001Good evening. Welcome to the regular board of directors meeting. It is August 12th, 5:30 p.m. Please join us for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Director Perkins has our land acknowledgement. >> Thank you. Evergreen Public Schools resides on the traditional lands of the Chinukan peoples and the Katz tribe. They have lived on and cared for this land and its waterways since time immemorial. We thank them for their stewardship and make this acknowledgement to open a space of recognition, inclusion, and respect for all indigenous students, families, and staff in our community. >> Thank you. The first item in our agenda is to adopt the agenda. Is
002there a motion? >> I move to adopt tonight's agenda as presented. Second, >> Jenny. >> Director Boken moves to adopt the agenda as presented. Second by seconded by Director Grwalt. All in favor? >> I opposed. >> So moved. Next item on the agenda is public comments. Any community member wishing to address the board may do so during the designated time on the agenda for public comments. Comments are to be directed to the board of directors as a whole and may not be addressed to any individual member of the board, the administrative staff or the audience. Although the board will not engage in dialogue, the board chair may ask a speaker a clarifying question or follow up at a later time on an issue raised during public comment. Each speaker has a maximum of three minutes.
003There is no mechanism whereby a speaker can donate some or all their time to another speaker and no individual speak no individual may speak more than once per regular meeting even if there is time remaining. Also please state your name and district affiliation. Do we have our virtual person online? Mr. Smith. >> Oh yes. Can everybody hear me? >> Yes. >> All right. All right. Thank you everybody. Um I'm at an event so that's why I'm not here today. Election season is full swing. Uh the topic I want to talk to you is about the PSSE contract. Um we've been uh we're about two weeks away from school. Uh no end in sight. Uh nothing nothing unique, nothing uh no progress. I feel that there's no progress in this contract negotiation. And um I don't
004want to do this strike because it would affect it affects our vulnerable uh populations uh special needs kids. And um another issue another issue that we're facing as well is that uh the governor recently signed a law that says um you can get special services for those uh up until you're age of 22. So that might be a few slots that are needed to fill in. Um the second contention is that um uh DECA their uh their student store advisors are under the PSSE contract and uh that affects training stuff they do with DECA. Uh I know Heritage is working on trying to get gold certified for their student store. Uh they've been doing that for a while and um we also have a lot of folks that are new to the student store and
005um trying to get this new contract in is uh very imperative and um time to me time is running out and uh I would urge the board to try to uh put things in as well and uh try to uh burn midnight oil and get that contract approved before uh school starts in two weeks. And uh thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Smith. Next up, we have Terry Grineer. >> Hello, >> Superintendent Mahoney and boards and board members. My name is Terry My name is Terry Grineer. I've been a day lead at Endeavor. I love Endeavor. I love the school district. And for the past 21 years, I served the district and students fed ABM as a ABM custodian. But after two decades, I'm only making $2110 an hour. I make more than most custodians
006do since I'm a day lead with high seniority. But the fa the the pay has now affected our dedicated custodial staff. A lot of us have to go to food banks and some employees because of price of groceries and some of us even donate blood or get second jobs. We're on our feet all day long. One of my co-workers struggled to find the money to buy a lawnmower when it broke down this summer. If we have to buy a major appliance, it's a we have to go in debt. We don't spend money on anything we don't need. We um maybe we might get a long cap out for the summer, but we don't go on vacation. Other school districts, our sister school district with the same similar funding problems as us are still paying their
007custodian a livable wage. I left this if I left this district today and took a job with the starting rate Vancouver would pay me more $2.24 an hour. Cameas 220 an hour Wugal 3 33 and Battleground 5.85 an hour. So, an entry-level custo that's for an entry-level custodian. People with my wage or my seniority would make5 to $20 more an hour. I love the kids. I love the staff. I don't want to leave. I want you to understand how it's affecting our ability to keep quality staff and workers. We and we don't have to I don't want to have to take a second job, donate blood, or go to food banks. I Please work with ABM. make sure we're treated with the same level of care and respect that we give every day to the
008students and staff of Evergreen Stools. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Joshua Richardson. >> Good evening. I've been asked to speak for Josh Richardson. he had a family emergency that he wasn't able to attend this meeting. Um he says his name is Josh Richardson. He's now in his fourth year of being a daily custodian for Union High School. He's worked for ABM for 15 years with the last 10 being an Evergreen School District. when he moved over from working on floor crews and commercial accounts, uh, he made more as a Evergreen School District custodian and that made sense to him because of everything that we did and the involvement we had with not only the kids' lives as well as the staffs that worked there now. And it also made sense to him
009because uh he didn't have working as an Evergreen School District custodian, he had to put up with Tik Tok trends and bathrooms, graffiti on walls every day, and total sometimes total demolition of the environment that he worked in. In the past 10 years he's been here, the pay difference has been switched today to a regular janitor working in the commercial accounts for ABM, making 27 $20.75 per hour doing his job. This is higher than him as a 15-year daily custodian. If he went back to commercial accounts now, he'd get a pay raise of almost $4. He trains lots of custodians being a high school day lead and um he has seen the turnover rate firsthand. Custodians coming in and leaving the next day because what they were expected to do didn't match up to what
010they were being paid. Custodians truly care about their schools, the staff, and the kids that go there as well. They know them by first name. When seen in the community, they are pointed out to their parents. They have to make tough choices to leave a place they love because they need to pay the rent and need to take care of their families. And they have to take a second job or like Terry says in some cases, donate blood for groceries. They need the district to work with ABM to address the pay problem with the inflation they've had over the we've had over the past several years. Um the raises don't match up and it's become a crisis. Surrounding school districts have managed to create living wage jobs for custodians even though they also have budget
