Special Work Session Board Meeting- May 12, 2026

001All right, it is 5:00 pm on May 12th, 2026. We are here for our quarterly budget work session here at the Woodford County Central Office. Call to order and we have for roll call. We have four of the members here in person. We have one member, Miss Springgate, joining virtually. Tonight's uh session is going to begin with the superintendent's capstone presentation. So, I will turn it over to you, Dr. Jones. >> Thank you. >> Well, I'm excited to be here and excited to present my capstone presentation to um the board members and the community. Um once again, um our theme this year really has been Unite the Hive. Um harnessing innovation, vision, and excellence. And we've said we've all year we've said all voices are united in building the next generation of excellence in Woodford

002County. I want to begin by thanking some very special people. Um I need to start off by thanking my family because they've made the greatest sacrifices this year to be honest um as I have taken on um this new role. And I just want to thank my husband Blake um all four of my children. um my mom and my dad um they always take my calls no matter what and they have been so supportive um this year. I want to thank the board specifically because um it meant the world to me. Probably the highlight of my career that all five of you voted for me. That that has meant a great deal to me and your support this year has been um incredible. Um Miss Terry Morgan, my mentor, is here tonight. I want to

003specifically thank her um for her continued uh guidance, sharing all of her expertise and um just everything she's done for me this year, as well as my executive coach, Dr. Fred Carter, who is also here. They have been incredibly supportive and um are part of the successful year that we've had here in Woodford County. So, thank you Jesse Raburn, Elaine Bailey, and Dr. Raburn, as well as Mr. Ryan Asher um could not have we would not have had the success we've had this year without these individuals and they've surrounded me as a new superintendent and have continued to make this such a great um a great year and a great school system and just to continue the excellence um that we've always had in Woodford County and I just thank them for their support. My

004um central office hive has been incredible. Um our w our entire staff as well as our students, Woodford County, you make me want to be an even better leader every day to support you and to to um continue to lead this district. Our judge executive James K, Mayor Laura Dake, and Mayor Grayson Vandergrift. I cannot tell you how many times especially during the weather uh situations we've had this year that they were on the phone with me all hours of the night. Um they were, you know, we were talking about how do we problem solve? How do we get this road clear? And and they've just we are so incredibly blessed to have the support of both of our city governments and our judge executives. So, thank you all for that. my hive groups this

005year. Our hive groups from our employee classified certified um student hive groups, our family caregiver hive group hive groups um you have been incredible to help with two-way communication and to um really give me input into what needs to happen um next and um how to communicate back out to stakeholders through these groups. Um there's a group I call the dreamers and they know who they are and I want to thank them um specifically for all of their support this year and um we are about to really be able to do some really great things with weave um with our hall of fame and um just excited about um what's coming for that. Want to thank Baird Financial Group, Kelly Merc, Matt Robbins. I they've been incredibly supportive and um every step of the way

006this year um what can we do? Let's problem solve. Let's come to the table and they've they've been incredible. Uh Bill Adams with Stutter and then our consultant Mark Patrick who has supported us um through our um with our budget work this year. Amazing. Amazing. So, thank you. I know that's a large group of people, but um I think I'm just I'm thankful for each one of you. So, my professional growth plan goal one um the board asked that um I establish a unified district vision aligned to student success and community priorities. And I have been incredibly um encouraged by that process. I'm thankful for Stutter that led us through that process, but I'm very excited to see um the work that came out of that with our strategic vision, our uh our vision statement,

007our mission, and our new motto um legacy of excellence, future of opportunity. the other. So my goal was um by June 30th develop and implement a clear district-wide strategic vision statement in collaboration with the board of education and all stakeholder groups ensuring alignment with strategic priorities and improved communication across schools and departments. And with the four pillars um of our strategic vision, you do see those as priorities, the things that we've just mentioned as the priorities of our district. So I'm very excited about that. Um the draft mission and vision was adopted in January of this year and we truly are aligning everything that we do as a board, as district leadership, school leadership to accomplishing that vision. Uh goal two was to strengthen community trust and the internal culture through transparent communication and stakeholder

008engagement. The goal was by June 30th to design and implement a district-wide communication and engagement plan that increases transparency, fosters trust, and includes feedback loops with internal and external stakeholders through our work with the budget transparency, our budget um uh committee, the work that we've done with hive groups, u conducting rounding with employees across the district, um community listening sessions, s um I've been able to establish a a cadence of communication along with our hive highlights each week um to really be able to um build trust with both our internal and external stakeholders and we'll continue to do so. So standard one is strategic leadership and standard one talks about the superintendent creates the conditions necessary for re-imagining and articulating the district's vision, mission, and goals through clear communication, strategic planning, and effective leadership. The

009superintendent ensures alignment with state and local priorities, establishing the foundation for continuous improvement in student achievement and district success. Superintendent also works collaboratively with the board of education to define and establish those pri district priorities ensuring a shared focus on advancing the district's mission and goals. And um previously what I just mentioned about um with our work with Stutter, our strategic vision, our strategic um our vision statement, mission statement, and our motto. Um we truly are moving forward with this goal very clearly. So I'm very thankful for that. some of the pictures you'll see. Um, I was honored uh to be asked by the governor to speak um at one of his Thursday updates advocating for pre preK for all. And that was an incredible experience. and I it was an honor to represent Woodford

010County Public Schools in a very noble um way and a topic and um an area of advocacy that's very near to our needs here and and our strategic needs in Woodford County. So um there's some other images here. You see um giving a hive award to one of our incredible employees at a board member or board meeting recently. Um and you can see different images from opening day um with board members as well as our ribbon cutting of our um new facility athletic facilities um at the high school. So the evidence that that I have linked in here, you'll see u my 30 60 90day plan. Um my professional growth plan which we've already talked about um the strategic vision focus groups. We had focus groups working on the strategic vision um from community to

011family um employees, students, our board members. Um and so th those are linked in here as well as our um steering committee for the vision and our community survey that went out. We had almost 800 people respond to that community survey which was a wonderful response rate. Our board retreat from December and the commitment statements that we've committed to as a school board. Um our vi mission vision motto and strategic plans linked in here. And then one of the key uh communication pieces that we've included this year that I'm really proud of is the the board brief that goes out and it summarizes um after the board meetings um the decisions that were made, some of the key areas so that stakeholders can get a synopsis of what the board meeting looked like and what

012decisions were made. And that's been a really um I think a very important piece in building um the strategic uh vision and um building trust. We also have a refocus schoolboard tab on the website that um with the goal of making it um very clear what our board does, what our statements, our uh beliefs are as well as um when board meetings are, who your board members are, that sort of thing. Standard two is instructional leadership and the superintendent develops and sustains a district culture that prioritizes student learning by fostering high expectations, instructional instructional equity and coherence. Superintendent ensures that all students receive the support they need to succeed regardless of background. Instructional leadership engages educators, students, and families in the learning process, addressing the whole child's development, preparing them to meet the community's evolving

013needs, and adapting to an everchanging landscape of technology. So, some of the images here that you will see are just some incredible classrooms that I was able to visit this year. Um, I was able to also give a um speech, a state of the district speech um to our community members um in Midway at Midway University. And also you will see an image of um a press release about our um EMS and firefighting um pathways that we just started this year. So, lots of um pictures of just that represent a great year in instructional leadership in our district. We just found out that we are the first um district to be accredited through Cognia for um I'll have to look at Mr. Asher >> competencybased education. We are the first district in Kentucky to be

014accredited for that. And so that's been a huge honor. And um Mr. Asher has done an incredible job and um we've been able to work together to um to really move us forward uh continuing the vision of the portrait of a learner. Um you'll see LinkedIn as well elementary, middle, and high school student hive quarterly meetings. Those have been very pivotal in giving us input as a school system and school leaders as well on what do we need to adapt, what do we need to change, what do we need to address um to meet the instructional needs of our students and students are very honest. I don't know if you know that, but they are very honest and that's been very helpful for us to know kind of what our next moves are. Um, another

015thing that I'm proud of is our high quality instructional resource alignment. um really looking for um resources that support the excellent educators that we have in this system in this district so that teachers don't have to build everything from scratch. Um they have high quality instructional resources. uh professional growth plans. I've taken a um intentional approach with professional growth plans to really align professional growth needs of those that I evaluate um to match the needs of our district as well. So that they are also growing professionally but they're advancing our district as well. And then there are multi-tered support system data reviews that we look at quarterly. Um, our leadership summit this summer was awesome. We brought all of our um, leaders together to really look at how do we continue to advance um, toward

016the implementation of the portrait of a learner. Um, and then our leadership retreat this summer with our um, school level administrators and district administrators. um my presentation to them about leaders bring clarity, they bring accountability, and they're visible to their the folks that they're leading. And then the learning walks that that we've been able to do this year. Standard three, cultural leadership. Superintendent embraces the district's culture and traditions to create conditions for exemplary performance by aligning aligning the work of all stakeholders with the district's mission. The superintendent promotes equity, trust, and shared accountability to ensure that the district culture supports the success of every student. Superintendent ensures that the community has opportunities to provide input on local accountability measures, aligning instructional practices and district priorities with community needs. something we're very excited about um that

017we are about to launch our alumni association with county public schools and part of that's part of our strategic plan and our strategic vision because we have such incredible alumni all over the world um including that live right here in Woodford County of course and we all all our alumni want to be involved in that continuing to build um excellence uh with our public school system. So, that's one example. You can see a lot of uh images here with our house system um meeting students this summer uh just meet and greets with students before I even started um the school year. And then um you'll see one image of um a collaborative meeting with central office where we were creating our purpose statement as a central office. And so that's just an example of um

018building the culture, building trust. So for standard three, you'll see um hive highlights that we that I put out once a week um to communicate all highlights of what's going the great things that are going on in our school system, my work with supporting the hall of fame, weave, and then now our alumni association. I love our hive awards. That's been a highlight of the year. people nominating individuals for our hive awards that that are presented at our board meetings. And again, those are for individuals who harness innovation, vision, or excellence. And we've had some incredible winners this year. Rebranding work this year is another example of the culture and traditions. We love the motto legacy of excellence, future of opportunity, and we're very excited to launch that publicly soon. Um, our community survey is

019an example, the state of the district speech that I was able to give to our um, community leaders at Midway University. Work with the workforce development council, the chamber of commerce. Um, I've been able to present at Verscell City Council, Midway City Council, and the fiscal court. And then also again our community hive quarterly meetings have been incredibly important for building the culture. Human resources superintendent ensures the district is a professional learning community with effective systems for recruiting, developing and retaining highquality staff through distributed leadership and fair evaluation practices. The superintendent establishes a supportive environment that prioritizes professional growth and accountability. The superintendent also ensures compliance with all federal and state employment laws through ongoing review and monitoring of district processes. You can see several examples of our wonderful employees in this district. um from

020our transportation department to our maintenance staff working on the ice situation that uh that we had this year which was unprecedented. Uh you can see uh a picture an image of me with a group of um administrators at the Woodford County Women's Conference which is was an incredible experience. Um you can see our director of nursing or health services, Miss Chrissy Evans there with students. We have an incredible um workforce. We have an incredible staff here in Woodford County and I'm so thankful um for the work that we've been able to do together this year. And um you can see several examples of um evidence here. Something that we do every week with central office when we meet with the cohive is I have them identify their five priorities for the week and then we

021I go through them as a superintendent and um we talk about where do we need to collaborate what do we want to accomplish that week each person um and that's called koka and you'll think of the song probably in your head but that's central office communication and accountability you'll also see cohive agendas linked in as well as administrator meeting agendas, um quarterly hive meetings. Um the central office reorganization has been a big part of um really trying to realign around our strategic vision that skilled and committed teams. That's the second pillar of our vision. Truly trying to do a better job of uh with our hiring, our orientation, and our onboarding of our employees. You'll see our impact survey results all increased across the board significantly this year. We're really proud of that. Um our

