001Okay, good evening everyone and welcome to the budget meeting for the South Southside Independent School District. Today is Wednesday, July 16th, 2025. Please let the record show that there is a quorum present. Jesse Hernandez present. Mrs. Miss Brenarez >> present. >> Mrs. Marbel Anger Robles >> present. >> Miss Faras, Mrs. Margarita Moral Garcia, Mrs. Lisa El Salazar >> here, >> and Mrs. Mary Silva. Okay. The time is now 5:32 p.m. on Wednesday, July 16th, 2025. As President Nich, let's call this budget meeting of the Southside Independent School District Board of Trustees to order. At this time, I'd like to welcome um Mrs. Olivaris to welcome our visitors and guests. >> Hello. Good afternoon. Just want to thank everybody for being here. Hopefully, y'all are enjoying your summer and um we looking forward to a new
002year. Thank you, Miss Solivare. Please note that this meeting is being held and has been posted in accordance with government code chapter 551, State of Texas Open Meetings Act. And today we do not have any public comments. So, we'll move on to our um presentations uh which is u information on the 2025 2026 budget updates. Superintendent Amidz. >> Good evening. Board of Trustees, uh staff and community. Mr. Kales will provide a budget update and continue the discussion of the compensation options for the upcoming school year. >> Good afternoon, Mr. Kales. Welcome. >> Good afternoon, board. President Ernandez, Superintendent Commission Midas, and members of the board. Today is budget workshop number five. Feels like a bunch, but they've been they've been kind of short. So, um today's a quick short meeting, too. 30 minutes here. So,
003we we'll try to go through these um four things briefly or as long as you want to. Um the first thing is going over discussion of the compensation options. Um, I' I've put a slide in there, not knowing how much everybody's aware of right now, but the first the first aotment that the district well one of the allotments the district is going to get is is 25,500 or 5,000 for each teacher that is coming in for those teachers at those dollar amounts. What's missing from that money is we have to pay the teacher $5,000 more than we did the year before. There's still the 1.4 me 1.45 four or five Medicare and some additional benefits that are attached to that, but they give us a $5,000 actually count um the the numbers that are reported
004in PES. They count that number of teachers and then they'll they'll fund the district with those dollar amounts. So um for every teacher with three or four years um the district will receive 2,500 and every district every teacher with five or more years will receive 5,000. So, um it's not quite dollar per dollar that they're providing us, but that's a direct amount that actually has been given to us to pay. The next aotment is the support staff retention aotment. Um that one the state is providing $45 per ADA. Um so for us approximately our ADA is 5322. $45. We have the $239,000 approximately. That money is used to give raises to everybody except probably the people in this room um assistant principles and and above are not part of this. So we we do have
005to spend this amount of money on the employees that have been specifically mentioned, bus drivers, transportation, food service, those people. So all all all the uh non um executive team or administrative level positions um the state will um review this the district's ADA and and and give us an aotment. Um this is a preliminary amount. That's what makes this a little difficult is our ADA is not finalized till the end of the school year. Um but we'll have an estimate. the 239,000 would provide probably less than 2% to all of those employees. It's somewhere between 1 and 2% that that would um so so it's not it's not actually a lot of money that that that actually provides for us. We we've counted the employees. We looked at the salaries. we made the adjustments what
006what 2% will do and 2% will cover the $239,000 for for everybody. Um so there's a heads up on that that uh that allotment and how that's going to work. The next one is going to be the allotment for basic cost. Now this is $106 per enrollment. This enrollment from our understanding will be measured with our October PEM snapshot date. So when we submit our P submission um we'll receive that that will be the number that'll lock in for the year. Um that for us generates approximately 675 um000. Same thing we don't actually know what enrollment will be on the snapshot report but that's that's kind of an idea of what we had in enrollment in the prior year. Um now that that money is a money that can be used for everything else uh
007including the including the raises for the for other areas but but this one is not as restrictive. Um there was some guidance but but it's not it's not restrictive there. Um the some guidance for example as we mentioned earlier the additional cost for TRS um the additional amount for retirees things like that um that those things were mentioned in there but but it doesn't have the limitations that the other two have. Um so that that's that's the additional um sum of money that will come in there. Um la last last month I provided if if all people um who are not subject to the 2500 or 5,000 we provided some numbers saying a 2% for everybody else would be approximately 616,000 2 and a half being 770,000 3% 924 and and so on. So th
