001District Jefferson Board of Education. We will start off as flagship and you show that we are all here for First item up is going to be our recognitions. I know we only have two citizens of the months here today. So we will start off uh with each. All right. I get the great honor to introduce you to Kaden Shop. And Cadence is in third grade, Miss Milo's classroom. And Cadence, who is here with you tonight? Mom and dad, right? And Cadence, what is your favorite thing about East Elementary besides Mr. Whitman and having your dad work there? Friends. All right, perfect. It's always good to have a lot of friends. All right, the third grade team. And Miss Min's here, her teacher. So, thank you, Miss Minel, for coming. Cadence has been chosen as citizen
002of the month by the third grade team. She is wonderful role model. Cadence is a kind friend to everyone. She is always respectful to all the students and staff at East Elementary. Cadence has a positive attitude and she works hard to achieve the goals she sets for herself. Cadence is an author. She worked hard this summer writing and publishing a book. Her book is title titled Cinnabon and Boreal the Magical Midnight Bunnies. In October, Cadence donated $1,000 to Children's Hospital of Madison. She is such a caring and kind-hearted third grader. We are very proud to have Cadence represent East Elementary as our citizen of the month. And I did buy the book and it was really good. Awesome job on that. All right, Cadence. Good. And then Miss Krauss with Sullivan. I guess sitting is
003the theme tonight. [laughter] I don't know which side to go on so that you can see him. So, well, I'm excited to introduce to you Wesson Brenle. Wesson is a third grader at Sullivan Elementary. And Wesson, who's here with you tonight? My mom, my dad, and my sister. And your sister's kind of special because she's what kind of sister, too? My twin. You're much much older or younger? Older. By how many minutes? Two. Two minutes. [laughter] So, uh, Wesson was nominated by his teacher, Miss Hammond. And this is what she had to say. Wesson is an outstanding student who consistently goes above and beyond in his academics and has a genuine passion for learning. He is a remarkably kind friend to all, showing patience, empathy, and understanding. He is quick to help his peers and
004his teachers and rises as a leader during during learning time. Won is a great role model in and out of the classroom. And I can attest to that. He is a fantastic kiddo. He includes everybody. He has a smile on his face. He's excited about things. Um I look forward to him as he continues to go on through Sullivan. I'm hoping next year that he'll want to be a Playworks junior coach and maybe student council as well because I think that would do a great job. Won Brown. Congratulations to both of you. Um, not here, but we do want to recognize um Wild from high school, Sophia Rios from the middle school, and Skylson Dennis from West Elementary. So, congratulations to everyone, all our citizens. Um, that is it for recognitions. We do. Next up
005is going to be public comment. Is anybody here for a public comment? For that. Then we do have our consent agenda. Got quite a few donations on there, but the consent agenda this month consists of the minutes. Uh there are no employment nations at this time. It also has a presentation of claims and accounts in that long list of donations. Is there a motion or not? Any of this could be separated out into a separate motion, but is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? So moved. Second motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor of the motion say I. I. Any oppose say nay. Motion passes. All right, long list of donations to read here. Got a $40 anonymous mon monetary donation to the high school for Skills USA.
