001[Music] Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Welcome back to the work session for the board of education on June 9th. We will continue with our calendar review. Um, as this is the last board meeting for the school year of 2425, we don't have a whole lot left, but we get to celebrate one more graduation on June 21st, a GAP graduation. Also, the Pter Learning Center solstice dinner. That's an excellent um opportunity to invest in science and exploration for our students out of the PLC. President Mash, if um everybody could please RSVP via the calendar invite to that. So if you've RSVPd, maybe change that to a yes or a no. Okay. Um and just indicate whether or not you're going to attend. I need to um for that tomorrow. Okay. For the solstice dinner.
002Yes. Yes. Thank you. Okay. And hopefully everyone has RSVPd for the GAP graduation as well. Um the UNCC legislative wrap-up, I attended that last year. That was really beneficial to hear from our um legislators as well as uh lobbyists for UNCC and for um district 6 and Bcus attends that as well. So that could be useful information. And then moving on to next year, July 21st will be our district leadership team kickoff. That's always a fun celebration. Um get to see everyone back and um our new administrators. Looks like the Habitat for Humanity breakfast as well. Um that's nice and early, 6:45. Um and then the community kickoff celebration if at all possible. That's a great um event to attend and welcome our students and families back. And then our first board meeting for the
003school year will be on August 11th, which is the first day of school. So any comments on the calendar? All right. And moving on to board member comments. Uh Mr. Matthews, would you like to start us off? Thank you, President Mash. Um it's been a while since we've gotten together uh formally, so there it seems like there have been a been a lot of things uh on the calendar and uh I think primarily though graduations. So we just got off graduations and just fantastic events. want to uh thank uh Teresa Meyers and and her team, also our grounds crew that sets all of that up and and their team and and just everybody for for pulling that off every year, our security uh and and all that they provide for us. They are just um
004fantastic events and I was the person that that skipped my college graduation and I and I skipped it. So, and this was my thinking at the time. I will never have to go to another graduation again in the rest of my life because I didn't even go to my own graduation. Uh I figured I I had an out for every graduation and now we we go to five I've probably gone to five a year for the last eight years and and they are they are so much fun. Uh people ask me, "Do you have to go to graduations?" and like well we don't we don't have to but they when you get to be that close and to see so much joy for for so many people uh it is just a fantastic opportunity for
005for board members and and an important important one. We have we have students that don't for some students it's it's not a it's not it's a big event but there will be other graduations in their lives. They will go on to college. they will go uh they will get grad school uh have grad school graduations. But for some of our students, we have some students that literally are working their way through high school. When I say that, I don't mean they're they're paying insurance to their parents on their car. They they pay rent to a sister or they pay rent to uh an uncle and and they literally work their way through through high school. and and is such an important event uh for our our graduates uh for our our students and and so
006thankful uh again for the the increase in graduation rates that we've seen 10 percentage points in in the last 10 years and and again what that what that means is about I think 150 more students probably more than that uh walking across the stage every every year and so that's u an important achievement for this district and and again just want to thank everybody, our principles, our our school staff for for fantastic uh graduations and I'm sad that next year I won't get to I mean I suppose I could go to graduation five graduations but um yeah when you're I think part of the joy is just being so close uh to to watching those kids go across the stage and uh I know we have board candidates here um tonight. I would just say
007uh I don't know how many are left but but make make sure you make that a priority because it's such an important event uh for for our board. Um and again such a joy to get to be a part of. Uh we also had some sad news and I think we'll we'll cover comments um or we'll take care of that in the business meeting but yeah our former board member uh John Hayley passed away and so just um yeah we're all as joyful as we were one weekend um we were we were very sad the next weekend and so uh but I think that's that's all I've got. President Mash, thank you very much Mr. Norwood. I will echo what Mr. Matthew said about the graduations and how special it is to get an opportunity
008to see the students, the families celebrate together and a lot of the first time high school graduates is pretty impressive to see as well too. Um the grounds crew, the principles, everybody did a great job and for the most part the weather held up for the most part. So I remember years past when we've had pouring rain, blistering winds, but this year for the most part I think they held up. So Dr. Campos Spitzy. Yes. Um wanted to start by wishing our district, community, uh students, families, and staff a happy pride month and uh to invite everyone to the third annual Gley Pride celebration. It'll be held at Ames Community College at their welcome center on Saturday, June 28th from noon to 5. I've gone the last two years and it's a really great time.
