001ship with our community prepares our students for achievement and and lifetime readiness by providing opportunities for all. If we could please stand for the pledge of allegiance. >> I pledge allegiance 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. [Music] Thank you. And as a reminder, tonight at the annual meeting, uh, everyone who is a a member of our community is welcome to participate. They can make motions and they can vote uh during this particular meeting. And we will start with electing a meeting chairperson. >> I will nominate Smith to be the meeting chairperson for tonight's annual meeting. >> I'll second. I have a motion from John and a second from Tracy. Any other nominations? >>
002I'd like to nominate Joe Martin to chair the committee. >> We have a motion from Bob. >> I would respectfully decline that. >> Do Joe doesn't have his mic on, so I'm going to repeat that. >> I would respectfully decline that. >> Thank you, Joe. Any other motions? All those in favor, please say I. >> I. I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. >> I would entertain motion for approval of tonight's agenda. >> I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. >> Second. >> I have a motion and a second from John. Any questions or comments? All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Opposing sign. Motion carries. Uh, next we will have our district overview with Superintendent Domen. >> Thank you. And Chelsea, can you go to slide number six?
003Thank you. Um this is just a kind of a demographics overview of the school district and these are approximate population and households. Uh but our area we we encompass about 120 square miles. You can see our population and number of households across our entire district. Uh we're made up of nine different municipalities mostly located in Rock County but also a portion of our school district in Jefferson County. And you can see our 2024 equalized tax base of a little bit over $3 billion. And our enrollment is approximately 3,400 students in 4K through 12. On the next slide, um Annette had read earlier our mission and vision statements about opportunity, achievement, and community for all. Uh but we're very proud to be an essential part of our community. We have an outstanding staff and very supportive
004parents and community. And uh again, our talented and dedic dedicated educators, our outstanding academic achievement, student focused learning and co-curricular opportunities are all important parts of what we do, but also important are building those strong relationships and culture across all of our schools and departments. You can see the data from this past spring survey from both parents and staff about whether they are proud to be a Red Hawk or proud to work for the school district of Milton. Uh extremely strong uh positive responses there. And we balance uh providing those high quality opportunities and achievement for students with being strong fiscal stewards. And our our district's mill rate has dropped over 25% over the fast past five years. So we're also in addition to offering highquality programs for students, we also are strong fiscal stewards.
005Uh our strategic plan is important is an important part of the work that we do. In addition to our vision and mission statement, you can see the five pillars or strategic objectives that are listed uh and they encompass the the most important things that we do as a district. teaching and learning, relationships, climate and culture, high quality staff, community engagement and operations and facilities. We will be uh over the upcoming months uh be updating our goals and focus areas in each of those categories. And then we have a couple slides with some uh pictures denoting some highlights from the past year. Uh we have Rue, one of our new therapy dogs at Milton High School and also here at the district office. uh our Milton Achieve uh and has expanded that uh therapy dog program,
006our little little uh hawk learners, our pre-flight academy group. This past year we had our largest 4K class since the beginning of the program. Uh and you can see the some homecoming activities uh from different staff. And then on the next slide, uh we have some graduation walks, scholarship night, um uh Red Hawk reading mentors, our varsity athletes getting out to K3 schools for reading time, our new flight simulator simulator at Milton Middle School has offered opportunities to explore career pathways in aviation. and uh Matilda the Milton High School Musical uh was an outstanding program. On the next slide, some student and staffdriven initiatives that give back to the community. Uh we have our East Eats that was launched this year by staff parent and Milton FFA to make sure students had had access to
007food over winter break. We have the Macy day parade at Milton West activities night during homecoming week. Uh our idea club hosted a multiculture event uh featuring dancers from Bo memorial night and gales and the boy even start dancers. Uh the library mus centers have VR headsets that have opened up new opportunities in our classrooms. Uh there's a picture there of our discovering demos democracy students traveling to Washington DC. And then uh on the next slide, the uh high school launched the winter drum corps and color guard uh giving more opportunities for our students. Uh two retired art educators, Mrs. Cutam and Mrs. Beer, collaborated with students at Harmony on a beautiful music. The art club created Rocky cutouts for students. The class of 2025 graduate Emma Stanky advanced to the finals at FBLA Nationals.