006$200 anonymous monetary donation to the high school wrestling program. $700 anonymous monetary donation to support West Elementary. [clears throat] $1,000 monetary donation to S from Somerset Marine Shoreline Restoration to support the Sullivan Elementary School. donations to the basic Thanksgiving dinner so far, $269.81 81 cents from Jersey Mike's, $300 from the Optimus Club of Jefferson, uh Jeff, I'm sorry, donations to the high school fabrication lab, $500 per from from Fourmost Builders, $250 donation from Lake Country Heating and Cooling, $350 donation from Mason BKY, $20 donation from Mike Felon, $25 donation from Rick Layman, and $400 donation from Kurt and Terry Howards towards the high school welding booth. [clears throat] And it looks like we have some furniture here. Uh nine tables, eight seats from Demco furniture to the middle school valued at $4,000 and eight tables,
00732 chairs for the library from the JMS PTO for our teacher organization to the middle school at a value of $7,600. That's a lot coming from the community. We appreciate all that. The total this month is $7,654.81 and school year to date is $86,951.95. So again, we appreciate all that support from the community. I have a point of correction. When I add up all those donations, it comes to way more than $7,654. How much is that a is that like a typo or are we not including some of the donations in the total? Just a point. So with all of that, I know that there's varants here have other things I want to do. You are more than welcome to stick around for the rest of the meeting, but if you are plant have the
008plants, it's a great time to get out. Again, you're more than welcome to stay. Next, we get into our reports. First up is the superintendent report. There is a memo with my information that I want to go over this evening. A few bits that are important at this time of year. The first one is CPI. That's consumer price index. We have the number this year. It's 2.63%. That is set by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. And it has importance for us because it is a foundation of our bargaining especially with the JDA since 101. So we use that as a basis. There are a number of things that are numbered and what we cannot do as far as which thing that I wanted to report is Ryan and I Mr. B and I meet JD
009leadership on meet and brief difference between confer and collective bargaining uh collective bargaining is that what's happened with that 2.63 63%. Um but the main thing about bargaining is any factor condition of employment except wages which includes only based wages or excludes any other compensation which includes not limited to overtime premium pay performance based on compensation pay for automatic provision. In the past uh negotiations would cover everything. There were districts that would even negotiate their calendar, for example. Now, we use meet and defer as a good faith exercise. It's got a long history in Wisconsin in which employment groups, in this case, the JPA can suggest things, request things to us, and then we can bring those back to the court. There might be things that we add to the employee handbook. Uh, it's not
010legally binding. But to repeat, it is really good process in the Fox County. So that's February 3rd. I'll give you an update on that. The other thing I want to talk through tonight is a food service management request for proposals. So we have the retirement of Mr. Dresdo, our student nutrition director. And as a result, we are going out to RFP for a food service management um bid and so it gives the board some options in the future as far as one possibility uh if that ends up working out for us. So uh that is now in the hands of the DPI. They have all kinds of regulations which uh set up the parameters for bidding on something like food service management. We'll timelinewise we'll have a lot of information to bring to the board
011hopefully in March to make a future decision as far as is this the right path for us? What might be the best um food [clears throat] service provider out there? And there are a number of rather large ones in the Midwest that serve Wisconsin two towns. You last week at the state education commission. Um and then just a side note if you're interested of the the uh requests for proposals that we have out there. We added a web page to our website and you can see all the requests for proposals uh that are out there that we're currently working on. wish that at some uh time in future will come to the school board. And speaking of the state educ education convention, I want to thank board members Terry Winkman, George McQue, and Lisa Fox
012for attending the conference. Uh we all get to present on our learnings and takeaways over the next several school board meetings. Let Mr. Schmidz know which one works best for you. I plan to share what I learned at the WIA Texas no session for example and we'll set all that up for future board meeting. And then last but not least the WBWSA school law conference that's February 19th coming up just around the corner. Let Valer know if you want to attend that legal conference that we've sent people in the past. question. Thank you very much. The total for the donations is $15,294.81. The the furniture for 7600 and the anonymous 40 on the top. Thank you. on the reports. Uh we have the east good news report. All right, we're going to share video. Um,
013Jason's pulling it out. While we're waiting for Jason, the reason I did a video this time, I just really wanted the kids to be involved in the report and the staff and the people that are part of ESO Entry because that's really the most important part of ESO Entry and what makes it great is the kids and staff that do these programs. There's so many more programs I could have probably put in there and so much more news, but I tried to keep it within 10 minutes. Um, and so this year I decided to do a video. I learned I could do a lot better at things when I did this, but it was a great first attempt at it. So, [clears throat] hopefully we don't get feedback. As long as the mics are off,
014we should be good. Hello. Me on my door. This is All right. There's only so much that AI is going to replace and getting outside, playing, learning SEAL, how to treat other people. We're not going to get that from AI. I I said the same thing to all of the arts and band and sports. Um AI is going to replace a fair amount of things, but those are a few things that I think it's not going to be able to replace. So, we've got to figure out how to still get great humans out. Some of this stuff is really great to see. So, thanks. Any other questions, comments? I was really hoping we'd get um an update on the outdoor um education. So, I was very happy to see that in there. Thank you so
015much. So, I think it's been a couple years since we had that presentation and it's just always wondered kind of how it was working and the positive effects of it are are wonderful. So, to kind of piggy back on Terry, um, very nice very nicely done. I very much like that video very much. All right. Well, thank you very much. Well done. Next up is going to be uh policies. Be taking a look. Yep. The uh approval of the 2026 summer school student handbook [clears throat] is sorry trying to catch up here. Mr. Layman, are you gonna be speaking on that? I think we both are. second reading student handbook. Any questions? We've taken some feedback from a couple board members and we made some edits on the handbook and everything should look pretty good.
