001call to order the Hudson School District annual meeting. We're going to start with some introductions. I am board president Bob Bowman. To my left is uh Brian Dah, Maria Rudy, Molly Powers, Superintendent Nicolette, Kate Garza, Megan Rosowski, Aaron Gerlock, and Bonnie Stagman, our finance director. >> All right. Uh, as we uh start off the annual meeting, I have the uh responsibility of making sure that we elect a chairperson uh to run the annual meeting. Uh the chairperson can be uh anybody that's a member of the electorate. To be a member of the electorate, you have to be a resident of the Hudson School District and over the age of 18. At this time, I will open up for nominations of uh for anyone uh for chairperson. >> I nominate Bob Bowman. >> We have >>
002second. >> We have a nomination a second. I'll do a second reading or a second ask for nominations and a third ask for nominations for chairperson of the annual meeting. Not hearing any additional nominations, I'll go ahead and close nominations. Uh I will be asking for a vote of the uh election of the chairperson. This is done by a voice vote along with all other items at the annual meeting. Anybody that is either on stage or in the crowd that happens to be a uh at least 18 years of age and a resident of the Hudson School District has the opportunity to voice vote. Uh so all those in favor in electing Bob Bowman, the uh chairperson for the annual meeting uh say I. >> I. >> All those opposed say nay. >> All right.
003The eyes have it. Mr. Bowman, I'll turn it over to you. >> Thank you very much. And uh to start the meeting, we will go right back to Nick. That was a very thanks for your vote of confidence. And I hope I handled that to your satisfaction. >> Right. >> So I I won't uh be able to see behind me, so I'll just uh say next slide. And I think is it Tim? Are you the one driving this thing for me? All right. Perfect. So welcome to the Hudson School District's annual meeting. We always start off the annual meeting with a highlight uh district highlights kind of from this past year and this past summer. Um and just a couple things we want to touch on. If we go to the next slide, strategic plan
00425 to 2030. Uh over the last uh 8 to 12 months, we've been working on the strategic plan uh for the Hudson School District. It was unveiled with the board uh about a month ago. Um the overarching pieces of our strategic plan are uh in that wheel, but you can find our full strategic plan online. A couple things that are a little bit different from the last time we did a strategic plan that which was the uh strategic plan that went from 2020 to 2025 is we did redo our mission and vision uh statements. This time we did not. Uh we kept the same vision statement which is the Hudson School District empowers all students to cultivate their talents, embrace their passions, and leverage their learning to impact the world around them. Like I said,
005off to the left of that uh uh statement, you can see kind of the pillars as it relates to our strategic plan. Uh if you go to the next slide and we have our mission statement there. What's that? Oh, we're having slide slide problems. Okay. I think this is what they call dead air. So they'll be able to Yeah. Do >> you have a dad joke? >> Yeah. No, no dad jokes for me. So, um I will uh continue to kind of run through things. I don't know if we're going to be able to We should be able to get this presentation up at least on the River Channels website for the um for the folks that way. Let's see here. Just want to make sure we're this up. >> There we are. >> All
006right. Okay. So, uh, we are Tim on. So, we just did slide two. Slide three, mission statement. Mission statement for the Hudson School District. We are dedicated to developing, caring, contributing community members. We're collectively committed to providing a rigorous student- centered environment to ensure equitable experiences for all students. Uh really the next slide kind of talks about our four strategic pillars. We're going to be looking at educational excellence, well-being, partnerships, and operations. The strategic plan is directly a result of our community conversation that we did in April of 2024 where we brought in over 170 stakeholders uh over three evenings to kind of talk to us and give us feedback and work through what was called a uh um forward um sorry excuse me future search uh to really understand what does the community want
007out of their schools and what direction we need to go. We took all of that feedback to get and to work through our pillars and um and our action plans. You can find our action plans online and the full strategic plan on online as well. Not going to go through the entire thing today because it is accessible online. Um as we work through the last piece before I get into some of the district highlights, you can see our our value statements which have not changed. We want to be student centered. We want to have a sense of acceptance, belonging, and safety as it relates to community. We want to have empathy which is understanding and respecting others. We want to be collaborative and look for common interest and goals. Uh integrity with honesty and consistency
008of character. We want contribution. We want a mindset of service for our kids and for our staff. And the purpose and we want to have purpose as part of our values which is intentional and determined pursuit of achievement for all of our kids and all of our staff. We get into the uh recap a little bit of this most recent summer. Um, as many people are aware, we did have construction at the middle school, North Hudson, and EP Rock Elementary Schools. As much as I'd like to say they're 100% done before we started the school year, we just didn't get uh quite to 100%. They're about 98% done uh in working to complete those over the next few weeks. We did have over almost 800 students in our elementary enrichment classes, over 400 students in