008Uh placed her in the top 15 students in the entire nation. Our uh robotics team qualified for the state competition and our elementary artists had their work on display at the youth art exhibit in Madison. And then our last slide of pictures highlights some of our other extracurricular activities. Uh the upper lefthand corner is the completion of the Schlim Stadium accessibility improvements and renovations at Milton High School baseball diamond made uh possible through community support. It's a standout year for Milton athletics. You can see the girls tennis uh uh participants that qualified for state tournament. a cross country runner qualified for state, swimming, track and field, um wrestlers who qualified for state, including uh two state champions and the girls wrestling team, the first ever uh state girls wrestling champion in the state of Wisconsin.
009So, a lot of things academically and in our extracurriculars that we have to celebrate over the past year. We're really proud of the work that our students and our staff and our community uh do in partnership with each other. And unless there's any questions on any of that, I'm going to turn things over to Ross for the financial report. [Music] >> Hi everyone. Well, we've had a wonderful year, obviously, and Rich has shared some wonderful pictures in the last couple minutes talking through some of our major activities, but I'm here to share tonight some information of where we're finishing up our 24-25 school year and how we're shaping up our budget for discussion and vote later tonight. I want to start by identifying what our fund balances are looking at for year end. The general
010fund, our fund balance is projected at 12.3 million. This reaches our end goal of 20 to 25% uh being at the upper end, 25% of our operating budgets. This continues to allow the school district of Milton to avoid the need to short-term bar for cash flow. And we're not going to be um looking to do that this fall either e either. So, that's good. The special funds fund balance represents only the accounts for donations and student activity accounts in what's called our fund 21. It also includes the activity in our special education fund but that fund cannot maintain a fund balance. The debt service fund balance represents funds committed for future for fall and future debt payments and PL planned debt defeasence planning. Our capital projects fund committed for future capital maintenance is based on
011our long-range facility planned in fund 46. All activity from the 2019 capital referendum has concluded during the 2223 school year. The food service fund balance represents fund funds committed to school nutrition activities and programming. And the community service fund represents funds committed for operation and maintenance of our community park spaces. >> As of June 30th, we only have one debt issue still outstanding for the 2019 capital referendum. After all payments made in the last fiscal year, our outstanding debt as of June 30, 2025 is 42,615,000. We're also required to report out on our fund 73 or other post-employment benefits for our existing staff and our future um retirees. This is held for the future commitment of all of our benefits liability to staff as required for reporting in fund 73. We must show our continual
012contribution to ongoing activities as well as the interest earned in that fund. Uh during this past year, the fund 73 earned $228,981.14 in interest earnings during the year. Okay, moving into our budget presentation information for 2526. I want to briefly discuss the way our budgets are required to be formatted and presented as part of state statutes. Wisconsin uses the Wisconsin Uniform Financial Accounting Requirements, also referred to as woofer, to code and format all financial data for the school district. These guidelines use a chart of accounts format that our local account structure must adhere to. This is used by all Wisconsin public schools. The long form version of these accounts use set dimensions including fund, source, object, and function. The publication data used for the annual meeting presentations summarizes these dimensions by fund. Each fund in
013the woofer format has a specific purpose and set regulations that must be followed during implementation. The district budget is a plan of how we propose to use our resources to accomplish our educational and operational goals. Our budget represents a plan at any point in time and we present this data to the board throughout the year. In June, this board gave preliminary approval of the 2526 budget. Uh we however we cannot set a final original budget until the end of October which requires some additional data we don't have yet including our third Friday count as well as our state aid distribution and equalized value calculations from the department of revenue to conduct the annual meeting. We must estimate these figures based on available information and these estimates are reflected in our budget and identifies resources and