016Each time the dress code, we have some comments on that. to change that just a little bit more clear. Now, we'll have to cross reference the elementary student handbooks in the future when that comes around the spring because that's where that verbiage came from. Any questions or comments? This is an action item. Is there a motion to approve the 2026 summer school student handbook? Second with a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor of the motion say I. I. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Thank you. Next up is a first reading of Miola's policy update for 35.1. And Dr. Yeah, happy to give an update. Um so we do not have a separate policy personnel committee. We operate as a committee as the whole and that's been the the procedure or
017the way it's been done in Jefferson for a very long time. So it is appropriate to go through this as a huge committee as of the whole now talk about any any questions and then of course this is a first read for a second back for action on the next meeting. Uh Mr. Schmidt and I met with our representative uh recently. This isn't a big change update, but this is an annual update 35.1 to all of the new policies. So, if you look at it, the first one, and I'll get the highlights, um, and so you can ask questions as I go or wait till the end, either one, of course. Uh, the first one is board board member behavior. And uh what I wanted to point out is it's just the pop the rei
018the revisions include communicating that individual board members other than the board president do not have the authority to act on complaints or investigations and that's not to restrict but to one um the powers to the to one person. If we want to change any of that, you have questions on that, what we put as the suggestions from Niola, we get to do within reason what we want. And just taking the Nola language guarantees that we're guaranteed, but we can have our own spin on things in Jefferson to be sure. So that's the board member behavior, communications, conduct. Uh the next one is the board district uh administrator relationship and you can see the revisions focus on including the district administrator's authority to delegate duties to staff members who are then accountable to the administrator for
019their performance. uh if you remember there's uh small uh capital D or small DA and capital DA and what that means is that's times where it's district administrator can't do everything uh and then just delegates those problems to other so this is a small change on 1210 or district administrator relationship um 1230.01 01 development of administrative guidelines. We've talked about that before and that gives district administrator and those that are delegated um consulting with stakeholders the publication and the administrative guidelines. One thing that we do in this district is we put all of our administrative guidelines on board doc so people can see them. Not every district has those uh public spacing. We do and they all do. They all must support the policy in which they're written to support. Uh 2131 reading instructional goals
020in kindergarten. This is all in response to act 20 and we create provide monitor personal reading plan with interventions. And I want to give kudos to our reading interventionists, to our principles, to our director of teaching learning to make sure that we're all in compliance with this. This was an easy update for us because we have these things in place already. uh 2431 intercolastic athletics that has to do mainly with the changes to EIL name image and likeness and just our uh our cooperation and our membership in the W scholastic athletic association. Um so those are pretty straightforward for NIL. Who knows how that will change in the future, but um the for high school athletes anyways, they're they're pretty pretty basic. The main one is for example, if you would do a car commercial,
021um if you're that type of athlete, you cannot wear your school's athletic gear in that commercial. Uh 5131, student identification numbers and cards. So, we've done this for a long time. This one seems a little old school to me. Avoiding social security numbers. I am old enough where I would go to see my grade for the psychology exam and it was your social security number. What's your ID number? We don't do that. We don't share social security numbers. We haven't as far as concerned but it's a it's a different generated number. uh for example their PIN number for their student nutrition um account. Uh policy 5131 is PCDS that's personal communication devices and that is in alignment with act 42 that the new law that will take effect July 1 um putting major restrictions on
022cell phones. We're all in compliance with that. We were before uh this update third grade promotion and retention at risk. The main thing for this one is having an appeal process at timelines. Now interesting one of the appeals is to appeal the promotion of a student. So if we were to say a student's going to uh to go from third to fourth grade, the parent could say no, I want them think they should be in third grade. So that would be require a meeting with the district administrator and uh I actually have experienced that as a principal. Uh 5514 is the use of personal transportation devices just making sure that uh it what it does it used to be just about bicycles and now that includes scooters, skateboards, hoverboards etc. manual or motorized and you're
023seeing more and more electronic or electric powered vehicles of that type in the in the future. Um so you can see 5511 student use and parking of motor vehicles. This the main reason for this update they call them ovs. I think most of us know them as UTVs. uh just making sure that they are um licensed, someone can drive them, and they can be on the roads to be in schools. I have to say that um Jefferson's had the UTV law for probably at least two years now. I thought that the that was going to be the end of it. Everything it hasn't changed much for us. So, kids have been great. Um and in the city of Jefferson not I I had one question on this one. Um, just a curiosity, it says designated
024parking areas. Do we have any kind of designations for these type of vehicles for motorcycles, UTVs? Mr. Lammond, anything specific? There's a huge square that's was labeled for motorcycle parking. We added a couple years ago and UTVs could park. So, we do have a area that cars and students do not have parking for specialized vehicles. Okay. And and what about snowmobiles? Um they historically have parks um kind of were west of the mainland shed. So they would come up the crawfish river but in the last few years they haven't had the stone trails. Okay. Back in the day there'd be 60 slides parked on that little grassy area right there. Okay. Yeah. They used to park by our parking lot when when we were in high school, but there was definitely more than a few.
