001I'd like to call the uh August USD 345 school board meeting to order. I guess we will start with the pledge of allegiance. Um Michelle, would you like to start it? I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for its one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> All right, public comments. >> Nobody signed up. Just need uh to adopt the agenda. I so moved. >> Second. >> It's been moved and second. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor raise a hand and say I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Uh, learning without limit. I guess I would like to introduce mi. Michael Stafer and his students that have won a national award for theater advocacy. and that was done at the international festival.
002So, Mr. Staer, welcome. >> Hello. Um, Michael Staer, the director of theater and uh wanted to share our joys with you all. Um, Seaman High School has been on the national stage at International Thespian Festival in Bloomington, Indiana. We won the uh 2025 theater schools outstanding impact award. So we're um one of the out of one of four out of all the nation to show the advocacy for theater. >> She was in charge of all of the theater schools months activities and we wouldn't have this award without her and so I'll give her a little time to speak. >> Hi, my name is Alyssa Greg and I was the theat's um historian for this year. uh this coming uh this past school year. And the way we got this award was we got to put
003together all these fun activities during the month of March like changing like once a week we would have like certain themes that we could go take pictures with. Like Thursday we had theater shirt Thursday and we had everyone dress up in their favorite theater shirt that they had and we took a group photo. Um on Tuesdays we did techie Tuesday. We dressed up all in black and then we on our Instagram um showed all of our techies that we had. So each week of the month we do like we would post all of our senior techies and then juniors and then so on and so forth. And we did the same for our actors and we just did all these fun little activities like we got to do like these painting activities. We did a
004lot of things that just um brought our theater group together so we could just have more fun. And we even invited a lot of people outside of our theater just to show what we had and like how fun it was to be in theater. And I think that's important just to show because it shows that everyone has a chance to have their own fun and all of that. I just want to thank you for supporting our theater department and letting it continue through. >> That's awesome. >> Congratulations. Thank you all because one of the criteria is advocating for a group with our board and so uh us me speaking to you in March really helped us out and uh Mr. McNorton when we went and spoke with him at the Kansas capital so u thank
005you very much. >> Great. Awesome. We have a certificate for you. >> Okay, great. pictures. >> All these pictures certificate. We'll get a picture in front of this. >> Why we got to stay >> good? Thank you. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Thank you, sir. >> Thank you. Congratulations. >> Good job. >> Thank you. >> Perfect. Uh, superintendent remarks. >> Thank you. Well, I'd just like to thank the SEA, Seaman Education Association, for negotiating really a great package for our uh certified staff. found out Friday um when we were doing our budget meeting that the average raises across the straight state were 3.4% and we're coming in with a raise of 3.6% for our staff. I want to personally thank Donna Street for leading the negotiations for SEA uh and Marty Ninstead of
006course with Donna and Braden and a few others sat in when necessary as well um who represented the board of education. I was impressed by Donna uh Street and Mary Beck's willingness to learn more about the school budgets um and the process. Uh SEA also negotiated several non-monetary items including several protections that they'll put into the negotiated agreement as well as three additional discretionary leave days. The certified staff has ratified the agreement and it is on tonight's agenda for the board to consider. Uh thank you to everyone actually that was involved in that process. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Um, next up is president remarks and um I would just like to take the time to uh talk about convocation and how great that was and want to welcome our new staff uh that has entered
007into the district and want to welcome them welcome them to our family. I would also like to recognize our teachers of the year, Anna Kennedy and Kelly Ginden, who is my family, um who are two fantastic teachers. Kelly is the elementary um district teacher of the year and Anna is the uh secondary teacher of the year for our district. And then also Tammy, who is our support staff person of the year. We we of course couldn't do a lot of the things that we do um without our staff support. So, want to uh congratulate them and also would like to recognize that two of our buildings within our district also had 100% teacher retention and that was North Fairview and Pleasant Hill Learning Campus and I thought that that was pretty amazing and that we
008should uh recognize them. Um I also want to recognize some of our new administrators to the group. Uh Sarah Cruz who is our new principal at Melk and uh Mr. Steve Meyer, who is the new assistant principal at Logan. And then Tanner Smith is our new director of HR. Welcome, Tanner. And then we also have um she's not new, but she made a move uh Jennifer Hill. She was recently at Milk and then she's our new principal at uh North Bear View. And I just wanted to recognize all of that um before we get started for this school year. But um of course we scroll social media and I found this post that I felt was really um appropriate. And so it said, "Schools just don't open in August. They're rebuilt by teachers and staff