009Um, also wanted to comment on graduation. Um, we kicked it off on May 14th with our transitions graduation. Um, got a little bit of a downpour that day. Um, we had six more after that and looking forward to the GAP graduation on June 21st. Um, in my new role as a trustee for UNCC, I had four additional graduations. So, I was ting it up and I was like, I think I did 11 and I have one more to go. Um, but like uh director gosh I want to call you President Matthews. Like director Matthews mentioned um being up close hearing the commencement speakers, hearing the teachers speeches. Um the students get to pick a teacher every year or um somebody in their building to speak at the graduation. Um those are so special. The principal's
010comments are always awesome and um you know the students get all the jokes that the principal makes even if I don't. but uh really special moments um to share. Um I wanted to give a shout out to Camila, a senior at Northridge or soon to be senior at Northridge High School. She's also um part of the D6CTE um program in cosmetology. And she did um she gave me a manicure and a pedicure last Wednesday. I ruined my manicure over the weekend gardening. So, but you can look at my cute toes. And she did a great job. Um couple other comments. One is um just something on my mind that's weighing heavily. Um the budget reconciliation bill um that should be passed by the 4th of July by our um senators. Uh there the TRIO programs
011are on the line um whether funding will continue for the TRIO programs. And if you don't know what those are, please um get informed. But in in a few words, they're programs that encourage low-income and first generation students um to pursue uh post-secary education. So meaning university. Um Gley Dream Team is a TRIO program. And so 43% of their funding comes federally from TRIO, which would mean on 4th of July, if Trio gets eliminated, 43% of Gley Dream Team's funding will be eliminated. Um, as you know, Dream Team serves over 700 of our students in the district. Um, in our middle schools and our high schools. Um, and as you know, for the last, I think they have their bragging rights for six or seven years now. They've had a 100% high school graduation rate
012with the students they work with. Um, they're an amazing program, been around in our community for 35 years now. Um, since the late 1980s, and it would um it would just be a huge uh blow to to their budget. And so just thinking of them. And then the Gear Up program is not a TRIO program, but is also on the chopping block um and could be eliminated um by the 4th of July. And that that is also part of our budget. Actually, there's lots of line items for gear up in our very own budget. And so um so just something to think about. Obviously, our senators um will vote against the budget reconciliation bill. So they're as far as as far as calling your senator, you know, um they should vote the way pro- education
013way as far as that goes. Lots of words to say about how it'll impact healthcare, but that that's not the hat I'm wearing today. Um yeah, on a more positive note, I had a quick brag um which I've already shared with Dr. Pilch, but I got to meet UNCC's new vice president of student affairs. Um, who has two kids who will be coming into our district. Um, and he had such glowing things to say about district 6. Um, he's coming from a coastal, beautiful coastal town in Southern California, St. Louis Abyispo. Um, where he was raising his family. Um, has moved to Gley and was looking for a high school program. um one of his children has special needs, so they will actually be in our transitions program. Um but when he was looking at
014high schools, he was looking at AP offerings and all those things and was so impressed by our district's AP offerings um at Gley Central specifically, but more specifically was impressed that our district pays for the test. And so he said that is not the case in the town he came from in in California. And so there was a lot of inequity and who has access to AP classes and and who doesn't. and he was really impressed that um uh that finances are not a barrier for our students to take AP classes. So, that was really cool to hear. Um and then lastly, um I a lot of you already know, but officially announcing that I will be the parent of a wild cat for the fall of this year. So, I'm getting a French exchange
