001young man. Please call the role. All right. Nikki Austin present. Jim Curran present. Mike Davis. Mike Prasad present. Nicole Joseph present. Tracy Keane is absent. Steve Mayor Terry Montgomery is absent. And then Phil Wasber we know is here somewhere in the building. He's in the building. All right, great. So, with that, I will call our June 23rd regular board of education meeting to order. Uh, first item for um approval is our agenda for tonight. Take a look. Then I'd for motion to approve our agenda for this evening. So I move second motion by Mike F, second by Steve. All in favor say I. I. All oppose. Nay. Motion passes. Okay. Next up is our consent agenda. Give board members a second just to take a look, see if there's anything you'd like to pull off.
002Shorter consent agenda for tonight. Does any board member wish to pull anything off the consent agenda? I move to approve. A motion by Nikki, second by Mike Davis. I'll go ahead and read the consent items. Um, item A is to approve our minutes uh from the June 9th meeting. Item B is to approve our acceptance of community donations. We got three uh from the Monroe Morning Optimist Club, $4,000 to the Teacher Fund program. From Mary Anne Johnson, $30 to Backpack Buddies and from Donald Jr. and Bonnie Barker, $50 to Backpack Buddies. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I oppose. Nay. Motion carries. Seeing no public comment unless Mr. Jubbeck would like to opine. No. Okay, we'll keep moving. No old business tonight. So, we're going to move on to new business. We've got three
003exciting um announcements to make tonight. First three items in in new business. I just want to I guess before well maybe two things. one just calling back to our our consent item, say a huge thank you to the those who who donated, especially the Mineral Morning Optimist Club. That was a very generous donation. Appreciate that. And in that same vein of the generosity of our community, we've got some exciting sponsorship announcements for tonight that I want to give uh Joe the chance to share more about. Sure. Thanks, Jim. We're excited to continue the the work with the community to identify um sponsors to uh secure naming rights for uh spaces in our new high school. And tonight we're excited to announce that we have three new spaces that will uh enter into agreements for those
004naming rights. Uh Moer and Associates has long been known as a huge supporter of the community, schools, kids, and we're excited tonight to announce that uh Moer and Associates through Scott Moer's leadership has uh secured the rights for the indoor concession stand, the outdoor concession stand, and the Coral Music Room. So, all three spaces will bear uh the name of Moer and Associates. Um, as I said, you know, I've known the Moer family for a long time. Obviously, Teresa serves on our board. Um, Joel and Moer was one of the people that took care of me when I first came into the district in 1998 and certainly served on the Big Brothers Big Sisters board with Dave Moer for a number of years. Um, and this is just another example of the Moer family stepping
005up and doing great things. Scott is a been a longtime coach in our district and has done outstanding work. And if you talk to any of the kids that have uh participated uh in uh track or cross country with Scott, they'll tell you every day that they they love him and he's he's been a great mentor and coach. Um and so to have Moer and Associates step up in this way is really incredible and we're very thankful. Um we have it on the agenda as the three separate items. So the indoor concession stand is a $30,000 10-year agreement. The outdoor concession stand is a 30,000 10-year agreement. And then the Coral Music Room is a $10,000 10-year agreement. Um, so again, we're just really fortunate to to live and work in a community where people
006are so generous. Um, and truly excited to have Moern Associates part of the project going forward. So, be happy to answer any questions before the board goes through the three separate motions. And Ron, certainly jump in here because Ron was was part of this work as well. Joe, can you just uh for anyone joining that hasn't watched previous meetings, um can you just restate the purpose of these funds and how they'll be used? Good. Thanks, Mike. Good clarification. So, to be clear, uh the naming and sponsorship funds that are collected are being used for uh maintenance uh purposes going forward. Uh our our uh high school build is is not only on schedule, but it's on budget. So, we have the funds to build the high school um as it's currently planned and being built
007and being finally built, I might add. Um but what this will do is allow us to uh put those funds in a special revenue fund um where they can be used to provide uh maintenance, maybe upgrades as necessary over the years. so that when we get 5 10 15 20 years into the future um there'll be funds available to take care of that versus pulling it out of the general fund and taking funds away from the regular educational activities in our district. So um those conversations have been clear uh with both Moer and Associates and uh a variety of other business leaders that have stepped up and we're excited to have uh that kind of long-term care available to the district. Ron, anything you want to add to that? No, I think it's u good
008foresight by uh the board and the district to make sure that uh you know we understand the commitment to the new building right now, but obviously uh you know various costs, you know, the sound system and the pack at some point has to be replaced, right? And so being able to have the funds uh sponsorships in place to allow us to fund those items when they come up and occur uh will be great in saving the district costs in the long term. Uh and then as with any of the areas in the building, anyone who chooses a a 10-year uh sponsorship agreement will have the first right uh to to renew that uh when their tenurs come up. Any other questions for Joe? No, just a huge thank you to Moer and Associates and all
009those that have stepped up already. It's really exciting to see this coming together now. So, huge thanks. Yeah, and I I do have to I know I spoke to this earlier, but Scott was fantastic through the process. He he contacted us early. He wanted to be a part of this project. he actually had secured another space um that he was excited about and then learned that there was another business that truly wanted that space and he was good enough to say we'll take a step back, we'll do something different. So again, just a real team player, not just supporting the district, but other businesses in the community. So can't say enough about Scott and his leadership. Thanks, Joe. So, I'd look for a a motion to approve the sponsorship and naming rights of the new
010high school's indoor concession stand to Moer and Associates Insurance Services for $30,000 over the course of 10 years. So, move second. Motion by Phil, second by Nicole. Any discussion before we vote? All in favor say I. I. All nay. Motion carries. I'm just going to take these in succession. Is there anything else you want to say by item, Joe? Nope, I think we covered it. Okay. So, I'll look for a motion to approve the sponsorship and naming rights of the new high schools outdoor concession stand to Moer and Associates Insurance Services for $30,000 over the course of 10 years. So, move. Motion by Nikki, second by Nicole. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. All nay. Finally, look for a motion to approve the sponsorship and naming rights of the new high school's coral
011music room to Moer and Associates Insurance Services of $10,000 over the course 10 years. Second motion by Mike Davis, second by Phil. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I was named. Thank you again to Moer family, to to Scott and Dave and Joe. really appreciate the support of Monro school district. Um all right, next up we've got an action item um for re reallocation of ELLL staff. Turn over to Joe to give us the information there. Sure. So this is a situation that um really kind of emerged over the last month, month and a half. Um you may remember that we had support staff member Alex Hernandez worked at Parkside. Alex was with us for a year. High School graduate did a fantastic job. We were sad to see Alex go, but he was
012given a great opportunity at the YMCA with some of their new staffing. Um, and through that process, as we looked at our needs, we reflected and identified that um, our ELLL needs at Parkside Elementary have been reduced recently due to spreading out some of the support to kids, not only at Parkside, but also at Northside Elementary. So, in working with them, we felt that we had an opportunity to maybe repurpose um a position. At the same time, we've become aware that there's a former ELLL teacher who was wildly successful while working with us that went away for a bit and is looking to come back in a part-time capacity. And so, using these two things, we put them together. And really what we would like is approval from the board to move that uh the
013resources for that full-time support staff position invested in a part-time ELLL position uh at the high school which will meet some significant needs that we uh see coming in with a new class of students um to make sure that they're properly properly supported. Um by doing this it'll be costneutral. um we'll be able to stay within budget, but it'll allow us to meet the needs of our kids that we currently have versus just sticking with what we've historically done uh with staffing in our ELL program. So, Ron, I know you were part of this with Todd. I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that. Yeah, I think a couple things. I mean, I think just the the amount of students in the last two to three years who come in at
014the middle or high school grade level who uh had significant language needs and in some case maybe hadn't even been attending school for a number of years. uh has has put quite a strain on that high school uh ELLL staff. Uh and then uh the fact that we're able to actually uh have someone we we've been struggling to find ELLL teachers, period. Right. So, uh the ability to find someone who's a part-time ELLL teacher who's willing to take that role. Alex was a great uh staff member for us as a support staff, but uh to be able to have somebody in there who's who's a Spanish- speaking ELLL teacher will really be a a boon for that high school program. Yeah, thanks for mentioning that, Ron. There's no question that we need to provide additional
015support at the high school next year. Um there's a lot of needs in the building already and there's going to be even more next year. And so as we continue to see um diverse needs uh across all of our schools, we have to be responsive and use the data that's available to make smart decisions in staffing. So am I hearing it correctly then? It looks like potentially could keep growing even more than what it is right now. Certainly keep a close eye on it. That's the trend we've seen over a number of years, but certainly the most recent years would indicate that that doesn't seem to be plateauing anytime in the future. And that's true of many of the communities around us as well. Other questions for Joel Ron on this move? I look for
016a motion to approve the part-time ELLL teacher position as presented by administration. Is this an act? I believe we did. Todd submitted it. It's information. He had it asformational. It's cost control. Okay. Sorry. We are taking action. Ron, you if so your thought Yeah. If a motion has been made go ahead and just doesn't hurt. I think it's on the agenda as an action item. I think we take the bullet up. So move by Phil. Second by Steve. Discussion. All in favor say I. I. Name. Motion carries. Thank you. All right. Next up, we've got the got the team here for the high school building project. turn it over to uh Joe and Ron and you guys can kind of lead us through the update. Ron, you want to queue these guys up? No, I
017was I was gonna turn them loose for the most part. It's uh Ryan and and uh where am I at now today? I'm Tony. Thank you, Tony. I I don't see Tony. I haven't seen Tony in like three days and so I lost his name. Um you know, but Tony was gone for a couple days himself. So yeah, I lost him. Haven't haven't worked with Tony for five years now. Uh but Ryan and Tony are here. Um talk a little bit about Tony's going to go through the video again, kind of show the progress that's been made over the course of the last month. I know the the drone footage is a little jerky. We've had a little bit of wind issues uh and some other weather issues out recently as we've been trying to
018get the new footage. Um, and then Ryan's going to talk a little bit about uh uh certainly the budget updates, but then if you look under the executive content, he's going to talk a little bit about uh um you know, kind of the uh furniture budget and you know, that's one of the lines we had paired back with the hopes that if the budget held, we were going to be able to put some additional allocation back there. So, he's going to talk to to that. So, turn over Tony first. All right. Um is the video queued up? I'm going to talk about aid for just a couple minutes here before we get to the video. So, as a part of this referendum, we have some work at Abraham Elementary School. Um, we still have some
019leftover funds from previous summer's work. So, uh, it's been chosen to to to use some of those funds for some things that are happening right now. Um, three main areas in that school that are getting touched right now. One is the gymnasium. Um, so what we did first is we went in there and we painted all the walls and sprayed the ceiling and the joists and everything. take some of that yellow coloring away. Um, that is completed. That portion of of the work in the gym is completed. Um, they've also removed the old floor that's there. So, they scraped all that up. That that came up pretty nice. Um, and it's ready for uh new flooring and the deliver delivery for new flooring is next week. So, that's coming along nicely. Um, aside from that,
020there's some exterior or some hallways and stairwells that are just getting the facelift with some painting from a hired painting company. I'd say that's about all 50 50% complete. Um then lastly, uh the exterior, uh fascia boards are getting wrapped with steel fascia to kind of, you know, maintain some some fascia boards that are failing a little bit. So, uh that's scheduled to start Monday, too. So, everything's on track to be finished up at this point, probably about mid July. So, good shape for being done by the end of the summer. Any questions on Abe? That's great. That it's been a long overdue at that building. That that gym's going to look nice. Yeah. And that all fit within the original AE allocation. So, all right. Then I guess what we'll do is we'll just
