001it's not like i have to sit down tomorrow check one two check check so [Music] sorry foreign the meeting will begin in three minutes but i know if you want me to i can't if you hopefully don't hope of the rain is also true is i think that looking from the hooks it's seven should i get started you ready good evening everyone i called to order the 2021 annual meeting of the river falls board of education so welcome and thank you for attending this meeting in particular i want to welcome members of the school board the administration and members of the community who are here for this meeting tonight the first order of business is to elect a chairperson who is going to guide the annual meeting so at this point are there any nominations
002for chairperson yes thank you this is raleigh janetsky and he has just nominated dr bauman are there any other nominations for chairperson if not the nominations are closed and elaine bauman is affirmed as the chairperson for the 2021 annual meeting thank you for agreeing to do this elaine and the podium is yours good evening the agenda for this evening is found on page three of the handbook as you came in i would now like to appoint doug witty parliamentarian for the annual meeting i would also like to appoint alan tuchenhagen clerk of the annual meeting at this time i ask superintendent benson to provide the state of the district presentation thank you dr bauman each year during our annual meeting we like to provide the public with a just a real quick kind of a
003brief snapshot kind of update you related to our upcoming school year touch on a few challenges and opportunities and so we have a little powerpoint presentation to help me walk through a few of those highlights excellent so again what lies ahead what's on our radar what are some of those challenges and opportunities i'll start next slide please just to always refer back to our district mission and our district priorities that have a strong foundation on what we do as a district the things that kind of drive our work and so i'll just share briefly with you that mission statement next slide you can see here it's really the it's it's what we're about it's what we do this is our formal mission statement to be an innovative leader in personalized learning ensuring the development of
004every student's unique potential to excel as responsible productive global citizens facilitated by a forward-thinking staff and of course in a safe nurturing and collaborative environment we have some priorities and we've held true to these next slide please the we've held true to these priorities the last couple of years and we feel very strongly that they do in fact guide a lot of our work they help us to make budgetary decisions they help us to improve upon our curriculum and in our instructional practices in the classroom and so the first priority listed to provide social emotional support for students and staff second one to increase our connectedness of traditionally marginalized students and of course the third one addressing achievement gaps we want to focus on the growth we aren't going to completely change our academic achievement
005numbers overnight but what we do want to continue to work on is the growth of each individual student's achievement so next slide please a couple challenges and hopefully some opportunities here again we want to maximize the learning opportunities for all of our students we know that there may be some financial challenges we have questions that remain unanswered down the road two years from now because this two-year budget cycle at the state level the state recognized that districts across the nation frankly were receiving federal covet relief money and in the process of that our state decided to channel their revenues elsewhere and not into the two-year budget cycle for schools and we're fine we're fine for now but the question will be in two years where will we be at with funding and so that's to
006stay tuned on with that bus transportation we just talked in a meeting previously about some challenges that we have i'm sure you're all seeing reading and hearing about other districts that are struggling to find enough drivers we know also in addition to that that our community continues to grow we see new homes and apartments we consult with the city about housing development to help anticipate our potential enrollment increases and so again that's a challenge for us with bus transportation facilities i'm going to drill in on that a little bit in a minute i'll talk more about the facility needs enrollment continues to be a question mark enrollment drives not only our finances but it also influences the number of staff we need the amount of space the number of classrooms the number of the amount
007of facilities and so on we have in the past historically been on a steady increase with enrollment however this last year we were down a bit and so we are anxious to get what is known as our third friday count is our official new enrollment count for this year we'll have that all ironed out here in the next couple of weeks know where we're at specifically with this year's enrollment we're going to continue to look at enrollment trends moving forward as well to help in our understanding of other related needs facility and so on obviously we want to hire and retain high quality staff and that affects a lot of our decisions as well what kind of support are we providing staff with what kind of educational learning opportunities for our employees do we have
