it would be great, we're already having it, if we could receive funding uh for that. And not only does the half uh of of the ADA uh funding, it it provides teachers, but there's total cost of ownership for your facilities. We're having to run, you know, air conditioning. we have support staff that we need that that's really it makes it very difficult for districts uh to implement that especially with a top budget and so uh that was listened to by several people uh many conversations later and so it was very exciting to see that in house bill 2 that was signed uh there were three great things that happened number one it is now 175
048instructional days and I'm going to show you how that impacts such a positive plan. I've already met with ALT last Thursday and uh put it in front of them for feedback and uh have some really great ideas. It also allows us to have funding for sixth, seventh and eighth graders and we have like 400 students that is going to be amazing and there's flexibility that the commissioner can increase the uh funding from half day to three uh fourth uh day. So that increases the amount of funding and it increases the students included in the funding. So to me it's a win-win uh for us in in in everything that we asked for. The one thing I asked in and uh it it was like no I don't think we can put that in there was
049for high school. Uh but we are working with that with other funds. So, let's look and see how that impacts the calendar because I think you're going to love the ideas uh that we have come up with. First, let's look at August uh in our the calendar that you've approved with 180 days. It has schools starting on August 6, which is really early. We're going to be able to add professional learning days the week of August 4th through 8th with 8th being a full day uh teacher workday in their classroom. and school would begin on August the 11th to give uh our parents and families some uh time uh to uh prepare for schools. And then on August 9th is meet the teacher. We've included that half day that counts as a half day work
050day for our teachers because we are asking them to come up on a Saturday and that is offset if you go to May 22nd as a half day. So we have kind of split those two days uh to help uh our teachers on if you go down to October this is uh very exciting we added a studentled conference college day and we spoke about this in ALT since our teachers are here and we have finished our first nine weeks progress monitoring we will be looking at our data and our uh nineweek progress monitoring district progress monitoring where we're identifying uh some of our students who need intervention. So we will set up studentled conferences for our parents and uh students to come and set goals and to explain the goals to the uh parents and
051led by our students. We're having to do some of these things after school, but we're going to our teachers will be here and we're going to earmark that and we would have already looked at our progress monitoring for the first nine weeks to help set and reset our goals. Along with that, I think uh you'll like the fact we're work we've been trying to work with T3 uh on our college day. So, in addition to uh high school students sharing their four-year graduation plan, we will also include uh a college day, uh how to sign up for um scholarships, the getting ready for your SAT, your TSIA. We will have a day that parents can come in and rotate through. And uh we've already talked to Manny uh so that that's a day that we
052can uh earmark and tell our parents they can come in uh during that time and um during the day and set that up. So we're excited about that day. And then all all grade levels. Yeah. All grade levels. So um if you look in February, we have an early release day on February 2nd where we will do more uh studentled conferences so that we can uh through the next progress monitoring. We will be able to talk to our parents about Saturday school and summer uh programming. And again, they'll look at their goals and have they met their goals? Do we need to reset new goals? we've included after we meet with our parents. Then on the 17th, we have a bad weather day on the 16th and 17th. On the 17th is uh when our
053teachers again will look at the um student data and progress monitoring and uh write a plan for um our Saturday school uh in our working with our students who now would need maybe uh some acceleration uh not only just interventions but acceleration uh prepared for college. So it'd kind of be like another October uh 27th day with some professional learning. And then uh school the last day of school will be May uh 21st. We'll also have graduation. We've set up the venue for graduation on the 21st. And then the 22nd is that half day teacher work day. And then we'll begin our summer programming on Wednesday the 27th so that we can get we have less Saturdays and more after uh June and May and June days which we know that students we have a
054bigger um attendance and enrollment during those periods versus Saturdays because baseball starts in March and April and that interferes with our Saturdays. So very happy about the flexibility in the schedule. And so uh tomorrow I uh based on on the changes that um the local policy allows me uh to uh authorizes me to add approved variations from the board adopted calendar. when such uh changes can be made, I will uh begin to send out because we will need to let our parents know, our teachers know of the new start date. We've also looked at uh special ed. Uh I've asked what impact this might have that we're not thinking of. And so during our ALT meeting, we brainstormed uh how this is going to impact us because we've done a lot of planning already. And
055so we are going to have to make some adjustments to our instructional plans, but we think it is such a positive to give our teachers back some at this time at the beginning of the year that we're going to move forward with that. Sure. First of all, thank you for always. So, and this is the part just bear with me. Help me understand think I wouldn't forget that one. Um, help me understand the 175 days and the funding and what we've all been talking about. Sure. Um, because I think it is confusing. So, uh, previously you had to have 180 instructional days before we could, um, get paid for the 30 days. And so now we only have to have 175 days on the calendar to be funded for the 30 days. So 30 instructional
056days. Yes. And we do get paid on ADA. So even if we have like say 100 students enroll now our funding was uh based on how many students were in attendance only instead of getting a full ADA you got a half ADA now we get three4 ADA and the high school item five at this time the board will retire close session under Texas Government Code section 551.071 through 551.076 and 551.08 through 551.083 to discuss the items listed on the agenda. The time is 6:54 We will consider the item six consent agenda. At this time we will consider the consent agenda as presented. Is there a second? Is there any discussion? Please indicate your vote. Motion carries 6. Item seven, consider adoption of the 2025 2026 fiscal year budget. Is there a motion? Is there a
057second? Is there any discussion? Please indicate your vote. Motion carries 6. Item 7B, consider approval of the new hire contracts for the 2025 2026 school year. Is there a motion? Is there a second? I second the motion. Is there any discussion? Please indicate your vote. Motion carries 6. Item 8A, establish the next meeting at Monday, July 14th for our regular board meeting. Is there anything we missed? I move we adjourn. Here you go. Thank you everybody. um that I think that we should be proud of and optimistic about the future. And so, thank you again for your hard work and thank you board for um working through these hard times. I agree. uh and for taking the time in the board meetings every month to uh look at where we were on our budget and
058uh keep a a focus on that. I think that that's been a real key part. So, thank you all for carving that time out and to Mr. Wooten also and whoever helps him. I move we adjourn. Hearing no objection, we stand adjourned at 7:30