001I want to thank you for being here. Um, tonight we will be presenting our FY27 funding request. Before we get started, Miss um Paul, would you please call roll? >> Yes, ma'am. M Miss Blackwell >> here. >> Dr. Chase >> here. >> Miss Davis >> here. >> Miss Ferholds >> here. >> Miss Hilly >> here. >> Mr. Keshi >> here. >> Miss Randall >> here. >> Mr. Rian is absent. Dr. Warner >> here. >> Madam Chair, you have a quorum. >> Thank you. So, the school board presents um we're presenting our uh funding request and uh the school budget represents one of the largest expenditures for the county. Um next Tuesday, they will be voting on the advertised tax rate. And I'm sorry they couldn't deliver a quorum to us tonight, but I do want
002to thank Mr. English, Miss Evans, and Miss Guy for being here to listen to the presentation. Um, I also want to thank our staff for turning this uh presentation around as quickly as they did. We only voted on the budget Tuesday. So, before I as I begin um um I want to thank this u board of supervisors for fully funding our three priorities last year. Prior to last year, we had over 9 million each year in deferred funding causing us to fall behind. Your investment allowed us to proactively address critical repair, renovation, and replacement on our three R list to maintain safe, functional, and highquality learning environments for our students and staff. The funding was not about expansion. It was about protecting and preserving the infrastructure we have already built together as a community. We
003look forward to a continued partnership in maintaining these assets as good stewards of our resources and to avoid more costly emergency repairs in the future. We are grateful for your commitment to long-term planning and infrastructure sustainability. As you watch this drone footage, you can see firsthand the progress being made on our um new schools. These projects represent careful planning, strong oversight, and a shared commitment to meeting the needs of our community. Despite significant construction market challenges, including inflation, supply chain pressures, we have worked diligently to control costs and identify savings through processes. We are currently under budget and on time. Through strategic bid timing, value engineering, and close project management, we have been able to reduce the expenses while maintaining quality and safety standards. We should note that there is no state funding provided to
004open new schools. While construction is funded through capital dollars, cost to staff and operate these buildings is falls on the local and operational budget. Opening them ensures we can provide appropriate class sizes, safe learning environments, and access to programs across the division. Stafford Schools continues to demonstrate strong academic performance and regional leadership. We are home to three of the top five elementary schools and the top ranked middle school. All Stafford schools are fully accredited. Four of our five high schools earned the state's distinguished designation reflecting achievement, graduation rates, attendance, and student engagement. It is the highest recognition available. One high school that narrowly missed this designation did so only by 7/10en of one point point. Our English learners are showing significant growth. Stafford schools earned 13 of the top 15 um positions in the region
005for English learner progress. Overall, our standards of learning assessments improved this year, including 20% increase in world history, too, gains in geometry, and of course, reading, Virginia, and US history, and our students are outperforming state averages in key areas. These results show that our investments are producing measurable results in academic performance for students and the community, but there is still work to do. Our elementary and middle schools are progressing but need additional support and investment to achieve distinguished designation. We have two schools in need of intensive support and several schools that have been identified as off track. We are working closely with those schools to provide the planning and resources they need to excel. As we look ahead, Stafford, like many other school divisions, faces complex challenges. Our district is currently ranked 121 out of
006132 for state funding. This demonstrates that despite less funding, we continue to make progress for our students. Local support is critical to bridge these funding gaps and maintain educational quality. Maintaining these costs while remaining regionally competitive is a growing challenge. This requires competitive salaries, benefits, and professional growth opportunities that are key to attracting and keeping highquality educators. But we also need to address the rising costs of health care that impacts our ability to fund instructional programs and other priorities. It's important to remember that among almost threearters of Stafford County Public School employees work and live in Stafford, meaning local investment supports not only student students but the community's workforce and economy. Most of the students who attend our new schools are already here. Our high schools were operating above 100% capacity and many of our
007elementary schools were approaching 100%. These schools are not expansions for future growth. They are necessary solutions to current overcrowding. Some of our student populations continue to grow, including students with special needs and English language learners. Supporting these students requires resources, specialized staff, and targeted programs. We are often required to meet unfunded mandates for compliance with state and federal law. For example, the Virginia Literacy Act requires that every student be reading at grade level. While this statewide priority is important, but implementation requires training, instructional resources, and ongoing monitor to support struggling readers. Taken together, these major needs show that while we are making strong academic progress, sustained investment is required to maintain and meet our student needs. This budget next Whoops. This budget directly addresses our key priorities to our students, family, and community. Attract and