021kind of do let's go through the main portion and then when it gets to June, you can just kind of stop. Okay. And I'll just talk about random spots. So, we'll let the video go here for the first minute or so, and you kind of just see the progress over the past few months. It goes all the way back to the beginning of the project. So, I know some of you have seen all this before, but it's a good refresher. Mind us when it was just a pile of dirt. Also reminds us how much rain we got in November. Yeah. Thing I thought was interesting looking at this, I didn't see much snow on this. It's a good thing. know and again Tyler being there at the beginning when we were just moving dirt and
022then coming back recently he's like yeah I guess while this is going I can highlight just kind of our last weekly update you know I'll be hitting a lot of the construction things here in a minute but we did have a couple um new faces on the project update here in the corner I if you saw highlighting some past u students so Tyler of course is back uh working as an internship this summer for us he's diving in quick and learning a lot of different things as he's changed his major to construction management and also Jace D I'll call it Dolphin. What' you say? Dolphin ball. Dolphin ball. Okay, great. Uh he's been uh he's looks like he's installing some hangers there in the photo that you've seen. So he's working with North American Mechanical
023Youth Apprenture Program. So um so yeah, as far as that goes, um I guess yeah, positive. We got to the generator droid positive. Perfect. So, what you see here is just obviously looking at the main entrance. You see a lot more green happening there. That means the the the exterior board of the walls going up. Um on the left half and the right half up there. Uh you seen seen a lot of windows be put in. Um I'd say about 60% of the windows on this half that's closest to us is probably done. Majority of the roof is done except for up on on the west side of the site that's that we're looking at. Um not much done in the parking lot there on the south just because it's a major staging area. Um
024but uh we are starting to get some of that stuff cleaned up. We got one of our trailers out of the way uh earlier this morning. So we're trying to eye that up for the next area to to kind of get looking nicer. So where you see the grain uh at the main entrance and along a number of those windows is areas where you're going to see the red panels uh on the building. [Music] Yeah, it was windy. So, uh, like they're working in the Yeah, if you want to stop here. Looks like they were working in the ponds, too. Yep. A little bit. So, off to the right here. So, as you can off to the right here is is obviously the track and and the u the the tennis courts. So, we we
025made significant progress on uh getting sight fills and cuts almost complete. You know, that's one thing we came into this spring and summer just leerary about with the rains and we've gotten really pretty lucky. Um we kind of got a jump start putting some line in that 18t fill if you remember me talking about uh last time. So, that really got us off to a great jump start and I think we're on our last our last lift right now in the ball fields. So, it's great. We do have a little bit of soil left to deal with in the the tennis courts yet, but uh we're nearing completion with the big mass grade uh move mass grading move, which is great. You know, just a couple six weeks ago, I feel like we were talking
026about there was 65,000 yards that need to be moved yet this year and we're almost we're almost done with it. So, um yeah. So, for those of you who don't do this every day, aren't involved. So basically as they blew the rock out of the stadium uh in the tennis areas and you had that pile of not only some rocks in there that got crushed up but also a lot of clay that was down there that all has been moved. So when they talk about the site balancing uh it it the site balances but we're moving a lot of uh fill uh earthwork for one area of the site to a different area of the site. So a lot of the clay that was under what is now the going to be the the football
027stadium and tennis courts ended up going over and lifting up or filling up the uh what was the baseball softball areas was mostly in that balance. You don't have to offite. Yeah, that's the whole goal. That's where all your costs would really skyrocket as you start. Yeah, fair damn fair did a pretty darn good job with that all along. They were complimented by the earthwork contractor throughout the project and getting it pretty close. So, um, all right. If you want to let it spin just a little bit more. Right there. So, like right at the bottom here is obviously the the football field. We're pretty much done with putting utilities in that area. At least the bulk utilities, there is some electrical that needs to happen. So on that hillside there, you can kind of
028see some steel off to the side of the building. Once that steel gets removed, we're going to start digging foundations for the grandstands this week. Um and then we'll still really start seeing some of our CR concrete crews ramp back up on site. Ever since the foundations for the building kind of got done, they've they've slowed down a little bit, but we're going to get back and start on the grand stands and then move to the concession buildings um and keep going with the green houses and other odds and ends foundations because you have two different crews, right, Tony? One one crew that does foundations and then you have a different company that's doing flat work for you. Uh a little bit of both. So like the Yeah. Uh without getting too much into the
029weeds uh around the outside of the site. That's correct. Uh CG Schmidz doing most of the foundations, all the flat work which is sidewalks, patios, curb and gutter is all being done by Paresi. So um but talking about the building here, I guess when you you see in the gym there, that's all queued up to get roofing pretty soon. Uh the western half of the site is pretty well roofed actually. Uh the northwest wing and area B and C where the CTE is and the kitchen is all roofed and and looking good. Um, so interior grading, I know you were getting close last week. Yeah, so interior grading in the gymnasium is complete now. The underground electrical is ready to go. We do have a pretty large pore scheduled for this week. About two or
030actually I think it's like 430 cubic yard pour in that gym. We're going to try to do it all in one shot just so we can prevent any curling and things happening underneath that floor. Uh, so that's kind of the big thing for this week. if everything goes as planned. Once we get that done, we'll have about I figured about 80% of the concrete slabs down in the building. Um, as you can see in this picture, we have obviously the the biggest bulk that will be left then is the commons um slab and anything on second floor around the auditorium. But otherwise, things are looking good there. The performing arts inside the perform rotate a little bit if you like. All right, stop her there. So, one one big improvement we've got here is you
031can see all the black down there. That's that's asphalt binder course. So, there's two layers of asphalt that go down. Typically put down the binder course first and then we do the finish course later. Um, so I calculate about 55 to 60% of the site's asphalt is paved now with just the first course, which is basically the majority of the north half. So is the the um the road 8 and a half street that goes all the way down kind of u just to the bottom left of this picture. Um but then you also see some sidewalks up to the building there uh that are done as well. And then um once that steel kind of gets filled in there west of the auditorium, we'll be working on doing the greenhouse right there in that
032courtyard looking space. Also, when you're looking at this, you can kind of see on on this north half closest to to town, I guess, is the roof is done. And um really, I was walking around on my this afternoon and a lot of a lot of walls are in. So, I mean, once we get the rest of this enclosed, the the auditorium, PAC, and the commons, it's really going to go pretty quick. Those are big open spaces. Every other place that's under a roof has steel studs standing pretty much. And really, a lot of their work is complete. And overhead roughing is going great. Um if you go back in by the mechanical um rooms, back by the loading dock, it's just clogged with piping and you know, it's just organized, but it's just it's
033just busy. So there's there's a lot of work that's happening kind of, you know, behind the scenes things that's going to get covered up, but paving the way for some drywall, which actually, you know, we we've been doing drywall for quite a few weeks, just kind of topping out walls. That's what we do first is top out walls so that duct work and things can be put in hallways, but now we're starting to drywall the bottoms of walls. So, you know, once that happens, drywall mud starts coming in. We do have some dehumidification kind of stationed and ready to go in the building. So, when it gets too humid and the drywall mud isn't drying, we're ready to go with that. So, it's going to turn to finishes pretty darn quick here on the second
034floor south half and then just as we go. So, if you just like to go around the rest of the way, go right ahead. I think that was pretty much it. Um, some other kind of key notes that I didn't hit on. Um, the retaining wall work down by the baseball fields is has started. Um, that's going well. Um, we are eyeing up enclosure. I'd say mid August right now is our plan. Like I said, the the the areas that don't have a roof over them, you know, are our wide open areas, which, you know, is good. a lot of the a lot of the area that has a lot of studs and a lot of overhead and everything is is under roof right now. Any questions on that? On the street and the station.
035I don't know any factual information you're saying. I guess so. I don't know if I should talk to this. They're out for bid as far as this. The streets are out for bid. I believe actually uh one of the street parts or maybe even uh has been awarded. Um and so that's pretty much what I'm aware of. Of course, what's going on with the city which you mentioned Hames James and Sons is that right there. Uh they were awarded that we're getting underway this summer. Yeah. U for the north half. So like where the site entrance is, I can't speak to if this is on schedule or anything, but the plan and the way it was bid out was everything north of the entrance to our site that you see right now all the way
036out to um what is that? Sixth Avenue by the jail. All that Sixth Street. Yep. All that would be done this year and then flop and do everything from our entrance to the south and that roundabout down by the beverage mark next summer. That's that's the city project. And then the other project is a BNS project with that private drive in the and the development to the north. Um I do know fair Graham is working on engineering exactly where that lands and where materials are for the lift station. I don't know but in my opinion it's getting pretty tight. Yeah. I know this this street coming right into the high school that They'll be constructing it. Uh, at least the last I knew the plan was, they'll be constructing it, but it'll be at city
037specs, right? But it will be public. Yes, absolutely. Yep. That whole neighborhood will be, so where's the second street you're talking about? So the first street that I'm talking about the city kind of follows what you see already. You know, it goes out to to down to that water station I want to call it and there's going to be a little turnaround loop there. So, not really changes as far as the city's work, but BNS's property kind of cuts across uh Kitty cornered across that green space just north of North Side Elementary kind of diagonals to the high school kind of right scoots right past those big piles of of of stone and kind of shoots into that northwest corner of the site which is the bottom bottom right corner on the screen here. So
038kind of there's an intersection there where the the street that goes north and south right now and the other street that comes through. So which one? Yeah. So the so there's two parts of it. So there's the the city street as if you think of the street as it exists right now uh 31st and then down past north side. They're gonna the city is going to do uh the north part of it first and then they're going to do the the south part of it second. At the same time, DNS is hoping to start work on their street that will go up and around the well through the north side property across and then back up and into and adjoin our property. So that driveway going in then off of I think it's 32nd Street
039where the curve is by north side there that would be just north of the buildings that are there then where the the gravel piles two big gravel piles and then there's a barn and house. It'll be just to the north side of that then I'm assuming. Yep. Basically that road heads from from northwest to southeast at a diagonal. It doesn't go true north and souththeast and west. Okay. So, it kind of goes from north from northwest to southeast. Okay. Yeah. It'll cross about halfway between like the well and like the lower drive for north side and then Okay. Good. Are the sewer lines all to the lift station where it's going to be? Well, the sewer lines right now that's that's part of the part of the thing we need to keep a close eye
040on here. Our sewer lines are across the property line right now which is all we are required to do as a part of this project right now. They are they are stuck to a point where then BNS properties project takes them from there and takes them to the lift station. Um so right now we we're we're going to be have um yeah I think the plan is December I believe is when that lift station will be installed by. So that'll be the north side. So 8 and a half street. I think we're still like 10 ft past the the north side of 8 and half street right now. So this project has done everything it's supposed to do and is on time to the adjacent project the BNS to tie in. So, we've done everything