008what kind of pay structure do we have are we competitive in the wage market those are influences i put on here maybe a tad bit risky but i decided to go for it that quite frankly one of the challenges we have right now is we need to manage what i choose to call the politics of crt the critical race theory conversation that is taking place again across our nation and to some extent here locally and how does that align with our current eid work which is equity inclusivity and diversity and how are we managing all of the politics with that giving honest transparent truthful communication around what kind of work we are doing in this district specifically to increase opportunities for all children and then of course i'd be remiss not to put covet on
009there as a definite challenge next slide please so some of the commitments these next couple of slides i labeled them commitments for this year just to point out a few to focus on student engagement continuing to improve those conditions that advance a safe welcoming and engaging set of experiences for all of our students in all of our opportunities next slide please professional learning community plc is the acronym for that we're pretty jazzed and excited about a new commitment and dedication that our district has made to building on those learning and sharing opportunities plc is bringing people together bringing staff together unifying our vision in creating a culture of learning for us the adults it's about putting a focus continually on what is best for our kids and increasing those learning opportunities for kids and what
010can we do as adults to learn more about how to more effectively help our students to reach more and to learn more and to do more it's a process of sharing techniques and analyzing data adjusting instructional methods and basically it's just how do we continually improve our practices for the sake of our children next slide please facility planning i said i was going to come back to that right now on the most immediate horizon we have the need to find out a plan for where our renaissance alternative high school will be located right now we have a temporary placement at hagstead hall we appreciate our partnership with the university they helped us establish space in that building we know that we can be in there all of this year we know that we can be
011in there part of next year hegstad is eventually going to be tore down and there will be a new 110 million dollar science and technology building put in place over there and so the university is working through their timeline with the the excitement they have around receiving the funds for that building and that will affect how long we can stay in the building before they begin to tear down and build new in addition to that facility need we would be remiss to not also look at and talk about and look into the future and discuss some other facility needs that our community has an interest in including everything from a school forest some new opportunities that we have there to identifying that enrollment trend that i mentioned earlier to be sure that we have appropriate
012classroom space in our elementary classroom specifically as well as middle school and high school growth and some other facility needs and so we'll look at all of those but we have the most immediate thing right now in front of us is to find a new home for our renaissance alternative charter school next slide please forest got a big event coming up i got to put in a shameless plug here on october 12th we're inviting the public we have the school forest dream big event coming up where we're inviting the public to come in and help us to dream big about what are some of the opportunities that we share what do we share for our vision and what can be done with that school forest property that recently we now have obtained new access to
013the property through a partnership with the kinney river land trust and the purchase of land that they have made that adjoins our property and in the process improves our access of getting to our school forest that had previously been land locked for decades so we're really really excited about trail development eventually having a facility on that property curriculum development building on those kind of opportunities that we we have a tremendous vision for and a great deal of support not only through the kine river land trust but other local organizations and entities as well as individual citizens so if you're so inclined please feel free to join us on october 12th as we all dream big next slide kovid we're certainly trying to apply lessons that we have learned in balancing the best interest of our
014entire community with the best interests of our students and staff we've learned much we're going to continue to lean on science and medical expert opinions as we move forward but we also have learned some things in-house and we have started this school year we're really excited about having all of our kids in school five days a week compared to last year next slide again just wanted to say thank you we understand the responsibility that we all have and the duty to serve our students parents and community now and always we truly appreciate that responsibility and we take it very seriously so we appreciate your support in keeping our schools here in river falls an amazing place for our kids to learn play and grow thank you next slide one more one more slide thank you
015superintendent benson i would now like to ask chad smarawa to provide the 2021-2022 school year budget presentation ah thank you 2021 the year we've just wrapped up um financially was a year of many contingency plans built on contingency plans that were necessary in order to balance our budget last year and to make it through strongly this upcoming year looks to again be another year where we're going to be working very hard to balance our budget to um and to keep everything in alignment but the plan we are presenting here tonight does do that and so i'll be talking through some of those high points as we go through officially my presentation starts on page six and seven a couple of the areas that i'm gonna talk about um that are high points i think of