011problems. And Evergreen custodians deserve nothing less. In fact, they deserve the world. Thank you very much. Thank you, >> Mindy Truffer Cooper. >> Good evening. I'm Melinda Tropher Cooper, your Evergreen PSSC president. I must say this feels like deja vu. I stood before you multiple times three years ago asking for your help in receiving a fair contract for my members and co-workers. Those words fell on deaf ears and we were good for we did what was good for our students, families, and communities. And we went to work. In fact, we worked half the school year without a contract. Many lessons were learned during that bargain. We have become more aware of how this system and you feel about us, about the work we do, and how we are valued. Talk is cheap. The proof is
012in the pudding. People can tell you anything, but their actions show you what is real. You should believe what you see, not what you hear. All of these expressions are filled with meaning for us in Evergreen PSSE. We are told often we are appreciated, we are valued, we matter. But none of that respect is shown to us, especially at the bargaining table or in how our contract language is applied to us. The bargain we were told at bargain we were told this isn't Burger King and we can't have it our way. Was it said and just probably so but the meeting was clear and the feeling of being devalued and disrespected was real. We didn't go to the table thinking it was going to go all our way. But we brought many important issues to
013the table and were met with we aren't interested in that many times. We expect repeatedly our why. But still we were dismissed as if we hadn't made valid points. We were also told we had been given enough. So your side was uninterested in giving more. That is not respect. It is not value. It is dismissive and demeaning. And it's not working to find a solution that is good for both sides. We understand you would like us to accept IPD only and be good little soldiers and let you to continue to budget or to balance your budget on our backs, but ladies and gentlemen, we simply can't afford your luxury. I have members who are unable to live on what you pay. They are forced to work multiple jobs, live in poverty, and frequent food banks.
014IPD for most of us is less than $100 a month before taxes. For us, that doesn't cover the inflation at the pump or at the grocery store. You continue to put money into the top of this district. That has to stop. We were told last bargaining cycle you didn't care about retainage as long as you could continue to hire. That doesn't make good sense, and it's not working. PSSE had to agree to allow the district to hire an outside agency to fill PAR positions so that student minutes were being met. That agency was more expensive and it didn't fix your hiring problems. In fact, it was not successful. It's also disme demeaning and disheartening to those of us who have stood by you once again showing a lack of respect. Are you sensing a theme?
015Because we are. In closing, I am here one last time and quite frankly expect the same results. But I am here to ask better of you. To finally put your words into action. To show us our value to this district. To show us your respect. We don't want to hear it. We want to see it. >> Don't force us to show you our resolve as you have made Evergreen teachers show you their last two cycles. We want to go to work. We want to serve our community. And we want to support our students in each of our capacities. But we won't do so without a fair and equitable contract. Thank you. Samantha Boulder. Hello, my name is Samantha Verer. I am a special education para educator at Ill Elementary and I have been working for
016the Evergreen School District for going on five years now. I have had the chance to speak to a lot of you and I've seen you in school and I appreciate that. Um, however, I don't think you quite understand just what it is like to be in a classroom without a PAR educator in it. Nowadays it is impossible especially with the neighborhood schools program. I have my own feelings about the neighborhood schools program but it is been rolled out and so we work with what we can do. However um a big part of neighborhood schools is working with all uh people within education. That's our paras that's our teachers that's our special ed teachers. And when you don't show the respect to the classified staff and the PAR educators, you cannot retain them. Therefore, we cannot
017build relationships, which is how we work with the kids. You cannot just keep bringing in new people on poor pay and expecting our our students to care to work with them at all. Um, I'm getting emotional because I am tired of having to explain my worth. I am a hard worker. I have made a different in in countless children's lives. I have multiple educators who have told me so and have said that this is unfair. I make less than $2,000 a month. I cannot survive. And I know that is quite similar with everybody behind me. I am lucky lucky quote unquote to not have a child right now because if I had a child there's absolutely no way that I could stay in the position that I so love and care about because I can't
018afford it. And hearing that everyone at the district level was able to get their raises or some raise in any way knowing that they are making six figure salary. I am not asking for a six-f figure salary. I'm asking to be paid a livable wage so I can make rent. That is all. I can only speak on behalf of what I know, which is the elementary system as a paraprofessional. But I know countless other people have many stories similar to mine where we stay around for the kids. But we are tired of the disrespect and we are tired of dignity falling at the wayside for not only us but our students as well. When we don't have paras to cover the needs of our student minutes, those kids are losing out on the education and
019social emotional needs that they have. We need to make sure that we are getting good para educators and classified staff in with good pay so we can retain them and keep those healthy relationships strong. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Katherine Verick Hello. >> Good evening. My name is Katherine Ferdick and my four children received their K12 education through EPS. Throughout that span of 20 years, I've observed quite a lot in our district. From my time as a parent, volunteer, and advocate, I've witnessed the effects of dwindling resources and staff for our children. Every level of employee within schools showing the strain while still trying to give over and above for our students sake. I've observed our district's needs for Paris and bus drivers in particular increase exponentially over the years. It's a well-known need.