008those are the amounts that that we're looking at um having from from the state. Um we've also provided HR has provided you a sheet for questions on where we're at. This sheet that everybody has in front of us will help answer to the questions of where we're at um competitively. I think we still have a lot of districts who are still holding out. Everybody's still trying to figure out what we're going to be doing. Um we've we've seen a few districts actually make make some decisions, but for the most part, I would say the majority of them have not actually finalized everything. If if you're September start date like we are, then we have until September to actually finalize or August 31st to finalize our budget or to adopt the budget at that point in
009time. So, we'll kind of use as much time um to figure all the things out and and apply the correct amounts um to the board. I I do have another slide that I kind of want to go over with everybody kind of quickly. And and it's the it's the health insurance. The reason this this comes up again is as we mentioned before, we have a deficit in in our how our our self-funded insurance is working and and that deficit hinders us probably moving above the 3%. Um I drew up a little simple analogy here. What's kind of happening as we mentioned before is there's so much money that comes out the employees check from their deduction. so much that comes out from the benefit that gets placed into the health insurance fund and then of
010course being self-funded we we pay the bills. Um the bills have been larger than than the amount that we've generated. So the the fix for this going back is we either contribute more or we have the employees um with a larger deduction. This year's health insurance rates have already been in place. People have already signed up. So, so one one option for us um and and this is a big hypothetical, but it would be something like a 3% raise and then look at increasing the amount of contribution to our health insurance because that that's going to still be needed. At some point, an auditor could ask us to to make that right. It has a negative $4.7 million in there and so it's a separate fund um that that that needs to be solvent. If
011we ever went back to TRS or needed to do something, we could maybe be even asked to um move money out of our general fund and and and just clean that up. And so we're trying to um one way about going that is is to kind of fix the health insurance issue by by by contributing more than it's actually being being taken out. And and that would be one way is to actually look at maybe once again maintaining a conservative raise and and contributing more of that towards the health insurance plan since we're not we're not looking at doing health insurance increases to the health insurance plans that people have this year. Okay. So, any questions on staffing or compensation? >> Just in regards to the comparisons for on the spreadsheet that was provided, that's
012without any any changes to date. Is that correct? >> Okay. Thank you. And are you are you able to tell us out of the the ones listed here which ones have already made announcements or none of them have? >> Yes. If you look at the second page, Valley Northeast and San Antonio ISD that have already said what their increases will be. >> It's between a two and a 3%. >> But that's not reflected here, right? Sorry. On this on the first >> spreadsheet. Yes, sir. Um and for Northeast, yes, the the numbers in blue for those two districts are updated. >> Got it. Okay. >> Thank you. Any other questions? >> I I have one question back to the first uh the slide that you had about the ADA. You were saying some that's based
013on the uh submission. Is that for this fall submission or is that um from the prior fall submission >> the >> where you talk about the ADA >> the support >> a lotment for the basic cost. >> Okay. That that our understanding at this point right now is snapshot for the 20 it will be for the for the school year that we are in. So October will be the 2526 school year. It should be the October 25 snapshot. So the the current year that which would be the current year we're in the 25 26 school year. >> Okay. Got it. >> They they'll do the same thing when they fund us with the teachers. Um they'll they'll take that may actually be coming out snapshot also when they actually measure the teachers also. We we'll
014we'll confirm when these things are going to happen because we do need to know when it is. But that that is our understanding right now is both those those two numbers will be at snapshot. >> Any other questions? >> Yes sir. >> Go ahead. >> Uh for for the insurance just for the board to know that by doing that $50 contribution that the district would do uh in case the board would offer that the plan would be to pay off half a million a year. And of course, if there's a little bit more money, we could increase that amount. But the plan would be that we would be paying off that that uh debt on the insurance uh 500,000 uh a year. So the auditors would see that the district is is actually uh taking
015that into account and and planning for that expense to be taken care of. So So uh when Mr. Kales mentioned, well, if the board would uh consider a 3% increase and then setting aside $50 in addition to the contribution to take care of that insurance issue uh with time, >> so would the $50 be it would be a $50 on top of the 25 or would it be just a flat 25 more to make it 50 >> on the health insurance contribution? >> Yes. Well, we're using round numbers. Um, when we said like 50 or 25 or how we'd actually get to 500,000, um, we don't we don't have an exact amount for you today. What what our plan is was, as Mr. Amida said, is to show the auditors we are making a good