022best practice academy for leadership, you'll see evidence there of um me being able to work with our administrators and build their leadership skills this year. And yeah, so those are some key pieces of evidence. And finally, um, standard five, organizational leadership. Superintendent ensures the district's operations and resources are efficiently organized to support instructional priorities and student safety by aligning systems for budgeting, facilities, and communication. The superintendent provides the operational stability, key word there, stability required for the district's success. Superintendent also ensures ongoing communication with the board about the district's financial stability and resource alignment with strategic priorities. Um you can see once again you can see um our incredible uh partnership we have with for sales PD our chief Sutton uh chief of our police force chief Sutton. You can see um the several employees

023uh throughout these images who are just committed to ensuring that our systems are well aligned and that they take us to the next level of excellence for our vision. I'm really proud of the budget transparency tab. um that has been key in trying to be very transparent but also upfront about um our budget challenges as well as solutions. And I will say that solutions have come from everyone. We have received solutions from everyone to from um turning sprinklers off on football fields to um can we another another suggestion that I just had um recently um well actually before the winter was let's centralize custod let's centralize our purchasing of our um products for our schools and that has been an incredible I that that has saved us so much money. So, that's just an example

024of everyone coming together and being able to um reduce spending even this school year um by 7% which is incredible. Um as well as looking for long-term solutions. The budget road show was another thing that our my classified certified hive recommended and I really thought that was very went very well. We talked about um in all of the schools kind of where we are, where we're going, um how we're going to close that gap. And then um you'll see other um pieces of evidence here, including the winter weather road system. That's another example of a system I'm really proud of that our county and our city governments as well as our school system came together during all the crazy winter weather that we had this year to truly problem solve. multiple times a day to

025target roads to get students back into school as soon as possible. And then again, our impact survey data um has has gone up across the board and in all standards and so we're really proud of that. It has truly been my honor this year to serve Woodford County Public Schools. Um it's been the highlight of my career and I look forward to um what we'll continue to accomplish. So, thank you all very much. Thank you very much for presenting. And I believe we're also gonna invite Dr. Carter. Did you want to come up and say something? And Miss Morgan, if you want to as well, you just come up to this table and hit the light or hit the button on the microphone. I think it's behind the laptop. It might be on the actual

026>> Ah, got it. >> Okay. Uh, >> thank you. I'm Fred Carter. I'm a retired school superintendent. Currently live in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Since I retired for the past 15 years, I've had the privilege of working with every new superintendent in Kentucky as their executive coach and uh been a fun ride. Actually retired, re-retired last year and then they asked me if I would work with Dr. Jones and I was thrilled to to do that. So, kind of kept my foot in the game a little bit, but I've heard always heard great things about Woodford County and u as we shared in our earlier meeting, you guys are so blessed because you get all the advantages of of Lexington without having the things that are not so advantageous. Uh and also you have a beautiful

027beautiful county, beautiful school district, uh kids who are succeeding uh beyond uh other districts and uh just a very very bright future. I think when uh when a board hires a superintendent, a new superintendent, they uh often have something in mind. Hopefully they do. And uh since we're in horse country, I'll say uh I think boards can hire either workh horses or show horses. And if they hire a show horse, that in my opinion, that's someone who's looking for the title of superintendent of the year or looking for the title of uh uh you know, some kind of personal glory. But I sense you hired a workhorse. You hired someone who rolled up their sleeves and came in and and I have not one time this year that I've been working with Dr. Jones. I

028have not one time heard her say anything to the effect that will make me look good or that will make me stronger in the community or anything like that. Instead, she said, "You know what? That's a really tough decision, but if we put the kids first, this is what needs to happen." And honestly, that's what you have to have. That's what you want to have in a new superintendent. She's had a year with challenges, as all new superintendents have. Uh sometimes it's personnel, sometimes it's uh cuts that have to be made, sometimes it's finances, and sometimes it's all the above plus others. But uh the key to a successful district is not a secret. What it is is the five board members and the superintendent paddling boat the same direction. And uh that doesn't mean

029you always agree. In fact, you don't. You know, I' I've been married for uh a lot of years. I was married 28 years. My first wife died of cancer and now I've been married 25 more years to my second wife. So, uh, lots of married years and lots of times we haven't agreed on everything. But we talk things out and we emerge stronger and more of a team. And that's what a board has to do quite honestly because there's going to be a lot of times you don't agree about things. But the key is communication and the key is talking things out and uh and agreeing that uh well sometimes just agreeing to disagree. You know, you may have a 4-1 vote or a 3-2 vote and the two say, you know, that's not what

030I want to do at all. But as a board, you are stronger when you emerge supportive of each other. And I sense that's happening here. You guys are going to do great things in the future. you have the right person leading the charge and uh I think when everybody when all the dust settles in the next year or two people are going to look back and go we went through some pretty serious tough times but you know you're going to emerge so much stronger and again I can tell you from the outside looking in that there's a great deal of respect for what's going on in Woodford County and that's in a county you know Warren County is kind of highly uh thought of as well but we look up of Woodford County and say

031there's really good things going on there and maybe we could steal some of them or borrow some of them and and we'll do that when we can. So, uh, congratulations. We signed off on the paperwork in our earlier meeting. Uh, your board chair, the mentor and I sign a form that renews Dr. Jones superintendent certification. It's not an automatic. Uh, she's had to attend a lot of meetings this year when she's been out of the district. She's been a new superintendent training. She's also had to do a lot of online work here in the district, but online with the group with cohort 13. And so, u, it's been a a full year. Her plate will be a lot less, uh, busy next year. Uh, as a matter of fact, I always say at the end

032of this year, she's going to have at least 14 more days by my count that she can devote to Woodford County Schools next year than she did this year, just as a result of having completed program. So, congratulations on your completion. You'll get the official certificate in mid July at the Gold House in Louisville and from the commissioner of education and uh full speed ahead. Congratulations to the board. >> Thank you, Dr. Carter. Superintendent Morgan. >> I like that your mic shows red. We could use that in our district. Uh first uh Terry Morgan, I'm superintendent in Harden County Schools. This is my 10th year. Uh and I have mentored multiple superintendents and I shared uh with Dr. Jones earlier that no superintendent that I have mentored has faced the challenges uh that you all

033have and she has been very complimentary of the board uh working together to uh find solutions that remain committed to your students but also remain uh reminding everyone that you're going to move forward in a very positive direction. So congratulations uh to each of you for making that happen. As Dr. Carter shared, rowing in the same direction is sometimes means you have to put your ore out of the water. And so uh I just congratulate uh Dr. Jones on the work that she's done on her capstone that she did. I will say I'm a little envious. I was out of my district 22 days, so they have narrowed that down to 14. Uh but each of the um areas, the five areas of leadership uh that you learn about as a new superintendent will definitely

034assist her in moving forward and the relationships that she has gained in talking to other superintendents in her cohort will continue to be valuable to you all. So congratulations to you for the hard work that you all have encountered and the uh Dr. Jones for leading that work and we're bringing people together, not just the board, but also the community. So, congratulations. >> Thank you both so much for all the work you've done with Dr. Jones this year. >> All right. Now, we are going to move into our financial update from Beard. So, I'll call up Miss Miss Spring Bait, I have emailed you the link to all of the presentations tonight. >> Thank you. Good evening everyone. I hope you all are having a great day. Uh that's a hard presentation uh to follow

035with Dr. Jones capstone and uh I can say from the outside looking in there's a lot of cohesive momentum here and uh that really is I guess the unite the high feeling. So, um, you all know it for a long time, but Woodford's a very special place, and I've seen it firsthand. You all get behind your kids with the sweet 16 or the arts and the auditorium. I just think uh that really makes a difference. So, you all know it, and uh hopefully I'll get to dovetail on Dr. Jones um positive report with some good bonding information. So moving to slide slide one just has some acronyms that I throw around pretty pretty regularly. So obviously CARA is the funding act uh that we operate under for school funding. SEK is uh the money you

036all receive and facility support program of Kentucky is the equalization funds school districts receive to their building fund for bonding capacity. uh AADA obviously big number is the number you all receive funding based on and the SFCC is the school facilities construction commission. So uh as I mentioned in 1990 CARA established a funding formula that was focused on equitable funding for for every child no matter where they came from and it still is the operation we have today for funding. Some folks say is is care broken? Are we receiving is it still what it was intended? I don't know if we would ever come up with a solution. Uh but what it is right now is that money from your local taxes as well as seek money goes into the school district. It's hope the

037the it's like a teeter totter. So the more wealthy your local community is likely the less money you get from the state and seek formula. Um when you look at your money to the district, there's unrestricted funds and there's restricted funds. the SFCC offers when we talk about bonding capacity we we are not we don't they don't flow through the district but we do calculate them as available funds unrestricted funds are money for your general fund like just think about it as your operating fund so anything you use to pay salaries utilities um those kind of expenses so SFCC excuse me KDE does not typically let school districts use general fund to pay debt service. We had to seek special approval in um 2022 when you all sold your bond issue. You all use general

038fund for two years, 23 and 24. They has not been needed since then. Um but more districts these days are using general fund for various projects just because in the last session the general assembly actually stated for the first time they do not intend to equalize new nickels going forward. Restricted funds are what we focus on primarily for bonding capacity and that's money to your capital outlay fund and building fund. They're derived based on the FSPK formula and obviously you can use them to pay debt service or you can use them to pay for other capital projects. SFCC as I said they are offers made based on need and they come every other bienium and Dr. Jones is actually a leader in helping them recalculate the last set of offers. So how much each funding

039each school district receives is based on your size, your wealth and your need. And as I mentioned, the AADA is a big formula of that. Obviously, your local tea tax base and then your unmet facility needs. So every year when you every four years when you do your district facility plan, when you identify your need and what you can afford, they come up with an amount that you need as far as unmet need. So looking at the next page right now, Woodford County, this is for the fiscal year 2026, which is hard to believe we're down to the last six weeks of your fiscal year. Uh but for the year you have final AAD AADA of a little over 3,700 and your assessments um are four right under $4.5 billion. So that is the formula

040that we use to calculate bonding capacity. Looking at the buckets, capital outlay is money from the state. It's been the same since 1954 at $100 times your ADA. You get half of it at July. You get the other half later on in the year. Local nickels. You have two local nickels. It's called a local and a growth nickel. The only nickels available now are recallable nickels. So for context, there's only 34 districts in the Commonwealth or 20% that have one nickel. 80 districts like have two nickels and that's 47%. 51 districts have three nickels, so roughly 30%. And six districts have four nickels and and 4%. So state equalization is that teeter totter to make sure that whether your nickel equivalent equals the same dollar per child. And we'll talk about how that formula is

041calculated a little later. The SFCC is also offers from the state based on your need and they're made every other bianium. They're available for eight years of bonding on priority one or two projects. So can't be used for central office or athletics but you know main educational buildings. This is a slide I really like that helps explain the FSPK equalization formula. So just entertain me here. There's district A, B, and C. District A has an assessment of about 800 million with a 2500 ADA. And you can see their local tax base puts in $1, but the state kicks in $2. Look at District B, uh, double the assessment. So the local tax base is putting in $2 while the state's putting in one. And District C on the other hand has that has a $2.6