025Um, but I was just curious as long as the students know where to park. I think that's the important thing. I just I've never seen signage. So, I was just curious. I think it's done through word of mouth and then the snowmobile clubs. Um, kids kind of know and they bring up their helmets and put them in the attendance office if they do bring their snowmobiles in. So, we might be seeing more of those now since there's some snow and ice. The rivers are getting a little uh frozen with the weather. Okay. 58.95 is student employment. You may remember the old days where you go down in the counseling office to get your work permit so you could do the quarantling. That's no longer a thing that we um are authorized to provide students. Uh
026and you can do all that on the DW DWD website. Now uh 7540.02 is digital content and accessibility. This is a replacement. You can read there. The replacement now reflects the Department of Justice final rule under title two and that's Americans with Disabilities Act. We've done a lot of work with this. We're ahead of the game on it, making sure our website has the right color contrast, colors, and everything for students to be able to access our materials, especially and then 7540.08 uh artificial intelligence. This is a replacement. There's been a lot of upgrades to this policy and uh we do have a good administrative guideline that goes with this. So you can see the main thing is is the online privacy protection act. We don't want to engage in any AI engines devices here
027that are not going to be secure for our students. So it's a it's a rather likely addition to AI. As we've talked about this is ever evolving and you're not going to stay in front of it, but you try and make sure that the gap isn't that wide. So, there's an overview. You can see the specifics on all the markups. So, I'll pause for questions that you have now or any other discussion related to anything. The only thing I had sent I already sent this to admin but um was I just needed clarification on what the definition of acting is when it comes to board conduct and communication with constituents. Um because as I read it I was like if I got a complaint from a constituent of any kind an act would be to
028send an email or to call the superintendent. So I mean in my by definition acting on that communication is doing something and so I wanted clarification on the fact that like we have a policy that's like you can't act on it. What does that mean? Um, so I think uh Charlie had explained to me that it really means making a full decision for the board or telling a constituent that you as an individual can make a decision um to their, you know, liking or to whatever it is as one individual board member, but actually acting like sending an email or exploring the topic as a future agenda item or things like that. Those are technically acts but they are appropriate like this doesn't cover that speak and um since uh vice president mentioned it we
029didn't specifically go out to delete vice president so we want we decided under that section if you look at the markup if we decided to keep that information in there I think that's fine um I think it was the only way of being more uh efficient with their policies But yeah, just to just to back that up, this is nothing that we've I I do have to say kudos to the board when we get concerns, things like that. They are passed on to me and they're answered uh in in alignment with our policies. That's what we want to do. So, uh so thank you to the board. And then also you see the updates. If there's things that we say no, we don't need to take that specific update, that is within the board to
030uh make amendments and motions to do so. What specific section were you referring to? Um, let's see. It would be page of the long one like the 39 page document. Uh, it would be page like bottom of page three or bottom of page is this three or four enforcement. Um, was mostly what I was kind of acting talking about was the enforcement section. Any other questions or comments? Again, that's just a first reading, so we'll take this up at our next meeting. Next item is going to be Mr. band with the 20 2026 27 budget calendar update. Great. Good evening. Excuse me. Um for you this evening, I have a brief little memo and report just as I've gotten historically in January as we um embark on 2627 budget planning. Um and so while that
031deals early, right, it's part of our early process that we begin with, um just to begin the funneling down of our process. So, um what I have for you out of this memo is just an overview of our budget calendar. This is actually I mentioned it briefly in there. Um this is a snippet of a larger, um manual, I guess, that I've given to our principles um and our teachers. Um building off the back of uh what Miss Peachy had started with, uh some training on, you know, how does governmental accounting work? um and just kind of how does it function? And so what this has been is really just been a guide that we typically have shared it now February is when I'll give it technically have it now, but I give it out
032with the uh worksheets that I give to all the department um I guess I should say principles who can pass to department leaders and also our directors uh for their oversight as they're planning their specific department and building these budgets for 2627. Um, outside of that, uh, a big piece of this is the staffing elements that come here in early spring. Um, that is really the backbone obviously of our business as a people business. Um, and so those are the big key things that lead us in April. Um, just as an overview, um, April, May, excuse me. Um, being in the middle of a state bianium, we also know our summer variables, right? Call back to a year ago, we weren't sure exactly what variables, what levers would be turned to at the state level.