009who give their summer so our kids have a fresh start. The amount of work it takes to reopen a school is an overlooked miracle every year, which I totally agree with. So, I just want to say thank you to all our teachers, any staff that um give up part of their summers to um help reopen our schools, especially our custodial and maintenance staff. Thank you, Lance, for their work and getting ready for our students to return. So, I just want to welcome everybody and and um tell them just to have a great year. So, anybody else? All right, moving forward. Uh disposition of business by consent. I need a motion. >> I so move. >> Second. >> Been moved and seconded. Any discussion on it? >> Hearing none. All in favor say I and raise
010your hand. >> I oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. All right. Uh discussion items. Megan Okay, good evening. Uh, I am just going to highlight one of our items on page two of the curriculum and instruction report and that is just to share with you what our next steps will be with staff in terms of our standards alignment goal that we have for this year. Uh so last Thursday after convocation staff had the opportunity to meet in collaborative teams and they heard this information um at that time and that is that throughout the district prek through 12 we want our um core areas of math, English, science and social studies to have representatives from those grade levels and content areas who will come together once every quarter towards the end of the quarter in order to
011meet and identify the standard ards that are the focus of that previous quarter and build out what we're going to call focus guides that identify the learning intentions, the success criteria, and um the measurement tool in order for when those standards are taught. So really to sum up um we're excited to work with staff members kind of in these small identified groups in order to really dive in and do the standards alignment work this year. So, that's kind of the big update and really excited to see where that takes us. So, any questions for me? >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Megan. >> Fedra, >> I would like to highlight our PD last week as well. Um, actually tomorrow, I keep forgetting this, tomorrow, Dr. Rich, our behavior specialist, is meeting with our pair professionals um
012working on reinforcement strategies. So, we're excited about that. Last week, I met with our certified staff and in efforts to to promote collaboration between spe special education, general education, parents, and administrators. Um, we decided that our beginning of the year PD would focus on our beliefs. Um, within the five within the five categories that are listed below, student centered beliefs, instructional beliefs, collaboration, social, emotional, and behavioral supports, and professional practices. We worked really well together, all 90 of us, at at Northern Hills and had a great afternoon and it was a really good discussion and we ended it with where do we go from here? Um, how do we promote this and how do we tie everything together so we're all on the same page. At the very bottom of my report, if you click
013on the link easy access document, that takes us to some of where we go from here and it's all of our professional development for the school year. Oh, that works or not. Never mind. Uh you guys can click on it. Um it will take us to our professional development for the school year. If not, I'll send you a PDF of it. But anyway, questions. >> The link doesn't >> Okay, I'll send it to you. >> Please do. >> I will shoot them here. >> We're doing >> uh Mr. Lance >> right here. >> Thank you, DJ. >> Mine's going to be short sweet this month. Uh this is the finish of Seaman High School's roof. I wanted to show some pictures of what the uh south side of the high school looks like. So >>
014they finished it. >> That's exciting. >> Right before first August. We were doing pretty good. And then Tammy Wayne um two years ago Sheriff Fest started the warmth or the capital. So that's what our crew did over the summer was finish that for Mrs. Wade. So we extended the kindergarten playground so it's not all mud and dirt. Now it's all mulch and they got a caterpillar in there now. So that's pretty much I'll have more next month when we're finished and stuff. >> Thanks. Any questions for Lance? Uh just a quick comment which is the high school parking lot had all the roofing supplies. We walk up there a lot. You guys did a nice job of keeping it clean and not like a total complete disaster of trash and everything blowing around. So >>
015there was several several several phone calls, but we got it. >> I didn't call you. >> Thanks, Lance. Uh Lisa sweet. So all righty. Um if you go to the enrollment history and I'm going to read off of my notes. Um okay. So state aid is determined by enrollment numbers and additional waitings that can be added to get a total amount of aid. Prior to the change in the law, districts were able to use either the first or second preceding year enrollment number. The law changed this for our budget last year, allowing a district to utilize the current year or only the one-year proceeding or the average of the one and two-year proceeding enrollment. Starting this year, districts will be required to use the current year or the preceding year enrollment to determine state aid.