042billion assessment. And you can see the local tax base puts in $3 with the state putting in next to nothing. That's an example. Well, Woodford County falls more like the option C. When we look at the bonding capacity, you all are going to carry the burden of any likely commitment to your building fund just given the tax base size um relative to the rest of the state and your any questions so far. So getting to the good news as far as we have seen a very healthy increase in the FSPK funding especially over the last four or five bianiums postcoid and you can see on the right hand column is the growth so the bianium we're in right now finishing up just in July uh June 30th uh we saw a 19% growth the ban

043beginning July 1 so your fiscal year 2027 uh isn't going to increase 12.1%. And so how that number is calculated is the general assembly gets the total assessments and then they and the statewide ADA and they come up with a per pupil assessment. So if we're looking at the bottom box for the 2728 bianium the per pupil assessment average for this the Commonwealth of Kentucky is a little over $95,000. In CARA it says that funding has to be funded at 150%. So they want property value of $1,358,000. That's around a figure per child no matter whether or not you're in a rural district or you're in a developed faget county. So what's that work out per nickel? They want $679 per child to your building fund. So looking just recapping 2026 because that's an important

044year to look at. You can see in the current year we're wrapping up each one of your nickels puts in about 2.2 million based on your assessment. So 4.46 46 billion of assessments times 5 cents per $100 and you have two local nickels. But you can see the state FSPK equalization to get you to that $65 which was the current bienium. You only got a little less than $21,000 per equalization. So you're obviously going to carry the load of any money to your building fund. We also use capital outlay fund as far as for bonding capacity and that's KDE guidance and also in all the the bills when they calculate um how they look at capacity. So $100 per ADA, like I said, and you can use 80%. You do not obvious use 100% because

045ADA is one of the most fluctuating numbers. So that's the guidance from KDE as far as only using 80%. Currently, there's only one SFCC offer available at $26,000 and that's available for 20 years. That money never comes to the district, but think about if you got a bond payment for $100,000, the SFCC would send $26,000 and the district would send the send the send the difference. So, right now in the fiscal year we're wrapping up, the restricted funds we calculate for bonding capacity is a little over $4.8 million. But the good news is here we go for forecast for 2027. So, we assumed a nominal growth, a 4% assessment, which is a little below what you guys have seen, the same ADA that you will close your 2526 of a little over 3,700 and the

046new FSPK equalization rate at 679 per ADA. So, your nickels each put 2.3 million in, but you can now see each state equalization puts in a little over $24,000. You the situation is that basically for every $11 Woodford County puts in, you get one state dollar. There's a lot of districts where every $1, they get $3 match. Um, but just given Eur's wealth compared to the most of the Commonwealth, um, you're definitely have a a large, uh, commitment versus, um, what other communities can put in. So the other thing that changes on this slide is the 2024 offer of assistance. So as I mentioned, Dr. Jones was one of the first districts. We sat down and reported what her off's offer was and it was a little under $4,600. And I had reached out to

047SFTC and said, "I thought they were miscalculated and they kind of gave us the guidance that they would not be changed, but Dr. Jones took it upon herself to reach out to the commissioner and they recalculate all the offers." So, your new offer is $17,665 and that will be available beginning July 1 of this year. >> Can you say the dollar to the $11 statement again? >> $17,665 and the original offer was $4,588. >> No, when you were comparing the like we put in $1 other >> $11. >> Can you say that all again, please? I'm sorry. So, if you look at the 2.3 million, if you take the math of that, you're basically for every $11 you put in, you get $1 return uh for you get from the state to get you to

048that state equalization target of $679 because you will obviously are so close to that 67. They were like probably 678. I didn't do the exact math, but it's just basically kicking in that little difference to get you to that state average. That's a great question, but um most districts um communities where they might put in $1 and they get a $3. It just depends on the local demographic wealth. The last time I looked, there's only seven dis less than seven districts that did not receive any equalization. So, Fyet, Jefferson, um believe it or not, Lion and Livingston, those are lakefront communities, Anchorage, um and then I think Camel might be one, but it it changes based on when the the new equalization, but it's usually no more than 10 districts. Um, and you guys are

049all one of the districts that gets pretty nominal amount of equalization. So, right now you all have three bond issues outstanding. All of them are fixed rate bond issues. You have the 2016A which has a has a final payment in Feb in April of 2036 and then you have the 2016B that has a final payment in February of 28. Um, then we obviously have the new high school which goes until 202. Um, I will note that you did pay off a bond issue earlier in fiscal year 26. So the 2013 refunding had their final payment in February 1st, 2026. This is relatively a nominal amount of debt for your school district um for a school district of your size. U most districts um you have over 100 million just given the cost of buildings right

050now. So all debt is fixed and you can see in total right now there's principal of 76,455,000. SFC is paying back about 2.6 6 million and the difference is paid by the school district. I never expect much of a SFCC caring because given the need more of it's going to be obviously local district supported debt. So on page 10 is just the annual debt service including fiscal year 2026. So you can see fiscal year 26 through 28 or what I would call your high watermark debt service. It's about 4.8 million and then beginning 2029 and thereafter the debt service goes down to 4.6 million. um until and that's also an important year. So 2029 there will be a new facility support program of equalization rate. So you have a natural pickup of capacity just because

051your debt service is going down but also a pickup of capacity because you'll likely have a new funding formula available that year. So right now the good news that we thought we should share is as of today the bonding capacity is is 10 million. That is a 20-year capacity. And you'll notice that the line at um in 2046 drops down a little bit. Nomally that's that you the way the budget house Bill 500 is written. Equalization on your second nickel is only available for 20 years. Um as I mentioned it's pretty nominal and um I do not expect them to take it away but that's what the budget to be conservative. We use that assumption. Any questions on the capacity? >> I just a couple things that you had mentioned throughout this that I wanted

052to point out. Um because I know that when we built the new high school, one of the fears was that we were not going to have bonding capacity for 30 years and we're going to have to use general funds to finance the high school for multiple years. But based on what you've shared so far, general fund was only used for debt service for two years towards the high school. >> Yes. >> And we now what? two two years after the high school's been done have $10 million in bonding capacity for future needs. >> That's correct. So the bonds were sold in July of 22. So the beginning of your 23. So there was a payment in that first 23 fiscal year and then 24 and then 25 and 26 ended with extra extra money in

053your restricted funds. >> Okay. So I just wanted to point that out because I know there was a lot of fear during that early time of how this would impact us long term. Um, so I just wanted to pull up those points that you mentioned. >> That's a great point. As I mentioned earlier when you had to That's a great point. You had to get approval by KDE to use general fund. So pre House Bill 678, House Bill 678 came around in 2022, but you kind of started your process to do your bond approval before it was around. So you had KD oversight to say, are we good to commit some general fund? And they fully supported it and they and it was just up to what you needed a certain level. And so they

054were they of the they were of the belief that you would need a commitment just for a couple years. This is just what we thought and then would no longer be needed. So that was part of the analysis on the front is we did have KD support and their understanding that they thought it was a very shortterm general fund commitment. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> Can I ask a quick question about um the difference on page nine and page 10? So just to be clear, page nine, what we're seeing is is just the principal to pay it off. That does not include the interest. So when we're looking at the outstanding at the outstanding debt as 73 basically is what we owe. When you flip over to page 10 that figure includes all of the

055interest. >> That is correct. That's the principal and interest. Correct. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So in total payback there's a little under under over 129 million. You're correct with interest. >> I will note the 20-year bonding rate right now for a school district of your size is about a 4.2% 2% and the rate you all locked in in in 20 22 was lower than that. So, um rates have continued to go up and we actually saw 20-year bond issues get close to 5% at one time. Um they've come back down, but I don't think we're going to see much uh the lower rates like we saw the two to 3% rates uh we a long time ago. So, >> yeah, I think we've seen that with rates and just cost of construction have gone

056up since then. So, yeah, >> exactly. >> Hi, I put my hand up, but I'm not really if anyone saw it. Go ahead. >> Um, >> so, uh, I did want to say that that is good news about having some bonding capacity. I'm very pleased with that. But to be very clear, we did spend millions of general fund dollars to pay down debt and just for various costs associated with the new high school. And um I do want to say that it does hurt my heart that we're now having discussions about um cutting staff and cutting stipens and um just having such very much difficulties um with the general fund. So um I I did want to just be really clear that um that that millions and millions of dollars of general fund u went

057towards this project. When you say millions and mill, how many million? 100 million, 10 million, how much was it? >> Uh, I'm not really sure, but that's a great question. Maybe we could have the administration provide that at our um our next meeting um because there was paying down of debt. There was um lots and lots of just different expenses associated uh that came out of the general fund and then we did have some reimbursements, but it would be nice to kind of have that um exact kind of dollar amount Yeah, go ahead, Dr. Gold. >> So, I guess a follow-up question to Miss Springgate's point, but also to your point about bonding capacity and to what we hear in the community that gets floated around of we don't have the capacity if something major

058happened or if we needed to build a new elementary school, for example, with the astronomical growth that we are facing in our community. I know that's a whole another conversation, but um what would that look like for us? Like if we had to, for example, if something catastrophic happened that we had to have a major building repair or if we had such an amount of growth that we needed to look at building another facility, where when will we have the capacity to bring something like that online? Because I think that $10 million is fantastic, but of course, as we know, that's a drop in the bucket for for new construction. So, where where are we looking at like time frame for that? when will we be in a place where we would be above water

059again? Because obviously going back and borrowing from the general fund right now is not an option in the situation that we're in. So hopefully that'll not happen anytime soon, but when will we be above water to be able to examine those things again? >> Oh well, you know, cost of projects have really skyro skyrocketed postcoid. So to give you a good good analogy, a good story, Warren County has built a high elementary school almost every year since 2019. And they built a new one in 2019. I think it was under 20 million. The last one was close to 45 million. All the same kind of fittings, the same size for students. Um to give you context, we ran the numbers that if today you all bonded 20 years with the highest revenue you've had ever

060for restricted funds, which is about 5.4 million, and you had no debt. So the other bond, the two bond issues, the 2016s were gone. The capacity would only be $73 million. So well below with the high school all-in cost. And today the high school's probably 20 to 30% more. I would say probably north of 100 million. Um but to your point, if you had growth, that actually would help you get more money to your building fund. So whether or not your assessment goes up or your per ADA, because it's a formula of how many kids you have. So that would help bonding capacity. um I can forecast out but I mean I guess the question from back to you all is how big of an elementary school because that's a big big is it a

061a 400 student elementary is it a 600 student elementary u but I do think you will see another significant pickup in 2029 so that believe it or not it's July one of if I'm doing my years right 28 2 but in a couple years you should see fiscal year 2029 a new state FSPK and then your debt service naturally goes down and obviously you're moving down the you you know, moving down where debts paid off. So, those two those three factors alone should add you capacity and we can map out, but I would kind of need some guidance to know how big of an elementary because that's going to say is it a $35 million elementary or is it a you know what, what have you. >> And and actually our um our enrollment is

062is pretty stagnant and actually a couple years ago it went backward a little bit. >> Well, I'm not so much worried about our enrollment. I I think that more I'm concerned about like if we needed a major repair to a building. Um so that that's more of a concern because as we know that our enrollment has remained stagnant with the growth. But when we pull in our PVA and how that impacts our seek and how it impacts everything else um regardless of the growth of like houses, we're still not >> we're still not we're still bottom up in a lot of ways. So, I I just wonder about like our safety net if something was to happen necessarily to one of our buildings because our because you're correct like our our enrollment growth has remained

063stagnant which doesn't help raise the amount that we're receiving. So, I'm just wondering what that may look like but it sounds like in a couple years we'll be >> another pick up of capacity. >> So, 2029 is what we're looking at >> this year. So, July 28th. >> Okay, perfect. >> But you're talking about maybe a million or two additional in bonding capacity. Well, we saw it basically going from 0 to 10. So I I would say with to forecast I how I would look at it if you look at page go back. So the average FSPK has grown about 8%. We usually haircut that to 5%. So on slide six and we we say in the next benium so your fiscal year 29 and 30 if FSPK went up about 5% what does that