033Um, and so this time this summer, we'll we'll have a much better picture of what that's going to look like. Um, so I inserted and kind of pulled out uh and just called it a board update, summer budget review in July. Um, just because we can do a quick look back before we close our books for 2526. Um, and also get a good good picture of what's going to be coming at that August budget hearing. Then once school's back, we start that finalization process our student counts and final levy setting as well. So again, just a big overview. Um, glad to take any questions that you have if there's items that you'd like to see along the way or some tweaks. Um, certainly open to suggestions and thoughts, but wanted to just give you the
034full picture and oversight on the process. questions to the board. All right. Thank you. Yeah. Then looks like you're also up for the 2024 district or sorry 202425 district audit report. Yeah. The exciting time of getting to talk about three different budget years in one year. Um so 2425 um again we uh work with our auditors Riley, Penn, Benson. um had a long-standing partnership with them. They've been great. Um as they close out our 2425, I'm grateful for uh their time that they invest with our staff and on the site. They only needed to be with us for one day in our uh second visit. So they historically have had three days um to do that. So all things very successful with that. Um as we stated with public and also as we shared at
035our uh building midyear check-ins, Dr. ers and I um we we really did what we said we would do for the first year of our referendum and that was having surplus uh budget with that uh a piece of that and some of the over budget there was over a 100% of revenues budgeted was a part of some of the insurance claim losses that we had as a result of that um uh the east fire and the west flood just shy of a million dollars um for that the the claim losses um but with that really we you know all things from a from a financial perspective um went through pretty well as far as the process. We understood the changes that we've made. Um and again trying to hold in and get as close to
036that 100% marker for budget revenues and expenditures. One note um that will always be a little bit different is as a reminder for our activity accounts and our donation accounts 21 and 22. We don't budget any expense or revenue for them. Um while they may have a lot of activity throughout the course of the year, you think about all of our different activity accounts. um that we are more just from the fidiciary responsibility of overseeing their funds from a policy and perspective, but setting revenue goals and budgetary expectations for them isn't really necessarily reports per year. Um so just a note, you know, those will always show even in my July report when I give it to you at the end of the year, year-to- date actuals, those will be budgeted revenues and expenses here.