008retain high-quality staff, ensuring our schools maintain competitive and our students have excellent teachers. Secure resources to ne to improve performance, support programs, interventions, and maintain safe, highquality facilities that provide students with an enriching safe classroom environment. We are now I would like to introduce Dr. Smith to present our funding request. But first, I'd like to remind the board of supervisors that our funding request this year is lower than it was our original ask last year. >> Dr. Smith. >> Good afternoon. Uh before starting, I I would like to thank Mr. Ashton for his partnership and collaboration. Our county administrator is in a tough position to consider the needs of the county and develop a budget proposal. I can share that I know that he understands the commitment our county made to our new schools and
009our exist existing schools and he's been a great advocate and supporter of our work to be one Stafford. Each year we utilize a zerobased budget approach and I can share that's something that's not common across Virginia school divisions but it is important uh for us to take this approach to ensure that we are being as strategic, intentional and efficient as possible. As you can see on this slide, our total anticipated revenue for FY27 is 41.1 million new dollars. Our projected state increase is 21.6 million and this is based on the Governor Yncan's caboose bill. We are aware of the House and Senate budget bills that were released this past week and we are awaiting specific details and information on what that is included in each and how they might impact Stafford schools. The local request
010in this budget is an increase of 18.6 6 million, which includes a focused request on two specific items. $10.6 million for the operational costs of our three new schools and $8 million for staff compensation. We appreciate the county administrator's proposed budget that would provide 15.1 million in local funds, but it's important to note that that is $3.5 million short of the request. In terms of federal revenue, we are anticipating 1 million additional dollars uh this year in federal revenue and this is mainly from formula adjustments and programs such as Medicaid. Our local revenue is projected to decrease um by $169,000 and that's mainly as a result of last year's legislation with dual enrollment. Taken together, these funding sources would allow us to open new schools, invest in staff compensation, and continue to limit the local
011funding request through intentional, efficient budgeting. Here's the bottom line up front. Stafford schools is delivering results. Every single one of our schools are fully accredited. Four of our five high schools are distinguished, the highest designation in the state. And our one high school that's still yet to get there is seven points away. We are outperforming the state in key areas and leading the region in multiple grade levels. We are preparing our students for life after graduation as evidenced by the 5,600 plus credentials that were earned last year. But we know we are growing and we have growing responsibilities. We are we are set to open three new schools which will expand our footprint of K12 schools by 10%. Our special populations, including our students with disabilities and English language learners, has over doubled in the
012past decade. Our student needs are more complex. We need greater focus on safety, mental health, and compre comprehensive support. We know this is tough, but we know we must also be intentional in how we manage resources. 8.5 million dollars we've reduced from our base budget over the past six years through our zerobased budgeting. And this includes internal reallocation and cost containment. This also includes $2.2 million that was cut to our base budget prior to my proposal to our school board. We are fortunate that state at risk funding has been received and is projected to uh increase for next year and we've been intentional about in leveraging those funds for inter interventionists, deans, security staff and staff stability. We're also working to leverage carryover and year-end funds to address non-reoccurring needs. As we look at our
013other funds, we're significantly fi behind our other neighbors. Not just our neighbors to the north, but our neighbors to the south as well. And we need to make progress on our salaries and compensation. This budget provides salary increases needed to support recruitment, retention, and stability that our students and staff desperately need. Our board has also looked closely at health insurance, has made adjustments to to protect take-home pay, while also working to try to cover some of our rising health care costs. The bottom line is this budget preserves the momentum, performance, and investments that our boards have made in our schools, our kids, and our communities. This position Stafford schools to move forward in an efficient, intentional, and transparent manner. This slide shows the five-year plan for the school's operating budget as was presented to both