041that we've done with agreements and with the physical uh infrastructure. And so, what remedy do we have contractually if they start to fall behind on those agreements with lift station? That's a great question. I was not a part of those agreements. So, um I don't I don't know what we have as a remedy built into the I believe I believe Carl sat in on those. Um I'd have to go back and pull the contracts themselves. Yeah, we have we can definitely we have the contracts. I think I heard you say you were starting to get concerned. Well, a little bit. I mean, I know they're I know they're all working on it. You know, talked to the engineer, at least one of the engineers on the firm there, and I know they're actively working on
042it and and could still be fine. I just, you know, it's just one of those things just like our site work. Project managers get paid to be concerned. Exactly. Yeah, we've heard from every party involved from city BNS like everyone is motivated to get this moving. It's just a matter of actually effectively getting the work done Wednesday and it's brought up every week. No. Um so um it's I think it would just make us all a lot more comfortable if we saw physical work happening on site. I think that's what it comes down to. Questions. What are the green spots there? The green buildings on the roof. Are those for mechanicals or um so on the far roof over there, that's the mechanical mezzanine for the gym. So what's inside of that space? Pretty much
043all the mechanicals that service the gym itself handler units in there. It's not the press box. No. Yeah. No. Yeah. But that's a good question because that was one of the discussions that came up uh you know um during the design and and and some of the uh cost-saving measures was you know do you go with just exterior roof units uh and and save some dollars versus they're actually called what's the correct term for them that they are? They're penthouse. They're a little penthouse, right? you know, and so that they have some enclosure to them and uh it was decided that the cost differential wasn't that great that the it was better long term to have them uh enclosed. It was cheaper to put them in a penthouse than it was into this the footprint
044of the building and expand the footprint of the building. Um but for longevity and maintenance of the units themselves, uh it was a better decision to put them enclosed. So, it was a cheaper cost per square foot to build a penthouse on the roof than it was to expand the footprint of the building to account for them. All right. Yeah, there's no further any more questions for Tony. All right. Um, I can jump in. Uh, thank you for doing that. You beat me to it. Uh, I'll cut through this pretty quickly and then we can talk. Uh currently we're at 35% complete uh for the high school construction project. We're 39% complete for the whole referendum including a blink. Um and currently CG Schmidt's uh scorecard, safety scorecard is at 97. So um they're doing
045great. Um owner contingency again uh the top number is what we had budgeted at the beginning of the project. The second number is what's remaining for the remainder of the project. And if we jump to the box directly below that, um, we're averaging an owner contingency spend of almost $36,000 a month. And that expenditure, if you project it flat straight line to the end of the project, um, we would have spent 8 almost 61,000 out of the 1.5 million. Uh, so we're doing great there. Also, Ryan, just a quick, so just for myself and the board, is that is that pretty typical in terms of what you would see for that rate at this point of the project or is that better or worse? I would say we're doing great. Okay. Um it's it's it's
046hard to say what's typical because every project is like a fingerprint. It's everything's really different on every project, but we're doing great. Um I would say yeah, we thank you for that. Um I we're in a really good spot and um and I'm I'm I'm very comfortable and happy with the spot. Um since we uh met last uh which has been a minute um we've had a couple change orders go through. Uh there's change order eight which is not accounted for because it was uh constitutive savings and some funds transfer. Um and I can let Tony talk about that in a second because we agreed that that's how that was going to happen. Um, and then but I will talk about change order number nine because that was a cost to the project. Um, change
047order nine uh consisted of construction bulletin number nine. Um, and a couple other miscellaneous things. Um, exterior signage is one. And so that is the infrastructure for the monument sign um that's going out uh kind of where the new road is coming in that we were just talking about. There's going to be a pretty robust monument sign with a digital screen. So, um, whatever you want to put on that can be out there. Um, and then we are adding, I think we we've talked about this at the entrance to the football complex. Um, the concourse area out there as you walk up from the parking lot that we just saw that has binder course. Um, there's going to be a walk up there and there's going to be a big arch there and um, uh,
048paying homage to the to the current high school. Um, so that is encompassed that that cost was encomp encompassed in this. Um, and then we upgraded the lockers in the locker rooms. Um, we we changed the color. Um, it was a flat gray color, pretty uninspired, and so we went with a red because we thought that was great. It's pretty low low buy up on that one, so we thought that would be a better one. Um, out of that $164,000 and change of that change quarter, only 70,000 453 hit the owner contingency because we had some line items already budgeted that would account for some of those things. And so, um, I pulled funds from those line items to help fund that. Um, and what was left over was the 70,000. That is all caught
049here in our burn rate. So, that's already calculated in. Um so we're still even with this we're doing great. Um and uh but some of those are Musco pole bases. Musco are the lighting um that would be at the stadiums. Um we have some uh light bases that are for potential future upgrades to the baseball complex and we went ahead and moved forward with adding those in. now because of some sequencing and asphalt and and things like that that made a lot of sense to put them in now been much more expensive uh later just the bases and just the bases not the actual lights and so but we are prepped we will be prepped at the end of this as best as we can um for future lighting for the baseball complex electrical spaces
050also the conduit will be conduit yeah conduit and then we will have capacity for those lights in the future within our service. Um so we'll be we will be ready to go if if the funds were to be available um for that. Um that's change order number nine. Change order number eight, like I said, uh represents some savings and it also uh represents some transfer of funds. And I can let uh Tony talk about that. Yeah, it's it's a net deduct total of $326,000. really uh breaks down into three different items. The majority of it is the branding and sign signage. So there are three allocations in our GMP. We had an allowance for about $70,000 for just signage. We did have one quote for that. But then um and then there was and all
051this was moved from the construction budget to the soft cost budget because of the branding that was was taken care of from from that budget. So the scope is just shifting out of our GMP and into the branding scope. So um like I said that allowance um there was a bunch of wall protection that had some uh logos on it that was in the comments. So that got removed from our scope be done by branding. And then there's a painting logo a logo that was painted that branding is also going to take on. So that kind of sums up to about $184,000 worth of work that's coming out of our scope and going theirs. Um there's a small item that we were carrying for a UTV budget. The plan was we'd buy a UTV, use
052it for a little bit, and turn it over. Uh we didn't see the need for that. We've been borrowing McGee's UTV on an as needed basis. You're welcome. Yeah. Um so that's been working out. Okay. So, we just decided it's time to just get that $20,000 out of our GMP and let it go back in uh to the soft cost budget. And then lastly, it was about $122,000 savings for a track surfacing product change. So, this is something we identified really early on in construction about going from a from a pancake track system to a surface uh structural spray system. Um, so, you know, this was brought up and talked about with engineering early on. It was kind of one of those things we wait later and make a decision on. Um, so as we're
053planning for it, we brought it back to the surface here at a meeting was a few weeks ago and ultimately the the team decided to take the savings, a lot of spaces, a lot of lot of tracks around this area and in Wisconsin really good structural spa spray tracks. U the pancake system is kind of like a added performance um top level type of track. Um so um you know that's the difference by by doing this. You're not you know you're not getting anything that's less, you know, less competitive with the communities around you or anything like that. It's just a it's just another way of skinning the cat, I guess. And we more often see the structural spray on tracks than we do the pancake system. And that's usually because of cost. There's a
054lower maintenance longterm a little bit. So sprayon is a little bit more maintenance long term just because of the product, but not not significant. Um, okay. Any questions about that? All right. Uh, I just want to point out a few things on the budget. Uh, the next page that we have, um, you will see a few things change. If you have eagle eyes, um, down in the owner direct category, you'll see two blank lines, which is signage interior and signage exterior. Um, that accounts uh, for two things. one, um, the exterior signage I mentioned before that I took money out of those line items to help cover that change order. Um, and two, the overall moving some of these efforts to the branding team. Um, and the reason being is we want a cohesive effort
055across the board. So, we want our signage and our branding, more traditional branding components all to kind of speak the same design language. And so we've moved a lot of those efforts into their line items. So if you kind move your way down that same category, you will see environmental branding about I don't know threequarters the way down that says 307,532. Um that number used to be $100,000 for their budget. So we've ballooned their budget out of other sources. And the reason why is because we've given them a lot more scope to do. So, it's all falling under their umbrella um to manage a lot of these signing signage efforts again so that it's cohesive. So, um the overall number has not changed. It's just moved buckets. And so, what I'll probably do in the
056future is minimize the the two empty lines. They're no longer there since it will be captured in the environmental branding. Um a couple things else to note is down below, if you look in the funding sources, I have two blank lines. Um, awesome news about community partnership investment. Um, currently all funds as uh Joe was talking about that have been uh garnered have been for all the things you said, maintenance, uh, long-term um, replacements, all of those type of things. If a part community partner did want to invest in something that could affect the budget of the job, um, say they wanted to, just because we were talking about it, buy lights for the baseball complex. Um I'm leaving this here as blank just in case that were to happen uh specifically to affect the
057project uh budget and if that were I would uh represent those funds there. Um so currently is blank because all of these funds are outside of the project now and and more for maintenance. The other one is focus on energy. We know that we're going to get funds from focus on energy north of $100,000 but they are reimbursement funds. So, um, currently I'm not counting them within the budget, uh, because they will, um, come after the project is complete. Now, they can come and reimburse costs that we have. Um, that's, um, kind of the intent of them, but time-wise, they will come a little bit late, so I'm not accounting for them at the moment. Um, and so I'm leaving that line blank. If we would need to account for that and figure out a
058methodology to to forward some funds into the project and be reimbursed from them, we can do that later. But right now we don't need to do that. Um and then the delta down there shows the uh current project surplus and so which is about um $874,000. Um I'll stop there and ask if you have any questions about the budget in general. The suggestion maybe those those items that you blanked out if to clean it up if you left the original amounts in the the left column and then zeroed out the right column. It should all add up and then would make more sense. I think I can do that, but they the numbers now live in a lower item. So, I mean, I can do it because I can just change my totals at the
059end. And well, it's the same thing with the lower item though. You leave it low to start with and then you show the increase. I I can't Okay, I can What I'm trying to avoid is show them as change orders because then they will try to they would try to tally in this thing as a as a percentage change of the overall showing that we have a delta and then we'll try to pull from the owner's contingency. So, the kind of creative way I've done it to not pull from the owner's contingency is do it this way. But, I can show it whatever way you guys want. I'll just have to do a little bit of looping around in the spreadsheet to make it work. But, it's not a big deal to me if you
060feel like that would make more sense to you. That's more of a functional issue of my spreadsheet than it is uh the math of it all. So, um well, I guess the delta is is probably the segue to the next part. So, like I said, about $874,000 of remaining funds. Uh we are if you read the memo, I hope you did, is that the project team um which would be the district administration um ourselves um we are recommending that we increase the furniture budget um by $650,000 from that surplus. We knew from the very beginning um and this is in the memo, but um that this number was very very very anemic when we went out to budget on it, but it was the item that is most easily added to later in the game.