037Um they also kind of they give us some opportunities just continue to kind of revisit debt about $28 million outstanding debt that we pay back over the lifetime of that as of June 30th. Um and just shy of about $4 million of old PEV liability. As a reminder, what that is is that postemployment benefit that we have for staff members that had been hired prior to July 1st of 2008. Um and so just something to be mindful of as we are getting um to our March 1 deadline for retirements. um for those that that applies to, that's a big decision for them and I'm grateful for our district office team that meets with staff to do that. Um and then just some of the other notes of some of the things that um want to
038just continue to bring to the board as a process of continued improvement um is our audit bindings. And so we we shed one of them this year which is always a win. Um but we maintained two more than our kind of typical two segregation of duties as one um that just about every district of our size has. really relates to the size and scope of our district office and the limitations that come with that. Um I'll briefly mention one piece that we're trying to further segregate that a little bit. It's more work for our district office, but I think it is a better level of accountability. I'll mention that at the end. Um and just the other one as well, financial statement preparation. Um there are some districts that have the capacity that they generate
039all these financial statements, but obviously that is the the great work of our auditors. um I do not have the time maybe nor capacity in my my day to be able to take that on. So again, those are two very common ones. Um the other two is um what I just wanted to kind of present to you tonight and talk through was if I was in your seats would want to kind of know what right what's the stats of these other two findings and can you give me some rale what we're doing to either have result or resolve them. Uh the first one which um well here is is titled procurement again. Um, and so this one relates to our co-op, our uh WISNP co-op. Um, we and about 60 other districts uh in the
040state participate in the student nutrition purchasing. It's the agreement we do that technically Middleton serves. I think we did it in May of last year. Uh the purchasing co-op, right? They go out. Uh part of that process, we have heavily relied on that for the compliance side. Um but this year because they're not in their normal compliance I guess uh bib process there's a um the oh goodness they're called the suspension and dearment certificates and really what it is it's an attestation from all the vendors to say hey we have the right to do business with federal government because federal government funds are involved in nutrition and it's just saying that they're in good standing with the federal government government did not suspend it or debar um as it turns out um our our cooperative
041didn't secure those this year And so they've provided guidance to districts now uh to secure them themselves by going on SAM.gov. So I have those uh really it's actually even more just a search to make sure they're not on the list of suspended individ um but it was something that previously in my former district when we were in the co-op in the past two years we haven't had that. So um with that that's something that we'll take guidance on and we'll secure them every year from now on. Um, but really it's it's just making sure we're doing our due diligence that they're vendors that we can work with. Our main ones like Gordon and Counts, a lot of the ones that we spend a lot of a lot of federal funds to support our food
042service program. Um, so again, those are secured already. I have them for my audit folder for 2026. Um, I did bring that back to some of my Madison Area Association members. um some of them that are in the the uh the co-op didn't have that finding and were unaware of this process. So I wouldn't share that with them. But it really just depends on what your auditors are looking for and right again it's a level of accountability that we want to be when we rise to that standard. So that one is that first one there. Um any questions on that or maybe I go to the other I have two questions about that. Uh, so what would put a vendor on suspension or devarment? That's a really great question. Um, could be could maybe not
043be filing taxes or reporting prop reporting I believe from the vendor side of things. Um, when there's different obviously there's funds that we can use where we directly pay for the the items as the goods and services. Um, but there's also some of the additional and I apologize if Blake know what they're called right now. um our commodities, our federal commodities that we can use where we can apply credits essentially for goods and services. There's a lot of reporting that's required that goes along with that. So I part of the vendor on the part of the vendor. Correct. So I can imagine there's you know improper reporting or auditing audit findings that they have from their from the IRS that could put that on purpose. Um there's individuals I mean there's vendors individuals that are
044suspended in the barred. Uh, but it's primarily a business relationship with the IRS and are you in good standing? That's a great question. I don't know all the things that could put you on. Okay. Because then the other part kind of ties to that which is you mentioned you already have the certificates, but in my mind I'm like, did they give you did the auditors give you should you be checking it every three months? Should you be checking it every month? I mean, can people get added and taken off the list? They probably can. And so even so for for the what uh the cooperative provided us as guidance at least and I shared that with our auditors and with my my peers um is more of just a search of SAM.gov But to your
