001And then all of the proper guys state. Good evening and thank you for being here this evening for our uh first public hearing on the 2026 budget. Uh this is a public hearing. Uh what that means is we're here to hear from you. Uh so first we will have a presentation from Miss is Miss Kulie or yes during our presentation this morning this evening. Good evening everyone. Tonight we're going to have a public hearing on the budget and I'm just going to go through some um some information about our current preliminary budget that's out there. One of the big things is our objectives and purpose with the budget. We need to provide an overview of the district's budget planning process. We include the timeline, key actions and decisionmaking approach. We have to outline proposed budget
002priorities alignment with the district strategic plan and student achievement goals. This is just a um slide of our district's strategic priorities and performance objectives. Um it falls under four main categories. students, our stakeholders, our employees, and stewardship. On this slide, I'm just including the dates and times of our public hearings. We have the one tonight, 6:00 p. p.m. May 7th. We will have another public hearing next week to also hear from the public. On May 14th at 6:00 p.m. We have our board millage rate public hearing number one and at 11:00 a.m. on June 11th and our second board milligate public hearing on the same day, June 11th at 6 pm. We have a third board mill rate public hearing at 6 p.m. on June 17th. This slide shows our district's millage rate and it's
003showing shown in a graph form and as you can see back in fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2021 we were at 18.881 mills. We have we have gone on a downward trend and we are we have reduced it in fiscal year 25 last year we were for this school year we reduced it to 17.481. So that is what our current rate is right now on this downward trend. This slide right here shows and this is the latest information that is available. It was looked up two days ago on the department of revenue. The latest information they have is our 2023 school millage rates. And I've listed several counties that I think are comparable to us. Some are larger, some are smaller. Tried to get some that were our size and also included Effingham and
004Brian, which is in our neighborhood. And on the right hand side, um, it is graphed. So you can see that we do fall in typically on the low end of the millage rate. And that number for 2023 was 17.631. And I did want to point out that that's even lower now. We're at 17.481. Um I Effingham a couple years ago was less than us. They're a much smaller district. Um Foresight is a little bit lower than us and that is the district that has an average income in excess of over 200,000. That's like north of Atlanta, the very expensive area. Um, so, um, I their houses are much pricier than ours. So, maybe that's why I'm assuming their millage rate can be a little bit lower because the houses are worth so much more. But
005anyway, you can kind of look there and see um the differences and see that we do fall on the low end of the millage rate. These are some of our influencing factors that go into the budget development. We look at local and state economic landscape, our enrollment for our students. We do a projection of that. Um, increased cost of sustaining operations, um, unfunded state mandates, which we're going to get into in a few minutes. There's quite a few. Uh, we also consider our strategic plan for our district. Um, we also, that's why we are here tonight. We're looking at the from input from the board parents and commu community engagement and we look at our historical budget investments. On this slide I am showing the general fund forecasted revenues and what we do is we
006take what our current general fund revenue budget is right now which is that top line. That's what we are this year. We're at six 619.5 million currently. And then we go in and right now we have done the local revenue. We do what things we think we're going to go up or down for next year. So our local revenue um we have done a projection. We have not received any data from the um tax digest on this um from the board of assessors office. We usually get that late May or in June sometime. But I did project a 10% increase in the tax digest which would give us an extra $36.9 million. That number is very subject to change because they do not give us any preliminary number. We just have to go based on
007what it looks like historically. And I did use a 10% which is um I don't think that's a conservative number. I think that's fairly realistic. But you know it could be higher, we could get more, we could get less. Um the state revenue adjustments they have not provided us with their final QBE numbers but they did give us preliminary numbers and this is the difference in them and we did use that. Um so I did you do have a good feeling about the state numbers because they did provide us. So QBE earnings we have right now um not final but it's 8.6 million more. Transportation they gave us an extra $36,000. nurses, 13,000. Um, and then the local charter supplement is going down. So, that increase is about nine million. As we know though, a