061So that's why we pulled those those dollars out of that. We had uh a herculean effort at the beginning of this project to make sure that this project was within budget. um we did a lot of work um to get there and so things dollar amounts had to be pulled out of certain things. One line item that took the biggest hit was furniture intentionally so not because furniture is not paramount but because like I said furniture can be added later in the game. Um and so the hopes were we would find an established savings throughout the the project um which would allow us to add funds throughout the life cycle of the project back into furniture. um which we've done, but also fortunately um we have uh we have more revenue within the project, more
062equity in the project than we thought we were going to with the bond interest income. Um so with that with after lots of design meetings, lots of stakeholder input, lots of work with the school, with Jeremy and his team and his teachers and the departments, with P uh with DIMCO, um we have come to a design that we feel like is the most um flexible, the most durable, uh the best for the student experience, right? And um and so we make the recommendation that we would add a portion of our surplus funds into the furniture budget as the highest and best use of those funds. Um I'll pause there and ask if you have questions or clarifications. I guess I have a couple. First of all, on the funding sources sign, can you remind us
063what that 50,000 is? That's uh money in an activity account that uh boy that dates back to the Mark Brandt era of the high school. um where um with different fundraisers andor graduating classes have donated monies with the intent that they were going to get a sign for the high school um mainly a video uh sign and so with the new high school we're finally going to be completing that and so they had set dollars aside uh that would be going toward that. So it's money in hand. Yes. Okay. And then on the bond interest income, we have 8.5 million budget where I mean these funds will be kind of a falling scale, but they'll stay invested. I guess it's a question for you, Ron. Is that 8.5 a finite final number? No, it's not
064a finite final number. Actually, um, we likely will have more interest revenue than that. However, as as we've talked in the past, uh, and we'll be getting that updated as we get closer to the end of the project, um, the IRS regulations only allow you to make so much interest revenue on the project, right? And, um, if you don't hit certain deadlines and certain spendowns, which with the delay on our project, there was no way we were going to ever make those. uh if you make quote too much interest revenue, you have to then pay that back that arbitrage back as a rebate back to the IRS because they don't want you borrowing money just to make money, right? And so uh that is right now what the calculated net is of what our interest
065incomes over the lifetime of this uh project versus what we likely will have to to pay back. Yeah, if you recall, even right at the right at the first in our first six months when we only had the bond anticipation note, uh we had to cut a check back to the IRS at the end of that six-month period and then that opened up the window for the full bonding which we're building and constructing the building out. So the IRS will have naming rights. We'll check into that. We haven't explored that. The hope is the hope is that we've looked at this conservatively and if anything that that the number might get better. Now the the the difficult part is it's not going to get a ton better um because of the limitations of to what
066we can do. But as you recall uh we did go out and get some uh uh we went out and actually purchased some bonds uh for some other projects that were taxexempt bonds. And so they're at a little lower interest rate, but then because they're tax exempt bonds, that revenue doesn't count against our rebate arbitrage amount. And so, um, there's there's been things we've been actively trying to do throughout the project so that we maximize, um, what you don't want to do is just let the money sit there, not do something. uh you want to earn as much as you can and then let the let the accountants try and uh you know get get you as big good of a discount or uh that as they can as they calculate out what what what
067has to go back to the IRS the 8.5 is probably a pretty solid think it may go up a little bit and so that's kind of where you know as as Ryan said the you know going back to you know to Ryan's credit when we built this furniture budget um you know Ryan's number original number was was pretty close to what what are what we're talking about right now and and and you know I know P said well they had had some projects that came in a little less and so we had shifted some of those but as Tony or or Ryan said earlier about something else in the project how each project is kind of has its own life and in in in signature and so if you look at ours we don't have
068a lot of built-ins uh there's not built-in cupboards and and like the standard classrooms and stuff like that. So, you then need to buy storage furniture, right? And so, suddenly you need dollars in the in the furniture budget. That may be a different project where they have all built-ins, which is part of Tony's cabinetry budget, you know, doesn't need as much furniture. And so, all that interplay happens and uh you know, as as as Ryan was pointed out, you pull money from that line item because, you know, it's the easiest line item to add later. Another area that comes into play is is the lighting. We talked about putting in the Musco bases. You know, if our if our bond interest income does come out a little better, that's one of those things that at
069the end of the project, the board can look at it and say, "Yep, we put in the infrastructure. Now, if we do have some extra dollars, we can consider putting in the lights themselves." just help me understand what we're talking about here because did we sign a contract with a furniture design company already and we've got whatever package was designed originally is approved is contracted. They've got to provide that furniture at that price and now we're looking to to upgrade or is this a budget line item that we missed the budget and now we need more funds to cover the gap? No, more to the first um we didn't have a design attached to our original contract. We had a budget. So the design had not happened. Uh per the the memo DIMCO did come
070to us with a package that was designed to budget and the team stated here the district administration P and HKP ourselves all looked at that and said um that design though it meets the base needs don't meet the needs and desires of what we feel like the most forwardthinking view of what the furniture needs are of the school and so and I said I mean my number was 1.85 million when we put the budget together originally. We're asking basically for 1.9 million. And so when we put 1.25 million, I I had a problem with it the whole time, but we didn't have a choice. We had that that's the choice that we had to have. And so they could outfit this for 1.25 million. Um the it would be a dramatically different school if we
071did that. And so um after having demo classrooms that they had the stu the students and teachers have worked through giving different department input um and like I said um numerous design sessions it has come out that what we feel like the true needs and true desires of the school moving forward uh to make them the most flexible spaces and the most forward thinking spaces and give it the longest runway of of durability. Um, we feel like this is the best budget for the project, right? I think that's a question I part of because it's a pretty good chunk of money and you know, and I understand why we're talking about it. So, you think the furniture is with the upgrade is it longerlasting, more durable? I mean, yeah, beyond just colors and looks. Yeah,
072for sure. Yeah, absolutely. I I think um as we move forward into this, the grade of furniture has increased. Um uh the I guess I keep saying the word flexibility, but the ability to uh learning spaces to be moved and adjusted and put together in meaningful ways um has increased. Um the commons is a dramatically different space um with the variety of furniture and seating and colors and durability and and all of the things we're talking about. Um teachers have more storage in their classrooms uh quite a bit more. Um what was that Joe? Just general comfort issues like you know instead of the four post chair you have the sled chairs that have a little more of a bounce to them and lean back a bit more. It's a it's not one silver bullet
073here that got us uh to an increase. It's it's a lot of uh kind of buups I guess if you were across many spectrums and many spaces. Um, but it puts it more on par and on standard to what I would see other modern school projects that we are completing today. Um, and so that's that's kind of where where we are. Yeah. to the credit of our our high school staff, I think, as they evaluated furniture and and looked at them, you know, uh they weren't tasked with uh yep, we need to keep it a number, but they they don't, you know, they they work in education. They know that, you know, numbers are are tight always. And so, uh they've also made some good decisions as to yep, we don't need piece of furniture
074that can do every cool thing under the sun. We just want what is really good and functional for our classroom, good bang for the buck versus the lowest end possible to hit a number, right? And so, um, you know, and and part of it push back from, you know, myself and Jeremy, right, when you start saying, "All right, you're an English classroom. You know, you have books, right? We need to have some bookshelves in storage for those books." you know, we live in Wisconsin, uh, you know, uh, you know, for whether it be a male or female teacher, but I especially think of female teachers, right? Where you need someplace to to hang your coat, hang your purse, whatever, right? And so, if you don't have you don't have a wardrobe uh, in your in
075your in your classroom, suddenly that all becomes difficult. And so, those are the types of things when you don't have built-ins uh, that you better be thinking about as you're as you're outfitting those rooms with furniture. Can I just ask and maybe this is part for you Ryan and part for you Ron but so what we're talking about is using our owner contingency. No. No. And that's not we're talking. No, it would not affect owner. So you have that delta down at the very bottom of your spreadsheet that says right now our expected revenues are more than what our expected costs are. And so that would get applied to furniture. That's just unallocated. That's not living technically in a contingency. It's not living in it is kind of in limbo. It's just unallocated. Then procedurally
076for the for the board tonight, is thisformational to kind of get our reaction or is this an item that we need to take action on? I think DIMCO will be at some point coming back with their final design plan. So, I think um you know we can bring it back as an action item I think at the next board meeting and then um that way we can make sure that we have that solidified and and ready to roll. But I think Ryan really needs to know so that we can finalize that plan with DIMCO. Are we thinking we're okay with it and you know are feeling you know and if we're not then we have to have probably a bigger discussion tonight. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's like, you know, it's I get it.
077I mean, I I think it's dollars well spent. Right now, we've got 847,000 and we, you know, bam, 650 is gone for for good reasons. And so, do we anticipate any other ticket items? Best guess. I am not and personally I'm not anticipating any items other than what we've talked about unless there's a project enrichment say like adding lights to the baseball um or filling up like turf to the baseball just some of the things that have been conversations with public partnerships with the community. Um if the if say um someone in the public did not latch on to one of these then uh at the end of the project or towards the end we have a better picture of our uh what our what we have left as a surplus and then the board
078thinks it's uh a good idea to to move on one of those. That's the type of items that I would expect on here and that's and I I look at this as the same type of item. Um we're not we're not allocating this as project funds right now. It's just that's why it's not been moved into the contingency. Um it is just looked at as a surplus. So um so I have nothing on my radar other than what I've just mentioned. And to be clear, for those of you who have been here, you've lived it. For those of you who are new, you haven't. Um you know, we've done, you know, three other buildings so far with u renovations with CG Schmidt. They also have a construction contingency line and uh every end of every
079one of those project we've had construction contingency dollars that we've had to decide how we were going to utilize them and what we were going to going to potentially uh add to the project with it. And so I'm anticipating when we get to the end of this project between the owner contingency, the um uh construction contingency, and any dollars that may remain in that unallocated andor that additional revenues that come from from interest income that there will be dollars at the end of this project that we'll be talking about. And so I think the the reason they're talking now though with Demco is we we need to get a furniture bid in uh as far as a furniture order in uh sometime in the near future to make sure that the furniture is here uh
080when we need it to be to move into the building. And so that's why we're talking furniture now and not next June. So Ryan, I mean the burn rate straight line contingency looks like under 900,000 in a project. So I should leave about 600,000 contingency now. I support the I do too. I can say that when I was in um at the convention in Milwaukee, we were at the Demco booth and we saw some of the furniture that they had and we saw um and I said, "Is specifically, is this what we're getting?" And she's like, "No, you're over here." And it's like it I'm just I'm glad to hear this is more durable, more because what I saw that we were going to be getting, I could see we were going to be replacing
081it in a few years. I mean, things are already going to start to get damaged. And I just I'm glad to hear that if we have some money, that's where we're going to put it because I think we need to do from the beginning. I know why we did what we did where we had to come in, but I'm I'm glad to hear and support it. And this upgrade will as Ron alluded to it and give like a place for teachers to hang up person. Yeah, I would say that probably and and Joe, you can speak to this too. Um, a lot of the feedback from like the baseline design of a given classroom was where's the storage? Um, what are your comments about this? Can I have more storage? Um, and we all know
082any building that humans occupy, uh, it always wants and needs more storage. And so, um, I would say these buyups are buying, in my opinion, what this project needs and not everything that this project wants. Um, and so, um, and I think the places that need to be, um, high functioning, high flexibility, and to be quite frank, impressive, like the Commons are going to be, uh, when you walk in, if you look at the furniture layout and the 3D model that they've built, um, it's impressive and it's highly functional and it's highly flexible. And so I think um and one more component would be or one more area just to highlight is the launch area. The baseline um was a big room with a little bit of furniture in it. Um and what was anticipated
083was more like a a professional co-work space. And so what the design um that we feel like that room needs is not a lavish co-work space but a professional high functioning co-working space that people could come into and and have the flexibility to do work as teams, work as individuals, um all types of things. I think that's what launch wants to be. Um and so there's there's a handful of those stories throughout the building um that this effort supports turning this into. And I and I will say again, this brings it on par with what I see and that's why my budget was the number it was when we started this on what we see on current projects. Love to get reactions from other board members before we going to wrap this up. I I
084definitely I I understand I appreciate the explanation. I understand the need. I don't really like the surprise and that might be my own fault because I unlike uh Nikki didn't know the grade furniture I I hadn't had the opportunity to see that. So 50% budget increase because we're trying to cut early to bit in line is surprising to me. I want to be absolutely sure that we're looking at every other thing. I I didn't realize we were cutting that that deep in certain places. Yeah. Um it's been an ongoing project conversation and I apologize if that hasn't bubbled to the board and normal conversation. It was um a heavy heavy effort at the early days um to get this in line and which we have and we've done it without cutting any required referendum scope
085um which I'm really proud of of the team. Um, but yes, this is uh this has been the one this has been the one that we've known about. And again, I I'll just apologize and follow my sword on that one that you guys didn't have the clarity on this line item is as maybe the project team did um that we we were very hopeful and optimistic that we'd be able to add funds to it. Well, and I'll I'll jump in on that if that's something that I should have communicated. I will say I have a unique perspective not being in the early part of this process jumping in on the middle of it kind of learning a lot in a short amount of time. I I just want to say it was very clear from
086the start that this budget line item was one that was an area of concern going forward from from day one. It's been identified as we got a number that we can make work but it is in no way shape or form close to what we believe is going to be necessary to do this project the right way. So, I I don't want Ryan taking all this. This goes back to two years ago, right? Before we before we started bid package one, before we we we put anything out where uh we had to look and say, "Okay, what what do we need to do to get this to work?" And if you recall, there was meetings with uh that's why we brought the electrical team on board. That's why we brought the HVAC team on board.
087That's why we brought all those uh uh subs on early was to say, okay, how can we find some efficiencies to make this still be a great building, but to make this budget work? And so, uh it was during all of that process when when this happened. I appreciate you taking that wasn't what I was looking for is to to find out, you know, I just wanted more like what else is there something else that is out there that we're not quite aware of? Anything else? Um, I will say a lot of the other effort to be honest is not doesn't live in the soft cost, lives in the hard cost. Um, so a lot of that effort was some of like uh mechanical pen houses. We talked about that getting that out of the
088footprint and getting it up on the roof. Um, that's one one component. Uh, pre-cast walls instead of more traditional cold form stud wall. Um, some of those things are are how we got to the solutions. Um, and and this was the big one of the soft costs that got us to the solution. I think the other one is I traditionally would have probably carried a little bit more owner contingency than what we have. Um, but we're doing great, so I'm not concerned about it, but we knew that we couldn't carry maybe all the owner contingency that I would say by default because of the budget. Um, but it has not been a problem, which has been amazing. Um, so um, those are the ones that we really on the soft costs that, um, kind of
089took the brunt of it. Is there any furniture from the school that's coming over? Uh there's a little bit of back of house type stuff that um so not not in the classrooms, not um student function. Um but there's some storage. Uh there's some of those type of things. Trying to do our best not to do that. And in the main reason being in in Ron's words, there's no there's no way quicker to make a new school look old than fill it with 50-y old furniture. Um and so we've tried to be prudent. Uh we did a a large scale evaluation of all the furniture that is in the current school and gave it a grading system A B C D I think. Um and uh that was a pretty big effort by multiple parties.