014for resources or revenues and purposes and use expenditures. The next several slides are going to outline the proposed budgets by fund. This information is also available in the financial supplement prepared for this meeting. At the end of these fund budgets will be a preview of our proposed tax levy by fund. In fund 10, most of our revenue sources come from local tax levy and general state aid. The resource split between within the revenue limit is approximately 40% local tax levy and 60% general state aid. Interd district resources are presented on this chart and what we expect to receive as part of students open enrolling into Milton. There is a corresponding expenditure on the other side of the equation. Just so you know, state sources include our general aid payments from the state of Wisconsin and
015any state grants. Federal sources include federal grants and uh do want to note as we do every year, federal funding has been shifting in recent years due to some one-time investments in education. The last couple of years we were using up the last of our ESSER funds and there was some uncertainty earlier this year over what federal funding would look like going into the school year. However, we do have our current awards for the coming year at this time. Total general fund revenues are set to increase close to 1.4% from last year's final numbers, unodudited of course. And on this graph, you can briefly see that most of our resources do come from state sources and general state aid and from local tax levy. On the expenditure side, this is summarized by six-digit function area
016and rolled up into their highest level uh categories. The 100,000 series is for all instructional activities including curricular staff and any co-curricular activities. The 200,000s includes all support services including student services staff, library functions, transportation, custodial operations, utilities, supervision, business services, and administration. And the 400,000s, which encompasses all of our non-program transactions, including subplacement, interf transfers, and open enrollment out payments for uh districts for students attending elsewhere. Also, private school vouchers. And again very briefly most of our expenses are are uh categorized in wages and benefits as we are primarily serviceoriented industry. Uh of note is when we look at purchase services that does include the um full cost of our substitutes as well as our open enrollment payments, transportation, utilities, software, etc. In our fund 20 series which includes funds 21 for donations and
017student activity and fund 27 for special education. The special um projects fund 21 is used to record one-time sources of revenue um and expenditures for specific activities. These funds must be maintained with balances until they are used for each activity and restricted for those purposes. The special education fund, conversely, um records how much the annual activity for our student services team, staff, and budgetary needs. This fund cannot maintain a fund balance as it is supplemented by the general fund each year through an interfund transfer. And again very briefly, our fund 27 budgetary costs are primarily staff-based just under 90%. The balance of which in purchase services are specialized transportation and again those sub costs. In our fund 30 series, the debt service funds is used to record all of our approved debt structure. The only
018debt we have at this time again is our 2019 capital referendum. activity in this fund in recent years has included payments in our our debt schedule as well as uh planned prepayment of debt through defeasance activity in our fund 40 category. Again, this is the uh we are now entering a period where there's no longer any referendum expenditures reflected on these charts. The capital projects fund must record all capital outlays as part of our long-term capital maintenance plan. And again, the fund 46 that we're talking about was established in 2020 and was first available this year starting in April of 2025, and we've begun incorporating that into our long-range plan. Our fund 50 is all of our food service activity. Uh fund balance in this fund again is restricted to food service programming. It will
019be used in time to invest in new equipment and other needs of the food service program if and when there are any projected revenue shortfalls in the future. And finally, fund 80. This is our community services fund. This tracks all transaction of all of our community service activities, including maintenance of our parks, including Shelberg and Central Park. The 20 2025 2026 budget includes planned use of fund balance for field lighting at Schillerg Park, which is why the revenues and expenditures on this chart do not align. That is that is a a specific plan to utilize some of that fund balance at the end of this year through those activities. And finally, for all funds at once, we have planned expenditures that are showing an increase of 14.08% over year-end activity. However, on this page or