008lot of that is going to be in that um health insurance that they're doing for next year because it's going up quite a bit. So, they did have to they did come and cover their the people that they cover for the health insurance. The federal revenue adjustments, I left them the same because it's so it's such a question mark. We do really do not know what we're facing with the federal government. So at this point, I left it the same and did no increase or decrease. And that is also a number that is subject to change. So our final projected revenue at this point is million 665.4 million. Um on this slide I'm doing the general fund forecasted revenues in a graph format and as you can see the federal has nothing because I did
009not um figure in any kind of change. So that shows nothing. I showed that the local if what we have projected at 10% increase in the tax digest is 36.9 million and then the state which I feel better about that number because that's one of the few things we've actually gotten some information from is the 9 million. So this would mean that our projected revenues are increasing by $45.9 million if everything holds true on this. Now on this next slide, it's the general fund forecasted expenditures and that is exactly the same way as the revenues. I take what is in the general fund this year in fiscal year 25 um expenditure and there's right now currently $629.8 million in our budget for fiscal year 25 and um go down. I wanted to point out that
010in here we did last year on the board dock on February 7th, 2024. It was it was um approved by the board to spend for next year $2.99 million on textbooks. So that number was coming out of the fund balance, too. So, I just kind of wanted to put that in there as a it doesn't affect the budget on here per se, but I want you to know that that expenditure is in there. So, um this next red area is our state mandates and the teachers retirement rate increase is going from 20.78% to 21.94%. That is going to cost us $3.47 million. The state health insurance increase is really a big increase this year and just that is going to cost us $ 8.4 million. Our step increase for based on years of experience is
011going to cost us $4.2 million for a total of statemandated um changes of 16.1 million. our charter school. The supplement was shown on the preliminary that it was going down a little bit, but we did figure in increases to charter schools. So, that um amount going to charter schools will increase next year our based on our projections by $2 million. Other operating are right now we have proposed a 3% cost of living increase for all employees in our school district. That will cost us $8.7 million. We did earn 22 additional QBE earned positions with the state and that is going to cost us an extra 2.5 million. Our enrollment staffing variance, which are some of the changes that have been made and looked at, that is going to increase our staff. Some of that was
012like the assistant principles, more assistant principles, more counselors, that sort of thing. that comes up to 76 FTE and that's going to cost us an additional $5.3 million. Um the increase in non- salary per pupil aotment um we did at the budget office. We looked at what the state has increased the operating on the QBE and we had to go up because things have gone up in cost. That's to cover the school's non salary items such as textbooks, supplies, um computers, whatever the school needs to buy. We did increase that for this year because the cost of everything's going up. So that cost us an extra $756,000. Our vacancy factor, we increased the vacancy factor for next year to be an additional $10 million. That was due to the fact that we are running at
013around 685 to 710 with vacancies in our school district every month. I would say the average is about 685 for the year of vacancies with our school district. So the vacancy factor is based on the fact that if we have a position and it takes us a while to fill it um that money is sitting there. We have substitutes or something maybe for a teacher but other positions are sitting there. So that money is going back so that essentially I reduce the expenditures to give it back out to the school sites and to the departments. So, we did increase that by 10. Um, school startup cost, um, that is going down next year. I did leave money in there for Windsor High and for, um, Bloomingdale, which are getting new schools, but we we were
014able to take out the Groves, Palaski, and Godly Station that had gotten money and startup this year. Um, we also went through and tried to take a fine tooth comb and cut everything we could out of the central office. And so, as you can see, the central office reductions are over $10 million. So, the total for other operating went down $4.7 million. Now, the next grouping is our program improvements. And as you can see, those are all ads because that's adding stuff. Um, I think this has been discussed in the past by Mr. Ray, the supplemental retirement option for employees that are not on TRS, that's the 3% match, that's 805,000. And then the next three three are the things that um have been placed in based on uh the firm that came in and