090And so we do have a catalog of all the current furniture and the grade in which it receives. So um really the only furniture that we're considering bringing over is the higher grade furniture and um more in a storage capacity um for back of house spaces. Yeah, we only have probably a couple of areas where we're, you know, quote excited enough to really want to bring it. But then on the other side, on the flip side is, you know, we have some really great like uh um stuff in the fitness area that we're going to be able to bring that we from when we had the PEP grant, right? And so that's a often times a very high dollar area. And so we have a lot of stuff that's going to go into the uh
091fitness weight room area that that'll, you know, be moved over. Um in the kitchen area, we have a lot of new stuff, but we also have a lot of stuff that we just upgraded uh in the last few years out of the the fund 50 budget. And so we're bringing those things over. So there's there are those pieces. Um even even in the commons, right? The uh if you go into our current m room, uh we have a handful of logoed tables uh logoed uh um brand new logoed cafeteria tables are going to look just like those logoed cafeteria tables. So we're bringing those with us, right? And so there are things that when they make sense that we're bringing over and I will say we a big win is that because of especially with
092fitness and weight room, all the things we could bring over, we really beat that budget. um what I was anticipating uh for our cost there um we've come in we beat it by about I think currently almost 20%. CT as well then we have some savings the grant work. Y so with the with the grant and with existing equipment that's in good shape um that we can bring over CT equipment as a whole bucket is is way out of budget. I have two other questions for general questions and I don't want to segue now. Jim said you're trying to straw poll. Sorry. I I am trying to st go ahead with your with your questions. Well, I I was just kind of curious. First of all, the scoreboard from the football field that will come.
093Yes, it will come. And as well as from the uh basketball Yeah. mean basketball. And this is a really small item. Hate to even bring it up, but it had people over the years where where his husband wrote cheese makers across the top if we had a background on that so it's more visible for the football the football and then I was just curious on the um branding who internally who's involved in that yeah so um from a vendor standpoint it's P which is the architect record and it's a group called Amplify. Um, and they're working in tandem with each other. Um, and then within um like the school-based decision making or review um we Joe and Ron and Jeremy and oursel and who else is in that? I'm not getting Rich is in there.
094Rich is in there. Yeah. And so as we look at specific spaces um we get tailored input because of their impact of that and um and then some of that has um rolled into community sponsorships uh components. So that's been really great. Um, and it's a good it's a really it's a fun effort because um that combination of PR and Amplify are very creative and very talented and they're getting very dialed into like the ethos of Monroe, of the school district, of the high school specifically. Um, they're really dialing it into some really great concepts. Brianna and Russ were both at that the community uh input meeting and and not that we had a wealth of community people there, but they both sat in on those those groups and heard a lot of those conversations.
095And so when we talk about some of the cheesem history and the arch and capturing all those ideas and concepts, that's they they've kind of been embedded in, you know, looking at that. They also for Russ to his credit I mean um digging through archives of our community and and our school uh and then he's like what about this is this important to you guys or you know and so you know he's he's he's done a lot of work in that area. staff involved. It's been quite a while, but I think we saw some initial branding thoughts, you know, since those kind of evolved they can be sent to the board. Yeah, I think they're they're still about probably a meeting or two from bringing it back to you guys. Uh but they're they're getting
096through some of it. Couple things they want to accomplish is um kind of taking big ideas and making them very specific. Um, and then, uh, currently the renderings that we're like reviewing these under are kind of generic and they want to dial the renderings specific locations in the school. So, we I mean we like it on a big white wall, but is that our big white wall and was it look good in that exact space? So, those are some of the next steps involved. I mean, I probably speak for all the board members, but you know, the look of the school is kind of the cool part. Yeah. So, I think maybe we would all like to kind of see that as it evolves. Yeah. I would just to Ron's point, Ryan's point, I think
097we're trying to get a lot of it cleaned up so we don't get here and you're like, "Wait a second. Why are there why are there uh mice all over the the school in terms of the the represent representation of the cheese maker. So, we we worked through some of those things. We're cleaning it up. Um, as Ryan said, I would anticipate that, you know, in the near future, we're going to have some renderings to share that quite confident that you'll be proud of. Yeah, that's the problem. The problem is when they first open the deck, like tell us what you love and what you hate. And the problem is most of it's like, oh, that's great and that's great. Oh, and that's great. Like you don't hate a lot of it, but then you
098have to really put the effort in to dial it in. So, and we haven't got to the granular level of like, you know, what does what does the classroom identifying sign look like? That's that's something that they'll also be working on. Yeah. Thanks. Good, good question, bro. Yeah, I'm out of my time. Shut them down. So, to to to make sure Ryan's getting the feedback he needs so there's no surprises if we bring a a Demco budget back, any other cries of outrage or feedback from board members on the $650,000 to furniture budget app. And I will follow up and say what we can bring back is the actual dialed in budget and the per dollar like the actual dollar increase 650 we're seeing as encompasses what the budget would be and we'll dial that
099in and then we can bring that back maybe as an actionable item once we know Yeah. And I assume you can then share some of the demo renderings and what spaces look like. Yep. And I mean potentially at that point I'll take the direction of the board, but we could even maybe if it gets approved then maybe Deco would come in and do a quick pass through with a slide deck so that you guys can see some of the furniture choices. One question on the budget. You were talking about the branding. There's there's no cost in here for the signage in the interior or exterior. Yeah. So that got rolled into uh the lower the lower line. It's about threequarters the way down that same section that says environmental branding. It's between teched equipment and
100baseball scoreboards. Um that 307,532. Uh that now encompasses uh the interior and the exterior signage because originally was not in their scope, but it was determined that it was best to be cohesive in the in the visuals of everything. So, if we gave that scope to them, then it would all be um speak the same design language about the building. So, I just didn't want another surprise. Yeah. No, we've uh we've signed exterior down to that line. So, you kind of let off with Right. Yeah. Good. Mike, you good? I'm good. Nicole, any any comments on this? I I like it. I mean, it's nice that Nikki was able to see what we're initially going to be getting versus what we can get that's going to last longer. It makes makes sense. I feel I
101I agree with the where folks are are headed here and also just appreciate um kind of a surprise for me, which is my own fault, that I didn't realize we had 874 outside of the owner contingency that was in the in the green right now. So, it's a it's a really good problem to have. It's a good problem to have. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions for the team here before we move on? One more question that I would have and we don't have to talk about it extent right now, but safety wise at the new high school. Um, are there specific areas that are going to be different uh setup? I know you go around to a lot of the new schools right now, hundreds of different ways, sectioning off and all that kind of
102stuff. And I'm just very curious as to what are we going to have, what's in the plan, those kind of things. And we don't really have to cover it right now, but maybe put something together, you know, for the next next time we come. Yeah, absolutely. We can have that discussion in more granular detail um uh if that it's appropriate for this meeting or if it's a sidebar and we can have whatever. I'm just I'm just very curious what that is going to be. More than happy to have that conversation. I'll take the lead of Jim on um on how we we handle that. But um yes, 100% and it's been well uh designed and thought out in regard. It was it was John number one to be completely honest when it came to design.
103So, but we actually had talked about that in the beginning I think before you were on um that we actually don't want to have that complete detail so that someone knows all the protocols that have been or all the measures of okay where we're most vulnerable to. Okay. Um so that's why it was very well thought out but not necessarily discussed. Okay. But I do think it's uh it's well worth your knowledge, right? Like you you to know it's it's very important and um and um we can have whatever that means of having that. Let's have it for sure. Bring that back next month. Yeah, we can do that. Um, like I said, I can do it and I I don't know what we need to do it with to preserve what Nikki was saying,
104but um, let's all talk it through. There's some larger standard safety issues that are in the mix like the secure entrance, things of that nature. It doesn't have to be extreme detail, I understand that portion of it, but just for the comfort of my own self and for anybody that's listening or watching or appreciate that question. No, it's great because it came out in the very beginning. All right. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks much. We're going to move on. You guys are welcome to stay for the duration. Um, thanks guys for coming. Yeah. Take care, guys. Oh, I'm sorry. Just a note, I I put you up early on the agenda so you didn't have to sit through the temporary operating budget discussion for See you guys. All right. Next up, uhformational item, we've
105got a activities and athletics report. I'm turn it over to Mr. Jup. Well, and while I like you could probably spend all night talking about furniture, I'm happy to transition to uh the student involvement here we have at MHS and all the different um opportunities. And I believe I shared with Joe and it sounds like it's up on your on your screen. So, I'm um I just have a few slides and then by all means um I'll pause for for any questions that you may have. Um the first one just kind of a general overview for all the the sports that we that we offer. There's um there's 25 sports, not all WIAA, a majority of them are um but I'll go into more details once we get into each of the seasons. I think
106they the asterric for for hockey for girls uh came earlier in the year at a meeting where uh it was uh an athlete had come to ask for that to be a sport. So, I appreciate you guys getting that back on. And it looks like for next year, we're going to have two girls that'll be playing in the co-op that's now going to be in Jane's. Uh, but again, I'll I'll go into more details um later in the presentation. Uh, the next slide is something I'm real proud of. I think for a school of just over 700 students, uh, we're extremely blessed for how many opportunities that we have for our students. I have this broken down. We have we have 31 activities and this number is kind of fluid just because each year there
107are a handful based on kind of student needs and as well as the adviserss. uh teachers that might have an interest and they leave etc. Uh but I've broken down into stipens so that these are paid and then the non-stipented um advisors is a combination of outside sources like an example would be uh big brothers big sisters um as well as um some some clubs that are that are volunteer that the adviserss are volunteer not getting paid. Um so we have some really really neat ones. So I'm happy to kind of pause on this point. We also have some some very successful ones. We got our musical and play. We have huge number. They've been very very successful. Our our forensics is extremely impressive as well. Um it's also kind of neat to see that
108we have a couple new new ones on the right hand side, but Dungeons and Dragons and anime club goal from a year. Something that that I really value for this job is to get as many kids involved as possible. So, it's it's neat to see some teachers have an idea to come and say, "Hey, I'm interested uh in studying this club." Great. Sounds good. At this point, there's there's no money available for it, but they'll help support you through that. So, if there's any questions or anything about this slide, are the non-stip is there a change to any of those or has that always been? Um, the reason I ask is I thought the key club received one. She the person that did that work for our Kuanas group was amazing. So, the I we're
109clear on the segment is not uh that would not be distributed money. So, a few other organizations like some of the big brothers too where they where they would come. So, so Key Club by excuse me, the Key Club by the Aquinus, right? That would then provide. I think there's a there's a couple on that side that are are that same. I think Junior Optimus is similar. So, yeah. Okay. I just I want to make sure. So, no no no money to the district but still need to allow those advisors that spend a lot of time to have some some source fun. Okay, moving on. Then the next one just kind of tying in the connection that we know that involved students are typically more successful students just because yes, it's important what they do
110in the classroom, but also to be involved. So this is kind of our 700 students, 297 different students um are involved within these 31 activities with an average GPA of 3.42. um within the 650 excuse me 665 total students meaning that like uh that there's a student that is involved uh in eight activities in fact I believe was actually your your your granddaughter um was if you if you take that just kind of the weighted meaning right so hers would be eight times more valuable of course because she's eight different activities so we have a total of 665 students involved if you look at it that way um and it's also impressive that we have 46 total staff that are involved uh within those different activities And now I'll just break down just briefly the
111uh seasons for the sports. So for the fall sports within within those um these numbers are relatively consistent from the previous year. Um I think the numbers that are in football was 71 this past year and I think we even have a handful more coming up this upcoming school year and we talked about adding a few JB JB2 level games to ensure that those kids have an opportunity because with 71 it becomes tight. Um and in fact soccer we're having the same thing. We're looking to kind of schedule a few additional games to allow those opportunities for those kids to um to get some more playing time. Um all the rest of the numbers are kind of eb and flow but are pretty similar. If you see for girls swimming that 18 number describe the
112co-op we are with nuclair. So that would mean there are 10 mlair girls and then there are eight um middle students and you see that there uh the fall and the spring we have our most students involved in sport. There's 250 that were involved in the um in the fall sports. You can see it broken down by by grade and by gender. This is the season that has the closest breakdown for gender for both boys and girls. What would a girls girls tennis what would that have been like two or three years ago? Well, um yeah. Yeah. Oh, for sure. It's impressive to see. I know that uh we were just speaking with with coach Bourne here recently saying that one of his right before he took over that the concern would to be to
113get rid of the program because there weren't high enough numbers. Sorry, we just talked about this at the um they were down to three players I believe. So it was one of the players dad pulled Gordon in just so that they his son was a senior could finish his um career otherwise they were yeah they were done. Well, one thing I'm and I'm really excited for, you know, it's just so cool to get these presentations to see the new school and follow that that process, but the sporting side of things and the that performing arts center is going to be incredible, but seeing that um tennis, one of the problems they have is only four courts at the high school, there's four courts at Wreck and used to be at Northeast. So, it's just such