064do as far as your restricted funds? And then we we do assume the ADA that you have now. We don't assume growth unless you've told us otherwise and we just build out. But because you're paying off every year um you know four you know 4.6 million of debt I think you'll see more of a pickup than just a million or two but I would like to put some real numbers to it. >> Thank you. >> Because to go to zero to 10 I think that's a pretty drastic. It might not be double but it would be it would be a pickup. >> So currently we have 10 million in bonding. So >> conservatively yeah 10 million. >> Okay. Thank you. And we are >> I have one other question. So Sarah was saying I I'm

065sorry I couldn't open the presentation, but Sarah was saying on page 10, it was showing the the cost of the high school. What was that dollar amount? >> All of your debt service total, all of your bond issues is a little over $129 million. >> Okay. >> Principal and >> what other um debt service or bond issues do we have besides the high school? So, fiscal year 20 uh 26 has one final payment on your 2013 refunding. Then you have your 2016A and 2016B. The 2016 A did some renovations at North Side and Southside. And then the 2016B was a refinancing of a 2008 which funded uh renovations at Huntertown Elementary. >> Okay. So, those were relatively kind of minor in the grand scheme of like hundreds of millions, right? Yes. >> I can't remember

066them. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. The high school was by far your largest bond issue. Yes. >> Thanks. >> Yeah, I think those together were just under 10 million for those two if I'm looking at this right. And then the high school is just over 73 million. Total original principal is the column I'm looking at. >> We work with another district that's ADA right around the same size as you all and they just levied another nickel um in 2023 and they need a new high school and they were told 150 million. I don't know if the high school size exactly comparable um but we did the analysis. We think they would have to levy three to four more nickels to afford um the high school the project that they're so we say it's kind of hard

067to I mean nickel yourself to a high school this these days. So um factors that could change bonding capacity um there's legislative issues like other nickels. So, um, your all's, uh, original growth nickel was levied in 1995, and at the time you met a growth criteria and Warren County, I don't I don't know how many districts, but districts that were growing at a certain level could levy it a nickel not subject to recall. Um, there was other in 2003, if you were still growing, you could levy a second one. You guys did not. Um, right now, the recallable nickel is the only nickel on the table. And to give you an idea of how many districts have levied it recently, um the current budget session that met this January in 2026, there were 17 new

068districts um that were getting new equalization. And in the 2024 general assembly, there was 23. Um the equalized facility funding nickel uh is was a kind of we call kind of call it the odd duck nickel equalization. And that's the equalization you all receive that when you levied your growth nickel, you didn't get matched immediately. So beginning I think in the 2008 time frame the state started giving you equalization. Brack nickel was a base realignment. Harden County is the only district received that. Uh the category 5 nickel was nickels for um districts that had deteriorating buildings and they were able to to levy that. But so obviously FSPK is a big driver. So new facility support program of Kentucky. If they change that and you receive equalization, it's kind of a compounding effect. Some districts

069have considering considered leveraging more than 80% capital outlay. We used to require KDE approval for that. Um but now there obviously it's the guidance is uh what they think best but I still think the 80% because ADA is one of the most fluctu fluctuating um numbers leveraging general fund. Um I was at another district in western Kentucky and they are committing and have for a long time $400,000 a year um because they have growth and they just only have two nickels and they need afford projects. Um I would say for you guys levying a nickel it's always given the return of equalization it's always going to be carried on the local community. you might get a little equalization. Uh but when you're putting in 11 and getting one, um that's sometimes it's a one for

070one match. So, uh future SFTC offers of assistance, like I said, Dr. Jones was a leader in getting you more, but the pool has increasingly decreased. So, several bianiums ago, they would get 100 million uh for to distribute offers. This most recent cycle was only 40 million. Um and I think the cycle before that was like 40 million. So, it's been going down and 58 million before that. So, it's been been going down. retiring old debt or refunding issues. There's no refinancing opportunities right now, but we always keep our eye on that. ADA to my is one of the fluctuations I think will most likely impact you all. As I mentioned, your 2027 forecast has ADA of about 29. So, that's another $500,000 that we did not factor into our bonding capacity. So, if that's

071true, it's 10.5 million. Uh, but given that it's a forecasted ADA and kids aren't in classrooms yet for fiscal year 2027, didn't think we should include that interest rate fluctuation. Um like I said for the last four three and a half four years uh rates have kind of teetered postcoid we hit the bottom in 2020 uh 2021 at you know 2% or thereabouts but 2022 and thereafter we've seen uh you know three and a half to 5% and I think given where inflation is and the expectation on oil prices I don't think we'll be outside that band for any time. So we didn't provide you any sensitivity we've assumed a current rate of a little over 420 um like I said and that's a little conservative right now. So kind of wrapping up a discussion

072on where we think about given that there's just two months left two months left in the fiscal year. So the last slide talks about what revenue you have after paying debt service. You'll notice the only difference from your you know local nickel and FSPK stays the same but capital outlay at 100%. Just because we don't we can't use it for bonding capacity doesn't mean you don't receive the fund. So in fiscal year 2026 restricted funds are about 4.8 million. you have to pay your existing debt of about 4.76 million. So there's about $105,000 which was similar to fiscal year 2025. I think it was around that 94,000 or right under 100,000 in 2025. So that's left in 2026. Now looking forward to 2027, if all you need to cover is your debt service, you have

0735.4 million of restricted funds. Uh and you'll pay 4.8 roughly million of debt service. There's about $648,000 of leftover funds. So next year is a really important year to clear out any balances you have in building and capital outlay fund odd years because if you have money left over and you accept an SFTC offer of assistance on odd years those balances become restricted so you can only use them for priority one or two projects. Currently where it stands you are allowed to do what's called a capital funds request CFR. You can transfer the money for any school maintenance or repairs building insurance uh replacement of equipment like HVAC or what have you. You can use it to purchase bonds or pay payments on bond issues. Some districts use KISSA or even cash. You can buy

074bonds outright. Um you can also use it for technology hardware, not software. So Chromebooks, um televisions, computers. Uh but just thinking through getting ahead. I know it'll be here before you know it. The best timing to do a CFR is kind of in that April May time frame of of next calendar year before you're getting close to closing out the books. But I we right now estimate if your ADA holds at the 30717 about six a little under $650,000. >> And you mentioned next year's an important year to pay off and correct me if I'm wrong, but to pay off any bonds that we have. >> No, to transfer out any excess funds you have left. >> Okay. >> Left over. Gotcha. I was just going to say because you earlier you mentioned we do

075have one of our bonds that is set to be paid off. Yes, in February of next year. So, I didn't know if that was relevant to this what we were talking about, but you you could actually prepay those bond issues. Your 2016 AB right now they're call they're called currently callable. Uh but the interest rates are lower than you're probably earning on your deposit. So, the interest rates on those bonds are two and a quarter and 3% and then two to 2.125%. So you could always pay down extra debt, but I would think that that 650,000 probably, you know, if you had a roof, you can you can use that to pay it outright or you most important is get it to the general fund. There's a lot of there's a lot of permittable expenses.

076Yeah. >> That you can use to just get it there and then you have more flexibility. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> Lot and that's the end of all but >> that's the end. But I thought it was good news at 10 million. I know that was um a good surprise. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. It's >> good to see you all. >> Thank you. You as well. Thank you for traveling in. >> Have a great evening. >> You too. Does anybody have any comments on that before we move on? All right. Thank you. All right. So, next we will move into our quarterly budget review. Dr. Gribbons, I believe, is coming up. All right, board. Give me one second. I'm going to, if you don't mind, share this with the web presentation with

077Miss Springgate. So, just one second. >> Thank you. also acknowledge we have Courtney Choir here with us, our food service director. So, thank you for being here as well. >> Absolutely. Miss Spring, can you see the screen now? >> Yes. Thank you. >> All right. So, we have a lofty agenda set out for you. Um 67 slides if you were curious how many we had. um with several uh packets and other things that we will um present to you and show to you um this evening. Uh kind of to get into the whole um where we currently are, where we're currently moving, and how we're going to adjust for all of our um needs for our district to best meet the needs of our district. Um and I think that Dr. is going to get

078into in just a second, but I think that you'll see that the presentation that we've prepared tonight is compromises that we have made to work with every stakeholder, everybody at the table all year long to present to you this tentative budget. Um, and you all received that tenative budget on the 4th of May. Um, and we have not shared it with the public because you all should be the first to hear the presentation so that you don't have to answer questions where for stuff you don't understand or know and that way we can share it with you and then you can share it with your constituents from this point forward. So, >> I think we're going to go ahead and start with um food service. Is that correct? Or after mine? >> Yeah, after yours.

079>> Okay. All right. So I think we always need to come back to our strategic vision, our mission and our our vision. Um and remembering that um our mission is to cultivate portrait ready learners by offering a safe and engaging environment and by harnessing the dedication of staff and the support of the community. And our vision is a unified community where empowered staff and engaged partners guide every student to become resilient learner, empathetic communicator, reflective collaborator, creative problem solver, and a responsible contributor, prepared to positively impact the world and Woodford County specifically. So we have our four pillars, successful and engaged students, skilled and committed teams, caregivers and community partnerships, and stewardship. Of course, a lot of the things we're going to present tonight um encompass all four of those pillars, but the one we're

080really going to drill in on is stewardship specifically. So, back in September as a new superintendent, um as we uh as I started, I wanted to make it very clear that um you know, once we knew what our um seek uh dollars would actually look like. Um I wanted to bring that to the community and wanted to bring it to you as a board and we we showed three options at that time. One was taking the compensating rate um which would give would have given us 149,000 which would have meant at that time the best we could calculate um a 1.8 million cut to programming or about 28 staffing positions. The 4% uh rate generated about $800,000. And at that time um what we could calculate was that it was a would mean at least

081a 1.3 million um cut and about 16 staffing positions. Option three would have been to keep the tax rate the same at 67.3 and that projected increase would have been $2.4 million. This would have allowed us to maintain the current programming and positions while restoring funding to transportation and technology because we had not um purchased buses this last year um as well as um technology. We had not replaced uh technology at the capacity that we normally did. So um and based on a number of factors, we chose to take the 4% rate. And so um then we started with our budget committee and our budget committee is made up of community members, student uh families, not students but families of students um administrators, teachers, classified um and we the the priorities we had as a

082budget committee. We also had Miss um Macauan on that as well. Um we wanted to make the lowest impact possible on classroom instruction. We wanted to make student centered budgeting decisions and we wanted to maintain as many current student programs as possible like not cut any programs across the board CTE, arts, electives, class offerings, etc. We also wanted to maintain the step increase or the raise that all of our staff members get every year as part of our um salary schedule. So these are the current cuts that you will see reflected in the tenative budget. Um of those at the top you will see um uh cuts in our custodial staff and that um came from the districtwide building operations uh part of the budget. And those um positions, those cuts equal about $240,000. The

083superintendent's office, central office, certified and classified salary cuts 1,18,000. Um at the high school, um the cuts equal 260,000. The middle school um certified permanent salary cut of 130,000. in our section six um allocations to schools. Um, we would also uh actually I skipped over, let me go back. The um other student travel that we had been giving out of general fund um was 66,000 and so we cut that we cut that back by 66,000. certified substitute salaries um with the adjustments that we are asking um with tonight's proposal that would be 125,000 conservatively retirement plan incentive payment which is our um 403b match we match at 1% um that would be a savings of $89,000 general supplies um actually where our um section $6 come in that's a $300,000 um cut. And then um