020Sorry. The definition of value is the regard that something is held to deserve the importance, worth or usefulness of something. To consider someone or something to be important or beneficial, have a high opinion of. I believe it is agreed upon that our paras and bus drivers are crucial to our students and that we cannot run our schools without them and the shortage of them has only magnified their necessity. The increase in behavioral and emotional issues in schools has also illustrated the need for experienced and adequately trained paras. Their value to the schools is inherently clear. Many of the complaints and grievances EPS has experienced at the root have been based on an inadequate staffing in these areas. How can we hire and retain the student-f facing staff we desperately need if they cannot be guaranteed
021a livable wage and working conditions they require? There has been public outcry over the salaries and raises for executives which have been met with and justified by a response of needing to attract talent and experience and retain it, needing to remain competitive. Yet, despite the acknowledged struggles to hire and retain the employees who are bargaining, the district plays hard ball over and over again. Money can be found and granted to others. No hardballing, no stalling. Where is value being placed and with whom? Over the last 20 years, patterns have emerged of an increasingly acrimonious bargaining atmosphere treated almost with pride. How is that a good representation of the district? As a contrast, I read of a bargaining elsewhere in which the criteria for bargaining success involved no strikes or necessity for mediation. We're seeing a
022similar pattern with the PSSE as we did with the teachers union. Bargaining began in the spring has yet has dragged out and stalled now close to the start of the new school year. Parents are greatly concerned that once again the district will not value our employees who face our students and that once again EPS employees will have no other choice but to strike than be villainized for doing so. Where is the pressure on the district to concede for the sake of the students? Playing hard ball leading to the equivalent of bargaining chicken to see who will give in to first to advert a strike and school delay to crumple the will to fight for adequate pay and safe work and learning environments is not the flex some would like you to believe. Your actions speak
023so loudly. I cannot hear what you are saying rings truer than ever. Our choices reveal our values and the choices with money in this district very much so. Your community, employees, and students are watching where you place your value. Thank you. >> Thank you. Megan Hinger. >> Good evening. >> Sorry, got to get my phone unlocked. Hi, my name is Megan Housinger. I'm a mother to two kids in the Evergreen Schools and I work as a parah at Covington Middle School. Here's one of my kids with me in blue supporting us. Our contract is currently in negotiation. In 2023, previous Superintendent Boyd made $343,000. Director Jana Gomes made $243,000. I made $18,000. That was the year that my mental health struggled because of the level of violence that was happening in my building. Does the
024district have issues with children throwing chairs across rooms? Have they been assaulted by students? How many times has an ambulance come to the district building because kids have gotten in a fight and someone gets sent to the hospital? This building is locked up like a fort, so I doubt that ever happens. We see it constantly. In contrast, a campus superintendent made $220,000 and the director made $194,000. That is a difference of $172,000 in two people's salaries. I made $18,000. The Vancouver superintendent made $285,000. That position alone is costing us $58,000 more a year, over three times what I make. Meanwhile, Hawinson put a freeze on administr administration salaries. We all know there are plenty of salaries to freeze here. This district office is huge and bloated. To put this more into perspective, occasionally because I
025am lucky enough to be a two-income household, I deliver pizzas from my husband's workplace. And this is a true story, not an exaggeration. On a slow lunch Tuesday, I made almost $10 more than I do as a parah without all the extra stress. I know how much delivery drivers make during a dinner rush. It is significantly more than us. And it's fun to drive around and listen to music and deliver pizzas. Why would I work harder, more stressful job for less money when I am constantly disrespected? I do my job because I love it and because I believe that we paras are such an important role in student lives. Frankly, I and I believe many others feel we are secondhand citizens to this district. And I'm sorry, I I am shocked with the custodial numbers.
026I did not know that. That is horrifying. Uh like absolutely appalling. As second half citizens, we are underpaid. I have been harassed by HR while I was in the hospital constantly because I'm not allowed to take unpaid time off. Even though I'm in the hospital, I'm getting threatened and harassed. Honestly, I've wanted to quit my job because of HR plenty of times. The kids are what has kept me in. The district is struggling to hire PARA educators, and there's clearly no question of why. If I was looking to financially support my family, I would go deliver pizzas. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment. The next item on our agenda is our board consent agenda. Is there a motion? >> I move adoption of the board's consent agenda as presented. >> Second. >> Director
027Perkins moves to adopt the consent agenda as presented. Seconded by Director Wilson. All in favor? I posted. So moved. The next item is our superintendent consent agenda. Is there a motion? >> I move to approve the super consent agenda. >> Second. Any second. >> Director Boengra moves to approve the superintendent consent agenda as presented. Seconded by Director Grwall. All in favor? I opposed. So moved. The next item on our agenda is our superintendent report. >> All right. Good evening. Um August, as um you know, um is incredibly busy as district and building administrators prepare for the 2526 school year. Um some of the visioning and planning actually occurred um towards the end of last school year and then intensified with implementation truly beginning um in late July and um through August and the next couple
028of weeks. So, besides visiting the many summer um opportunities EPS provides for students across the district, including our multilingual summer school where both Director Perkins and I um got a chance to enjoy a great cultural food celebration and were given a recipe book and you are welcome to check that out created by the kids and celebrating their uh cultural heritage. Um we also I've also been attending and speaking at many professional developments uh days provided for all staffs and all different departments. executive director. This is a preview coming up for the August 26 board meeting. Um, executive director instruction and leadership Bobby Height will be providing some details that are more specific about the actual work that's been taking place um focusing on increasing student achievement and um they will have information for the board