114a pain to try to navigate that whole system. So, to be have it all in one location, um it's going to be great for of course all programs, but I'm excited for tennis to be able to be at one be at one spot. Yeah. Any other questions for the fall? Um, this this was this current school year we just finished up. Correct. Are we flipping where it's going to be a lot more girls swimming Monroe girls in the upcoming fall? No, not that I know. Uh, we don't have in fact we have a big junior class of Monroe girls. So, next year it will be similar and then I think it's going to drop off from that. Honestly, our our sixth through 8th grade current numbers that I now, of course, you don't know which
115kid decides to come out because in fact, this number wasn't going to even be eight. I think it was four or five and then there were two a couple students that one changed from volleyball, another one decided to last minute. So, I think uh but I think this is actually on the high side for the next handful of numbers or excuse me, the next handful of years. I think co kind of I will say cheer was cool to see cheer to be 11 that that ended up being a really nice we have a new cheer uh cheer coach did a really nice job to get numbers out and this upcoming year I think our numbers are even higher but we'll see 11 uh this last fall as well okay winter um winter's always a season
116that there's less sports so therefore there's less involvement so it's 116 total students that are involved as you can see these numbers here um one that the aster with uh excuse that I mentioned that with with um girls hockey, but boys hockey, same same as with swimming that we are a co-op, but for this sport, we do have a majority of the athletes that are in Monroe and that's 13 of the 21, but in that co-op, I think five or six other schools from the surrounding area. So, it's not just from one other school area. And then one thing I'm looking forward to is that one thing that we're really prioritizing is that girls wrestling. I think what girls wrestling and lacrosse are two fastest growing sports in our country uh right now. So, it's
117we only had two this past season, but we know we have a handful of middle school kids coming out. We've been kind of working to be creative, creatively finding ways to get more girls to be involved in wrestling because it's a great sport. We're looking forward to kind of getting those numbers uh where we'd like to see them. Any questions that question on that? Eric, I know you mentioned lacrosse. Has there been any push for any of that? No. I I didn't know anything about it until three years ago and now it's probably my favorite. Yeah, it's a cool sport and I mean the amount of athleticism that it takes is incredible. It's a tough sport, but it's also challenge for a community our side because even schools that would be I think was it
118I don't know if Montro does or I think that they're kind of going towards it but their concern is that when you take 15 20 25 kids from other sports where are they going to come from and then what's that going to do to their sports. Um so I'm intrigued what the future looks like because it is such a fast growing sport this point okay to not have it based on our numbers. Okay. And then in spring, um, spring, similar numbers to the fall, 215 athletes. Um, the I think the biggest kind of interesting piece in this one is just that the the gender disparity is quite sizable with 130 boys and 85 girls. Um, it is interesting though because we have a few sports that do have big numbers. Our softball numbers are are
119quite sizable and our boys tennis is huge. Um, our girls soccer numbers were a little smaller than they have in the past. Think about ways in which we can grow that. Um, but uh, yeah. that spring that spring sports. Any questions on spring sports? We had a really nice spring season. We had four of the IA teams, what was it? Four took, no, excuse me, five took first, two took second in the conference. We need to see the success we had in the first season. And the last one was probably a slide that uh you've seen in the past because I try to kind of dig through some spreadsheets to um to to pull that information to Bloom showcase the importance of being involved in not just of course these activities as well. Um and
120just shows that if you were involved in a sport or an activity you almost had an point GPA higher than not being involved. And then um for activities themselves just an activity the 2 and 97 students with that it's also nice to see the high GPA essentially the more older the student is the you know the correlation for the GPA is there. Um that's that's my information um new to this of course my first year really enjoyed the year I was really sure other information if there's other stuff that you'd like to have in the future I'm happy to provide any additional information or any other questions. Oh, do you happen to know off hand um speaking about GPA here in this um last slide, how many um of the athletes did get um like
121all state honors um for their academics? Yeah, I'm not I'm not too sure that I think it's it's interesting because each sport's a little bit different in how they handle their all state, right? So like uh sport like cross country I'm aware where if your team makes it to state and you have a 3 point whatever 3.5 GP I believe it is then you're then you're you know all state in that sport. So each one's kind of based on the success of the sport as well as the uh as well as the grade. So I honestly not too sure about I just feel like I see a lot you know a lot of it put out there which is their students first. Sure. Awesome. There are no questions. I I just want to say I
122was very excited. He's coming to a point where he's finishing out the year and newer to the job. But um I can't tell you how many compliments I've gotten from people in the community about Eric Chewacc and his performance. And so ear muff it. I'm going to say nice things about you for a little bit. But like Eric um has taken that job and attacked it with a level of excitement, enthusiasm, passion um that I think has been extremely wellreceived in the community. Um he's constantly at various activities and not all athletics. He has a passion to make sure that all kids are represented in this work. Um, this is one of those jobs that maybe you don't hear a lot about your ad unless there are things going wrong. And um, you guys need
123to know that Eric Dubet's doing a heck of a job for this our school, our kids, and our community. So, thanks, Eric, for all you're doing. I will totally echo that coming from the booster club side, too. It's just been so fantastic to be able to work with him and have his involvement, and he's always in contact with us. um you know helping us promote ourselves and then just partnering with him has just been so fantastic and we got to you know throw some flamingos in his yard. So thanks Eric. Appreciate you. Maybe just as a transitional statement to our next topic. It's also been a tough budget year on the athletic side in your first year as athletic director to be able to navigate some of the tough budget waters. Really appreciate your leadership
124there. Thank you Eric. All right, we've got one last item, new business approval of our temporary operating budget. And this is an action item. So, look to take action to approve the budget. We'll make sure we got the information you need to uh to take that action. So, turn over to to Ron. Yeah. So, basically uh what the temporary operating budget is is We develop our budget that goes to the annual meeting uh and the board reviews that in September uh and then at the annual meeting uh the community approves the first uh real budget that for for the district for the year. But we we have to have a temporary operating budget in place so that we can you know expend monies uh throughout the the summer up until we get get those approvals
125uh at the annual meeting in October. Um it is temporary in the sense of it's the best picture of what the budget looks like right now. It's up to date as of uh the staffing uh a lot of the places that we had in place uh at at last month. Uh now with that said, a lot of the new staff, I don't know what health insurance plan they're taking. Are they going to take single? Are they going to take family? Are they going to take none? Uh so there's going to be a lot of moving parts over the summer with that. Uh and we're also obviously as we discussed in the finance meeting really waiting to see what happens with the the state budget because that drives what the majority of our revenues are. And
126so uh the latest we've ever seen that come in is is early October. Uh so I certainly hope it'll come in a little earlier this year. We know that last year uh when we did our early projection uh going back to actually it was the spring of 2024 and then we looked at it again in the fall of 2024. Um we we knew we had to make some serious reductions. And so the the board tked uh uh administration to look at a million dollars worth of reductions uh with the hope that we would hit about a 2 million uh 2.5 2.055 055 million deficit. Right now, we're not there and there's some reasons for that. Some of it is our revenues have changed um between the decrease in our fund balance as well as some
127of the decrease in interest rates. Uh we reduced our budget in interest income. Um we had $100,000 in our budget previously. Uh we had a gift from uh Swiss County that was funding our uh elementary Spanish. That's going away. The good news is we have grant dollars coming in from GCDC. So that revenue line item stays the same. But where last year we didn't have any elementary Spanish staff to use that gift, so we didn't get the gift. Uh next year we know that we're going to be adding a teched teacher uh with with the dollars coming from GCDC. So what happens is you had the revenue last year budgeted but it ended up not coming to fruition because we didn't have the elementary Spanish. However, we didn't have the expenditures either. This coming year
128we don't have quote new revenues because that revenue budget line item is going to stay the same but we will have the expenditures associated with the new the new staff member. Uh some of our minor grants uh were not reauthorized. some of the, you know, get kids ahead and some of the other small ones that, uh, you know, were used to be tied to either some of the federal programs or to miscellaneous things. As of now, they've not been reallocated within the state budget that's coming out of the joint finance committee. And so, we assume some of those will be likely going away. Uh, and the other major factor was we knew we were going to be making a significant change to health care, but when we were looking at health care being about a
1295% increase, uh, those changes were actually probably going to well, not probably, those changes were expected to actually save us dollars on on our budget. Unfortunately, uh, our renewal came back at 19.5%. Uh and so we're still making significant changes to healthcare, probably even more significant than we originally looked at. Uh but that's to keep us somewhat costneutral there. So it's not eating up our whole budget. And so we're not going to see savings coming out of all those changes in the sense of yep, it's going to lower our deficit, but it's going to offset that entire amount of increase and make sure that that line item isn't growing. We are going out to uh uh bid uh this uh spring summer. Our health insurance renews January 1 and so there is some hope that
130it'll come down and it might be a little better, but uh I think that's going to be, you know, um getting back to that break even point probably likely be the best case scenario for us. Uh, you know, I had some notes in there in the cover about some of the uh the state budget and so we we've talked about that a little bit in finance and and I've shared enough things with you. I'm not going to jump into all those. Um, you know, there's not a lot of dollars came into the new state budget that we had hoped for and so um I won't go into all those. looking at uh some of the budget building docks. I'm going to start with the uh one that says uh uh June temporary operating budget by
131function for fund 10 that one. We don't typically look at uh our revenues by function. We look at them by object meaning what are they not what are they for. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time uh talking about the revenues uh by function. But um if you scroll down to page two uh at the bottom, you will start to see the expenditures appearing. And they really on page three is where they really pick up. And that far right column is the revised budget, meaning uh is what the title is, but it's really the percentage change. And so I'll point out a few of the big ones when we have them. Uh but I also will be a lot of times I'll be looking at where those breaks are. So if you
132start on the bottom of page two and you scroll down to the top of page three, the total for the undifferentiated curriculum uh which will show on your report is 10E some dashes and then one one and a bunch of dashes. That is all elementary education. And so the total for all elementary education grew at 1.94%. Uh and so one way we've done that is we've you know we've made the cuts in previous years. We don't have a lot of changes uh next year in uniffer in in the elementary area. We do have some staff changeovers. Uh but that budget really isn't significantly growing. However, at 1.94% it's certainly less than CPI and some of that is because of some of the adjustments we've made. You go to the next big group of dollars, the
133120s thousand functions. That's all like your subject area. So it's your it's your arts, it's your Englishes, it's your uh maths, it's it's and so really that typically applies to either specialty areas or when you talk about the middle and high school, the core areas. uh meaning they we look at it there not as ninth grade but we look at it as these are math teachers these are English teachers these are social studies teachers and so for all the 120,000s you see we actually have a reduction of 0 um 04% and so all those costs for all those programs uh nearly $8 million didn't really change year-over-year because of some of the uh the changes we made in the budget. Uh when it comes to um summer school, we made some changes in um our
134our summer school model and and as well as our our transportation. When you look at um the German line 1223 209, that program has gone away. Uh and so you see a few more significant outliers. you see in general music uh where we are going to be splitting uh part of our music teacher uh and it used to be split with uh library but now it's going to be uh split even more and so uh you see some significant savings in some line items moving to the 130,000s uh that's your vocational curriculum you actually see a 5.74% increase uh why is that a large part of that is because of the addition of the additional industrial arts teacher that's going to be funded by the gift or the grant from GCDC. Uh but it's it's
135it's a new cost to us on our budget, but that there'll be revenue the grant. It will. Yes. Now, as I said though, that's really replacing a grant dollar that used to be in a budget that we didn't really get, right? So, uh, so it's not going to show a $100,000 increase on the revenue side. That that budget is actually going to stay pretty static because we previously had the the gift from Swiss Colony that we didn't use. However, from from an expenditure side, yes, there are revenues that are coming to pay for that new expense. You then have all the co-curriculars um academic and athletics uh that uh Eric just talked about. You actually see that being pretty much static and and partly is we're going to have with the new salary schedule some
136changes in what some of those pays are. And so I'm guessing when we get to the end of the year, we're actually going to see a slight decrease uh in what the actual expense is. Uh, I was able to capture it for some areas, but there's just so much little dollars that that get that get spread out throughout that entire thing. It was tough for me to capture like truly to the penny exactly where all those uh were going to hit. The 170,000s, uh, once upon a time that used to be mainly gifted and talented, but once they recoded, uh, ELLL up there, the majority of that budget, the 17100 multilingual students, that's our ELLL budget. uh English limited learners um English as a second language it used to be called. You see uh that
137budget uh has been growing over the years as as we've applied more staff into those areas. U and special needs is closer to 5%. Yeah. So, and it's it's not special needs, it's be uh non-English-speaking students. Oh, I see. the 210,000s are are all special ed services. Um, and again, there's some uh changes in there. Some of it is we've had some staffing changes with new people being uh placed into roles. Some of it is just uh some of those line items uh uh I'm trying to think which ones are there. Uh some of it is just people that are still moving through the scale. So, uh they're Aren't many of those folks that have been here long enough where any of them are topped out on our salary schedules yet. 220s curriculum staff services.
