001When are we uh broadcasting? We are. Yeah. That's why Chris is here. >> Yeah, that's what I thought. >> had to do any of this. Okay, let's go, Chris. I'd like to call our meeting to order. First action we have is approval of the agenda. Do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? Daniel Wallace so moved. Is there a second? Amy Richards second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. Okay, the next item on our agenda is a public hearing on our 2026-2027 budgets. >> [clears throat] >> And so at this time, I'm going to ask Ms. Rice to do a presentation on our proposed 2026-2027 school board budget and school nutrition budget. Okay. Um good evening to you all. Uh and all of the information you are going to see
002this evening is uh going to be very familiar. This is the same information you have seen previously. We don't have any new updates from the state since we last met. Uh so for our budget priorities for 26-27, uh the established priorities are to recruit the best personnel to our division and to retain the best personnel in our division. And we also want to maintain smaller class sizes and offer more elective course offerings and other course offerings. The projected state revenue is based on Governor Youngkin's proposal at this point with a projected average daily membership of 1,512 students. And that is a projected increase over the current year's budget uh where we were projected to have 1,480 students. We're expected to increase again for 27-28. So all of that is encouraging because school enrollment is going
003down uh all over the place. Um there are fewer children uh to enter the public schools. So we're we're glad to see our numbers are continuing to increase at this point. As you know, our local composite index did increase just slightly from 0.50 [snorts] in the last biennium to 0.5181 in the upcoming biennium. And uh this is the projected state revenue that that you have seen a number of times. So we have the side-by-side comparison >> [laughter] >> of what was budgeted for 25-26 and what is proposed for 26-27. And again, this is all familiar to you. So the bottom line, the projected state revenue uh is projected to be 100 and 6,565 over the current year. I need to look down so I can see. >> [laughter] >> Uh projected total revenue includes uh
004the increase in the local revenue of 659,845 and that is based on required local effort and match. So we can anticipate receiving at least that much in state revenue, at least that much in local revenue. And we did experience a decrease in federal revenue for the current year over the previous year, and we are using level federal funds as our projection for the upcoming year. So overall, we are looking at an increase in total revenue of 703,487 dollars. And this just gives you uh percentage of where the revenue is coming from. So the largest portion uh remains state funds at 51%, local dollars at 44%, and uh about 4% in federal funds with a tiny bit um coming in with e-rate and Medicaid and miscellaneous revenue. Employee compensation was a priority again in the development
005of this budget. So we have uh built a budget that includes a 3% salary increase for all employees. The latest indications that we're getting from the state is that will likely be uh the percent increase that's included for uh compensation dollars in the upcoming budget. But we do have one version that is a 2% increase, one version that's a 3% increase. And the the rumbling is that Prepare for the three. Yes. Um and I did link in for you all the proposed salary scales. So that's a live link. When you go in BoardDocs, you can click on that and see all of the proposed scales for 26-27. Our part-time daily wage employees also will see a 3% increase. Um so you can see the increase to bus driver pay will be 140 dollars a day,
006and car drivers and transportation aids 107 dollars a day. And that is based on the daily wages based on 4 hours of work per day. For our part-time hourly wage employees, we're looking to increase the hourly rate from 17.51 to 18.04. And that's also a 3% increase. Other things that impacted our uh personnel dollars this year, the VRS rate is actually uh slated to decrease from 15.23 for the employer contribution to 13.37 for professionals, and that's the certificated staff. And then to decrease from 10.32 to 9.05 for uh what they call non-professional staff. And then we have built in overtime for transportation and maintenance. That's built into this budget uh because they are routinely working some overtime, and so we've budgeted for that. And then we have built in uh retiree employer-paid health insurance for
007six retirees that we anticipate will be participating. Uh you know the story of the health insurance for this year. We did experience uh an increase. We will be offering the same three plans. We're with the local choice, and we're going to be offering Key Advantage Expanded, Key Advantage 500, and the high deductible health plan. Any of those plans come with either preventive or comprehensive dental, and all of them can be taken as employee only, employee plus one, or employee plus family. And there's our uh premium increase of 15.4%. And uh this shows over time. We've had great years where we had no increase whatsoever in our premiums, uh including for the current year that we're in. Uh and then we have years where they make up for that, and uh this is our highest increase
008in the past 10 years. So overall average is still a 5-year average of 9.08 and 10-year average of 6.22. Our decision uh in the budget planning was to absorb as much of the health insurance increase as the division could feasibly absorb. Uh particularly since our employees are looking at a 3% salary increase, we didn't want the entire salary increase to be eaten up by and now you have to pay out more for your health insurance. So we are absorbing 85% of the increase and passing 15% of the increase on to the employee. So the employer contribution for health insurance for the upcoming year uh if everyone were to take the same plan that they took this year, uh would be will be 402,572 dollars and 40 cents. And that's of the 700 something thousand additional