029um at that time. So tonight uh part of the process of um creating vision and goals um based on data. Um, this wraps up tonight when I share the uh finalized priority goals um with the board. So, can you please display the goals? All right. So, I'll let um you read them. You're very familiar with them. You've seen them. You've provided input and draft um ideas back to me. And so, this is a finalized um Evergreen um public schools priority goals for the 2526 school year. Each one, as you can see, is aligned with one of our foundations from the strategic plan and then also with our operational expectation policies and each one of those policies have summary impressions um with uh that contain specific data points that are provided and evidence that are provided
030in support of that. So, the board will be receiving periodic updates throughout the entire year um on all of these priority goals to um to look at where how we are progressing towards those goals. Okay. Okay, that can come down. Thank you. Okay. Um earlier this evening um just a few minutes ago actually um we heard some public comments regarding bargaining and a short update here on this is we are in mediation with our PSSE large group and with our evergreen administrators association EAA um as we work towards new agreements. These staff members are extremely valuable to our district and our students and we are hoping and looking forward to reaching agreements sooner rather than later. We do have significant budget challenges and all of our financial decisions need to be made in order to
031support the overall financial health of our district. Um you're going to hear from our chief financial officer in just a few moments, Jennifer Jacobson, who will be conducting a budget presentation um this evening where she will share more details about our current and our future financial situation. And so that concludes my superintendent's report for this evening. >> Thank you. The next item on our agenda is our public hearing for our proposal for our Evergreen Public Schools budget. First reading, CFO Jennifer Jacobson. Can you wait a minute? What >> you want? Water. One second. >> Okay. Uh, good evening to the board and to President Weatherspoon and Superintendent Maloney. Tonight I'm going to present the 2526 budget. Can you hear me? >> Okay. >> Yeah. Okay. All right. So, every year I present a similar type
032budget. Um, I have added a few slides in that I think are very important points to to add to kind of our budget challenges for this year. Um, if you go out to the district website, you can see the full budget in its entirety. It is over 230 pages long. So, it includes the F203 revenue generator, the F1952526 budget, and the forecast. So, there is a four-year forecast out there. Um, I do want to remind you this is a $467 million just general fund budget. It is a huge budget, very complicated. We have over a 100 grants. We have all kinds of categorical funding. Um, and so I'm really trying to distill this down into a shorter presentation for you. I'm going to kind of skip through slides pretty quickly, so we're not here all
033night. Um, but please feel free to ask questions as we move along or at the end of the presentation. I always start these presentations with enrollment because the number of students we serve drives our revenue. About 85 to 90% of our revenue is driven by the number of students we serve. So basic education, um the number of meals served, the number of students we transport, those all have impact on our revenue. So over about the last 10 years, we hit a high in 1617 of over 26,000 students. That's the most ever served at Evergreen. And now um about 10 years later, we're going to be about 5,000 students less. So it is a very drastic decline we've experienced. Usually about 400 students a year we are losing, which is basically the funding of an entire
034elementary school of loss of revenue. Um and to give you an example, for each student we serve, we get $11,000 in basic ed funding. So losing 5,000 students, we would receive 55 million more in revenue this year if we still were serving that number of students. So we are expecting to continue a decline in the next few years. Um we went to flow analytics for our demographers that helped us uh come up with a 10-year trend. We are supposed to hit the bottom around 20,500 and hopefully we'll start seeing an increase after that. So, it depends on birth rates and on housing and and availability of housing and a lot of different things. Um, I also added in this enrollment by grade level because I think it's a good visual of where we're headed. Um,
035the 11th and 12th grade about 200 of those students are actually are Cascadia Tech Academy. So, they're students for other districts that we're serving and that's why you see those jump up in that 11th and 12th grade. So, at that level, we're serving about 1,700 students per grade level, but you can see it has dropped pretty dramatically, uh, 1500 kind of at that middle school level, and now we're down to serving about 1,400 students per grade. So, when we graduate out 17,800, we bring in 1400, we're seeing change of 3 to 400 students every year. We're hoping this 1400 is where we're going to hit the bottom and then things will start to grow up again. But you'll see as these grades come through the higher levels, we're going to have shrinking middle and high
036schools. And um it's just something to to see headed, you know, coming up in the future. So this is a very high level general fund summary and I'll get more into the revenues and expenditures on the next slides. Um we are estimating a beginning fund balance for next year of $22 million. Um we had uh presentations in in back in February and June and July um about the deficit we had in 2425. So we had about a $10 million deficit this year. We started the year with 32 million. Um we had expenditures uh far over what we had anticipated and that was I said in my presentations primarily because we had a lot larger special ed numbers than we had anticipated. Um, so we have hired a lot of additional C and classified staff to
037fund that. And so that's how we ended up with 22 million. Um, I won't close the books till October. So then we'll get the actual number at that point in time. Uh, we're expecting to exceed our revenues by another 5 million next year. So that will leave us with an ending fund balance at $16.8 million and that's projected. So of that fund balance, we have to have a number of dollars restricted in reserve accounts. So that's like our food service revenue skills center. Uh we legally are required to set those aside and we cannot spend those on things like basic ed salaries, teachers, principles, that kind of thing. Those are funds that come through like for food service USDA. It has to be spent on food service only. So those are kind of untouchable reserves.