016This means that the decline in enrollment impacts the budget at a faster pace than previously would have. Um, as we have discussed before, there continues to be a decline in enrollment. And according to the demographic study that was completed for our district, this trend will continue. We continue to see larger class sizes graduating while the incoming classes are smaller. This will directly impact the amount of state aid receive. Any questions? Mill levy, the big one. So, there are a lot of things that impact the tax formula when it comes to an individual's taxes that are paid. One of those is the mill levy. Um, one thing we have tried to do here at Seaman is to keep a steady or slightly lower mill rate as we continue to improve our district. For the 2526 school
017year, we were able to keep the mill levy steady again, continuing to meet our promise to the community and board. Last month, I asked the board to approve the proposed max revenue neutral rate levy of a 51.966. After completing the budget, we came in at 51.452. And this is actually lower than last year's, which was 51.466. Um, another key part is of the tax formula is the assessed valuation in the district. The assessed value has been growing and seen good growth over the last couple of years, which is similar to the trends in other districts. It is important to remember that as an individual's valuation goes up or down, so will the amount of taxes the individual pays. This is regardless of the mill rate that is put out by the school. Okay? So, we
018went over this last year, but it's a complicated uh formula. So, just to go back through, we wanted to show you guys and our audience how taxes are calculated on a residential home. So, um, as you guys are receiving these questions and wondering how it's done, you'll be able to use this information to give accurate answers. Taxes are calculated on the general fund differently than the other funds. This is a simple example of what goes into figuring out taxes when somebody will pay it on their residential home or property. Okay. So, when utilizing the general fund levy, the individual automatically receives a 75,000 tax exemption, which is an increase from two years ago was 40,000. Last year was the first year was 75,000. So, if you have a market value of a home of 200,000,
019your market value will automatically be reduced by 75,000, reducing your total market value to 125,000. This amount is then multiplied by the assessment rate which in this is 11.5%. The assessment rate is out of the control of the district. Our mil levies do not impact that assessment rate. These are decided at the state level and then given to the county treasures. In this example, the 125,000 is then multiplied by the 11.5% to reduce the assessed value to $14,375. Lastly, the 14,375 is multipid by the 20 mil general fund levy, which brings the general fund taxes due on this property $287.50. This money goes directly from the local county treasurer to the state and the state aid is received by the district through a deposit by the state. um the other calculations. So on the one
020side it's the general fund. The other side is how we calculate all other funds. Um which would be your bond and interest, um capital outlay, things like that. Uh this stays local and goes straight to your county treasurer and then to us. So we receive a payment from Shaunie and Jefferson County for those. So, if we're going to use the same 200,000 market value home um in this formula, they do not receive the 75,000 automatic exemption for all their funds. The 20 $200,000 market value will be multiplied by the 11.5 assessed value. This brings the assessed value down to 23,000. And the assessed value is then multiplied by the total remaining mill levies, which in our case is this was last year's 31.466 mills. Um the total taxes the would be due is $723.72 for
021the other um funds. Again when looking at these formulas the assessment rates are different based on the zone type. Um residential is the 11.5% which was used in the example. But if you have commercial it's 25% and agricultural is 30%. And these rates are not impacted by what anything our board does. Those are straight from the state. Good. That was a lot. Okay. All right. So, at the last meeting, we asked that you approve, Mr. Wilson um to be able to approve the year end transfers. So, I just brought them back for your review. Um from our general fund, we were able to move some funds into sped of $535,72. And from our supplemental general, we were able to move $787,143. All righty, the fun stuff. This year's budget. Okay, the budget we are presenting
022shows the district to be in good standing as long as we continue to follow the long-term plan for financial stability. This budget is reflective of the plan and the first budget reallocations that the board and the district committed to earlier this summer. We will continue to work together on the long-term plan to ensure that it aligns with the strategic goals set by the board. Um, one thing I do want to point out as you guys are reviewing this, you will see the actual expenditures versus the budgeted for this upcoming year. This is because we are we are told and have to overestimate the budget to have enough budget authority to spend if the need were to arise. The intention of overestiming is to try and avoid any re republication due to unknown expenditures arising. All