009dollars that we have to work with. So between the 3% increase and the health insurance increase, um the vast majority of any additional dollars that we're anticipating are going right back into the employees. And this just gives you uh a side-by-side comparison of employer and employee contribution changes from 25-26 to 26-27. And that's monthly contribution. So you can see the lion's share is being picked up by the division. And then uh little bit of the increase is being passed on to the employee. And this is the same side-by-side comparison for those who take the Key Advantage 500 plan. And then finally, this is the side-by-side comparison for those who take the high deductible plan. And all three of the slides that we're sharing with you are with comprehensive dental, but all three could be taken
010with preventive dental instead. And that does decrease the contribution for the employee a little bit. In terms of positions, um we did want to maintain uh the existing positions that we have and and not uh looking to reduce any positions with uh just a couple of exceptions. We do want to add one elementary teacher position at Washington District Elementary, and that's due to um the growth in a grade level. Uh we are proposing to eliminate two full-time custodial positions at Washington District Elementary, but that's due to a retirement and a request to be assigned to a new role. Um so nobody's losing their job. Uh we just have two full-time folks who are either retiring or moving to into a new role and uh we'll be contracting out the custodial services at Washington District. And
011then we've added the equivalent of a CTE director position. So the funding is in there uh for CTE director. Um again, our CTE our current CTE director is uh just moving to take on some other duties uh and we'll be reassigning the CTE duties to someone else. But again, no one is uh leaving a position. We're just shifting duties. Question for you at this point. Yes. If we go back to our priorities, one of the ones that we have is to increase course offerings. Yes. >> So is it possible that uh the number of positions might change based on trying to offer additional courses? >> It is possible with the additional state revenue uh that we may I'm sorry, I'm trying to get back to where you want me to be. Um all the way
012back. I didn't mean to make you scroll. >> Chris, you could have gotten there a lot faster than me. I should have let you do it. I'm going to let you get me back to okay. [laughter] Um so uh yes, with with additional state and local revenue that we do we anticipate because we we do expect we'll get something more once the state does settle on a budget. Um we think the budget we're presenting this evening is the minimum revenue that we'll receive. So there are a couple of other things that uh we do have in mind, some other positions we'd like to add. But in terms of the staffing decisions we've made thus far, we're actually moving a couple of positions around so they don't have a budget impact, but they will allow us
013to add some new courses. So an example of that is we have a CTE position at the middle school. The person in that position will be leaving us and we're not going to fill the position at the middle school where class size numbers are really small for the CTE program. Instead, we're going to move that position to the high school. So there's not a budget impact for the division, but it allows us to offer some additional courses at the high school level. So we're strategically using positions that we have. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Some other significant uh non-personnel changes. We did increase the allocation for purchased services in instruction um and that is based on our historical spending. Uh we're spending more in purchased services than what we had um previously budgeted.
014So there's a need for us to to bump that up. And that's so that we can continue to um contract out for example with the Berkeley Group uh who's been working with us on strategic planning and strategic plan implementation. We want to be able to contract with the Donovan Group potentially um or another communication group uh to help us with our communications and developing a division-wide communication plan. So whomever we we settle on, we need to have revenue there uh to try to contract out for some support services. And then we have a number of other uh purchased services that we have in place that we want to continue. Yes, uh thank you. Uh and one of those is uh we do contract out with in placement agencies for international educators. And so we need
015funds in in the purchased service line for that as well. And then we have uh allocated an increase for Northern Neck Tech Center. Um that fee will go up for the upcoming year. We've increased our allocation to cover our Chesapeake Bay Governor's School participation and increase the allocation for our participation [clears throat] in alternative education um because each of those three programs obviously costs is going up for all of them as well. Uh we are also allocating funds to fund the high school pathway advisor >> [cough] >> as a single-site advisor rather than sharing with another division. And we've allocated funds for replacing uh elementary classroom furniture, student desks, chairs, tables, etc. Uh we're actually doing some of that replacement out of this year's budget, but we've also budgeted for next year for any anticipated