084this one, this one is exceptional um children, our special ed program. Um but this was not really this was taking what funding we get and using that more efficiently so that we don't have to spend as much out of general fund on salaries. So that was not an actual cut to uh staffing. That was just using the the idea and B um funding more effectively. And then um supplies and tech devices, again, that's um not replacing several um devices this year with is a savings of 63,000. And then natural gas um a savings of 82,643. So that totals 2.9 million. So, I just wanted to share um the goals that we've talked about as a board and a school system and and input from the community. Um we start with our balanced budget. That's goal

085number one. And you you guys charged me with that first day one. Um and so what that would look like, the goals would be revenue is sufficient to support the strategic vision of our community. Our community has given us this vision. We all agree it's where we need to go, but our revenue needed needs to match that. Um, contingency fund balance is at least 10% of the total operating budget. I would love to for us to actually aim closer to 20%, but right now we are we are looking at 10%. Um, per student spending keeping up with the rate of inflation, which is pretty dramatic right now. But here's our current reality with those goals. As a school system, we are shifting from being um two years ago or three years ago 60% funded by

086the community to now in for by the time we get to fiscal year 29 being 80% funded by the community. every dollar that we spend in local taxes specifically that go they go to all of the areas um you know that support our infrastructure in the county but for school taxes every penny of our local taxes stay here every penny. But then when we pay taxes to the state our our taxes we pay at the state level that's where those taxes are divided out and dispersed differently. those state taxes are dispersed differently and that's that's through the seek formula um with a reduction of spending by 7% this year and I have to applaud every single person in this district because every single person has contributed toward this 7% savings. Um we will now end

087the year at a 6% um fund balance but when I started the job July one we were projected to end at a 3.8 8 fund balance. Um per student spending is currently lower than the rate of inflation annually. And by maintaining the 63.3 uh property tax rate, we would be able to close the gap between that per pupil spending funding and the inflation within four years. The second goal um of our board and our community, student resources, high quality instructional resources that support um our Woodford County portrait and technology to equip students to access those standards at high levels. Our current reality is we have um adopted one new highquality instructional resource this year in math which supports our data. But had it not been for WEF, the funding from WEAF and our grants that

088our incredible curriculum instruction team wrote for our district, we would not have been able to do that. That's the current reality. We would not have been able to buy that resource from the general fund. Um hardware replacement is not in the current budget. Um therefore, you know that the whole goal of technology to equip students to access standards at high levels. We currently do not have that in this proposed budget. Um for student opportunities, I hear the board constantly and I hear our community constantly, let's increase opportunities. It's in our motto, right? Opportunities. It's uh e legacy of excellence, future of opportunities. We want more career exposure for our elementary students. We want more career exploration at the middle school. We want then commitments to careers. We want students to come back to Woodford County

089and live here and work here, right? We want to increase pathway opportunities for students based on that community input and the data from our students. We want to increase arts, gifted, and talented opportunities. Our current reality is that we have no funding in this current general fund budget for any of these areas. There's no money in the current general fund that we're the budget we're bringing to the board tonight in the community. Um all of our arts enrichment opportunities are by and large only because of weaf our um educational foundation supports all of the enrichment arts enrichment opportunities and other enrichment opportunities that we're not able to support with our general fund. thanks to and if it not were not for our county and our city governments supplying instruct instructors um we we pay for

090a portion of those instructors but our county and our city pay for the other portion of those instructors in our new pathways for EMS and and firefighting. There's no money in the general fund that we're presenting um the budget we're presenting to be able to support new pathways um pathway needs that have been identified to us by the community and students. Um HVAC, mechanic, electrical, plumbing, ROC is a big one that I keep hearing from students and from the community. Equin expansion which makes perfect sense in Woodford County. um loss of we also have because of the um the cuts that we had to make at the high school staffing cuts we have had to eliminate one pathway. That's that's incredible considering the budget that we we were facing and are facing. But >> Dr.

091Jones, that was SPDM's decision. >> That's right. That's right. And I will say I have to applaud our middle school and our high school SBDMs and our principles because they came up with with they cut everything they could possibly cut before they cut classrooms. And I'll talk more about that in a little bit. Um but our SBDMs and our um our principles really did have to problem solve. I mean, a lot of solutions that they came up with that were just amazing to to minimize the impact on classroom instruction. We are looking at a partnership potentially to be able to provide that pathway in other ways just just because that's the Woodford County way. That's what we do. We we look for ways to cons continuously partner with others to make create more opportunities for

092our students. But none of those things, all those pathway needs that we have um including the the business pathway, those are not included in our budget for this year. Our goals for staff pay and benefits. Our staff is our absolute number one um asset in Woodford County. We want to have staff pay and benefits that are within the top quartile of the state. So the top 25%. We are currently for teacher pay and this is the only available data we have right now. Um we are currently 42 out of 171 in teacher pay and that places us at the 24th percentile. our certificate program for our classified positions. When that was brought to our board, that was projected to cost the district $200,000. That is now costing $370,000 and is absolutely an incredible investment in

093our staff and we believe in our staff. We want to honor our staff members, but we also have to look at the reality and how do we do things? How do we continue this program? How do we evaluate it to see how we can make it work? Annual step raises. Sometimes we forget about this, but in Woodford County, everyone gets a raise every year. It's part of our salary schedule. Sometimes it's easy to forget that, but because we retain such incredible staff and we have such experienced staff, the increase this year for alone four step raises for certified and classified automatically increased our budget $540,000. And our 403b matching program at 1% is an $89,000 um expense. We also have the board before me um instituted a vacation policy for 260day employees in 2023 and

094um they were given uh 20 vacation days per year. We're going to talk a little more about that in a little bit. Facilities, we've heard a lot about facilities tonight. We've talked about that KT Dr. Gold. Um but we want to our goals are to have building systems that are updated and efficient for operations. Those needed updates include and these come directly from our um facilities plan that was developed before me. Um and but I agree with it. These are our priorities. Um, a renovation at Woodford County Middle School for safety and for the roof is estimated to be three 3.2 million. Simmons, um, the front door, um, $50,000. Southside, a renovation of 5.2 million. North Side, 5.7 million. Huntertown, a 1.4 million. And then another Simmons renovation of 6.2 million. Um we also know

095from our um CMTA assessment that our HVAC system at central office is is going to need to be upgraded soon. >> Yes. >> All of these numbers are also based off the time of the the >> That's true. So they could be higher now. Yeah. And probably are. Um but that just puts it into perspective for our board. And let me say this, our board is committed and I want to thank our board members for your commitment because um it's kind of been a pivotal year this year and we we've had to make some tough decisions, but um I appreciate you all for doing that. Um we also want to have our athletic facilities maintained for safety on a scheduled basis. We currently don't have any funding in the general fund for that. Uh, an

096example of that would be right now we are redoing the field at the middle school, the football field for safety. Um, and you know that that costs money. We need to have a regular maintenance schedule. We do not have money in our general fund. We do not have money in our budget to be able to do that. Were it not for our partnership with the county and the city through Falling Springs, we would not be able to provide the athletic opportunities for our students and the facilities that we have for our students. And that's truly that's the truth. Um because as you can see once again, our budget does not allow us to be able to do that. Um, we want our buildings running at high rates of energy efficiency. And according to our recent

097energy assessment, they are they are running at high levels of efficiency. And then transportation best practice is to replace our bus fleet at 8% which is about two buses per year for us. Unfortunately, fortunately, um, our transportation leadership located a bus just recently that is a 2017 model, but it had just had the engine replaced. It's got a brand new engine in it, and we were able to purchase that bus for $18,000. So, that was an incredible deal that they were able to find. That's the only bus and it's not new that we have purchased over the last two years. In the current budget, there is no funding for new buses for next year. This puts us behind by four buses in this rotation plan. And buses are around $150,000 each. So that's about a

098$600,000 um total. We also know, everyone in this room, everyone watching, everyone knows that diesel and fuel prices have skyrocketed. So, we know that transportation costs are skyrocketing as we sit here. >> Can I ask a question real quick? >> Yeah. So, with the transportation costes, as we expand our neighborhoods and we will have children in those neighborhoods that we will transport to school, how does that impact our bus routes um and our capacity to get our kids home in a timely manner so they're not riding on buses or waiting for pickup for an extended period of time? >> That's a great question. >> Um because we are expanding our neighborhoods significantly over the next couple years as we have more neighborhoods come online. Um, and I think that that's something that we don't often

099consider in our in our community planning and also our resources that we have to outfit and facilitate that transportation. >> Our biggest pro uh issue with expanding our neighborhoods right now is we're getting more roads and more miles are being traveled, but less kids are coming. >> Yeah. >> Um, our home values are so high that we're not seeing school age children coming. Um, so we're still having to travel those roads to pick up one student instead of traveling those roads to pick up 20 students. Um, and that's that's part of our issue. >> Yeah. >> Which also means that kids are sitting on buses longer because you have more miles to ride. >> So, and then safety. We are very committed in Woodford County. It was the number one um value identified in our

100survey for our our vision. Um, safety is the number one value and um, our SRO's and other safety personnel. The state gives us $20,000 each year per SRO right now um, to reimburse that that amount. We also additionally this last year picked up an additional 65,000 um because by employing our own SRO's at the high school and middle school that was an additional 65,000. Um, we have several updates in our camera systems that we need to make to continue to maintain the level of safety that we are we are committed to in Woodford County. Um, we have uh annual equipment updates and replacement as needed. We those are needs and then it's it needs to be known we do not currently have funds in the budget for we do have funds in this current budget

101for our SRO's. We do not have funds for any of the other um updates and camera systems that we need to be able to install. All right, we had several questions about food service, so we're I'm going to turn it over. Yeah. >> Yes. >> Turn it. >> I didn't want to interrupt you before you were finished. >> I thought I heard you say at the beginning that last year in August of U 25. >> The state evaluated um our revenue >> and based on the current tax rate at that time along with growth and everything, >> they said you're going to have this much money coming into you. >> Yes. >> So therefore, we will decrease your seek formula because you have all this other funds. >> Yeah. And then the board voted not

102to accept all of the new local revenue, but to lower the tax rate. >> That's correct. >> Which reduced revenue by 1.8 million. >> That's correct. >> So we had a 1.8 million uh revenue uh decrease by board action and then you had seek u reduction. So it was a double whammy last year in revenue. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Yep. >> Thank you. >> But to clarify, we also had to go to a vote if we were to take the full >> No, it wouldn't. It could It didn't have to go. It could go. >> It could have gone. >> They could have petitioned to allow it to go to a vote and then we would have had to to foot the cost of the addition >> because it was an election year. Correct. So,

103that impacted some of the decisions. But, you're correct. We did lower the taxes last year. >> We lowered revenue by 1.8 million last year. >> We didn't we didn't lower it. We held the rate. >> We lowered the rate. >> Yeah. Lower. >> There was all the language back and forth on >> a lot of that had to do with we did have people reach out and and the expectation was that we do take a look at the current budget and see where cuts can be made >> and um so that coupled with everything we just talked about went into the vote to to be able to lower the tax rate. >> Yes. But we did lower the tax rate as much controversy that it has >> 67 point something to 63 to >> 63.