016faith effort to actually eat into that that debt. And so when we talked about it, we're like, what does it take to get to five um $500,000 a year to show them we're taking half a million dollars a year that we're in addition and and moving that debt down? Um I I don't I got to go back and look at the amount before before I want to confirm exactly. We can put in an email or something. I I'm I'm sorry. We we don't have that exact amount. What it takes to get $500,000. >> Can you go to the next slide, though? back where you you were at with the insurance. >> Yes. On on this slide, that that was just kind of a demonstration of how we were actually when I when I put the
017$25 on this slide, right? >> Um this would have been if we would have had a $50 health insurance plan, which we don't, but I was just kind of showing that we have some money come from the employee deduction, some from the that's what goes in the health insurance fund on a monthly basis and then we pay our invoices and the invoices have exceeded that in that demonstration shows we have $50 for that, you know, that we've contributed and $100,000 $100 invoice. So just kind of showing that more money is going out than it's coming in. >> So how so Mr. Carlos, how how long has this 4.7 been there or how did we how did I guess how did we rack up 4.7 million as a deficit without anybody's attention? >> Well, it it's
018it's been in the audits the last few years. Um, and and it's it's it's been building since we I I don't know the day we did, but I I would have to guess from the time we actually started a self-funded health insurance plan. So, probably about from the year we got out of TRS, it it has been it has been building. Um pro probably what should have been shared with the board years ago was the amount of the contributions and and the employee deductions need need to be increased. But those are hard decisions that like we had the district had not received any additional funding from the state and and to sit there and tell employees, hey, this is how much more we need for your health insurance. I I understand why that's a hard
019hard decision. So I'm guessing somewhere without being here at the time it probably fell somewhere along those lines. Last year we did raise the insurance rates for that reason. A small amount but we still went up a we still we increased the prior year for for that reason. >> Yes. We were no longer offering the free plan due to the fact that we were selfunded. It was it was too expensive. >> So is the deduction $25 per month? >> I'm sorry. It's $25 per month. >> Um, no. That was more of the analogy of kind of just showing how we got the $50 and paid $100. But it I um are you asking how much we pay for each plan? >> I guess what would be the employee deduction? What is it today? And what
020what are we proposing it go to? >> So the the the plan you're on it depends your deduction depends on what plan you're on. So if you're single with no children, that would be one of the cheaper plans. And then even then there's three different options. There's three. We have a high deductible plan and two other plans. And then every one of those has for um employee only uh employee and child, employee and family, employee and spouse. So everyone has four options and we have 12 different so altogether probably 12 different dollar amounts depending on what your situation is. >> I guess then my I'll ask differently. Are are you going to bring something that shows us each of the plans what what each employee would be is currently contributing and then what we're proposing
021that they contribute? We're actually not not asking the board to look at changing the amount of employee contributions this year. >> So, it's just strictly a a district contribution. >> Yes, sir. That that's >> And why why would the employee contribution not be on the table? >> Well, one reason is we've already done enrollment for the new year. Um so people have an idea of what they're what they're paying. Um, two, we did not know when when we started doing this, when we start the health insurance plan like like we did months ago, we don't know what's happening with the legislature. We don't know what the funding is going to be. We don't know if it's going to change. Um, we have made changes working with Shauna and Barrett. We've made changes to restructure our
022health insurance plan. For example, a lot was changed last year when we went from Humanana to Blue Cross Blue Shield. The caps, the stop loss, and then I'm going to get into words. I don't even know what the health insurance fund but but but the the fund has been restructured so we would we would stop losing as much money and we also raised the rates. So we did that we addressed it last year. This year when it was time for people to enroll, we didn't know if we were going to be able to give an increase or what we were going to be able to do. So so the rates were not increased. >> Okay. Well, >> we we can definitely make sure we bring that earlier next year if that I mean that I
023I get that we're already started, but if we do want to take a look at that, what's the impact? >> Um, employees who have already enrolled and think they know how much our health insurance plan is for next year, but >> dollar amount. I'm not sure what you're asking. >> Yeah, dollar amount. Well, I guess it it would depend how much um how much the dollar amount is of what the increase would be. We could we could draw up some scenarios of what an increase would look like and a district contribution. We we can drop those scenarios with the employees that we have. Um so the these monies that we're getting from the ADA and the basic a lotment uh