038And then the rest are unrestricted reserves are 10.8 million and that's two and a half% of our previous year expenditures. So the board policy is that we retain 5% but we have spent down our fund balance now down to 2 and a half% because of these unforeseeable deficits from last year. Um so I will go into a little more detail on what that means and how important it is to have a fund balance account in a few slides. Um I'm going to hit really high level here revenue sources. I want to point out that our state aortionment is going from 237.8 8 million to 242. So, we're only getting an increase of about four million in state funding to support all of the increases that we need in our basic ed. So, all of our
039teachers and principles, secretaries, district office, um they're all basic ed expenditures. And so, because of our declining enrollment, we're just not seeing a lot of extra revenue in that in that space. Um I also have this broken out in this chart and the main changes you can see up there. Last year the state pro provided about 55.5% of our total uh revenue and it has now fallen to 52.3. So state funding is is dropping. Um our EPO tax though fortunately we passed a higher tax levy this for next year and that's going to help make up that gap that we're seeing in our basic ed funding. Um, I do show expenditures broken out a few different ways. There's a million ways to slice the data. So, I picked a couple ways that OSPI highlights. Um,
040this is expenditures by program. So, you'll see here our anticipated increase in basic ed expenditures are $13 million. So, I just showed you how we're only getting four million more from the state, but look how much of an increase we've got in those expenses. This show chart shows expenditures as sliced up by object code a little different way. This is across all our programs. You can see our certificated salary is 46.2% classified 15.1 and then the benefits 21%. So about 82.3% of our total expenditures are all on salary staffing. Our contractual services are 10.6%. And that note below um shows you that we also spent 4.3% on our custodial contract and our food service contract. So we don't staff those. They're contracted out, but they are for our custodial and our food service staff. So
041I consider those also people. They're funding people and part of our staff. So it's over 86% of our funds go to people. That's what we're about. uh materials, supplies, and operating costs. So, per this RCW, I'm required to disclose how much we receive in basic ed um allocation from the state. So, 29.9 million for next year, and how much our budget is to spend those out, and it's 47.4 million. So, this is an area that the the legislature did put a little more money into MSOC, but due to our declining enrollment, we're not generating um as much as as as big of an increase as we would see if if we had the same enrollment. So, we're really only seeing a $900,000 total increase in MSOcks, but we're actually seeing over a $2 million increase
042in expenses. So, one u example of this are our insurance expenses. I talk a lot about a couple years ago, our total property tax or property insurance went from three million to four million in one year, but we only received $350,000 to cover that cost. So, we're we're experiencing huge amounts of inflation here and and therefore things we have to pay for. We can't not have insurance for our property. We can't not have utilities. So we have are also experiencing huge inflationary costs and the state are giving us two to three% to cover those increases. This was another uh graph that I based on OSPI's uh F-195. They separate out our activities in this way. So they show how much is goes to teaching, how much to teaching support. So teaching support is counselors, our
043safety security out at the schools, nursing, um other support that's our transportation maintenance warehouse, our principles and our central admin. And I went out because OSPI publishes really what the kind of averages for a district our size and the average statewide and we are falling in five% is about what everyone's spending on teaching. Um the counseling, nursing and safety is 13.2 to 14.3%. So we have ramped that up. We know that counselors security are very important and that is an area we did not want to see cuts in. Other support is was uh the average is 16 to 16.9%. We have continued to cut and cut in those areas furthest from the classroom. We have heard and we've been making cuts in that area. Um principles typically are between 5.6 and 6% and that includes
044the principal secretaries as well. So it's kind of the principal office is included in that expense. And then central admin uh has gone from 5.8% down to 4.7%. The average is between 4.7 and 5.4% across the state. This is another area we have taken enormous cuts. So here at ASC we have taken 25% of our positions have been reduced over the last four years. If you walk around the ASC you'll see a lot of empty desks. Now my um I won't get personal but we have taken a lot of cuts here and I think that's not always understood. So this graph shows it quite clearly for basic education. Um, this is just showing how much does it cost us versus how much is the state giving us per student. So, back in 1516, there was
045about a $1,800 difference. So, we had to come up with levy funds to fund part of our basic ed needs. Now, um, for next year, it's going to be about a $3,000 per student difference. So, again, basic ed expenses continue to to rise and that gap is just continuing to increase. I think I'm talking too fast now. All right. Now, I want to state jump into um just a statewide overview. So, these are some of the current headlines I've seen in the last month or two across the state. Uh the top two campus and Hawinson, they um are it was in the Colombian ways they are proposing to uh make reductions in Washington state. across the board, we're seeing reductions uh Tacoma, Seattle, Belleview, Edmonds. Um this is really not even just a statewide problem,
046but a national problem. And you're hearing about this happening at districts across across the country. So, I've included what factors are contributing to the statewide school funding issues. And the number one is lack of adequate state funding. So, I'm going to toggle for a minute over to this chart where it shows back when the mccclary decision was made. So, in 2018-19, um the state allocated 52% of their total budget to K12 education. When that decision was made, um they they they made the commitment to fully fund basic education, which includes special education. um they put money into the system and then as the years went on there were no very few adjustments made very little additional money put into our prototypical model and we've now fallen down to where we are not being a top
047priority to the state and only 43% of uh the total state budget is coming to K12 education. So this is definitely um an area that we are seeing some inadequacies. We also, we've already talked about the decline in enrollment and the impact on our um funding inflation. I gave you the example of our our insurance going through the roof. Um we have competitive market driven salary requirements. So we um acknowledge that the state is not funding our positions for what the market is demanding and so we need to um pay where where we're at and the state is not funding that. Um we also have federal grant funds that are at risk and so that is also adding to the volatility we have in our finances. Um in particular as far as inadequate state funding