104Yeah. >> Yes. But there was a lot of back and forth on social media. I do follow social media even though I do not comment on social media. I do see what the community is saying because I think that that's an important lens. Um but there was a lot of misinformation being spread about the lowering of the taxes. A lot of people said we raised the taxes but the reality of the situation is your PVA went up. So when you look at the percentage, it's a percentage of your property value, not necessarily. So if you had a tax increase last year, it was because your property value was reassessed, not because the amount of money the tax, not because the tax rate increase for school taxes. So, I just want to clarify that. Um, we

105will continue to have PVA assessments done. Um, and you will continue to see that happen. Um, just because our property values continue to raise across our county. Um, which compounds our seek funds. And I just want to be very, very clear about that. I hope that people are watching this and understand that the tax rate was not increased last year. The PVA was increased. My tax my PVA went up a couple years before that. So, I saw a return. um my my yearly mortgage went down um as a result of that. But that's not everybody. If you were in the quadrant where you were getting increased, that's why you saw the increases. It was not because of the tax rate from the school board. Just >> I just did want to add something. I put

106my hand up again. Um but just to be clear, um we didn't lose any any tax money. What we did was we voted the maximum amount of a tax rate that we could vote. That 4% increase is the maximum than we did both. Um what that meant was because assessments were off that the uh the rate did go down, but we did the maximum 4% rate that is allowed by allowable by law. Um and so we didn't didn't lose any money. Our our revenue from our local taxes went up 4%. >> I would. >> And then the other thing just about seek just to be clear, the check that the state cut us for seek funding last year was more than the fact that they had us the year before. >> Well, the tax rate

107was six six7 point something, right? And then we went down to 63, >> but we generated 4% more revenue >> because of the property amount of revenue we could generate. So, yes, the rate did go down, but the amount of revenue we received from our taxpayers went up by 4%. >> Because of the PVA, >> correct? That's correct. So, we got actually 4% more in tax revenue from our our local taxes last fiscal year. And I believe that the seek amount also went up just marginally. But the check the state actually gave us um if you look at that year by year and that might be something Dr. Jones that might be nice that kind of have just a list of the last four years of seek the check that they cut us uh for

108the last four or five years and then also a list of the taxes that we uh collected um just to kind of show that that number is actually increasing and so I think that is an important part to to just really be real clear about >> well and I think that that >> that is part of the presentation today I will I will mention that so that's going to be shared so we will all see those. >> Yeah, you you'll see those numbers. So, it's there is kind of a misnomer that you generate 4% more revenue, but when you actually do all the totals decreases and see the local revenue and then you look at it per pupil, you actually only saw less than $300,000 total increase. But then when you add for the the

109different special ed students and the actual ADA, you actually saw a decrease in per pupil revenue. So there's a lot of >> moving parts, >> a lot of moving parts that go into it which I'll share here in Mr. Wilson did have something. >> Mr. Chairman, >> I don't think that there is a maximum rate that you can raise. I think you can raise taxes whatever you wish to. Now, that is subject to recall, but you can. And like I said, last la in August of last year, we chose to decrease our tax rate, which resulted in a $1.8 million decrease in revenue from if we had left it where it was. That's indisputable, isn't it? >> You all? >> Yes. >> Okay. food service. >> All right. So, I'll start off with a little

110bit of uh background information before I hand it over to Courtney. So, I wanted to share just some research that I did as far as our numbers go. And uh what I wanted to share was schools across Kentucky are having to increase prices because there's a lot of things going on right there. We know that the food costs more, personnel costs more, services cost more, but more importantly, uh KDA uh facilitates with the US um DA paid lunch equity program. And what that program states is that you must your current rates must fund all of the food service programs to include personnel, food, supplies, serving for the full paid rate. So it doesn't mean like um reduce rate or free lunches. So what's happening in Kentucky right now is schools for every full paid meal

111they're losing money and that money has to come from the general fund. So KDE puts out recommendations and their current recommendation for FY27 is $416 pricing for lunch. Now we know that that's well above what we would want to ever go but this gives you a guideline based on not only USDA but also the KDE uh guidelines. And so what we're we're kind of seeing that same thing come through because just like we talked about fuel and diesel, everything is kind of it doesn't get cheaper every year. Insurance premiums don't get cheaper. Everything rises. And so we've seen that uh in our food service program as well since that we haven't raised any rates in our lunch or breakfast program since 2018. Go to the next one. So this shows the reimbursement rate. So what

112USDA does is they look at the cost for school lunches and then they say this is what we would expect that cost to go year to year to year and that's that blue line. So you can see back when we haven't raised rates so I use that as our kind of baseline all the way back to FY19. So it was $3.54. Today it's closer to $5 is what the USDA reimbursement rate says would be a comparable lunch serving. those three lines we've flat. You know, we've maintained that $3 um since 2018. So, that's really kind of where we've saw that kind of reduction. I had to pull some general funds the last couple of years from to support the food service program given the inflation of those costs. This is a graph. You know, milk

113is a staple, right? Especially in food service. 30% increase over the last, you know, six years since we've increased prices. So just milk prices alone have gone up 30%. So that's hard to absorb if you're not at least minimally trying to combat that cost uh over time. So that's kind of the data behind what I've seen for across Kentucky, Food Service, USDA, KDE, and then I'll turn the specifics over to Courtney. >> Before we get to that, uh board members, you have a packet on your uh table. >> We can see better. >> Um Dr. Gold had requested some information, so we provided it to all of you all at the same time with all of the data that was requested. Um there uh one of the other things that um Miss Quire and Dr.

114Gribbons and myself have looked at is is this because of staffing um while we know staffing increases have come up over the last few years like are we adding more staff members and from what you can see on your screen uh is that our staffing numbers are actually decreasing instead of increasing. Um, and at the top part is the staffing formula that we give our schools. Uh, and it's actually says 42, but it's going to or um there's going to be one reduction there because of um somebody's retiring and we're not replacing that person. So, we're actually still continuously reducing the amount of staff members that we have for our food service department as well. >> Can I ask a question about that? When you go back to food, I'm guessing FS is food service

115assistant manager. We went from zero assistant managers in 20 to 21 and up to six. >> Yeah. So, we converted some we converted some positions from just a cook to an assistant manager. >> And what is the cost difference in that title? >> It was like a quarter. >> Quarter. Okay. Um, so this slide shows our participation for March year to date, how many meals we've served this school year. Um, you can see Southside is leading in breakfast with 31,000 meals and the high school with 77,000 as our leader. >> Can you go back to that slide? Sorry. >> Um, okay. I just I didn't have a chance to look at all the information. Sorry. >> Okay. Thank you. >> And the next slide here, the top part shows our free and reduced percentages per

116school. You can see Safe Harbor and Simmons are still pretty high. That's why we're able to still offer the C program to those schools and give all of those kiddos free meals with 100% free reimbursement. However, we still need to cover the cost for the paid meals for the rest of the district. So, on the bottom there is just a snapshot of one month, this was March, of our total expenses, not including labor. These are just the supplies that we need every day to get our kids fed, food, milk, um chemicals. So, we still have the labor issue. So that's >> $145,000 for one mile. >> Next, this year, uh we were incredibly fortunate with our community partners to receive donations of $11,000 to go towards um negative meal accounts. So in our schools, we

117are very careful not to have a negative impact regarding meals. We do not use collection services. We do not withhold graduation. Every student receives a meal regardless if they have funds in their account. We don't provide alternative meals. There is no lunch shaming in Woodford County. Um so we're very proud of that. And next, so this is a comparison of meal prices. I can't say with 100% certainty that we're the cheapest in the state, but I can't find any other district offering meals cheaper than we are. Walton, Verona is the only other high school doing a $3 lunch and they are increasing meal prices next year. Um, see Boone, Fyet, Dascese of Lexington, Kenton are all significantly higher than us. As Dr. Gribbons mentioned KDE recommends a meal price for $416. I really don't want

118to go to that and I think we can become a self- sustaining nonprofit without going that high. However, if we keep having to pull from the general fund, KDE will mandate that we go to that higher rate and I really don't want to see that happen. >> Um Dr. Rayurn's going to go into our proposed meal prices. Uh I just want to food service cook baker is a grade four and a an assistant manager is a grade nine that's 1438. >> Okay. I have a piece of paper for you. >> Thank you, Miss Cordon. It's very helpful. M choir. Excuse me. Still helpful. Courtney, can you talk a little bit about and this was one of the questions I asked. I had sent an email with several questions because as I had mentioned before in

119our last board meeting, I am very against raising food prices if we can find a way to work around it. And I want to be very clear that that statement, the statements that I made has nothing to do with our employees that are related to the food service. I think Courtney does a wonderful job. I think everybody who works Julie's here and give a shout out to her. She's amazing. Um, at Huntertown, all of our food service staff are wonderful people. They do, they are the smile. They are the people that are greeting our kids, making sure everybody gets fed, food is a basic need. If our we want to reach our full potential academically, we have to start with the basic needs. Um, and so I think that this is an incredibly important building

120block, but it has to be an accessible building block. And when we raise our food prices, I'm not talking about free and reduced lunch folks. Those are the individuals that do have services. I'm not talking about Simmons and I'm not talking about Safe Harbor because those kids have access. Um, that access obviously could go away in some capacity, but right now they have access. I'm talking about our our families that are struggling to make ends meet that another cost will be a burden to them. I'm also talking about our students who do have the luxury of either taking their lunch from school or from home to school or choosing to eat our our meals at school. Um and so there's different pockets of populations that we need to address with this. And so one of

121the questions that I had, well I had several but and I appreciate all the information but I'm just receiving it tonight. So I'm trying to take it all in and I would prefer not to vote on this. I know it's not a voting meeting but I don't want to make this choice tonight. I guess is what I'm saying. Um >> there's no decision. >> Yes, I realized that when I said that, but that's my we need a moment to take all this in. Um I guess is the point that I'm trying to make. Um but one of the things that I I know that we've talked about before is our summer lunch programs. And you're saying, if I've looked at this correctly, that there is no additional cost to our families for those summer lunch

122programs. We've talked before about how that need that people have to access that has to be accessed rather to be able to fund those programs. Correct. >> The summer free lunch. So that's open to everybody. And I think that what some of my confusion I think it's a wonderful service. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of kids that go to school to eat and they're not able to have those things. There's a lot of kids that are, you know, home during the summer when their parents are working, for example. Um, so that makes things more accessible when the school's out. But I guess two things that are of concern to me with that is one, how do we afford to feed the entire community throughout the summer? And I know that's only a couple

123months out of the year, but we are struggling so much to be able to provide make ends meet and have to pull from the general fund during the school year. And the other question is >> you want to take one at a time? >> Yeah, let's do that. Yes, that's perfect. >> So, uh during the summer we're allowed to operate the summer food service program. It's a totally different program than what we offer during the school year. During the school year is a school breakfast program and national school lunch program. SFSP is much easier to operate. It offers a higher um reimbursement for all meals. Uh it's $5. I think it's in your packet. $5 and something per lunch, which is higher than the regular school lunch reimbursement. >> Awesome. >> So that's how we're

124allowed to do that. >> We also have a reduced staff, so not every staff member works over summer. >> And that reimbursement rate covers the rate of our staff working over summer. Correct. >> We're also using a lot of staff chose to make up their NI days for that. Perfect. Um, and so I guess my next question is, can we because we have to have people to use it to keep it, correct? We've talked about this before, but the information that we're getting sent out to the community, I think, is a misnomer for our community that they think that, oh, I can only access this if I'm on free or reduced lunch or I'm taking away from someone else's capacity to access these things. And I know Elaine does a great job of pushing it

125out and it's already starting to be pushed out, but I think that we need to have increased clarity of everybody go get a food bag. I mean, it's your kids are being fed. It's a nutritionist meal. It's not they're grabbing something from the pantry instead. The whole community needs to have go out, have that community of going to the free lunch spots, get a bag, take advantage of it because it is fully reimburseed and is not contributing to this. So, I think that we need to have that language go out to the community. So, they would >> have the board members support that in this like use your voice and your constituents to use this as an opportunity. Um, we have we can only do what we can do, but you all have more access

126to more individuals. It's anybody under the age of 18 can get a full meal, including a large gallon of milk almost every single week >> that can either be delivered to your home or can be picked up at the middle school every Friday. >> Well, I would argue that statement and say that with parent square, we have access as a community. We are what I'm saying is we are putting it out there. But you are >> it is but it's not explicitly stated that it's it it's still vague in that that the way that it's worded. So I'm saying if you explicitly state what you're just saying right now I think you'll have more access is what I'm saying. I think it has to be communicated that it there's not any income barriers or anything

127like that that it's for the whole community. But >> we will look at the communication for >> Yeah. And I'd be happy to continue. I'll put it on my own social media. I think that as board members that's a great task for you to continue to support and push that program because it does it brings in more money than we can receive during the school year >> which is amazing. Yeah. >> Um so I I think that if we had another push even on social media if we could share it out on Facebook pages and that sort of thing and parent square as well as our own efforts that would be wonderful. So that was that was something that I think is often a misnomer because people ask that question about why is that covered

128but the other isn't. Um so th those were the two questions I had currently. But the other question that I had that >> it's also non-public school kids too. So like we don't have access to private school databases either. So >> so public so private you don't have to be a >> home school it doesn't matter access to our student body. >> Well honestly I didn't realize that. I thought you had to be a student at the in the county. >> Anybody under the age of 18, which is why we set up the Falling Springs and we participate in their camp programs that they have we worked that out with Falling Springs that they have their camp um in the morning before they go do swimming, they have lunch >> as part of our program.