009our middle school enrichment classes, and almost 500 students participating in our Raider Elite athletic uh fitness uh training program in the summer. So, lots of students involved in lots of activities this summer. In addition, we had almost a thousand students take swim lessons through the Hudson School District at the middle school pool. uh 117 students in grades six through eight were in band camp. 48 students in grades five through eight were in orchestra camp. We had some uh some of our students that uh require some extended school year opportunities because of special needs. We had 35 students participating that way and had almost 500 students attending our summer school age care programming. When we talk about educational excellence, the district exceeds expectations on the state report card. As a district in grades three through 11,
010we're in the 93rd percentile in reading and the 91st percentile in math. Our goal is to get into the at least the 95th percentile, which would put us in the top 5% of all districts in the state. Uh the Hudson High School has been recognized as an advanced placement pace setter school in the district. We had over,200 AP exams that were taken this past year by over over 675 students here at the high school. We had 105 AP scholars, 55 AP scholars with honor, and 92 AP scholars with distinction. We had a 15% increase in the number of AP students receiving scores of three or higher, which is a passing score on that exam. It's important to note that a lot of the accomplishments tend to be high school focused because that's where a lot
011of the recognition tends to happen. However, as we remind our staff, uh kids don't uh come to us in kindergarten knowing pre-calc and and all these things. It takes years and it takes the the culmination of our staff uh working with them all the way from teaching them to read to being able to do AP exams all the way through the process. So it is a collective celebration even though they tend to be at the high school level. Additionally, we had 65 high school students in the national riseup retail certification training and exam. 21 of our high school students pass the auto service excellence student certification. So the ASSE uh service uh ex uh ASSE service uh excellence education is related to the auto the automotive industry and then we've had great partnerships with the
012uh Luther auto group. Uh we've had 62 students uh receive transcripted credit in welding through our our welding academy through Northwood Tech. So these are kids that are getting college credit while in high school to learn a trade as well. Uh over 360 of our high school students participated in competitive activities. 31 speech and debate teams qualified for state with 15 gold, 11 silver, and five bronze medals earned. 33 DECA members competed at state and 12 members qualified for the international competitions. We had 107 students participate in the fall musical and spring play as cast crew or pit orchestra. We had seven FFA state qualifying teams. National level egg tech uh and mechanical system team earned silver and egg science placed fourth in the nation. We had 16 HOSA uh and that's uh health occupations
013uh members competed at the state with one member advancing to nationals. Quiz bowl qualified for the high school national championship tournament. Our science olympiate placed fourth at the state out of 70 teams and we had 97 seniors were inducted into NHS with over 4700 hours of community service. Uh when you think about our well-being and student athletes, we had over 1300 students participating in athletics at the high school level uh level. 210 academic allconerence students with an average grade point average of 3.66 senior grade point average. We had 68 individual and eight teams qualify for state, seven conference championships, three state championship teams uh including girls lacrosse, radars dance team kick and cheer and stunt large group co-ed. In operations uh as the district uh runs, we have uh almost 400 certified staff members uh
014right around 300 support staff members and 34 administrative staff members. This year we welcomed 33 new certified staff members, 45 new support staff members, and three new administrators to the district. When we look at operations, the elementary, we uh outfitted with 400 new elementary Chromebooks that were prepared uh by our tech services, plus we had 3,000 secondary Chromebooks that were um prepared and redistributed over the summer back to the buildings uh after they reconditioned. We had 120 laptops that were issued for staff members. We updated all of our computers to Windows 11, which is over 900 different devices on our Windows machines, and then supported the construction projects. The uh technology department also answered over 200 help desk tickets. So, lots of different things going on in the district. A lot of times people think
015of a school district as just being their child interacting with their teacher, but there are so many other things that go on in our district in order to make that happen. And a lot of times they go unnoticed because they they they happen pretty well. The district partners with Chartwell serving over 4,000 lunches and a thousand breakfast every day. In partnership with Safeway Company, we transport over 3,200 students daily and we traveled over uh 750,000 miles uh last year uh with with Safeway Bus Company. And so a lot of a lot of different moving parts to the district. We've had some great partnerships with the Royal Credit Union financial education program for our high school kids. We had the second annual job fair with the Hudson area Chamber of Commerce which was very well attended