015student. Her name's um she'll be moving in with us first week of August and she's 16 and she'll be attending Gley Central. So, I will be getting a high school parent experience from Bordeaux, right? Um, she's close to Borderaux. Now, I'm forgetting where the name of the town, but it was close. Thank you, Miss Sullivan. Very cool experience that'll be. I've always wanted to do that host to family. So, um, I just want to also say the graduations are pretty big and, uh, very well planned out. They've always been very uh respectful and just a great um experience for all the kids. And I was only able to make the one this year, but it was a great honor because I got to accept the class for the graduating um class for where my son
016was going to at Frontier. And um I think the highlights for me is when you get to hear the student speeches because that's when you get to really understand what their experience was and uh they bring to the table just the truth and the honesty and it's it's just I think the graduation experience for them is more powerful than it is for anyone else just because again you get to hear of their experience and what they're going through and I um also appreciate how Frontier always goes through each of the students and I think university does that as well just because they're smaller schools, but they go through and uh identify what the next direction is and what the next step is for these students. And it's it's pretty impressive to see how many of
017them are going on to either trade schools or um a secondary education as well. So, it was fun. Congratulations on your son's graduation. And Mr. Bentley had a graduate as well. I guess I'll let you go next. Um yeah, graduations are fun. I missed most of them last year with some scheduling conflicts, but I you know obviously this year with the graduate I avoided those. Um it is really fun to see the different um spins that principles and that staff put on each one and and the different uh you know they're they have their own little tweaks and and history and and what do you call them? Traditions that they do. And so it's always really fun just to kind of to go through the process with with them and uh see see everybody put
018them on. They're always well ran. It's impressive they can, you know, you'd think it'd be like hurting cats, but they actually it looks like well trained cattle. It's it's pretty nice. So um the uh uh I did get to to go to university's graduation and and hand my son his diploma. So that was pretty special. Um, and I also one one thing that I didn't know was going on. It it's it is high school fishing season and um somehow my son got on a high school fishing team and I had to go be his adult boater for the day yesterday and um at at Horsetooth it's um sanctioned and everything and you have to have an adult drive the boat. I I don't fish like he does. So basically I I fished with him. I
019just drove the boat so that he was insurance wise legal and then he fished all day and him and his friend took second at the tournament yesterday. So that was fun to be part of. But that's like through Chassa. It's a club. Yeah. But it's Yeah, it's high school. They call it high school fishing. So nice. Yeah. Very cool. Pretty pretty exciting. Learn something every day. Yeah. Well, I also enjoyed attending all of the graduations. um and very impressed by the student speakers, their their vulnerability, their um hopeful hopeful speeches and um some of them shared, you know, that when they came to District 6, they didn't speak English. Um multiple languages they're giving the speeches in. So, our our future is bright with our district 6 graduates. Um Dr. Pil or Dr. Pil, Dr.