138Uh you actually see a reduction there. Um part of that was as we made some of our changes, there was some reduction uh to the curriculum development budget line item. Um we also uh had a change in in how we are staffing our our libraries. uh both from we reduced one aid as well as a half of a a librarian and so that is the biggest chunk of the reductions that you're seeing there. General admin shows a slight reduction of 68%. Um you know we I lowered our legal budget a little bit because we're actually coming in even less than that this year. Uh, and so hopefully we'll get back to that's kind of back where our legal budget used to be was more in the $40,000 to $45,000 a year range. And so I'm
139hoping we're we'll be trending back in that direction again. Uh, office of the principles, most of that staff is uh both from the secretarial and administrative level um is is is the same. Uh, it's some of it gets into how the principles apply their building budgets. Uh, a lot of them end up putting some dollars there so that when a third grade classroom at the end of the year says, "I need new furniture," they then allocate it out to that area, but they hold it kind of in in their budget at at their level until they know what that's going to be. And then in the 250,000s, uh, you see a 4% reduction. Um, there's some reduction there in our transportation costs. Uh, we had a bus route reduction. And there's also some reductions there
140uh in in some of our building budgets. We have one uh custodial position that we're currently not filling. Uh and so that's a short-term solution because we know what we're going to need that position uh when the new high school is is open. Central services, you see uh an increase there. Uh that really is driven by uh we used to get uh -ate uh covered most of our phone costs. No longer covers phone costs. It covers our data costs uh but it doesn't cover uh some of our standalone phones that we still do have uh in our existing buildings. And so uh now that they're not getting a 70% discount that that's going to raise that budget line item. Uh the retirement benefits in the 290,000s, uh not a significant change there, 1.4%. Uh we're
141at the point now where we've kind of started to balance out where uh the savings that we're seeing uh from those receiving the old benefit is matching kind of with uh the the increase in people who are receiving the new benefit. So for a while there it was growing and now it's kind of leveled out and eventually it'll it should uh even see a slight reduction over time. the operating transfer to fund 27 uh in 411 there uh is showing less than a 1% growth again because of some of the reductions in in the special ed staffing that was made. General tuition payments um uh a couple of them you see that went up. Uh one is we don't know what that uh the 400 I apologize my eyes aren't as good as they once
142were. uh the 438,000 line item that is my best guess as to what the uh voucher school payment is going to be. Now granted that comes with an offsetting revenue that you know that's the one that we find out in October. Here's an additional amount you can levy to pay for students who are going to private voucher schools. And by the way, you know, here's the expense that we're going to take away from you as as a deduction in your aid. And so, uh, as you can see, two years ago that was 42,000. Last year it was 99,000. This year that we're in currently wrapping up, it grew to 173,000. So, I'm assuming that's going to be 220,000 or more next year. It'll be an offset of a revenue and expense, but it's something that
143does drive the total budget when you look at what what expense numbers are changing by. uh general tuition, open enrollment. Um we, you know, we we'd hoped we were going to drop a little further last year. The 195 is kind of kind of where we're landing. And so I I think that's a real number. Um do we hope that we'll recapture some of those people and lower that? Yep. But I think that's probably a more realistic number right now to to be leaving in the budget. grand total of all those expenses in fund 10. Uh you can see it's a 0.54% increase. And so really that's that's a product of that million dollar of reduction that we made in the last year offsetting for the most part any growth in in our budget that we
144had. And so uh our revenues have been staying pretty static over the years. And so as you have your CPI increases, uh the only way to keep that from growing is by making uh reductions uh and basically trying to keep your your expenditures flat as well. Quickly jump to uh the functions for 27 through 80. We won't go into these as nearly as much detail. Uh Ron, just quick question on the last one because that's just an overarching. So, I mean, when you take in the the revenue totals, the expense totals, so our our million dollars of cuts, we we ended up about $160,000 worth of savings this year over last year. Is is that what I'm seeing? No. Uh, we we truly had a million dollars of savings. um what what you're uh so
145I'm not sure how we're you know I think I I get what you're trying to say but uh so yeah so we actually saw our our expenditures increased by 170,000 however had we not made the million dollars of reductions our expenditures would have grew by 1.2 2 million like inflationary pressure and those kind of things not cut a million would be at 1.2 million right higher. So I mean you have your whether it be utilities, whether it be your purchase services, whether it be your staffing, salary and fringe, right? All those costs are increasing. And so had we not made a million dollars of reduction, uh instead of seeing aund uh 85 $180,000 uh increase to the budget, we would have seen a 1 nearly $2 million increase to the budget. because the the the
146budget reductions were real. They were done. U but it's just there was also new costs or increased costs that were go into the budget as well. I guess I'm just looking at it the draw down of our of our general fund. Last year we were 2.6 million loss. This year we're 2.441. So yeah, that was expected to actually grow. So, you know, it was uh you know, we you know, our deficit uh you know, had we not uh made those million reductions, that deficit was going to grow even more because again, our revenues aren't aren't growing at the rate that our expenditures are doing. So, had we let our expenditures grow by 1 point 2 million, uh you know, that 2.4 would be would be 3.4. for thank you. Yeah. And so that's where, you
147know, we were targeting hopefully that that 24 would be 2 million. Um, and we had some changes in in a few things that didn't allow that to be there. Now, again, I'm hoping that we can close that ground. The other thing we'll see before uh we get too far into this fall is, you know, where exactly that 26 came out. I'm anticipating it's going to be somewhat less than that. Um you know, when I looked uh today, uh you know, we're probably going to be, you know, 500 600,000 hopefully to the good on some of the expenditures. However, we're going to probably be a couple hundred thousand short on some of the revenues. And so, you know, maybe it's 400,000 less than that. Maybe it's a little better than that. Uh, I'd like to get
148it down to so it's 2 million instead of 26, but I don't know we're going to quite get there with some of the revenues lagging. Remind me again rough numbers if if that 26 is where we land for this year. Where does that leave our fund balance after? Started with about eight. So, that takes you down to about 54. So then another two four next school year and we're we're definitely in a bad bad place because then by let's see 27 28 by by 2930 we're we're right that's why we said we would have to identify any uh potential reductions that we were going to look at in advance of of running the referendum so that should the referendum not pass uh we would have to be queued up and ready to make those reductions.
149We couldn't we couldn't afford to wait till after to identify what those would be. Meaning no change in fund from the community as I look at this budget for 2526. We're that's short-term cash borrowing before the end of the next school year. Correct. Most likely. Yes. Yeah. Short-term cash borrowing is expensive. Yeah. And so that's why we we've done a great job of uh avoiding that for a number of years. So, I think as as we've said, I when I first came, uh, we were half million in the hole and we were, you know, paying $300,000 a year on interest and we've gone a lot of years without paying any interest for short-term cash flow borrowing. So, uh, it's not something I like to do. It's not an area I like to be in. U,
150you know, but it's something, uh, a lot of districts are in that situation. Uh so we're not unusual in that regards, but again I would rather spend money on uh people and programs for kids uh rather than for interest uh to you know a credit card payment for lack of a better word. looking at those other funds, um 127 um always has to balance out. Uh and so you'll see that the the revenues and the expenditures uh do balance. And with that said, uh what really is the big number is that first line. what's the operating transfer which is the money from fund 10 that is making fund 27 balance out and so uh it's been 4 million give or take for a number of years and uh with the reductions we we we keep
151making in in in special ed so that the costs don't grow it's been it's been hovering right around that number anywhere from you know 4-1 a couple years ago to to 38 and you know roughly 39 this last year so almost for costs. Again, there you see um in the 150,000 which is all the base pays uh you actually see, you know, or an increase of 2% but you see a couple of line items that had pretty significant decreases uh driven by you know some of the staffing changes. couple items line items you see increases partly that is uh just a reallocation like that emotional disturbed person our new person licensing has an LD license and so we have to recode them uh from ED to LD and so those two net out uh and
152then we did have uh the one area where we you know are just it's a specific program where we have a little more aid time but then we have aid savings down below in like the 159 170 So, for the most part, it's not a staffing change, per se, other than we've uh actually had to make some reductions to to keep it from growing more 1.98 increase for for that's for the educational cost of of of of teaching staff. You then get into the uh 210s, which is some of the uh other services where you get into your psyches, OT's, PTS. we had a reduction of an OT. Uh and so you see uh that was a 27% decrease in that line item. And so our cost of all those uh special ed services uh
153for for OT's, PTS, psych type people uh was a 6% reduction. And then you get into uh some of your other support services which are just some of your administration of it as well as um you know some of the allocations of of of dollars from IDEA and things of that nature uh and trainings and you see that budget basically reduced 1%. So pretty static there. Uh and then when you get into uh specialed transportation uh again we're hoping to see a slight reduction there. Uh we'll have to see at the end of the year if we're able to achieve that, but that's our goal right now. And then uh I didn't change the tuition payments. We'll those we'll just have to see what they shake out to be if we get any better uh
154information this fall. But uh total for special education EEN there you can see the expenditures uh a 0.4% increase. So again, uh offsetting any increased costs by making some of those reductions and you know bot staff and some of the other places that we had uh some small changes. Fun 38 we don't have anymore uh that that that's been expired. Uh and then fun 39 is the uh payments for the new high school. uh you see that the uh expenditures will always be a little more than the revenues and and that small amount of difference is basically just like with your home mortgage, the first payment of the year in the fall for us is is always um we have to have those dollars booked in advance so that we because we don't get the
155uh tax revenues until January, right? And so each year our interest cost becomes a little less. So the amount of money that we have to have to make that fall payment becomes a little less because our interest keeps getting a little less every year. And so um that's why you always see that our we'll always have a little bit more expenditure there than we do revenues. Fund 49 uh is the remainder of the project. Uh again, uh some of those interest revenues um some of those long-term investments um that used to come in and you know had been gaining interest for months on end for a couple three years for some of them they're going away. Most of our interest revenue over the remainder of the project are going to be short-term month-to-month interest revenues.