048we see special education the gap we used to have a 14 13% uh shortfall and that has just continued to grow over the years. We did see some money put into special education in 23 24 and you saw the gap go from 23 to 19% but now we're anticipating uh 22% for next year. There was a little bit of extra money put into the multipliers and put into safety net that will help us out next year but we still have a gap of 17 million next year in special education funding. That's 17 million of our levy funds that are supposed to go for enrichment that we are spending and on the muchneeded special education um realm. All right. So, I talked a little bit about fund balance and how ours is going down to that
0492 and a half%. Um and people ask, you know, what is this fund balance? Why is this important? Um we need those reserves for a number of reasons. One is emergencies and extraordinary events. And I would say this year having our special ed come out so much higher than we were anticipating that was kind of an emergency and we did have to spend down some of our our um reserve to pay for that but we can't continue to do that. Um so we need to make sure we build that reserve back up to 5%. Um we also see gaps in cash flow. Um, I've brought this up in in prior meetings, but we have 36 to $38 million that we pay out every month in payroll and accounts payable. And having only 15 million 16
050million sitting, it it doesn't it's not enough to fill in when our revenues are low. Um, and so that that's a big concern. We're going to have to next year go out and borrow money from our capital projects fund to meet our payroll. Um, planned usage. Some districts do set aside money for things like um a curriculum adoption or a field turf replacement. We don't have any extra reserve to set aside for planned. Um and then also for bond ratings that it will affect our bond ratings as well having a low fund balance. Um so like I said reserves are projected to fall below our minimum 5% sent board policy. Um, what I anticipate is I'll close the books in October and we will probably be about 3.8 to 4% at that time. So, I
051will present that to the board November. Um, but what that means is we need to develop a financial action plan to restore that fund balance back to that 5% minimum required amount. And so, I'm telling you this because I'll talk about the forecast and what that looks like for our forecast in order to build that back. We also have operational expectation five and this is where the board sets kind of the vision and goals for the superintendent and part of that is being fiscally responsible and maintaining that 5% minimum fund balance. All right. So one thing we are hearing about across the state are binding conditions and people don't understand what that is. It is when a student cannot balance their budget and they have a deficit general fund balance. Once you go into the
052negative, you get put into binding conditions and at that point OSPI and your ESD will provide financial oversight to assist the district. So you have more meetings and reporting and they council the district and will set your fund balance targets for you. So right now there are eight school districts in binding conditions. Belleview just went I think last month. Um I know there are a number of others that are on that edge of leading into binding conditions. That is not an area we want to be in. We want to be fiscally responsible and continue to have a positive fund balance. Um, we know that at least 19 are on the financial watch list, but I think when the books are closed in October, we're going to see that number skyrocket. Um, all right. Now, I'm
053going to lead into the four-year forecast. I'm getting to the end here. Um, so this is our F195F. There are literally hundreds of assumptions that have to go into a forecast that goes out this far. So, I tried to lay that down just to kind of give us a basis. Um, we know that enrollment decline or we project it will be about 2% and then it will slow down a little bit. Um, so I put together kind of an idea of what reductions in staff would look like to hit that target 5%. So, the next slide will go into more detail on that. We know we're going to have to have reductions in staff coming up though to continue to address this declining revenue. Um we also uh after the collective bargaining agreements expire in
054this forecast we have salary increases based on projected IPD only. So that's an important one to note. Um anything above IPD is going to cost more money than than what I have presented here. Um to give you an idea, if you go 1% over IPD for um our certificated staff, it's about $2 million more that we'll that need to account for. Um I have our estimated IPD. This is comes from the state. And then this is assuming no additional state funding comes in over the next four years. So this is what the four-year forecast looks like. What I did was aim to go from a 2 and a.5% fund balance to 3 and a.5% next year. And this would mean cutting about 11.5 million in expenses. So roughly 62 staff members in 2728. Then we
055would make another 7 million in reductions 7.5 million and that would bring us up to about 4 and a.5% and then the following year about 6.9 million would bring us up to the 5%. So this is declining enrollment all the way through and in and the impact it's having combined with inflation. Last one summary of our other funds. We have four other funds. Capital projects fund is what builds all of our new buildings. We are just wrapping up our bond expenses now. We have about 32 million we're anticipating and spending in capital projects. These funds were generated through impact fees and bonds, sale of land, things like that. They can only be spent on building new buildings. Um, debt service fund is at 31 million. This services the bonds that we're paying off. The ASB
056fund, we anticipate about a 1.6 million. This is student run and driven. And then transportation vehicle fund can only be used for purchasing buses. And we do anticipate replacing some buses next year, but we'll have a healthy 8.7 million in our transportation vehicle fund. All right, that concludes the presentation. Now, um I'll open it up for questions from the board. Actually, first, are there any comments from the audience? Are there any questions from the board? Yeah, thank you, Jennifer. I know you presented this to each of us um a few weeks ago and we asked questions then and just watching you reviewing the slides again, I just had a couple of quick questions. Um and first right off the bat, um the 2526 IPD percent do >> two and a half% >> five. Okay. And