020Campos um mentioned um the budget bill and that we weren't talking about healthcare, but I actually did have the opportunity to go to Sunrise with a number of different healthc care leaders and um speak with Senator Hickinlooper about how the Medicaid cuts would affect District 6. Um and I've been on the board for a number of years, but I was not aware of all the all of the services that we provide to our students that are funded by Medicaid. Um, so our special education students receive many different services that are funded by Medicaid. Um, District 6 is able to apply for reimbursement for those um, services. We pay some of our school nurses and many of our health clerks through those funds as well as providing the AEDs that we have already seen saved the
021life of one of our parents um, and other medical supplies. So, it was um a useful conversation to explain to him the very real uh consequences of those cuts. Um it was also the CEO Alan Kwalls of of Banner Health, Marilyn Chalk of the UC Health Gley Hospital, I forget some of the other names, but um Northridge or Northridge Northridge North Range um their their director um they had a board member from Sunrise who also I believe has his doctorate in public health or something like that. So it was a really great conversation. um I think he was um interested in hearing those very specific details of how this would affect our community. And so I was able to share with not only do our special education students research services, but um you know concern
022for for the general health of our of our community with so many of our students living in poverty. So um yeah, hopefully that will be helpful um moving forward. Mrs. match, thank you for attending on my behalf to that event. She she went in my place because um I wanted to attend a community members celebration of life that afternoon and and so thank you for doing that. I appreciate you representing us. All right, the next item on our agenda is our 2020 2025 2026 budget adoption and so or proposed a budget. So I'll give that to Dr. Pilch and Miss Sponsor. Thank you, President Mash. Um, most of you were able to come in and meet with Miss Sponsor and me to to go over the budget and to um be able to ask questions
023oneonone if you had them. Um, Miss Sponsor has a a brief presentation here tonight and and is happy to take more questions and provide more clarification as needed. And then we'll we'll also have a presentation and the opportunity for a budget hearing for public to come in if they should choose to during the actual business meeting tonight. Thank you, Dr. Belch. Um I have a brief presentation and many of the charts will look familiar to you because we talked about them when we met. But um just to kind of refresh the process, the school finance act is introduced by the state legislature every year. Um last year, House Bill 241448 is the new public school financing formula and that was approved last year that kind of flows into this year's decisions around school finance. And
024so the first step that we were kind of waiting to see is if the legislature would approve starting the phase in process of the new funding formula. So in this actual school finance act for this year, House Bill 251320, they did agree to start the phase in of the new school finance act. Initially that was supposed to be phased in over six years. It was stretched out to be phased in over seven years, which is a really long time when you're looking at the career of a student. They could go through half of their educational career in that amount of time. But, um, we're at least starting the process of implementing the new funding formula. So, the the funding formula this year, um, increases the base per pupil funding by $195 and that's the rate
025of inflation. So 2.3%. And then what they did in terms of the phase in I think it's a little confusing but they looked at the calculation using the new formula compared that to the calculation using the old formula and they took 15% of that difference. So it's an increase of funding. Uh not a huge amount this first year but over time that will start um accumulating and eventually it will make a big difference. um once it's fully implemented over all seven years, that should be approximately $20 million to district 6. So that's a a good number and will definitely help us. Ironically, it's about the same amount that we had in our COVID relief funds every year. And so we were able to do a lot with that money. So, you know, thinking about what
026we might be able to do if we had 20 million in our budget, we could reimplement a lot of those things. Looking at all of our funds, uh we have revenue mostly coming from the state. So state equalization, otherwise known as the school finance act, equates uh 45% of our budget. We have grant revenue from federal and state sources. We have local property taxes that fund operations that is kind of governed by the school finance act. We have local property taxes that pay our bond debt and then we have local property taxes for our mill levy override. So you can see the three different pie slices there. Uh but that is a significant component of our budget. Uh we have other revenue. Um those could be oil and gas royalties for mineral rights that we