014boards in March of 2023. At that time, we budgeted the cost for the three new schools to be 15.3 million for operating costs. Last year in FY26, the costs were estimated to be at 5.6 million. However, due to costs and lack of revenue, these costs were reduced to 900,000 and were deferred to FY27. In total, now that we're close to FY27, we're able to take a look at the actual cost, including what we are requesting this year, and that is 3.7 million less than less than what was included in the five-year plan from 2023. We've also included the license scale investments that were a part of the five-year plan that was shared to both boards, and Dr. Chase will speak to those figures a little bit later in the presentation. In preparing for our new
015schools, we have done the work. We have redistricted all elementary and high school students across the county. We've established a divisionwide transition team to help guide the work of the transition. We've developed and executed plans for the movement and reassignment of staff, including 300 staff members who are moving with students. And those rep staff represent nearly 80% of the staff required for the new schools. We've created plans to move classroom equipment, shift teacher supplies, curriculum materials, everything that's needed, and the list goes on and on. Simply put, we're incredibly thankful for the investment and the challenge, and we've met every mark, and we're ready to continue to take the steps to get these projects over the finish lines and get them filled with students and staff. The total size of these schools is just over
016560,000 square feet, covering over a little over 114 acres. And again, this increases our K12 footprint by 10%. New schools also come with essential staffing expectations. Every school needs a a principal, assistant principles, counselors, social workers, technology staff, librarians, just for example. All of that comes at a cost. And at the same time, opening the new schools would reduce our utilization rates in our elementary schools from 99 to 100 to 85% and from 102% to a little over 85% in our high schools. With these factors in mind, we are carefully planning to ensure each school is properly staffed and supported so that both students and staff can thrive in these environments. While we're intentional about managing costs, our largest expense remains compensation and benefits. And that's by design because our people at the heart of
017everything we do. Investing in our educators, our administrators and staff is an investment in student learning and achievement, an investment in engagement and classroom success, and an investment in a strong connected community. We need competitive compensation as this is essential to recra recruiting and retaining top talent, rewarding our staff for their dedication and expertise and ensuring that Stafford schools can continue to attract and keep the best educators in a competitive regional landscape. Simply put, strong staff equals strong schools equals successful students in a successful community. Some increases in this budget are essential, non-optional expenses just to keep our schools functioning effectively. And a few of them are displayed here on this slide. For example, the state recently adopted new English and language arts standards. And in FY27, we're scheduled to adopt new K12 textbooks and
018instructional materials that align with these standards to ensure we are teaching our students the right standards that are aligned to the state. We have a new learn we have a learning management system called Canvas that's been supported by the state. The state has previously paid for this and this is our course that houses all all of our courses, our assignments, our student calendars and resources for teachers and students. It's currently not covered in the state budget. So localities will have to fund it separately. In terms of infrastructure and technology, we currently do not have a cyclic replacement to replace equipment when it breaks. Establishing a cyclic replacement cycle for technology, buses, and other key infrastructure is a long-term solution. And we don't get there in this budget, but we take a small step forward. These
019investments ensure our schools remain functional, effective, and aligned to student needs. In Governor Yncan's proposed budget, Stafford County is projected to receive 4.5 million in new atrisisk funding. This funding is must be targeted to support students facing higher barriers to learning, including students experiencing economically disadvantage, English language learners, challenging behaviors or discipline, and other students identified by the state criteria. This funding has the potential to have a significant impact as we are focusing on what has been proven to work in our schools. It also in order to achieve this funds we have to have a local match and this plan offsets those costs with costs we were already incurring in our local operating budget. Strategic use of our atrisisk funding will allow us to focus on supports and stabilizing critical positions. It allows us to
020improve student outcomes while reducing the local funding pressure. And now I'll turn things over to Miss Finger Holtz to speak about our new schools. >> Thank you. So, I again want to thank um our board of supervisors, definitely the ones that are here tonight, for funding the construction of FallsRun, Crow's Nest, and Hartwood High. Um this helps us get back on track to providing adequate infrastructure for educating our Stafford County kids. Um kids that rode the bus, they parked their car in their decorated spot this morning and were sitting in the car rider lines. These are kids that are already here. Construction of these schools has been on the books for at least a decade. What a great moment for you to be able to cut that ribbon on all that time and all that