057in looking at the um the amount per student, um 11,000 is what we're receiving per state >> per Yeah. and uh 14,000 is what we're spending per student. >> Okay. Yeah. Um OSPI, when you look out there, it shows for Evergreen, we're spending like 17 or 18,000 per student. I I assume they're including special education and some of the other programs in that. This is purely basic education. So, I tried to keep the categoricals out. >> Got it. Okay. And um what was my other question? Um the federal and EPO does that add in any of the difference there between 11 and 14 or no? >> Uh the EPO levy is what is funding the difference >> difference, right? Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah. Federal funding is set aside. So those expenses and revenues are kept
058you know as a wash. So those are not included in here. >> Okay. Thank you. So, I guess I just kind of want to make a comment because I remember that we uh we did a lot of work advocating uh at the state level, superintendent groups, administrator groups, financial groups, uh teachers, par educators, and and board members. Um supporting an increase in funding for special education and for materials, supplies, and operating costs. um but that the outcome of the legislative session uh did not result as you've shown us in any significant uh per student revenue changes for the district and that's per student revenue changes um meaning that the increases are a wash um if this continues I imagine that we'll have to uh we'll be required to think through budgeting with a shortfall that
059rivals that of the previous three years. Um, and I think you um you showcased that really well in your presentation today and appreciate that. Uh, the work we have to do is I don't know that we can expect much of a change. Uh, state legislature tends to think in biania uh rather than uh year-over-year. Um, but we should continue advocating for and insisting on um enough revenue to support our students and and pay our people well and we'll be between a rock and a hard place until they do. >> Rob, you bring up an interesting point because I think to the slide that Jennifer showed us that um shows what the funding was after mccclary decision where we were around 50%. and how that significantly I think you're bringing it back up how it significantly
060so 2019 21 we were at 52% 2017 2019 50% because they met that obligation and then every year since it's just dropped dropped dropped and you can see that now here we are 43%. So, if the state was withholding that obligation to continue to fund public education at that 50% rate, we would likely not have school districts across our state in binding conditions and we would probably be just like we were in 2019 2020 without any of the same issues. Even even with inflationary, I think we would probably be in a much better space because I'm not sure what that equates across the board, but it's significant. 8% is huge for a district our size. I did see in the Tacoma school district who is also heading into a negative fund balance um that they
061calculated out to be about 175 million more in revenue per year. Now they're quite a bit bigger than us but that would still be like 100 million for us which would be huge. I mean, yeah. >> And the thing, you know, Jennifer mentioned in the beginning, so larger school districts are starting to experience some of this because I think that the belief is that if you're large, you get plenty of money, but it's not necessarily true because it's all driven by student enrollment. But what we're seeing is small districts and they're really some of the ones that are hurting because they don't have as many resources and they're they're um struggling as well. >> Yeah. Yeah, in a lot of ways, uh, the numbers I've seen about small districts are as bad or worse. Um,
062because, you know, if you if you chop up the funding by student enrollment, um, and reduce that funding, uh, you still have to pay teachers in a classroom. And so I think what we see a lot of is that our enrollment goes down, but it doesn't go down enough to meet the contract thresholds for removing a position until it really goes down, right? Uh and that's the place we're in now, right? Is that enrollment continues to decline, but the costs are staying up there. Yeah. and and increasing and a lot of them faster than inflation. The insurance and and fuel and transportation other transportation costs are just um way beyond what a household is experiencing uh in a lot of ways. >> Going back to our fund balance, can you explain how going below 5%
063will impact our cash flow? >> Right. I talked about uh yes gaps in cash flow um and I have explained how our state aortionment does not come in at an even amount month after month. There are some months we receive 12 and a half% of our total state aortionment. Some months we only receive 5%. So in those months that we don't receive that much funding, we still have to pay our payroll. We still have to pay our um accounts payable. And I think um I'm going to show you very quickly. Uh you can see here's our financial statement from June. June is a very difficult month for a lot of districts because we have a low aortionment. And if we look at our fund balance for June, we ended the month with $4 million total
064in our cash flow. So that is all I had to work with to pay all of the bills during July until we could get our July aortionment payment on July 31st. And our accounts payable during the month. We run accounts payable every week and it usually is 6 to8 million for a month of paying our accounts payable. So you can see already we're hitting a point where we don't have the cash to to cover. Um, so that is why I explained in uh in September I'll show you a cash flow projection for the year and we'll see that there are certain months that we are going to have to probably borrow about 10 million from our capital projects fund to cover these low months. Um, and we'll have to pay interest on that. So, um,
065it's it's not in my idea fiscally responsible to have to be borrowing to make our payroll. And so that is a huge reason why I think it's important we build that fund balance back up to that 5% a minimum 5%. >> Is that an inter fund borrowing? Do we have to pay interest? >> Interfer fund loan. It cannot extend over fiscal years. It has to be a short-term loan. Um >> interest has to be paid. >> Yes. And uh once you you can only borrow so much and then you the next step would be to go to the state and get an aortionment in advance which some districts near us have done recently. And as we're seeing more districts in this in this condition, they're going to have to we're going to see more districts
066trying to borrow against their state aortionment. And the state only has a very small pot of money from which to borrow. And so they're that will be extended next year expended. And then the next step after that is we would talk to our treasurer about running warrants uh registered warrants. So that then is paying interest to the treasurer on checks we cut. So that's kind of the path we would take to try to solve our cash flow issues. >> Are those the kind of things that would put us on a financial watch list? >> Yes. Yep. >> Yeah. They look at how much cash on hand. They look at our fund balance. Um absolutely. >> What are the terms of our payables? Are they net 30? >> 30. Yeah. >> And we typically run AP