016needs or unanticipated needs that might come up. We've increased the allocation for audit expenses uh to match what we are being charged. And then we've uh in pupil transportation, we actually eliminated in this budget the allocation for school buses because the school buses are now covered in our capital improvement plan budget. And we have increased the allocation for Enterprise vehicle leases and we do expect by the time we start the new school year, we expect that all of our non non-buses uh which is mainly cars for transporting students, but also includes maintenance vehicles, technology vehicles um we expect to have all of our non-buses leased through Enterprise and have a full fleet of reliable, newer vehicles on the road uh when we start the new school year. And then other non-personnel revisions, uh we did
017increase the allocation for electricity again to match uh our spending and we increased the allocation for custodial supplies. And significantly, we increased the allocation for contracted cleaning services since we know for certain we want to contract out for Washington District Elementary School and we already contract out for custodial services at the high school. And we're considering uh one other school as a possibility. And then for technology, um this was an area where we could actually decrease our allocation for telecommunications. And again, that's because the actual cost is coming in less than what we had anticipated for the current year. Additional non-personnel revisions, uh transfers. We have an increased allocation for our school resource officers. We um pay 50% for one of our SROs now, 50% of salary and benefits, but we have a second SRO
018whose grant will expire at the end of the year. So we'll be picking up the full 50% of it an additional SRO. And then we still have two SROs whose grants are active and so we're only paying 25% of salary and benefits for those two SROs, but it is an increase for the upcoming year. And then uh with the increases, at this moment we have decreased what we're setting aside in our contingency fund um out of necessity until we get some additional state and local revenue and then we want to uh restore what we've taken out of our contingency front fund because that's as you know, that's the one category where we can use that money to address whatever need arises without doing a resolution to move money from one category to another. And then
019in multiple categories, uh I did I didn't have one category to choose from. We've increased the allocation for mileage reimbursement because as you all remember, we used to reimburse mileage a year ago at at 35 cents a mile and now we've uh changed the policy to say we reimburse at whatever rate the IRS is reimbursing at any given moment, which is 72.5. So currently. I know this because I asked Tina and Alexis earlier today uh cuz I can never remember what it is. And then expenditures. Um this is by category. You can see the majority of our increase is in instruction as it should be uh for a school division and then we do see an increase for administration attendance and health. We have a decrease in pupil transportation. Um, but that is because of
020the buses moving over into the CIP. Operation and maintenance is going up just a bit. Technology was able to be decreased and that that was because of the telecommunications decrease. We have an increase for the transfers for the school resource officers and a little bit of a decrease right now in the contingency fund. So, our overall budget before grants is 32 million 349 604 and that's an increase of 771,966 over the current year. And then once we apply our grants, our federal grants to that, it brings our total expenditures, our total budget to 33 million 548,950 and that's an overall increase of 703,487. And then this graph shows you the percentage of dollars that are in each category of expenditures. And so, you see the the largest piece of the pie is instruction. And again,
021as it should be. Um, and we have about 6% of the budget on administration attendance health. Our transportation budget has crept up over time and now is 10% of our overall budget. And then operation maintenance is at 9%, technology 4%. We have a little bit for transfers and our contingency makes up about 2% of our budget. Our grants make up about 4% of our expenditures. And then looking to the future, this is what we're waiting for. The House and Senate both have their individual versions out there. Um, both started with the projected ADM of 1512 and the governor's amended budget of 17,152,974 for state revenue. And then this is what the House has added to what the governor proposed. So, you see an increase in special education add-on rates. The House is the one that
022has the proposed flexible spending, which we are really hoping goes through. 695,554 for Westmoreland should that go through. And then our total state distribution would be 17,964,052 and that would increase our local distribution as well. Because of effort and match increasing accordingly. And the Senate side started with the same ADM of 1512 and the governor's amended budget. Um, and the difference on the Senate side I have to look here. Um, they also have an increase for special education add-on. They have an increase of one additional percent for salaries, compensation supplement. They increased school breakfast rate. They expect an increase in estimated sales tax distribution. And then there's an increase in at-risk add-on funds. So, that would bring our total state revenue to 17 million 510,898. And that also increases the local share. So, a side-by-side
023comparison um, the proposed governor's budget compared with the House budget you can see with a side-by-side we would pick up an additional 1,067,602 were the House version to be adopted. And if the Senate version were be to be adopted, we would pick up an additional 696,653. Still good. And so, we don't expect either the House or the Senate versions to be adopted as presented. That's why there's a conference budget that we're all waiting for. So, we expect it'll be somewhere in between what the House has proposed and what the Senate has proposed. So, hopefully we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 to 900,000 more to work with than what we have put in our budget thus far. And we do have a long list of requests that we have not addressed with our