021investment. You will be addressing the large number of trailers, some of the longest bus routes, and overcrowding of lunchrooms, hallways, and classrooms. With less crowding comes better academic possibilities and improved behavior management. You are also adding over 80 stable quality job opportunities for your constituents right here at home. With Hartwood High, we will be providing more realworld study for our high schoolers with pathways such as live entertainment management and audio engineering. We've all seen the numbers, we've seen the slides, we've seen the progress over the years. Personally, I want to share with you one of the most important points. These are not buildings of brick and steel that belong to the school division. These are Stafford's schools. All of ours, whether a neighbor has children attending them or not, in these walls and around these
022fields is where our community will continue to connect. where our seniors from the Falls Run and Celebrate neighborhoods can catch some Friday night lights with their grandkids, where a new church can gather, where parks and wrecks can hold indoor basketball games because we've added that to these schools, where we can have the easiest, most coste effective date night at a theater and possibly the cutest as well. Where our kids will grow memories, life lessons, and roots. Schools are living, breathing parts of a locality's identity and pride. We definitely appreciate you for helping opening three additional ones and growing that pride in our community. Good evening. Before I share with you the role of the interventionists, I'm going to give you the bottom line up front. interventionists ensure that the right amount of academic support at
023the right time for the students who need the help to improve their performance. Now on with the role of the interventionists. They provide targeted support in reading and math for students with the greatest need. Interventionists deliver res researchbased intervention to strengthen foundational skills and close learning gaps. They monitor student data in real time to adjust instruction for maximum impact. And last but not least, interventionists ensure evidence-based strategies are consistent across both classrooms and schools. As you know, we've had interventionists in Stafford County for about two years, I believe around 23 20 the 22, I'm sorry, 23 24 school year. And the data shows that the interventionist efforts are indeed working. Early targeted support is reducing the number of students identified as high risk in reading. Here are some things for you to consider. Students are
024being identified early and support supported more effectively. Many students no longer require the highest level of intervention. Students are moving toward grade level performance, not remaining in high-risisk categories. And number four, focusing intervention efforts in the earliest grades accelerate growth in literacy and in math. the lowest performing students p um percentage sign is significant growth demonstrated in the 2025 school year which obviously is the current I'm sorry 2025 to 26 which is the current school year we have included the interventionists in the budget to sustain the progress that has been made and the last two things I'd like to leave you with is I want you to note that the interventionists were previously funded through grants but are supported by the atrisisk funding to maintain the momentum and the interventionists are a top priority for
025elementary school principles as they are essential to meeting student needs and supporting reading math outcome. Thank you, >> Miss Randall. desirable behaviors. This is Oh, thank you. Oh, thank you. Allowing more time. Thank you. And attention on teaching and learning. Our administrative teams develop protocols and procedures for their schools safety plans. A new member has been added to that team in our high schools. In our high schools, they are the dean of students. Their role has an increase has increased lowering sorry with an increase in lower level discipline issues after COVID. These deans are able to receive a message from a teacher, get there, and immediately begin to handle discipline. If they require an assistant principal, they can get that ball process rolling. They can spend some reflection and redirection time with the students and
026their service helps to support solid tier one instruction. In addition, we as a division are working to develop our own pipeline of administrators who already have hands on the job training and currently we have one at each high school. Our middle school principles have identified dean of students as their top request. In addition, it has been in our five-year budget plan. So we are asking for eight of them for our middle schools using our at risk funding. To round out our security people request, we would like to ask for eight school security officers or SSOs. I think can we turn the page or flip the slide? Thank you. Currently, our high schools have one SRO and three SSOs. Our middle schools share their SRO. And the Stafford County Sheriff's Office on their website, it's not
027quite up to date, but they have gave us a list of all of our county schools. And you can see some of these deputies names appear three times because they serve a middle school and two elementary schools. Middle schools have had a slight increase in undesirable behavior and have even moved above our high school data. and we would like to make a strong step towards protecting the teaching and learning time and space. This position works to support our code of conduct and their duties fall under the direction of the school administration. As you can see on this chart up here, we show that we indeed have SRO's in our middle schools and high schools like many of the areas and localities around us, but we do not have as many of our localities around us.