016our financial management here in the district over the past few years um is and i'll explain these in greater detail in a moment but the first is our low property tax rate as compared to our neighboring districts uh the next one will be our relatively speaking high standard and poor's bond rating we have a very reasonable fund balance that we've maintained here in the district which strengthens our financial viability and finally we have very reasonable per pupil spending as compared to our neighboring school districts turning the page on to number eight the first area i'm going to talk about is the mill rate i think as you can see the graphic does a good job of showing where river falls falls in terms of the school tax rate per on as equated on a per
017thousand dollar value of your home you can see these are our neighboring districts and the most recent data available from last year shows that we are solidly at the bottom so the value that we're providing is quite high our fund balance is a measure of the level of funds that we keep on hand to be able to avoid short-term borrowing borrowing as a district we look at that as an expense and we want to try and reduce that fewer dollars going out for that means more dollars on student focus programs and in the classroom now while this measure is relative to each district's unique financial situation and details you can see that for us 27 percent which is just above the board's uh policy of approximately 25 to 30 percent we fall right in meeting
018our policy and we fall right in the middle of our neighboring districts and we've continued to maintain this over the past fiscal year and our plan that we have in front of you that i'll be talking about in a minute does continue to maintain that strong fund balance the next page is the state allowed funds that we're allowed to take in on a per pupil basis now there's a long history that plays into why river falls is a little bit lower than the average but as you can see we are we do fall below that average of approximately ten thousand two hundred dollars so obviously we're providing quite a high level of value in in terms of our spending and versus our tax rate and then just kind of to wrap it up here with
019our financial high points which is the standard poor rating is basically kind of like an grade you get as a student in the classroom and there are many levels but we have the second highest bond rating that is possible and there are very few school districts in the state of wisconsin that are able to maintain that and a lot of it's due to our financial fiscal management here in the district but also a lot of it is due to our local economy the strength of our local economy the uh income levels of our pr of our local of our local taxpayers but bottom line this is we achieve quite a high grade and why it's important is that um on our most recent referendum and there may be those in the future coming many years
020down the road but it means we're able to borrow for a lesser rate because we're considered to to have a relatively speaking lower level of risk of not repaying so that's kind of the the big grade there that caps off our financial story for today what i'm talking about here for the remainder of our time is the 2122 budget uh that is we're proposing here for you tonight as i mentioned earlier the budget is balanced the budget is going to deliver the budget that's in front of you is going to deliver a tax mill rate of about 7.98 which is lower than our neighboring districts and is also a reduction from last year it's about a 3.8 percent reduction in the mill rate so the levy that we're proposing here tonight is approximately 200 000
021higher than last year which is relatively speaking last dozen years much lower than the average as well the following pages 13 through i believe it is 18 cover very detailed financial information about the district which i'd be happy to meet with anyone who is interested to discuss this but these are the details of our district's budget again a balanced budget a fund balance that's strong and continues to be strong and a mill rate that is decreasing thank you mr sumawa i would now like to ask if we have a motion to set and approve the school board salaries for the 2021 school year okay mike davis moved do i have a second raleigh janetsky seconds for the same rate as last year or for same as last year my parliamentarian reminded me mike are you
022setting it for the same rate as last year yes [Music] and the second is for the same rate as last year okay thank you probably okay procedural question here show of hands or voice vote okay all um all in favor of the motion to set the school board salary rates at let's see what do we have here 200 annually for the board members with the exception of the clerk and president and treasurer who will receive 3 600 annually all in favor signify by raising your hand do we need an actual account are you counting do you have a number okay 28 and those opposed okay the eyes have it the levy has been set the next item is the resolution to set the tax levy for the 2021-22 school year do i have a motion
023to approve the resolution to set the tax levy as presented on page 12. mike so moved mike thompson do i have a second second could i have your name please pardon me bob schultz thoughts okay thank you todd okay so we have a second and a motion or a motion and a second getting ahead of myself here to set the rate as proposed on page 12 all in favor with a show of hands please all in favor all opposed same sign the eyes carry at this time the meeting is adjourned thank you very much for your attendance and appreciation yeah you