045point, you know, after this 2025 federal filing, could that put some notes on there? It it could. Um, but at least our requirement is prior to doing business with them, ensuring that they are not on them. Um, accountants, a Gordon, most of those those vendors. Yes. Yes. if there's single local ones. And what what I've kind of keenly taken away from it is opportunities is while we would assume that our our uh neighbors and local vendors would be in good standing just as an opportunity before we do business with them to check it out. So again, something that I was unfamiliar with as a process. Um yeah, I've never seen it on an audit. So that's why I was curious. I I I have not either. Okay. Yep. Yeah, it's a great question. Typically, so
046as Dr. has mentioned um at least from a food service management company, one of the very extensive parts of that contract and bid process is the signing off of suspension and dearment. So a food service management company takes over that liability and saying they're going to make sure and ensure that they're not working with vendors that are suspended or barred. Um but us as this individual LEA, that's our responsibility. Um even though we utilize the purchasing power of a cooperative, ultimately that's still false. each district that's in the in every district. Yes, correct. So, and if there's other questions, happy to take them. But the other one here is just um our adjusting entries. And really, there's two things that kind of come from that. Um one of which is maybe a little bit easier
047to explain. The other one, well, I guess it pretty easy to explain. Um the first one comes to just when the change in health insurance for September of 2024. Um, historically we have always deducted an expense out benefit for that for teachers um, prior to their June 25th payroll. And so for those of you that may be unaware, um, we run in the school district of Jefferson, our teachers get they can opt to a to receive a 20 or a 24 pay uh, period for for that time. And regardless of what they do, that final payment is uh, 20 or 24 election, excuse me, is on that June 25th. So it's actually a big lump sum for for those that choose 24. they they may get a June point payment and then essentially four summer
048payments all at once at the end of June. Um coming from a place where we would do payables and receivables, that's actually very convenient. But regardless, um the the piece with this is that we would typically historically teachers had insurance through the end of September and we would uh draw an expense out their deductions and our expense for the district in June so that when they came back, we always preded for the month ahead. They're then making a deduction in September for October coverage. And likewise, June would cover July, August, September. And that's how we've always done it here in school district. What the change was is in the beginning of 2024, we aligned ourselves to be more akin to other school districts that have September 1 to August 31st coverage. And so what that
049means then is we should be changing our payroll practices um to reflect that that deduction and expense for September should technically get always pushed to the next fiscal year. And so we have to do a big journal entry to make sure that that gets reported correctly. for example, September of 25 if we we expensed out before teachers left as we always would, but we had to do an adjustment to make sure that that would get covered in the correct fiscal year. And so really what it what it means then is one year we got shorted for only 11 months of expense coverage, which is now some aid, but that may that's for that change to make sure that we're in alignment with a teacher that serves in 2526 should only have insurance through August. And
050so what this means for us is this piece is is kind of a two-part suggesting our journal entries is the short version which will impact our staff, but we'll make sure to communicate it is we're going to have to probably double up now um our insurance deductions in September when they return so that it hits the appropriate fiscal year. Um and that just means then we will probably work with our staff to do something like instead of deducting in June for September, we'll have deducted twice in September for September coverage and Um, while that seems minor, right, obviously when you're talking about expensing out premiums that it can be a big amount of money and so avoiding that journal entry, uh, is is obviously something I want to do and as well as our auditors.
051But, uh, that one gets stemmed out of the changes from our our recent health insurance switch from that and adjusting the practice to make sure that we can avoid that that large journal entry. Um, that other one, the other one that's kind of connected with that, it was these two entries that flagged this was our eBay funds. So, -ate is um you know we typically Mr. Powell shares his plans for infrastructure. E-Rate is the federal government assistance uh that works to provide infrastructure for technology related uh things. Those payments always typically I should should say always but coming July or August. Um and so for the last few years we'll will happen and actually I should say as far as I can look back we'll think on projects we'll work through adding those. Um, and
052when we received the funds in July and August, we just book it to that appropriate to to that year we received it. Uh, what our auditors had changed this year is they would like us to book it back into the year as it's connected. And that makes total sense. I understand those pieces. Really, what we were doing is just following past precedent of always booking it when we received it. Uh, because it doesn't impact aid or anything like that, but again was the established past practice. So they they expressed that they'd like us to go back and book it as receivable into the prior years, which makes sense for when the projects are due. Um, but again, I'm not one to typically want to buck a a past trend in this for a particular reason.