028We only have the SSOs in the high school, not all levels. And so we're asking to take one more step of improvement improvement by bringing them on board uh in each of our middle schools. An SSO can check hallways, entrances, and exits. They can uh serve in the car rider and bus rider entries and exits. They would be dedicated to their schools, and they do not get called away for an hour for a day for an hour up to a day with threat assessments. We would like this consideration to be an and and not an or as part of our safety first. Moving on to our SRO's. Since FY23, we have maintained 13 SRO's. In FY23, we had two, but we moved to three sergeant SRO's, but we have maintained that entire time with only
029five SPOs. Our SRO's as you can see on this slide here become are an employer or their employer is the Stafford County Sheriff whereas our SSOs are an employer employed by Stafford County schools. Yes, as I I did hear your discussion the other day. I don't want you to think I wasn't mindfully part of it, but um yes, they are SRO's are armed and our SSOs are not. Um we expect our and have a agreedou which you are all given a copy of that shares and shows the responsibilities of the SRO's and the SS and most everything they do has to do with law whereas our primary responsibilities of our security officers in our building is safety and uh maintaining the safety of the building who's coming and going also um there are in there
030are some instances where SRO's cannot get involved and the SSOs can um and again both of them serve very important roles we wouldn't want to be without either um as we move towards uh maintaining safety in our schools um our at risk funding gives us the opportunity to once again as um Dr. Smith mentioned earlier um being able to bring on these uh SSOs and new deans of students for our middle school safety and security. So thank you. >> Yep. So I wanted to speak a little bit about uh teacher salaries. Um we about gosh I think it was 2023 um we were came across the street and we pointed out that um we were not at all competitive for teacher salaries and that we were really losing lots of teachers to the north and
031to the south of us. And it was noted at the time that public safety um were put at market in one year. And there was a board member who's not here today who made the point that the school system had so many more employees that it was really not possible for us to make this market adjustment in a single year. And we understood that. I mean, we're willing to work with with the board of supervisors and we were asked to come up with a five-year plan. And we did come up with a five-year plan. And you can see on this slide uh license scale investments. The bottom table there, it shows for 2024 um that the five-year plan had us getting 16.8 million, but we only got 14.1, so we fell behind by 2.7 million.