067every week. So last month we checked every week and made sure we could cover what was being released. >> And down the road could there be a temporary time we go net 45 or >> we can talk to our vendors, >> but >> that would be unusual. >> Yeah. Jennifer, besides the um kind of what you said our next steps would be given that this is, you know, across the state, are there any other things that you're seeing that the other school districts are doing besides what you've already listed kind of us going forward with? >> Yeah, I I think advocating legislature for changes to the prototypical model is is our best way of going about it. There are some things uh example is we've been given about 500,000 to cover our all of our
068substitute costs for about 10 years now. That number has not changed. And uh our substitute costs are about 5 million per year. So here is unfunded. Of course, we have to pay substitutes and we need them for classified and principles as well as certificated. And those dollars just have not changed in over 10 years. Our allocation >> $500,000 >> versus 5 million. >> Yes. So there needs to be changes to the prototypical model. Another example we see a lot is that our prototypical model generates 3.7 security for our entire district of 22,000 students. I don't uh I don't see how that is considered adequate for security. So um you know there are all kinds of areas like special education. Um another thing the legislature just did is they did lift the levy cap. And I
069know I think there is a district that is going to try to go out and get supplemental levy dollars from taxpayers. Um we don't usually see those pass. Um usually that is only a district that runs with approval ratings over 60% that then try to go out and get a supplemental levy and get more dollars from taxpayers. So uh that that is an option, but it's not a great option. So >> and it's pretty costly to run those elections. >> It is. Uh our two levies last year cost $350,000 that we paid to the county >> and we just got our levy. Yeah. >> In February. So >> yeah. >> Any other questions? >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Jackie, I' I'd like to move that we advance the budget to the
070second reading. >> Second. Director Perkins moves that we advance our 202526 budget proposal for a second reading. Seconded by Director Bokenra. All in favor? >> I opposed. So moved. The next item was just covered. It's ourformational item on our financial statement for June. And the next item would be proposals for action. Director Perkins. >> Okay. I'd like to do it so that we advance one motion here. Uh these are um first readings of our changes to policies GC7 governance culture and GC9. Talking first about GC7, we discussed uh adjusting some language on item five. There it is. Um uh just to clear up the language so that it's a little clearer to all of us and hopefully clearer to the public. uh by striking appropriate to and inserting a regarding so that it reads um
071members will maintain confidential confidentiality regarding sensitive issues and information that may compromise the integrity or legal standing of the board especially those matters discussed in executive session and that's as uh edited there. Um, the second one, GC9, is even shorter. Uh, rather than saying I'll wait for I'll wait for you, Lori. uh rather than saying deal with violations, uh we want to word that as address deliberate or continuing violations uh with respect to uh board members acting outside of the of the uh governance culture policies uh and our other agreements. Um we also replace uh risks the loss of confidence with language that says risks eroding confidence. So the meaning is still there. Um but uh the semantics of it are I think kinder and consistent uh with our work with uh Superintendent Maloney that
072we also lead with kindness. Um, what I'd like to do is move that we advance both the changes to GC7 and the changes to GC9 for a second reading at our next meeting. >> Some moved. Seconded. >> Seconded. Yeah. >> Are you seconding? >> Yes. Okay. >> Oh, yeah. I kind of just moved. >> Moved. Okay. >> So, Dr. Perkins moves that we advance GC 7 and 9 for a second reading. Seconded by Director Gro. All in favor? >> I >> opposed. Thank you. >> Our next item are on the agenda is board comments. >> Anyone like to start? >> I'll go. I just want to say um most people have left but we do appreciate people showing up and coming to the meeting and sharing their views with us and sharing their stories and
073as a board we do hope that we move forward and can come to a good agreement with everybody. Yeah, as always, I appreciate uh public comments and appreciate the comments tonight. And maybe um I don't know if we've done any look at um you know, was mentioned and I've thought of this in the past um as far as the outside services we use for paras when we don't have enough at that particular time to avoid missing IEP minutes. Have we ever done like a cost benefit do you know on that to see you know compared to what we're spending there verse if we had the employees enough employees to cover at that particular time. Don't know if there's someone mentioned it was more costly to do that and I tend to think it might be.
074So I don't know if it's something we need to maybe just review to get a better understanding if we're paying more on the other end. So >> I think generally using a temp firm is more expensive than um hiring and retaining as long as the retaining part is uh the case. But that's just generally I think we've been in an also think we've been in a position with provisioning for special education that uh the only way to hire um or to bring people on quickly had been to use those those services. Um maybe you could talk a little bit about that. >> Yes. And we do try to um hire the people that we that were brought on through the temp um contract um and um put some things in place uh so that we
075could they could become full-time evergreen employees. It's it's pretty complex and there's lots of things that the um district um has been working with in trying to um attract and retain um our pair educators for example. Definitely. >> Yeah. And it is more costly to do that, but if you don't have the people, where do you find the people? Right? And so that was that was just a stop cap like, okay, and our special education numbers came in so much larger than what we anticipated this last school year. And um so that's what we ended up having to do. So we were providing services for our kids and the support they need. I know we as board members really don't technically get paid, although we get a kind of a stipend, you know, $50 for
076every meeting that goes over an hour up to $4,800 a year. And I know I've foregone that for, you know, the year and a half I've been on the board. And I was considering recently changing that, but I think I'll continue since we're in a negative kind of budget situation. Just I don't need it. So, thanks. Yeah. >> Any other comments? >> The time is 6:39 p.m. The board is going to go into a 45minute recess and we'll reconvene the meeting for an executive session. I will announce the start and end times of the executive session when the meeting reconvenes. There is no workshop tonight. Thank you.