156Uh and obviously we still have uh as I mentioned earlier in in finance uh our our expenses are ramping up as we have more and more people on staff and and more and more of those uh subs uh work getting done but 50 um you can actually see I'll go all the way down to the bottom line uh we're projected right now to have a a net increase of 3750. Now, with that said, that's before the the allocation of dollars from uh fund 50 to the new project. Our fund balance during COVID uh ballooned from about 200,000 up to nearly 800,000. So, we're actually able to apply a number of uh that fund balance over to uh the new equipment that's going into the new high school. So, that's good because the DPI keeps telling
157us we need to lower our fund balance. And so that's that's one way we're going to be able to do that. Uh and and we've been very fortunate uh for years that our food service has operated in the black. For some districts, uh they end up making a transfer from fund 10 over to fund 50. So that's something we've not had to do. So we've been very fortunate there. And then fund 80 is the public library. Um basically uh for now using status quo with what their budget was from last year. They'll be getting us some new updated budget numbers during the course of this summer to put in there before we go to the annual meeting. I'll jump quickly over to uh fun 10 by object. We won't go through all the other uh
158funds by object, but if you pull up the fun 10 by object one just because this is how we typically look at uh the revenues. And so you can see um in in the first line with the current year property tax if if the joint finance committee's current allocation of saying, "Yep, we we have the $342 increase to um uh the revenue limit uh but we're not going to put any new dollars into uh general state aids." All those dollars then get passed on to the taxpayers and so you'd see it would be a 6% increase potentially. So I'm I'm hopeful that at the state level they they work on that and maybe come to some resolution there. Uh put some put some funding back into um the general aid um allocation for for schools.
159Interest on investments is a line I I told you that got reduced down to 250,000. Um and again partly it's interest rates but partly it is because our our our our balance is is cash balance is decreasing. Gifts uh 291 that's where you can see it's still staying pretty steady at that 100,000. It's just a question of uh this last year we really didn't end up getting it. So our our received is going to be less because we didn't run the elementary Spanish program. However, next year we will be getting uh the uh the grant dollars uh from GCDC uh to help fund the uh techad teacher. So the budget doesn't change. However, compared to what our actual for 2425 is, yes, we'll be getting dollars when we didn't have the actuals in 2425. And
160one thing right now equalization aid you see uh I I it's at 18950 uh basically the same as it was last year because that's what they're saying it's going to be. Every school's formula will sh will change a little bit based upon our expenditures in the in the previous year. So, how we spent compared to how other districts spent might change our number a little bit, but for uh the most part, I just kept it uh fairly the same because we, you know, they're not putting any additional allocation in there. Library aid, they've put money into library aid and so that that's been an increase that we saw this year and it's expected increase we'll have next year as well. Uh so that is the one area of aid that has been growing. And then
161for right now with the federal dollars, we we've kept them status quo. Obviously there was a little more uncertainty there, you know, u 3, four, five months ago as to, you know, were some of those going away and I can't say that some of them might not go away. U but some of that talk has been lessened as our federal government has other things they're dealing with at the moment. Uh so yeah on the revenue side uh you know 1.1% growth on on the revenues uh predominantly driven by the increase of the $342 in the in the revenue limit and again which if no dollars are allocated to the special ed are or to the uh general aid allocation then then that all becomes a cost on on on taxpayers. Where what did what did
162you where where do I find special ed revenue from the state? Special ed revenue from the state. Uh we then have to go to the going to make me pull up the next one. Uh you go to uh funds 27 through 80. Uh yeah finish by Nope. That's fine. I was done with that one. So if you go to the fund 27 to 80 by object and right at this the top is the fund 27 specialed uh budget uh and on the revenues you can see the handicap aid. I don't show it changing really with that with the amount that they ended up putting into it is is a not that significant and with some us making some staffing cuts in special ed. I really don't see that number moving much for us. Um because
163some of the reductions we're going to have in our special ed costs are going to reduce the amount of aid that we get. And so um you know adding a you know uh a 2 3% factor to it just doesn't doesn't change the ball that much. So uh hopeful that it comes in a little better and if it does then our our transfer becomes a little less. But um that that that's why you don't see that number moving significantly right now. I've got a question just to just to make sure I track the overall picture here. So this past school year we had a roughly half million dollar structural. We made a million dollars in fifths, but that wasn't deficit million dollars. You're anticipating that that would only reduce our deficit by roughly $450, $500,000.
164Yeah, we were trying we had we had a projected deficit of over three million and we were trying to get down to just over 2 million is what we were trying to do. Uh and then obviously as I pointed out some of the things that changed uh in the assumptions um you know the uh interest revenues uh I'd have to come back to my notes. Are there in your notes too uh of all the things I said when I first started talking? Let me get to that. I think you mentioned in finance, you know, like work and property insurance costs. Yeah, some of those went up more than that, but yeah, so some of the big drivers were obviously the reduction in the interest uh revenue. Um, you know, the fact that the GCDC uh
165grant is real new dollars, but that that gift line item would have been going down otherwise, but now we have a real cost there now that we've added a uh a teched teacher. And so um it's a funded pro program, but otherwise we would have been seeing that uh revenue line item go down 100,000 much like we did with uh the uh uh dollars for the interest. The other areas uh we mentioned certainly was the change in uh health costs was significant, right? I mean, we'd hoped that we would save about 240,000 of savings by making the change. We are seeing that savings. However, when you had a 19 a.5%, we're actually going to be able to make need to make even greater changes to make even more savings just to get back to zero.
166So those are some of the big reasons for for the adjustment from you know uh it going from about 31 down to nearly 21 instead being about 2.44 on top of that. So essentially we went from$2 and half dollar deficit to two and a half deficit and what came out of joint finance holds people are going to see an increase in the property tax most likely. Yeah. Just because the the only revenue that's coming to the school is is the increase in in our revenue limit. Obviously not growing at enough to keep up with our needs. However, without any uh additional uh state aids put into the factor, uh you know, it's it's it's all ends up being on on on our uh on our taxpayers. the only the only dollars the only quote new
167dollars and and you know I explain this every year and usually it's being facitious but this year unfortunately it's a bit true is no matter what your allocation is it you can say that we're putting I'm going to make up a number here this isn't the number you can say you're putting a hund00 million into you know and it's billions that are really put into public education right but let's use 100 million you can say you're putting $100 million into public education in the following year put a h 100 million1 into public education and say it's a historic investment in public education. True statement doesn't move the bar. When you look at this year's budget, we have a minuscule increase coming in to special education aid and no other dollars going into public education. the
168allowed increase to revenue limit is coming on the back of taxpayers and they're trying to do that to position it, you know, politically so that they can point the fingers at the governor for making that increase permanent. Um, but the reality is schools needed that increase and more and they also need and our taxpayers need some aid dollars coming into schools to help fund it. But the irony in the per pupil aid increase that's not oh I gota there there is a per pupil aid that's not changing the 320 the the revenue limit per pupil amount yes I mean that was the work of the legislature what the governor did was extend it beyond Yes. Exactly. Yeah. And and if you look at it, 342 is really only what what CPI is or for districts
169that are at the low end where we're at. If you're at the high end of that, that's not even keeping up with CPI any. So yeah, so over the course of the summer, uh we'll finalize these numbers before we take them to the uh um annual meeting. Hopefully some of these will get better. Hopefully the picture at the state level may get better. Um, and uh, you know, nothing has changed in the sense of there isn't some night on a white horse here that's saving us from having to look at a an operating referendum next spring. We're going to have to look at that operating referendum next spring. And we have to have a plan in place that should that not pass, uh, there's going to be significant reductions that will have to be made
170to balance the budget. questions from board members for administration. This is like for the benefit of all of us around this is a temporary operating budget until the September, October when we get state funding finalized and then the community will approve. Yeah. So, we'll have an update for this board in September. That will get approved to be taken to the annual meeting and then the annual meeting will be approved in October. And we always have that weird thing of about two weeks later or a week later we we finalize uh based upon what we finally learn some of those allegations are. I'm hoping we'll have a good sense of what the state picture is in advance so we can take that to the annual meeting. Uh worst case scenario, there's there's been years when they
171didn't finalize the state budget until about October 8th, and that's because DPI needs about a week to be able to run the numbers to figure out what everybody's aid is. So that's about the drop dead date that the legislators can do it. But it's horrible when it's that late. But I mean, do we have a deadline that we need to approve? The community needs to approve. we have to as a district we have to approve our levy uh by usually by November 6th so that um that we can then get it on our tax bills uh when they get sent out in December. So that's really the drop drop drop dead date. That's why we always have to make that adjustment in the end of October right after we have our annual meeting to to
172make those adjustments to the final dollars. See if there's any other questions discussion here. I do any board members want to share their their perspective or is that a motion? Motion to Mike F. Second by any discussion before we vote here. I'll just say thank you Ron and Joe for all the work you guys none of us looking at this feeling thrilled to be proven temporary temporary these numbers it's a pretty but like Phil said temporary business keep working picture that in favor say I I carries Thanksgal items I don't have board of education correspondence Got enough here. Committee reports start the end committee report. Thank you. Yeah, kind of took the words right out of my mouth. Um I think the board and admin need to start now. Um given this budget looking at
173what the future district is going to look like. Um, so I'd like to talk now about adding that to to future agendas to to create two scenarios. What what it looks like with the referendum and what it looks like without because we we really need to understand that as a board and as a district and as a community you and I had a conversation about creating a good timeline to that effect. Yeah. So, just to echo what you said tonight, Jim, um had shared some thoughts. And I think one of the things that Ron and I and the team are going to need to to do is start sketching out a path forward for two possible realities. Um and part of that's going to invol some decision- making for the board. Some of it's going
174to involve looking at options that we'll have to consider as a school district. Um, but I think it does make a lot of sense for us to be very clear about when we some of that going forward for the benefit of not only the staff but for the community. So that's work that we'll start putting together. We definitely want to be on the front end of that discussion um and not waiting too long so that people are feeling rushed with some important uh and thoughtful conversation. Yeah, because obviously we what we don't know yet is is what the state budget is, but we we do know that if the referendum doesn't doesn't pass, there's a huge hole there regardless, right? So, the semantics of is it this much or is it that much isn't isn't
175so big. We know we have to start tackling, you know, if this doesn't pass or it's going to be a big number. And even if we don't know exactly what that big number is until the state budget passes, we need to start preparing for it. Let's be surprised by the state budget, but history tells us anything, we won't be items and reports today. Five minutes for We'll count those down. Move us into close session. So I'll read this out. by Wisconsin state 195 compensation evaluation public governmental body jurisdiction responsibility to let administrator and staff position discuss for a motion motion by Nik say I Nikavis have to come back Welcome. back. Heather you. I mean, I've got 10:20 for a motion to convene into open session. Mike Pep, second by Nicole. All in favor say
176I. Nay. Motion carries. All right, we've got two action items tonight. Um, next up is the approval of exempt contracts and compensation school year. So I look for a motion to present contracts compensation as presented by administration [Music] Davis bill any discussion I'll be thank you Nikki I've got a comments that I want to share I'm going to break this up into two parts so as a alongside really trying to balance two critical imperatives. Uh one is phenomenal talent people who are responsible for our kids every day and responsible for moving this district forward in a tough talent environment. And so we need to remain competitive and we need to take care of our at the same time that more about even more about time. We're in a a tough budget budget constrained environment. the
177comments both that we voted on two weeks ago and tonight um reflect the board's um necessity and so we um mass base increase group of 2.95% step changes we approved uh professional staff 2.15% step increases And right now we're about to approve the same approach for our staff 2.9 base increase plus uh step changes compensation study from 2022 and with that is there any other discussion? All in favor say I post name. Motion carries. And finally, I'll look for a motion to approve the administrative proposal as presented by administration. Motion by second by Steve. Discussion. Want to make a particular note. administration contracts. Um we took the same approach for administration as recommended inter with a 2.95% increase and because of some of the static changes it's important to note this is a neutral surge
178year over year and I think it's important for everyone to understand that that is very uncommon in this day and net neutral for administrative school district and two special notes that um one I want to make a special call out to Joe as our interim superintendent in the past few months has taken on really two jobs the duties of being superintendent while covering his um his previous job a paying offer that he came to the board with retook on the interest and second also to take on compensation at a significant cost relative to the previous superintendent session um appreciate the administration's overall and thank Joel for his leadership this situation with that say hi I name motion carries. That'll look motion at 10:24. Motion by Mike, second by Nicole. All favor say I. Hi. Thanks
179everyone. Unplug. Hold on.