032Um last year, FY20, well, the year before that, FY25, uh we were on the money. That's very nice. And then this year, um we fell behind by uh 6.6 six million. Okay. So, um part of the the there are a couple factors that have come into play for us with with salary. Uh one is we were fortunate enough as we were raising salary to get more experienced teachers. And I tell you as a teacher myself, it takes about three years to become a good teacher. So, an experienced teacher is a very valuable thing. But an experienced teacher costs more money. And so as we got more experienced teachers into Stafford County Public Schools, um it cost a little bit more money. And as a result, we haven't been able to lift the salary for starting
033teachers. And so you'll notice on the top table there that this year our starting salary for teachers is 50,600. What we are proposing for next year is an increase to 54,000. That doesn't really get us as competitive as we'd like, but it hopefully our later years where the salaries are higher will help. But you can see proposed for Prince William for next year is 65,000 for Fredericksburg is 55,000 for Spoty is almost 55,000 and for King George is 51,000. So, um, this budget is asking for, um, enough to have that starting salary be at 54,000 rather than, uh, 50,600. Um, and why is this important? Um, study after study shows that the most highest impact on a student is the teacher in the classroom. to have a highly qualified um teacher who develops relationships with
034students makes a huge difference. And so that's why um we are asking for this money and and I would just point out that we are working to adjust the scale. We had the scale having 3% steps. We now are suggesting 2.15% steps. Um, we understand that we're making a big ask for next year. We understand that we're opening three schools. And what I often hear is, "Well, the schools just ask for everything." Well, we actually aren't asking you to give us all the money for year four and all the money we didn't get last year for year three of the salary scale. We are working with you. Um, we understand that 10.6 million to open three schools is a heavy lift. Um, so the next thing I want to mention that's a strain for us
035is health care costs. Health insurance has been increasing every year. For next year, we're expecting uh perhaps a 28% increase over the current year to catch up to underfunding. Um, and as part of that, we are increasing employee premiums next year. We have proposed to increase premiums up to 47% for some of our employees because our premiums have been lower. And this is another way that we're trying to help and not ask for everything um in this budget because we do understand it's a heavy lift. um salary and benefits are incredibly important for our goal of getting students the best education that we can and I think we can see the effect of those experienced teachers in some of the outcomes we've seen in the past year with respect to our schools that our students
036are doing well and now let's hear from some of those students so we have Safi Koreshi and Tao Davis will be giving us their student perspective Ive >> Hello everyone. When I was thinking about what to say for today's speech, I had a realization. Most of my memories from this year didn't actually happen at a school dance or a big game. They happened in the five minutes between bells when teachers asked how my weekend was or stayed up stayed late to explain a concept to me for the 10th time until I finally understood it. What I'm trying to say here is our teachers are the heartbeat of our daily lives. They aren't just experts in their subjects. There are mentors or unofficial therapists and sometimes the only people who noticed when we're really having a
037rough day. They pour so much of of themselves into us that sometimes we forget that they're human, too. But here's the thing. You can't pour from an empty cup. We see our teachers staying late, grading through lunch, coaching a team, and supporting a club. It's easy to see the lessons they teach, but really stands out to me is the constant support they give to us even when no one is watching. If we want them to keep showing up, showing up for us with that same energy, we need to show up for them. Let's ensure that our teachers feel supported the exact same way that us students feel supported and heard in their classrooms. >> Building on that, I want to be clear about what it truly means to show up for our teachers. It means
038providing resources they need so they aren't innovating out of their own pockets. It means active listening, ensuring that when they voice concerns about classroom sizes or burnout, those concerns are led with direct action. When we pro prioritize the professional health of our staff, we aren't just helping them. We're ensuring that our schools remain a place of growth rather than a place of stress. By investing in their stability, we're securing the quality of our own education. As student representatives, we see the direct connection between teacher well-being and student success. When teachers feel supported and valued, classrooms are stronger, more stable, and more effective. Investing in our educators, it's not extra. It's essential to long-term strength of our schools. When our teachers have the room to thrive, we thrive right along with them. So, I urge the
039board to keep seeking those tangible ways to champion the people who champion us every day. Thank you. >> Thank you. We appreciate it. And thank I would like to thank Mr. English and Mr. U Miss Evans for being here. And um I just want to remind you that we are delivering results for our students and for our families. Um this has been a monumental year. It's quite a quite an honor to open three schools, but it it is a big challenge and I know that our staff is working monumentally on those tasks. But we do have to address the fact that our compensation is lagging and we are trying to work with you to make um to make it more feasible for us to to increase the salaries where they need to be so that
040we're competitive and we're recruiting the best teachers and we're keeping the teachers we have. So a strong community requires a strong school system. We are part of the economic engine that drives our community. And I want to thank you for your continuing support, Dr. Smith. I think you about said it all there. So, just looking forward to working with Mr. Ashton and our supervisors. Uh, I hope this presentation has shared some of our needs and happy to answer any questions as we move forward uh in this process. >> Thank you for dinner. >> Okay, we are adjourned. >> Thank you.