024current proposed budget. So, uh, we won't be having to think hard about what we want to add to the budget. We have quite a few voiced needs that we haven't addressed yet that we would be able to address if that revenue comes through. And that is all I have for this evening. Any questions from any board member? Uh, any comments? Once again, we very much appreciate all the effort that goes into this. And all the folks that help with it. And we know it's not easy. Cuz we never get to do all the things we need to do or would like to do. But, um, fantastic job. Thank you. So, I do recognize, uh, pretty much all the faces out here. But, uh, uh, but a part of that process and a public comment period
025is to ask if anyone from the public would like to provide any comments at this time. Okay, I don't hear any. So, based on that, our public hearing on our proposed school board budget is closed. And then I guess we'll go to the school nutrition budget next and we'll do the same thing. Yes. >> Thank you. Thank you. The school nutrition budget, you all have not seen in its entirety. You're you're familiar with the revenue because we've been sharing that. And so, I'll start with the revenue. We expect essentially the same revenue in the upcoming year that we're receiving for the current year. We do expect to see an increase of about 35,335. The school nutrition budget is unique because very little of this budget very little of the revenue do we actually know when
026we create the budget. We know what the school lunch and school breakfast state funds are going to be, but that makes up a very small amount of the revenue. Most of the revenue comes from the actual reimbursements that the school nutrition program receives and that's based on how many meals are served. So, a lot of what we do with the school nutrition budget revenue is just projecting based on current trends. What's coming in this year in terms of federal reimbursements for breakfast and lunch programs. So, we do we do look like we're heading in the right direction. We'll have essentially the same amount of money, almost 1.5 million in revenue and we do expect a slight increase of 35,335. You can see the state dollars for both school lunch and school breakfast are actually projected
027to be less in the upcoming year than what we received for the current year. Um, but you saw in the Senate version that they did include some increase for school nutrition programs. And then for the expenditures, um, school nutrition is one category. So, we are able to freely move money anywhere that's needed within the school nutrition budget because it's just one category. Um, and we do see a decrease in school nutrition salaries. Um, we have not decreased the number of workers and we will be doing the 3% increase and we have the same health insurance increase for school nutrition. So, it it looks a little misleading, but that's because for the current year 25-26, we budgeted for a school nutrition supervisor working more full-time and our school nutrition supervisor is working part-time. And so, it
028looks like we've decreased and the cost is less than what we budgeted for this year, but we haven't reduced any positions. And that's you see the increase in benefits for the health insurance and we were able to increase a little bit materials and supplies and food supplies so that our increase in expenditures matches the increase in revenue. And that is all we have for school nutrition. Okay, any questions or comments from any board member? Okay, I hearing none. Once again, we appreciate all the effort that goes into this. This may have been a little easier than the school board budget. Yes. But um so do we have anyone from the public that would like to make any comments on the school nutrition budget? Okay. >> [laughter] >> That was classic. I guess [laughter] we have
029a comment from a board member. No, I just I I anticipated that there would be no comments, so >> [laughter] >> That's what I thought. Okay, so anyway, our public hearing on the school nutrition budget is now closed. And I would at this time would like to ask the board uh if they would like to take any action on the 2026-2027 proposed school board budget and the school nutrition budget. And we typically do those at one time unless there's any objection. So do any board member like to make any action? >> Mr. Chairman, I would move that we accept both budgets as presented. Okay, is there a second? Second, Rebecca Minor. Okay, any discussion? Okay, Ms. Richards, how do you vote? I. Ms. Minor? I. Dr. Wallace? I. And the chair votes I and the
030budgets are approved, Ms. Rice. Thank you. >> Okay, thank you. >> [laughter] >> We all appreciate that and then of course we'll be back in May uh with a revised budget once we know what our actual dollars are. Okay, then. So at this time uh like to see if any school board members have any comments. Ms. Richards, do you have any comments? Um no comments. Great job on the budget. Seems like I've heard it five times now. >> [laughter] >> I think you have. So Ms. Minor, any comments? Dr. Wallace? >> Uh the only question is I'd have is given the turnover at the Board of Supervisors, um are there any anticipated um hiccups? No, um they they have uh brought back the former county administrator who is very familiar with uh budget development and
031who understands the school funding formula better than anybody and required local effort to match, so we we expect it all to go very smoothly. Okay. Yeah. Good. Yeah. And I'm sure at this point you've already uh provided inputs to him. Yes. That he fully understands. So >> Yes. based on past experience. Yeah. So there would be no surprises. That's all I was I was concerned with. >> We anticipate no surprises there. >> the uncertainty there? Okay, thank you. Ms. Rice, do you have any comments to add? No, sir. Thank you. >> Okay, thank you. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? Daniel Wallace so moved. Is there a second? Amy Richards second. All in favor signify by saying I. I. I. We are adjourned.