016across the community. We collaborated with ERA University resulting in over 162 teacher field placements and observations. So, 162 different either student teachers or uh other uh individuals that are in college thinking about becoming teachers were placed in the Hudson School District to to do some of their professional um observations or work. We had over 2600 community education participants and 230 uh classes and over uh 80 community ed instructors. Um, our community feedback, uh, just want to remind people we do have community feedback on potential school closurions. That is coming up on September 22nd at 6 PM. And that'll be at the Hudson Middle School multi-purpose room. That is the room that um, you walk in that's in between Hudson Prairie and Hudson Middle School. Uh, we did uh, add to our website. There is a
017link where you can post questions ahead of time. One of the things the board asked us to do is give an opportunity for people to post questions ahead of time. Uh, and then we're going to try to work to kind of get some common themes with those questions and answer them on the front end of the meeting so that people can have their voices heard that way. All of those things being said, it's been a successful year for the Hudson School District. Um, and uh, any any questions? All right. Thank you, Nick. And uh now we will uh have uh board treasurer Megan Rose uh Rosowski uh give us a financial overview. >> Thank you, Mr. President. Um as Bob said, my name is Megan Rosowski and I serve as the treasurer of the Hudson
018School Board. I want to start off by thanking the residents of the school district for passing the nonrecurring operational referendum in April, which allows the district to levy an additional $5 million for six years. This referendum provides much needed funding to maintain the educational offerings of our district and pro provide pay and benefits that attract and retain fantastic staff. Dr. Olette just shared some highlights of our district over the past year. behind all the accomplishments you shared, we know there's a lot of hard work. So, I also want to give a huge thank you to our teachers, our staff, administrators, students, and parents for all the hard work you put in last year and all the hard work you're already putting in this year. Our teachers, certified staff, and support staff go above and beyond
019each day to serve students. And for that, I am extremely grateful. And with the construction at North Hudson, EP Rock, and the middle school, the staff uh there have been working extra hard to make sure that education keeps happening in buildings that are under construction. So, thank you so much for all the extra work that they have put in during these projects. So, now on to the budget. As many of you know, there are ongoing structural budgetary concerns for our district and school districts across the state of Wisconsin. Before speaking more about the preliminary budget for the 202526 academic year, I want to give you a little more background on K12 funding in Wisconsin. Back in 2009, the per pupil revenue limit, which is the amount a school district can receive from the state and
020from property taxes, was decoupled from inflation. That means that before the law changed, the per pupil revenue limit would increase annually by the same amount as inflation. Because of this decoupling that happened, school districts across the state receive about $3,000 le $3,000 less in pure per pupil revenue. That's a tongue twister than they would if they had simply kept up with inflation over the past 15 years. So, what does that mean for the Hudson School District? Doing some rough math, with about 5,000 students, that would be an additional $15 million in per pupil revenue annually, which is more than the district would need to levy to cover the rising costs and to fill the current projected budget deficits in the future. If the per pupil revenue funding had not been decoupled from inflation, our districts
021and hundreds of others across the state would not have needed to go to operational referendums. As per pupil revenue has failed to keep up with inflation, we've also seen a decline in the number of students in our district. Compared to a decade ago, our enrollment has declined by 15%. From about 5600 students to 40 5,000 students, I think I don't have the right number in here. Anyway, the decline in K5 enrollment during that time has been even steeper at 19%. School districts across the state and the country are experiencing declining enrollment due to lower birth rates and birth rates that never recovered after the great recession and then after the COVID pandemic. So, we're in a position where the amount of money we get per student hasn't kept up with inflation while the costs have
022continued to increase and the number of students have decreased. So that means there's less general funding than there would be if this were not the case. And I do just want to note that our school district doesn't have lower enrollment because there's an increase in the number of students within our boundaries who are choosing different educational options. In the 20145 school year, about 800 students chose to enroll in other schools or were homeschooled. Last year that number was 809 students. So over the last 10 years, the school district's capture rate or the share of students living within our district who attend our district schools has ranged from 85% to 90% which is considered a high capture rate. Another piece of the budgetary problem in the state of Wisconsin is that the state has not adequately
023funded special education costs. Last year, our district moved about 9.5 million from our general education fund to our special education fund to cover the 70% of special ed costs that the state did not reimburse our district for. Thankfully, the state increased special education reimbursement to 42% this year, which helps, but we're still projecting a transfer of 8.5 million from the general fund to special education to cover the costs the state doesn't. As the number of students has fallen over the past decade, the district has worked to rightsize our staffing to our enrollments. And Nick gave a few examples of that um or Bonnie did earlier with uh 900,000 about in cuts for this year, 2.7 million in cuts over the past three years. As a district, we cannot wait and hope that Madison will fix