027own, rental of our buildings and facilities. A lot of different things kind of go into that bucket. So any questions on different revenue sources? And then looking at the appropriations by the different funds. Most of our appropriations go into the general funds and that is really where we can have this the most say and most control over how those funds are spent. All of those other fund types are pretty well either specifically through ballot language or through federal law. it's identified that the the revenue raised goes into these specific purposes. So now I'm going to talk just about the general fund. Uh we are projecting an increase of 59 students. So 0.0 or.3% increase. We felt like we needed to be conservative in our estimates of student enrollment. And so we really are I mean
028that's hardly any increase. So we wanted to be cautious about that. We'll see if we are accurate. We'd love to have more students than that, but we'll just have to wait and see. So our total funded pupil count for next year, we are projecting 22,437. Does that include preschool or is that that does not include preschool? That's a great question. So since preschool got moved into the universal preschool program, uh that no longer is funded through department of education, that's now funded through the department of early childhood. And so that's a whole different funding stream than what we used to have. So great question. Uh this is a look at the per pupil funding over time and this year we're projecting per pupil funding to be 11,733. It's interesting that it is about $1,000 increase
029since two years ago. So that's a pretty good increase over a pretty short amount of time. And then our total general fund revenue, we're projecting about 331 million for next year. As I mentioned, the school finance act is the biggest funding source for the general fund. That makes up 86% of our general fund. And then on the right hand side I have it broken out between what the state pays, what our local taxpayers pay and then what is coming through through uh specific ownership taxes. Then we have the smaller pieces of pie on the lefth hand side. We do uh provide services to charter schools and so they pay us for those services. That's 3%. We have indirect costs that we can charge on some of our grants and different uh funding sources that come
030in that kind of fill in that other bucket. And then our Millvy override makes up 7% of our general fund. And conversely, we spend the money on people primarily. And so 84% of the budget goes into salaries and benefits. and supplies, materials, and purchase services make up the rest. And here's another look at how the expenses um go out. The the program type and the object type are kind of governed by CDE and the way we have to account for things and that's so that it all can flow into the state for reporting purposes and that flows up to the federal government actually. So, what each of these categories encompass, there's more information in the budget book, but I think should be fairly explanatory. Instruction would be people and services that directly influence children in
031the classroom, operations and maintenance, that's Kent's world, with maintaining our buildings, paying for utilities, all of those things. And then here is what I refer to as the doughnut chart. Um, my point here is that the money flows to our schools in one way or the other, primarily through salaries and benefits to pay employees at each of the school. Uh, but really everything that we do goes to support schools. So it might not be a direct cost for the school, but it does impact the school and the environment in one way or the other. And then finally, I wanted to just highlight the general fund reserve account. We do have a pretty healthy rainy day savings account, which is a good place to be. We have spent some of our fund balance this year in
032some of our property purchases. And so that was intentional because that is a good use of one-time funding uh to to purchase an asset like that. But uh we don't really plan to spend any more of our fund balance in the near future. We'd like to keep that. It's helpful for our bond rating and um just generally it it looks really good when the state does their uh financial fiscal health analysis of school districts. So this is a good number to be paying attention to. So that's all I have, but if you have questions, I'm happy to answer. when we looked at the the income per pupil going going up um and it's you said about $1,000 in the last two years, but if you look look on down it's about $4,000 over the over
033the last probably eight years um per pupil is how much of that is the elimination of the budget stabilization factor? A lot of that is um go back here. Did I pass it? Yeah, I think you did. There. There you go. There you go. So really 2016 through 21 where it's really pretty much flat. Um that was heavily influenced by the budget stabilization factor. Then when the legislature started having a little bit more money to work with, that's when they started trying to buy down that stabilization factor. And you can see that in the numbers. You can also tell that in the past really three years, we've had substantial inflation. And since the law says that funding for schools has to be increased by the rate of inflation every year, I think you're seeing that
034also in the numbers over the last three years. Thank you. It's a good chance just to thank our legislators for we're finally getting rid of the budget stabilization factor because it was about 15 to 20 million million dollars our district would lose every year uh in those 17 1819 right around in there. Yep. And cumulatively. Yeah. But much even before that. Yep. All right. I don't see any more comments. Thank you, Miss Sponselor, for making it so easy to see. I like all of the different types of pies and donuts and but um this is really good news and um thank you to Dr. Pilch and Mr. Matthews and our our lobbyists for continuing to work hard to get the funding formula fixed. And I mean 15% is obviously a long ways from completely instituted