023righty. Uh bottom part is the revenue neutral rate. Um we are required to complete the revenue neutral form if the district plans to exceed the revenue neutral rate which we plan to for the 2526 school year. Um the revenue neutral rate means that the county looks at the tax revenue that you received from prior year and then calculates what the mill levy should be if you do not plan to receive any any additional funding. We are asking that the board approve the intent to exceed the revenue neutral rate while maintaining our promise to try and keep mil levies steady if not slightly declining. >> So next steps are we ask that you approve publishing the RNR in the FY26 budget information in the newspaper for our hearing next month. Any questions? questions for Lisa. >>
024Pretty simple. >> Thank you, Lisa. Thanks, Lisa. >> Thank you, >> Lisa. I guess you guys are going to do a action, right? >> Uh >> I said wanted to ask question before action. >> Yeah, that is that's the first thing on the list. Sorry. Uh just need a motion and if you can read it >> exactly as how it's printed, that would be great. on >> number nine >> the action item >> underneath the action item there's a motion >> star is where the actual motion is >> I thought we were on discussion >> it just went to here we >> just move >> I'm just moving right along where I'm Y >> yours looks a little different than mine does, but yeah, just that bottom part. >> Um, so I would make a
025motion to publish, right? >> Considering the needs assessment. No, >> you want to Yeah, >> just read. Okay. Make a motion to consider the building needs assessment approved >> publishing the notice of fiscal year 26 revenue neutral rate hearing in the metro news. >> It's been moved and second. Uh any more discussion? Candace will do a roll call vote. >> Diana Brody, >> yes. >> Braden Warner, >> yes. >> Donna McGinty, >> yes. >> Christy Wiler, >> yes. Joe Fell. >> Yes. >> Chris Travis. >> Yep. >> McNorton. >> Yes. >> Has been approved. >> Sorry. >> Same thing for >> Yes. >> number B. >> Yeah. And moving on. Consider publishing the notice of the >> It says FY25 budget. >> Be FY26. FY26 budget hearing. >> No, we just Oh, >> yeah. >>
026We have two. >> The motion is correct. >> Hearing. >> Yeah, the motion is >> This is just >> Madame President, I would make a motion to consider the building needs appro assessment approved publishing the notice of fiscal year 26 proposed budget in the Metro News. >> Second. Moved and second. Another roll call. >> Yes. Discussion. >> Oh, any discussion hearing? None. Roll call vote. Candace >> Diana Broaddine. >> Yes. >> Braden Warner. >> Yes. >> Donna McGinty. >> Yes. >> Christy Wiler. >> Yes. >> Michelle. >> Yes. >> Chris Travis. >> Yes. >> Al. >> Yes. >> Has been approved. >> Great. >> Thank you. Thank you, Lisa. >> Lisa. Sam. >> All right. Moving down the line, Mr. Wilson, policy updates. >> Yes, these are the policy updates that uh you had the
027opportunity to review at the last meeting. Um these are obviously your policies. So, if there's any suggestions for changing um we did uh correct the grammar on one of them um visitors to the school, but other than that, we would ask for you to approve those. Can we approve them all in one? >> You may. >> Just need a motion. >> I make a motion to appraine the policy updates as presented. >> Second. >> Uh, it's been moved and seconded. Any more discussion? I think this is really good because looking at the media one, the last time it was updated was like 07 >> and there's been a lot of changes since >> in media a little bit. >> Yeah. >> So, this is good. Thank you. Any other discussion? All right. All in favor
028say I. Raise your hand. >> I both same sign. Motion carries. Great. >> Great. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Well, now I make a motion to go into executive session to discuss negotiations pursuant to employer employee negotiations under coma and the open meeting will resume in the boardroom no later than how much time? So, uh, 640. >> So, >> 640. All in favor, raise your hand and say I >> second. >> Oh, sorry. >> Oh, >> we invite Marty and Mr. Wilson. >> Yes. >> Any discussion? Has it been moved and seconded? I don't know. I'm so far. >> Got it. I'm telling you, this seat is like nerve-wracking. >> You remember your first time? >> No. >> Do we need to invite you to because you know he's been that nice to you? >> Okay.
029Can I get a Can I get a motion? >> It's already been >> Okay. And seconded. >> And all in favor raise your hand. I >> oppose. Same side. >> Do I need to add another minute since I wasted? No, you're >> fine. Bringing us back together. We need a motion, please. >> I move that we accept the 2526 negotiated agreement as presented. >> Second. been moved and seconded. Any more well questions? Anything? Uh, all in favor raise your hand and say I. >> I. Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. And a second motion. >> My motion to uh establish the 2526 pay rate increases for employees not covered under the negotiated agreement. >> Second. Been moved and seconded. All in favor raise your hand and say I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Now I
030would like to make a motion to go into executive session to discuss student information pursuant to the exception relating to actions adversely or favor favorably affecting a student under coma. And the open meeting will resume in the boardroom no later than how much time? 8. >> Uh, no later than 7 o' and I would like to invite Mr. Wilson. >> All in favor raise your hand and say I >> oppose. Same sign. >> We're off. >> Motion carries. to executive session to discuss confidential employee information pursuant to the exception relating to personnel matters of non-elected personnel. And the open meeting will resume in the boardroom no later than I'm going uh 7:30, guys. And uh it'll just be the board for right now. Um we will invite people in as we need. >> Second. >>
031Been moved and seconded. All in favor raise your hand say I. >> I.