024the problems with the K12 funding formula that were exacerbated when per pupil revenue was decoupled from inflation back in 2009. As a board, we must consider the financial health and sustainability of our district and all of our decisions. The district must be responsible stewards of tax dollars while providing a high quality education for our students. You might be wondering why we are seeking the approval of a preliminary budget for the current school year 3 months after the fiscal year began and a few weeks after school has already started. And this is another one of the quirks of K12 funding in Wisconsin. Um though our district currently has estimates of how much funding we will receive from the state and how much we will levy via property taxes, we won't get the final numbers from the
025state until sometime in November uh October or November as Bonnie said. So that we seek approval of this preliminary budget this evening. The numbers may shift when we approve the final budget. Before turning it over to our CFO to dig into the details, I just want to point out a couple more things. Uh the district had a clean audit conducted by an outside firm for the 232 24 academic year financials. I'm proud that our district consistently has clean audits and I'm very thankful to our finance staff who put in so much work to make that happen consistently. When you look at the preliminary budget, you'll see that the expenditures are significantly higher this year than last year. And this is due to the spending on the construction projects projects at North Hudson, EP Rock, and
026the middle school. You will also see that spending is 15 million more than projected revenue. That's because we're using 15 million from our fund balance that was designated to pay for the construction projects. The school district still has about 30 million in our fund balance. The fund balance is a little bit like a savings account for your family. You know, for your family, they generally advise you to keep several months of expenses on hand in case of surprise expenses or financial difficulties. The fund balance is really important for school districts because the funding doesn't come in every week or two weeks like our paychecks. It comes in large chunks over the course of the year. So, the fund balance allows the district to pay bills, which includes salaries and and health benefits, while we wait
027for the next infusion of revenue. Without a fund balance, school districts have to take on short-term loans to cover these expenses, which in the long term adds to costs. This budget uh pays for inflationary pay increases for our certified staff, support staff, and administrators. Those were approved um in the spring or early summer. Um and certified staff and support staff also received an additional pay increase to help offset rising health insurance costs that they face this year. Additionally, I'm very proud that the district has increased the pay of new teachers to be more competitive and has further increased pay for special education teachers. uh and it's been hard to fill those positions over the past few years. And last but not least, uh the preliminary budget estimates that the mill rate will stay the same
028for the 202526 year as it was last year at 8.21. I'm pleased to support the preliminary budget for the 2526 school year and I will now pass it over to Bonnie Stegman, our CFO, to share more details about the proposed preliminary budget. Thanks, Megan. You did a great job explaining all these terms. So, thank you so much for going over that. So, we had many factors um facing the district this year. Um Megan talked about a lot of them, but we'll just touch on them. The revenue limit. Um there was an increase of $325 per pupil, but again, this has not kept up with the consumer price index as Megan kind of outlined. Um so, that is another issue that we face as a district. um declining enrollment. The district continues to see a rolling
029three-year average of declining enrollment that directly affects the revenue limit calculation. Student services and student learning continue to evaluate programming to ensure that all students instructional needs are met. The retention and recruitment of staff continues to be challenging for the district. Human resources and the communication department have done an outstanding job of recruiting staff through the customization of marketing for specific positions and the approval of competitive staff compensation packages for all employment categories. The district has continued its commitment to maintain class size within established guidelines and we have started and continue to evaluate all district facilities with the development of a long-term maintenance plan for all locations. So this chart um outlines our general fund revenues. The main funding source of the district revenue continues to be the local sources or specifically the tax levy
030which is projected to be 67%. The second largest source of revenue is the state equalization aid. Although equalization aid is a large part of our revenue as indicated by our schoolboard treasurer, our percentage of budget funded by the equalization aid formula continues to be reduced based on the state funding formula. Um highlights of our revenue changes. Um we do have a projected increase in open enrollment for this upcoming school year in both student number and revenue for students. Um this was included in the 2527 state budget. So that was good news for us. Um reduction in the fund 27 special education fund 10 transfer due to increase in special education aid from 30 to 42%. Um we'll have an estimated reduction of equalization aid of around $750,000. And then we will be reducing our debt