035but it's that's a healthy start I think. So all right, we are now to debriefing the work session. I'll let Miss Sullivan, you start at this time. Thank you for your presentation and uh most importantly, I don't think this ever gets mentioned, but your budget book um you do a very nice job of putting that together. It's very self-explanatory and makes go for a good read at home. Thank you for the time you always put into that. Dr. Kim. Yeah. um want to echo Director Sullivan's appreciation. Um I also approved uh UNCC's budget on Friday and their graphics are not nearly as beautiful as yours. I was just like, where's the donut? Um but yes, you make it so easy, so transparent. I wish like everybody in our community would go and look at the
036budget um just to see. I know I talked to you before the session, but um the the equity you see, you know, the kids the schools that are most impacted are almost always getting the most money and um it's just really cool to see um that play out. And then uh I also wanted to thank you guys for including in the report to the community um on the very last page change and challenges what's next um the transparency around um our $7 million deficit um this year and clearly just listing out where the cuts were made. Um and then I like the quote they included from Dr. Pilch. It's very hard to make cuts like this without impacting schools. And then when we see that that donut where like the money is all going to
037schools when there's a $7 million deficit, like Dr. Dear Drafilch said, it's really hard not to hit the schools. That said, I'm also hopeful that seven years from now when we have those $20 million that we might go to precoid or was it during COVID that we got to decrease the student to staff ratio. Um so that would be awesome to see. May I President Mash? Um, so I was on a call today with several superintendents from um from around the state and what I see is in districts that didn't need to make cuts this year or made fewer cuts, they did not give a staff increase. And so we, you know, we've just stayed committed to to giving an increase to all of our staff and be staying competitive with salaries. But um I
038mean I just want to remind everyone that's the trade-off that we made really was do we do that additional staff increase across all of our employee groups or do do we lower or increase class size a little bit and and have fewer fewer staff and as the last page of your um that brochure you pointed out says Brenda, we tried to make the cuts up here first here in the district office um but you just can't make, you know, $7 million worth of cuts without there being some impact on the schools and and our instructional technology department um took a significant brunt of that cut. Um nearly $3 million of that cut. So um you know, we're you know, we came together and and we figured it out. You all know that when I started
039with you, I think earlier in the year, we were looking at anywhere from 12 to 20 million we thought we would be cutting. And so the the funding from the state came out much better than we had anticipated early on. That's right. Thank you, Mr. Norwood. I will echo thank you to Miss Sponsor. What a great job. Enjoyed meeting with you last week as well, too. It's amazing the the the magic that you can work with the budget. So, thank you, Mr. Matthews. just echo that again and and uh it it is a really informative document that Megan puts together every year. I would encourage as I think Dr. Campos Spitzy said anyone in the community if you want to understand the school district there's all kinds of information that's not directly related to the
040budget like uh demographics on in on each school. You can find out so much information about our school district just by it's it's a lengthy document. It's 215 pages, but you can find out so much information about how money is spent and how the school district is run. Again, would encourage those that are running for for the office of of school board to to check that out. It's it's very informative and thank you so much um sponsorally Mr. Bell. Yeah, Ditto. Um the budget's always fun to look at. Megan does a great job and it's it's very comforting to have the confidence of of continuous and and multiple longunning audits, flawless audits. Um it makes our job a lot easier to not have to second guess and worry about the finances and if if and
041when or where they're going and the transparency is is very much appreciated. Um they're always well put together and easy to read and full of really valuable information. It's really easy to put a budget together and fluff it and look here why we're doing stuff over here and you know you get those kind of financial people and it's really frustrating but Megan's not one of them and and it's nice. So appreciate your your hard work on this. I know it's a giant portion of your job. So yes, I also did also welcome or echo all of that information. Um, I was just looking too. It has like the mission statement of each school, which is is kind of fun, too. Um, if if you didn't know the mission school of Brentwood Middle School, you can
042find it there. So, um, yes, thank you very much. And, um, thank you to our pro prospective candidates for coming and getting a little more information. Um, at this point, we will take a break and see you all back for our business meeting. This meeting is [Music]