015analyzed everything. And that is the cost for each of those. 5.6 million for classified hourly, 2 million for administrative, principles, APS, directors, and then teachers 12.68 million. uh high doage tutoring, we're including an extra 250. Differentiated school support, 750, expanded early childhood education, preK, 120, and pool repairs and operations, 975. And I do want to mention that that number does not include liability insurance on pools. So that would be you can count that will be more than a million if that is to stay in the budget. Our total expenditure amounts come up to $666.6 million which is an increase from this year of 36,838438 36,838,432. Um wanted to just put this out here because right now based on this budget we are using a $1.2 2 million fund balance. But I also wanted to note
016that we would actually be in the positive if it weren't for the fund balance that was already dictated from the year before. So technically, we would actually be showing a little bit of a surplus if those text if we didn't have to buy textbooks because we have to put that 2.99 million in for the textbooks. So, I kind of put that on there so people can kind of keep that in their mind because that was adopted by the board back in February of 2024. This is uh on this slide we have a general fund forecasted revenues and you can just see what it looks like um under the various areas. I tried to kind of color code it to go with like the first grouping was the statemandated and what's it costing us in a
017graph format. So um you can look across there the charter schools other operating program improvements and our fund balance. So that's where it shows how much the fund balance based on what we have right now on this slide. Um this is our strategic priority stewardship. I have just done a table which lists individually so you can see how much the revenues and expenditures are for each fund. We have mainly right now been discussing the general fund. But on the first one, you can see our revenues are projected at 665.4 million. Our expenditures at 666.6 million. So that is a little bit of a shortfall. Um debt service, capital projects, they're all equal revenues and expenditures. Um this next slide which shows the special revenue funds. I do want to point out that we do not
018know exactly what's facing us with these federal funds but we have kept it in there based on that we would receive them. So um that is what our budget is now. We're basing it as if we're not going to lose anything from what we have this year. So um those are all in on this slide right here for special revenue funds. Uh the next slide also is all the special revenue funds. You'll know all the titles, all the different federal monies that we receive and at the very bottom of that is the food service. All a question mark. Um the last few um funds that we have are our internal service fund, which is our workers compensation, unemployment and employee dental plan. And as you can see um at the bottom also is the total
019for everything. the employee dental plan. We now are we used to be self-insured and that's why those expenditures are out there to um utilize that money that was collected, but the workers comp um and unemployment um they're fairly small compared to all our other funds. But our total preliminary budget for revenues is 939.2 million for all funds and 941.6 for expenditures for all funds. On this slide right here, I'm showing the total expenditures and graphing it so you can look at it and see what percentage each fund makes up of it. And as you can see, of course, our very largest is our general fund at 70%. Um, our capital projects make up about 17.2%. Debt service is less than a p, it's like 0.03%. our special revenue funds which is uh some of that
020federal monies that's 11.57% and then our internal funds are only 39%. We got any there's any questions? All right. call. Um, Miss Kig, is there any way that um under say operating other operations that at least the computers you mentioned, is there some reason that can't be taken care of by East funds that it would have to be in the general fund? I I guess we don't really buy a lot of computers and I just want to I probably shouldn't have even used that as an example, but you can buy computers, but they do the esport does buy the majority of them. But if they need a little separate computer for some new person that comes in and is hired or something, they can use their funds to buy a computer, but eslash can certainly
021be used for computers. Okay. And is there anybody who you feel is really the east blocks expert who because you know we're always so old you can't use these blocks for this or that. But then I read about other and I I I realized I guess other districts if they write a east block plan that's different from ours maybe. But are we sure that we're using every of East Blot's funds that we can as opposed to general fund money? Is there somebody who really uh knows it backwards and forwards enough to know that and it's not just tossed off? Oh, no, we can't use it. We can do some research and um bring you back some information. Well, I guess our legal team is who I'm talking to. our legal team has given us guidance