053Um, so that mentioned 2425, we actually had two funds because they had us look it the previous year in 2425 when we received it and then also now one we received here this summer. Um so again sitting in your seats those are the pieces that I just want to ask is what what's being done just to address some of those adjusting entries. Um what's being done to address the procurement elements um and then the last note that um our honors get it wasn't a finding related but just with the segregation of duties um there was just a communication they kind of gave us kind of like their little their nudges to say hey you should consider this it's not a finding or anything like that. Um but one of them was just reviewing journal entries
054those exact pieces. Um and they just suggested that we utilize facet of Skyward that we haven't used before so that everyone that spits one, it just goes to be for um so in our office only myself, our district accountant and our payroll and benefit specialists are able to directly post journal entries to the ledger. Um and so in the past we review them all the time when we're reconciling, but obviously in the moment is the best time to be doing that. So uh we just are activating with part of our Skyward system where everything gets approved now to me through an approval process and then I we would actually post the ledger. So in in the grand scheme of things um it creates a little bit more work on my part but that means that
055everything flows ultimately as it should. Um and so I just gave you an example of that there as well and something we'll provide our auditors for our 2026 audit just to talk about some of the progress we made in some. So, lots of elements of this. This audit is obviously an annual item that we do as school districts. Um, there's a lot of facets to it. Welcome to take any questions that you may have or talk about any of the other aspects of financial state in the district at 2:30. We didn't have any other adjust. It was only those two scenarios that made us have journal entries. Those two scenarios, correct? So they they always have some adjusting entries as far as uh reclassifying leases or things like that. Typically they're reclassifying and things like
056that. They're saying, "Hey, you quoted something like this." In governmental counting, it should probably be like this. When they see these ones, there's things that they think it's not a material element, but it's significant enough to bring up. Um so last year it was really booking our retainage from our capital referendum. How much did we still have? We were able to resolve that. No better, do better. But um these were ones that know that we know we'll be able to adjust our plans going forward. But it's a clarification I know um wanted to for my accountability include Dr. is on those communications because if there's something that they think is needs to be addressed, I want to make sure that I know it's so. Yeah. But the reporting, is it just [clears throat] a lack
057of time that available or is it lack of ability to generate reports that they're asking for like the ones you're you're going to, you know, party out to them? Is it what's Yeah. Yeah. You mean for the financial statement preparation? Um, it could be a combination of both. I mean, I I like to think I have some some good skills in this area, but the level of expertise with government governmental county standards. Um, for example, there was a new regulation that we had this year related on compensated absences. So, for teachers, that might be your uh sick leave or personal leave. For support staff or administrators, it's your uh vacation, it could be your sick time. we were required this year and they had to do some calculations to to report out that as and
058post, right? As it would make sense we we would hope that we're not going to burn through all that liability that we have for, you know, accumulated sick leave or or things like that. Um but frankly, it's I um most districts I think have this because they just don't it's not worth the investment of time or people power to have someone in the district do that. So you have like budgeting software you're using. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But so is there any is there any ability to purchase like templates reporting that will dump some of that where you're kind of in between you generating a good question. Yeah, that's something I certainly could look into if it's something for the future. Um I don't know any particular one. We use Skyward for our for our
059main accounting software. Yeah. Um, but that's certainly something I can look into because to your to your point, right, like it's regulations that are filtered through and maybe be followed. And it's it's a lot of taking our financial data and being able to sync it up with what they how they want it presented. Where I was at in the city that's what we ran into with ACP pack was just literally there are certain reports they just needed with regularity and they're like, "Yeah, we can design that template for you straight from your database." Yeah. Spit it out. Skyward has not been known to um have the maybe I look at my principles and my directors near there maybe not the most user friendly although we've been able to manipulate raw data quite su successfully with
060some of our budget monitoring that we do with our principles and directors um this level yeah certainly be interested something I can research a little bit I appreciate the thought that wasn't the journal the the uh to the audit binding that I was looking to attack first but happy to I mean We get if we get down to zero, I'll be a happy guy. Low hanging fruit go or something the association too. Maybe a little push to make it happen from a bunch of school districts saying we need you to be able to do this. There was yeah there's a legislative fiscal bureau uh audit review of school districts from a couple years ago and I'd have to look back to my notes from the webinar in November but it's I would venture 95% if
061not more of districts cover your your your Milwaukee your your Madison's may not maybe not any other questions or comments from the This one is an action item. Is there a motion to accept the 202425 district audit report as presented? So move. Second. Motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor of the motion say I. Any oppose say nay. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is going to be our future agenda topics. Does anybody have any suggestions or questions on that? Let me get into announcements. Dr. Ernes say a kudos to everyone involved with the Wizard of Oz new edition, a live dog, flying monkeys, flying witches tutorial. It was really fantastic. So um star can follow with that. And then also a a a fun good and loud to share.
062Coach Polarski recently reached his 100th World Meet win as JHS head wrestling coach. And then also for the first time in 47 years high school is officially co-conference champion. I think we've already put that up on the in the gym. Congratulations. Excellent. All right. With that, is there a motion to adjourn? Second. Second. All in favor of adjourning say I. I. Say n. We're thank you everyone. Trigger. [laughter] [laughter] Yeah, right. Thanks everybody. stickers. I thought you Oh, no.