129Like we're we're actively we go to Journey Church >> um and participate there um as well. We have several locations throughout the community already. >> That's amazing. High quality. Yeah, my kids have really enjoyed it last summer >> and and I participated last summer because I knew the answer to that question, but I just want to keep on pushing that out. Um, so the other question that I had was and you you answered the question about extras and I really do appreciate that because that was another question I had and that looks I have to put a break on my child even getting extras because I'm like you're you're spending like a ton of your budget here. Um, but I think that extras that that we're making quite a bit selling extras, which is wonderful

130and beneficial, especially for those kids who may need something extra to fill their bellies. So, that's great. Um, the other question that I had that I don't I'm sure it's in here, but if you could just answer for me. Um, is with the additional like to get is some of the and of course we know about the the things that you talked about inflation and the cost of labor and that sort of thing and food of course, but is it a deficit in the number of students? Do we need more students to purchase meals to keep the program afloat and not raise prices or raise prices very minimally if that's what we have to do? Is it because we're not getting enough people choosing to eat school lunch? Do we need to work on that?

131Do we need to work on other options? Like where where is the breakdown of keeping our program afloat? I guess is my question. >> I think it's a couple of different aspects. Um there's two sides to it, right? If you could have 100% participation, then the economies of scale would pay for it. That would cover the gap. However, we know we're not going to have 100% participation, but uh we what we would propose and what we've looked at is a minimal minimal increase. Um and I think we did the math. If they ate lunch every day for the whole year, it would come out to like $70 a year. >> Yeah, we have that on we haven't gotten to that part yet on the slide presentation, but that is in there. >> Yeah, we're we're

132trying to get there. Yeah, >> I'm just being a barrier. >> I think might want to go back to my slide. >> All right. So, um, our proposal, as you can see, our current rate versus our proposed rate, um, for breakfast. So, the $4.16 only covers, um, that is the lunch rate. The the state does not tell us anything about breakfast. So, um, Miss Springet, we'll get to you in just a second. Um, the proposed rate is that we're taking our breakfast up to $2. um that still gives them a high quality breakfast for $2 and our lunch rate to go from elementary to $3 and middle school, high school 325. Um I broke that down for you by the yearly and the monthly additional cost that the a paid a paid person would expo

133be exposed to. And we have 10 months of school. So you take that number and divide by 10 and that's what you have for your monthly um when you look at the actual cost. So on the next one which is the piece of paper that I gave you. Um so when Miss Chuire and I got together at the very beginning um I started noticing this trend happening. Um and in our first meeting that we had as an operations team I said something's wrong. Um and we need to start looking at what's wrong. So we've spent since October well November um really looking at every possible solution that we can. Um we did have an increase this month um for our expenditures or our revenue over our expenditures. Um but at the end of the day

134the it has come down to the fact that we need to raise our prices. And so we looked at um this is from October which is a pretty good month for us to see like participation wise how much how many students are participating. So Miss Chuire broke it down by how many free lunch and reduced and paid students actually participated in October. Um because that's when we started looking at we started looking at November December time frame. So this is from there. Uh and I asked her to take a look at what the cost would be for a paid student at $2,325 and what that revenue increase would be to to see if it would even be worth it before we presented it to you. And so you can see all of the numbers down

135there at the bottom of the page. I know it's small on the screen, but it does come out to be about a $10,000 increase for the month of October that we would have received um based on actual numbers, not fictitious numbers that we're just trying to dream up in our head. Um and so we took that number of 10,000 and divided by the 19 days of service that we provided to our students. Um that gave us $500 additional around about which would if you take that number and multiply it by 172 days which is how many days our students are going to be going next year would cover the deficit that we are currently experiencing which would be around a $90,000 increase to our food service budget um to get there. U we have to

136recognize that decisions were made to give the whole county uh free free food um a while back. While it was a decision that was made, um it did deplete our food service reserves um that year, which is why the board decided to not renew that service because our reimbursement rate was not where we needed it to be. Um so we don't have a food service reserve to pull from. Normally, we would pull from the food service reserve before we pulled from the general fund. Um if equipment, so in your packet, you can see the age of our equipment. Majority of our equipment other than the high school are around 20 plus years old. uh for dishwashers and stoves and other things. The um garbage disposals at the middle school that was going out today that

137we are trying to band aid so that we can keep our program afloat and we can't do it on our on our food service budget alone. Um and we don't have the general fund to support it. So a food service should be able to support itself and its equipment in there. There was no purchases made for the new high school out of food service. Um the equipment that was going to be moved, we actually had to replace because it wasn't able to be used at the new high school. Um that and that was equipment that was purchased several years before and we were trying to save money at the new high school and ended up having to buy and replace that out of the high school project fund. Anyways, so we haven't purchased equipment for

138any any of our food service department for many many many years other than maybe a warmer every now and then that has gone out. Um so we have to do something and it's not fun. Um it's not easy and it's not easy to say like um I understand that it's not what you want to hear. Um but it is the reality of where we are. Um we don't want to be making cuts but that's the reality of where we are. And so we're trying to do it as a way that doesn't impact our families um in any way possible other than $6 a month if they eat lunch, if they don't eat breakfast, $6 a month um at the elementary school. Um like $6, yes, I know, I know, is a lot. I get it

139and I understand it. And but we have to be sensitive to that, too. We didn't ask for $4.16. >> Yeah. Um, I know Miss Springgate had her hand raised earlier, so I'd like to give her an opportunity to comment or ask a question. >> Thank you. >> Um, I I would say that I do think that um increasing prices may also lead to decreased participation and so that that can cause an issue. Uh, but that being said, my question was, what is the minimum amount that we would need to be charging for breakfast and lunch to be compliant with FDA rules? >> Do you want to pull that back up? I think you had a proposal. >> Yeah, I saw the proposal, but I'm wondering what the minimum amount is. >> Well, there's no set

140amount. It just says that it has to be self- sustaining. So, this is kind of where we're at in the proposal process that by increasing it this much, we won't know until we go through a full year because you don't know what the participation rate is going to be. But we project that on current participation rate. Should we adopt this, it should fill that hole and then the food service program would be self- sustaining, not pulling from the general funds. Just like I'm going to present here in a little bit. We all know everything's based on what we know today and tomorrow it could change, but there isn't any minimum. It just says it needs to be self- sustaining and there's recommendations, but we're not we're not going to go with the recommendation. That's >>

141we're not self sustaining, >> right? >> To be clear that we are we are currently compliant with USDA federal requirements in regards to the minimum amount that we're charging for breakfast and lunch. We are not >> we're not we're not we're not currently compliant because we are pulling from general fund that's not self- sustaining. >> That's the that's the move to the move to the next slide. Next slide. Next. I'm looking for the slide where you had the breakfast and lunch proposals and the >> this one. So it says lunch pricing has not increased since 2018 falling out of compliance with USDA federal regulation rules. And so my question was what is the minimum amount we can charge? And it sounds like we are fine with charging the minimum amount. Um but then Adam is

142saying that that no we have to increase it that FDA, USDA, federal rules require an increase. Is that what you're saying? No guarantee there's not a minimum requirement. That's what um there's not a minimum requirement. What the requirement is is that we have to be self- sustaining. Meaning we should not be pulling from the general fund. That's not self- sustaining. >> How much are we pulling from the general fund? >> Uh last year was 30,000. This year we're going to be more. >> Yeah. And the year before that was about a h 100,000. So >> because we were doing the free reduce for the count or the free for the county. >> So we were in compliance all the way up until the free reduce because you had that kind of account balance built up.

143But once you depleted that account balance, there was nothing else left to pull. So anything that came up, whether it was over overage on food prices, labor, you need repairs that had to come from general funds. And that's what throws you out of compliance because then it's not self-sustaining. You have to use general funds to support the program. >> So and the question that I have asked that I have not that doesn't seem to be an answer is what what alternatives do we have? Like, and that's my question, like, is it because of course the the schools that are getting I I think we throw them out, right? Because they're getting free lunch. It doesn't matter, right? People are going to probably choose free over paying if that's a choice that they have. Um, but

144what is what is what are we doing to increase the amount of students that are purchasing food? Because I know the high school has a lot of options. So it seems like the >> at this point we're losing meals with every meal we serve. I mean we're losing money with every meal we serve >> because we're not pay charging enough. Is that >> charging enough? >> So we and that was my question. So is it >> there in the packet there's a lot of information about how we promote the program. >> Yes. And I I've heard about the sushi days and all that stuff like my kids love that. Um which I think is amazing. Mhm. >> I guess what I'm hearing is with the high school, they like the choices. That's the positive feedback

145that there's multiple opportunities to get different meals. If we do a model similar to that at like even the middle school or the high or at the elementary school levels, will that increase will that resolve some of our issue if we >> already offer um several different entre each day? Frankly, the feedback I get from the schools is the kids the younger kids have too many options. It takes them longer to get through the lines. Um I I don't see that as being >> we are and like >> and it would increase food cost. >> We are looking at ways to increase participation in promoting going back and purchasing seconds at the middle school. Um I I don't think that's something that the board can determine based off of this one. We need your support

146to help us with the proposed things while and let us handle the day-to-day so that we can get participation up and then next year if we can get this participation, get it turned around, we would love to be able to say we can go back and lower it down. Um but we have to we have to have your support um to to make this >> Yeah. Yeah. And the only other way to really do it would be to draw in additional free and reduced lunches, which is kind of the paradox that we're in because of the property values are high. So the any new students that you bring in probably are not going to fall into that category. >> Well, and I guess my other question too is how many because we have a lot

147of migrant individuals here. a lot of and not to get political but because there's a lot of fear out there right now about reporting anything and so when they feel are they encouraged to fill out >> all migrant students receive free meals >> okay so regardless they don't have to fill out the free and reduced okay >> no they're direct certified >> yeah and then we also like if you're on uh you're a foster child you also get free if you are on SNAP benefits you're automatically free um all the you don't have to fill out a single piece of paper for that >> and So, looking at this, your your minimum threshold that we're talking about of staying self-sufficient, we're going from $130 to $2, right? Like in in one of the examples >>