022and we do recognize when you look across the state you see other places doing different things and I have raised that um but our legal team is providing the guidance and there's also you can also reach out to the state they do have contact points at the state that offer advice and input on east bloss but well no Mr. Dennis, if you tell me that you know for a fact that we can't do it, then I'm going to take your word for it. But I'm saying you feel confident that we are using every opportunity we possibly can legally to use our east blocks funds rather than general fund. I feel that we're taking the right approach and that we are respecting the text of the law while also, you know, using East Bloss where we're
023able to. I think that's that's our I think that's our philosophy is to read the law as written and and apply it as written. I think some folks get pretty aggressive about it, but I think that we that's that's our approach is we're taking the law seriously as it's written, but we also look around. We see what others are doing. We we reach out to the state when we feel like there could be a potential, you know, we want the guidance from them on something that we might want guidance from. Reach out to the state. But we are we're part of that legal community. We listen to what other people are doing, but primarily we look and see what the constitution actually says and we try to apply that text fairly. So is there no
024changing that? No, no way that between when did we start East back in 2008? There's nothing that has changed that might give us a little more uh latitude in terms of uh what we spended on. You'd have to be particular about what the question is, but I I it's a constitutional it's really the constitution that has not been changing for are we aggressive enough or are we very very cautious? I don't want us to get in trouble, but is there It just seems to me that perhaps we're over cautious and and not really um you know, if it's in reference to actual computer expenditures, majority of our computer expenses are in the blouse for equipment. I think that was your question, right? Yeah. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Majority of the expenses are in East Plus um
025three four and there's budget in five. Yes ma'am. Um and Mr. Chair as a point of clarification it is a public hearing and that was the intent of this meeting. Oh, I was forgive me for making a comment. I'll save it for We will feel feel free to send us your questions and we can provide answers at the finance committee meeting um this Wednesday. Yes. I'm sorry. Thank you, Mr. Jackson. All right. This is a public hearing. Um and we have one person here from the public. Uh so, uh Mr. Ronnie, it's been so long since I've spoken to you, I should probably introduce myself, right? Uh, I want to talk about millage rate. Um, my goal would be to convince you to stop using millage rate to compare school systems. So, let's look at
026a hypothetical situation. We'll take two counties, county one, county two. They're exactly the same size geographically. They have exactly the same population. They have exactly the same number of schools. Distribution of schools, the number of high schools, the number of elementary schools are exactly the same. They have the same number of students. Everything's basically the same except one thing. County one is a urban county, suburban county. County two is a rural county. So their prop uh property valuation is very different. Oh, the one other thing that was the same was their school budgets. Both uh county one and county two have say a million dollar a year school budget. So property valuations county one suburban high property values say hund00 million worth. So to pay for their million dollar school budget they need a millage
027rate of 01 01 times 100 million gives them the million dollars. County 2 is rural so it has lower property values say $50 million. So to generate their million-doll school budget, they need a millage rate of 0.02. 0.02 times $50 million is a million dollars. So we have county one with a millage rate of 0.01. County 2 mill rate of 0.02. So by the analysis we use here, we'd say, "Oh my gosh, county one's doing so much better. They have a lower mill rate." So what? They have the same budget, same schools, same people, same everything, but their property values are different. So millage rate really is a measure of property values, not of district efficiency. If you want to talk about district efficiency, the most reliable number to use would be the cost per
028student. Now, that's not a perfect measure. There's lots of problems with that, but it's a lot more relevant than a mill rate comparison. So, I would encourage as you're going through comparisons to look at cost per student. Miss Campbell's raised this once before. I didn't see cost per student anywhere in the budget this time. That's a much better measure. So, thank you. I hope you're convinced by that eloquent dissertation. Thank you. All right, we have no one else from the public here. Um, I'll accept the motion to adjurnn. It's moved and seconded. All in favor and public, if you're watching, attend our next one.