031service levy to offset the fund 10 levy to support the referendum that was approved. Um the main portion of our fund 10 operating budget is designated for salary infringe at 53%. The remaining large expense categories are purchase services which is mainly transportation, independent contractors and the main interf fund transfer to special education. Um purchase services is a little increased if you look compare that to the previous year and that's due to the $15 million um that the board has designated for our construction. Um some highlights of our expenses for the 2526Q. Um we continue um to rightsize our staffing with our enrollment. So there was a reduction of staffing. Um we do have the completion of the referendum projects at EP Rockck North Hudson Elementary and Hudson Middle School. Um we hope that those will
032all be done by October. That is our target. And the district is projecting a deficit of $13,700,000 for the 2526 school year. But again, as Megan over or provided a summary, um that's mainly due to the um building improvements. Um based on the community feedback, the district is reducing their district footprint. um the district office or the ASE has in place for sale with a plan to move staff to a designated space at Hudson Middle School. Um that is actually happening on Friday. So, we're excited about that. Um the school board has also accepted an offer of 91 acres of property on County Road U. The goal is to close this land transfer by December 2025. putting both of those properties on the tax will increase um the taxable property of about 4.5 million for
033taxpayers. So that that's a great thing. Um our capital referendum highlights um that was approved April 4th, 2023. Um again, the majority of the work has been completed um with a completion date of October 2025. Bray Architects and Mara Johnson were selected as a team to manage those projects. And again, the district office is scheduled to move into their new offices um next Monday. We will be open for business. Um if you look at new construction values, um actually the town of Troy has the most new construction value um that we are estimating for this year with over 40 million. Um, but this chart kind of shows by municipality the increases districtwide for new construction. The benefit of new construction is that, you know, whatever our levy is, we can spread over those funds. Um,
034and that reduces our tax levy for the whole district. um included in new construction. The district is projecting a 4.35% or approximately $317 million increase in equalized property value. Although the state value is 8.07, um we do see growth and that's a good thing for our community. And then this chart outlines um the growth at all the different townships. Um, as we talked about previously, the mill rate, um, is estimated to stay at 8.21. Again, our two big outliers that we're waiting for is our certification of aid, which we'll get October 15th, and our equalization value certification, which we'll get the end of October, early November, and that will we'll be able to finalize that mill rate. Um, that mill rate is less than what we prop we um publicized in our referendum materials. It
035should have gone up to 8.24. 24. And lastly, um this is a comparison of 2024 25 mill rates for CEL 11. Um just for kind of comparison between all the different um communities and how they're funded. Typically, you see districts that have high property values um are going to have a higher mill rate based because they get less equalization aid. Um, but you can see just kind of a comparison of the district districts in our seesaw. And then we would ask for a resolution um to approve the set the levy for the 2526 school year. And that's outlined in the slide. At this time, we'd uh open up a hearing on the proposed budget, and anyone on stage or in attendance is welcome to to voice their opinions or have questions. Okay. Uh hearing none,
036I would entertain uh the further language on page 23. >> Mr. President, Yes, Megan. >> Uh, I'd like to make a motion for the proposed resolution to set the tax levy for the 2526 school year. Be it resolved that a tax in the amount of 62,360,784, 53, 35,784 general fund, 8.9 million in debt service, and 425,000 in the community service fund B, and is hereby levied against the taxable property in the Hudson School District for school purposes. Thank you, Megan. Do I have a second? >> Second by Molly Powers. We'll do a roll call vote. >> Oh, it's on roll call. Twice vote. >> Okay. Um, all those in favor say I. >> I. >> All those opposed. Hearing none. The budget passes. Okay. And then for uh new business, uh we'll turn it over
037for uh setting a date for the annual meeting. Nick, you want to take that over? >> Yep. So, we would uh need a motion to set the date for the 2026 annual meeting. Right now, we would set it at Monday, September 14th, 2026 at 6:30. It's just a corresponding date to the the Monday we're on right now. So, um that would be a motion that could be made. >> Mr. President. >> Okay. I make a motion to set the date for the 2026 annual meeting to Monday, September 14th, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. >> Thank you. Do you have a second? >> Second, Maria. Thank you. Okay. Um, all those in favor say I. I. >> I. All those opposed hearing none. That date is set. Okay. We can move to adjourn. Yep. >> Yeah, this
038will be a voice vote for board members. Um, Doll. >> No. Wait, it's it's um everything's a voice vote of the entire electorate. >> Oh, okay. >> Yep. >> So, all those in favor of adjournment say I. >> I. >> All those opposed say nay. Hearing none. We are adjourned. And I didn't look so good in front of Jamie Johnson who's in the audience out there. >> So, reconvene. So, we will we will reconvene to a regular schoolboard meeting in 10 minutes.