020in this slide, I do want to highlight the um detail on this slide as to what that represents. The all funds expenditure increase includes one-time changes in inner fund transfers, a reduction of $1.8 million over current year, planned debt to feeasance in fund 39, $4.2 million estimated for this fall. utilization of fund 146 capital maintenance funding an additional $200,000 and maintenance work in fund 80 community services another increase of $170,000 including the field lighting at Schelberg operational budgets as part of this increase will increase only 2.51% over year-end totals for 2425 about 1.4 4 million in total. And this is fairly typical of the increases we've been looking at the last several years. Very briefly, I want to highlight the composure of our municipalities. We do have nine municipalities uh in the school district of
021Milton. The largest of which is the city of Jainsville at just below 35% followed by the city of Milton at 18.5%, town of Harmony 14.5, and town of Milton at 12.5. Uh this proportional share is based on an estimated increase to our equalized value for this coming year. These numbers are not yet final and they will be issued to us by the department of revenue by October 1st of this year. Uh what you're seeing on this proportional share is a reflected 4.5% estimate of change in equalized value at this time. Uh we're currently starting to receive some estimates of what that final number would be, but I do not want to report out of that until they are final. I also want to briefly touch on what the school district of Milton has experienced in
022the mill rate itself. Uh in the past 10 years, the school district of Milton has been trending downward in local tax rate with the exception of the 1920 school year when the capital referendum was put into place. With the current estimates we mentioned on the last slide and DPI estimates for general aid, we anticipate the mill rate to reduce to $6.58 for the coming year. And finally, the tax levy information is listed here by fund. The uh again, we do expect the total tax levy to reduce under the current revenue limit structure and anticipated aid payments, but these are not final numbers until after the October 15th deadline through DPI. On here, we have a debt service levy that it does include plans for debt defeasence. We are currently targeting to bring that back to
023the board for discussion and action in January or February of 26. Uh the community service fund levy is updated in here again for plan maintenance per the long-term capital maintenance plan. Uh but we do overall anticipate the total tax levy to remain relatively steady currently estimated at a reduction of.3%. All right unless there's any questions we are able to move on to the budget hearing at this time. Ross, before you move on, I just wanted to uh thank you for all the information you and everyone in the business office. And um there's a lot of information here, but I think there's two main takeaways that people here and in the in the community should look at, and that's the the decrease in the mill rate. Again, I think that's the fifth, maybe sixth year. Is
024that correct? But yes, >> also the tax levy decrease for a second year in a row, which I think is a big deal, and I think people should be aware of that. And um that's a testament to uh the work of all the admins and uh all the staff districtwide and um so thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> All right. We're on to the next part of our new business. I would entertain a motion to um approve our tax levy for the fall of 2025. I move that the district levy a tax of $16,111,300 for the current operations, $5,146,100 for referendum approved debt, and $438,381 for community services for a total all fun tax levy of $21,695,781. [Music] Second. >> Who? I'm sorry, I didn't Oh, Chris. Thank you. So, we have a
025motion from S Sarah and a second from Chris. Any other questions or comments? All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. >> Uh, next we'll move on would entertain a motion to fix salaries of the board members and authorize expenses. I move to set salaries for board members at $2,000 and the board president at $2,500 per year to authorize the payment of actual necessary expenses compared by the board of education members while traveling in the performance of the duties. >> Have a motion from Jeremy. Can I get a Sarah and a second from Sarah? Any questions or comments? >> All those in favor, please say I. I. >> Oppose. same sign. Motion carries. We are on to our next motion to establish the date and time for the
0262026 annual meeting. >> I move to allow the board of education to establish the date and time for the 2026 annual meeting as provided under section 1208 stat. >> I'll second that. >> So motion from Tracy, second from Rick. Any questions or comments? All those in favor, please say I. I. >> I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Thank you very much. >> I'll make a motion to adjourn the annual meeting. >> Second. >> Have a motion from Rick, a second from Tracy. All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Same sign. >> Thank you. Thank you all for coming. Thank you Sarah for the [Music]