148and so nowhere near the $416 that recommended, >> right? I know I was comparing >> the 130 to the to the $2 for breakfast and the 265 to $3 for lunch. Um, and so minimal increase, but that would get us to that threshold for per your calculations to be self-sufficient. And then next year, if we saw, hey, we're a little short, we're a little over, we can always adjust it, but we just need to get to a place and that minimal increase again compared to the 416 that's recommended, >> um, just to get us even to be self-sufficient. Okay. >> Well, but I think that you're looking from your lens and your income. That's a minimal increase for you, but it's not a minimal increase for everybody. And I think that that's where we get

149lost in some of the semantics is that >> I meant minimal increase compared to the 416 recommendation. >> Yes, I understand. Yes, I understand. But I do think that that's still that can still impact families. And I think that if we can that's why I'm just saying we can if we don't ask questions then we get into a space where we're just going along and we get into problems and we're seeing as the budget goes along that we are in problems. So I'm asking the questions to make sure that there is no other potential way that we can do this without putting the burden on our families. That is why I'm asking these questions. So I appreciate Courtney putting the packet together. I know that was a lot of work and I asked several questions

150about it. Um, and Courtney spent about 20 hours putting that together. So, thank you on this packet. >> Yes, 20 hours. >> I just got one quick question. >> Um, I really appreciate um all the things that you and your team does, Courtney. You guys really are amazing. Um, what does it look like? How are we how what percentage of paperwork are we capturing with those applications for like free and reduced lunch? Is there any way to to do that differently so that we can maybe increase participation without increasing prices? I'm just trying to think of of all the options. >> She wants to know how like the what you're getting from your free readers application. >> The application process, Miss Springgate, is that what you're referring to like 100% participation in that? >> I

151do not want 100% participation. So, I process every application. We do have one school that goes for 100% of the kids filling amount. So, I spend a lot of time processing applications for families that are well over the limit. Um, next year I'd like to advertise to families, hey, if you meet this income, fill it out. >> And are we >> are we seeing that shift? Because I know SNAP benefits have shifted significantly in our country. So what is that looking like for free and reduced lunch? Is that net getting wider or is it getting more narrow to mirror what our SNAP benefits are >> like more available because the threshold is lower? >> Yes. Or is it less or Yeah. >> I mean I'd have to look at the numbers. I haven't noticed any

152significant changes in percentages per school. >> Well directs about 40% right. >> Yeah. Majority of our majority of our kids are direct certified and then yeah 10% of them are application income. >> Yeah. Because we have to look at this data for many different things for title for rate. Um >> I mean it's connected to a lot of >> connect to a lot of things. So like um when we we sit down as a team and we go what's our direct search? It's pretty much always every time I fill out my paperwork for the state it's 40% um direct and 10% or less for those that actually qualify. Also know that anytime income changes, you can fill out a free and reduced form. >> You can reapply. >> It doesn't mean that just because you

153didn't qualify in August that you're always going to be turned away. You lose a job, have something come up that um causes a family to have a hardship along those lines, reapply. Um that's what we can always I mean Miss Choir always is doing um applications in our our free friskies our family resource centers and our youth service centers do an excellent job of connecting the ones that they know that they need it. Um so we do have a great we are connected to our to our students and their needs >> and it's not just free and reduced lunch. It's our title one funding. It's you get athletics the technology fees wave like it opens up pathways to have more support for sure. >> So this proposal will be on the May board meeting next

154week. >> All right. >> And Courtney, I didn't mean for you to spend 20 hours on this, but I do appreciate you doing that. >> Put your research cap on. There you go. >> All right. I'll just uh touch basis. Uh next subject is on the wraparound uh potential program for August. Um did some calculations. What we looked at was the current facilities is safe harbor. We looked at what is the average utility cost. Uh what I did is broke it down by square foot to get like what would a classroom cost for the utilities. We looked at personnel salaries. We looked at the materials. all of the things that would go into this program. Um >> uh can we first before we get into that, Dr. Jones, would you mind sharing your vision for

155what the wraparound care program is? >> So um one of the first really honestly my first week on the job um our workforce development council, I met with them um and several people in the community said child care is a big need. Even though we have some incredible community partners um that provide child care, it's still not enough. And so um that has continued to be a need that has been identified my entire year um as a need. So we I started thinking and started dreaming about um especially with the push for prek for all. How could we offer or could we offer the wraparound care for the second half of the day of with preschool? And so that would allow us to expand our preschool offerings. We have a lot of families in the

156community who do not participate in our preschool program because they need all day. And so, um, if you the the Safe Harbor building was originally built to be a preschool facility. So, it has all of the fittings and all of the requirements needed for so there like there's not construction costs or like renovation costs or anything like that. It's already built for that. And so when um the board decided that we wanted to expand safe harbor spaces here, I thought, man, that would be a really great opportunity. But then I went and poor Dr. Gribbons came on board like that day. I was like, help me figure this out. Um because I do, you know, we want to calculate conservatively so that we can come to you and say we know for sure we can

157support this and break even and it be self- sustaining because now we've gotten etc back. um at a place where it is self- sustaining. And so um that's where we are. So >> yep. So the first slide that'll come up is just the guidelines of what the licensed uh child care staff to child ratios are. So you can kind of take a look at this. We use this as the model and then moving forward you'll see this is a two classroom model. So, we looked at what was the workers, the custodian, food service coming in, all of the things, and the total expenses come out to a little over $1,467 a day. And on the right, you can see the average revenue that would be required per child uh for that to basically break even.

158Our current wraparound for preschool is about $35 if you look at the current one. So, that's the two classroom. And then we looked at it the three classroom model which actually you know as you expand you become a little bit more operational flexible. Um you can see the cost is still about the same. Uh but what we come into is now with 40 kids it's only $36 a kid average to break even for your operational costs. So that's just kind of the math that goes into it. And then this next slide really just kind of sums it up. That says we've had interests for over 72 people right now that have said yes, we would I would say 72 families. So if you kind of do the math, probably more than eight of those families

159have multiple kids. So that would be 80 kids, which would necessate at least three classrooms. Um with that, that provides that buffer. Um, then you come in and you only need $32, a little over $32 average per kid to break even. Uh, and that is actually below what our current wraparound preschool is at $35. And then there's there's some variances there whether it would be like an afternoon, morning, there's different things depending on what the kids need that would go into it, but this gives you kind of a an overview of if they were there all day, this is what it would take to break even cost. So, it also allows for um wraparound care to exist on Fridays. Um that is a big problem that we currently face with our preschool program where they

160don't have school on Fridays. Um this is a solution for that where students will still have the ability to go to the wraparound care program that we're calling the little legacy hive. Um they'll have that ability to go there on Friday to um to get daycare all day. Um so families will have the same opportunity um that we have our transportation staff already available during preschool time. They can assist with transportations to the facilities that we can offer our shuttle programs um that we currently already offer. Um it's not going to be additional costs there for that. Um, and the ability to also use the ones that for people that qualify for the state funding u for daycare can also use this service and we can get the full rate instead of the partial rate

161which is what we currently can get with ETC because we offer services for them every day all day. And then also we also know that there's a lot of waiting list in the community. So that would definitely help the community out there. Uh, I think it would set us up in the in the next budget cycle because we already see that there's kind of that universal preschool funded that's kind of starting to roll out now. I wouldn't be surprised if that got funded in the next benium. And then I think what you would be looking at is like, okay, where do we get more space because we're going to have more kids because we've already developed that program and establish it. >> So the break even point is 40 kids, right? The break even point

162is 40 students. Um, so that's where we are right now. We wanted to bring that information to you all. >> And you don't think there's any problem getting 40 children? >> It's It's amazing. Yeah. Honestly, I mean, >> it's probably going to be more like 80. >> Right. Right. >> It verified what I've heard anecdotally, but I was like, "Wow." I mean, >> yeah. >> I have a couple questions. I think this is a great idea. I'm not trying to dispute that at all. But um my first question is when will pickup be? Like are you talking about like a 5:00 kind of roll into etc? Like will it cover a work day for a family because I would think that that'd be a barrier to use. >> We're thinking about a normal daycare operation

163time 6 6:30 to 6 p.m. >> Perfect. And would they would all the students go to the classrooms that are in our elementary schools and then be transported over? And what is the reason for that? Can they have like an option to stay just in one place all day? Unless I know that there is >> I understand that the continuum of like rolling into elementary school and they're in the building and the benefits of that. I'm not saying that at all. But is there like for a three-year-old for example, could they have the capacity to stay in one building all day instead of going over maybe? >> So this is not we are not offering daycare in all of our buildings. >> No, I'm talking about >> they're going to have daycare the daycare part

164in the safe harbor building and then they'll be taken by a bus either to >> to preschool and then they will come back. >> Okay. So they if they want to access preschool services >> then they >> I think I'm confused about this like >> so preschool there's child caring and then there's preschool. Are you separating it out in that capacity? Okay. So the child caring part would be at safe harbor. The preschool part would be at the elementary school and then the after the half day. Now I understand. Okay. I was getting confused about >> that's okay. I didn't even tell you that. So that's good that you asked. >> That's the wraparound part where >> they're still receiving. Okay. And then >> we just don't have room in the schools to be able

165We do have room to be able to expand more preschool classrooms, but not like not for child care, too. So that space just allows us to be able to do both. >> So will they have a curriculum within this program too? Like Okay. Um the other question I had was cost of outfitting the classrooms and that sort of thing. Have that has that been factored into the overall break even? Yes. >> Yeah. So, uh actually they had quite a bit of the classroom furniture. There are a few things that we would need to purchase, but uh the majority of stuff they actually already had some still brand new. >> Mr. Wilson, did you have a question as well? >> Yes, I did. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh these are very simple questions, but I just

166like it. What's the eligibility? Do you have to be an employee of the school district? Do you have to be a student in the school district? What are the eligibility requirements? >> That's a that's a great question. So, we are looking at offering it for our employees u first priority, but then also tuition spots for preschool and we're factoring that in so you don't have to just meet um for income or disability. You could also have a tuition spot with our preschool program. >> Okay. Y >> thank you. And then the second question when it you mentioned daycare modeled after other daycarees. >> What happens on snow days, NI days, the summer? >> That makes my job so much more fun than it is right now because I would also be making the call for

167those. And I did that in Jessimine County like >> we would decide whether we were offering um etc there um on snow days and it just depended on the day. I mean, honestly, if it was really bad, then we would say we can't we can't offer it today, but maybe we're back tomorrow. That sort of thing. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you. >> Summer, we are not sure yet, >> to be honest. >> We do have a structure in place already for summer, too, which is why we're not 100% sure. >> Yeah. >> Because ETC operates all summer long. So, that is a structure we already have existing, so we don't know exactly how it's going to >> For this age group. Yeah. Well, and I think if you look at other

168competitive factors, like I think you're right. This is a gap. This is a lot of families choose to go out elsewhere for child care because of this, but also the competitive factors within our community. >> They're structured very much like a school day. So, this does allow I think that I think that people would run to this. I mean, I don't see why you would not, but >> yeah. and with it. So like for a student, let's say um that takes a tuition spot, fills a tuition spot in preschool and also does this. The combination of the cost for those two would be cheaper than um any of the rates around us. So we're trying to make it affordable and that's still factoring in the cost um that Jason has Dr. Griven has calculated. So

169>> this is this is more an observation rather than a question. I'm long past daycare. Uh I don't worry about daycare. I'm long past all that. >> Me, too. >> However, um I'm assuming there's other daycare facilities in Woodford County. >> Sure. >> And if we had children that were currently going to those daycarees and they chose to come to ours that would open up spots for other people in the community, which would help everybody. >> There are not enough right now. There are so many waiting lists. I was going to say as someone who within the last handful of years had kids in that the wait list are crazy. So this this would not be a competition for any other daycare this would probably allow them to to bring more kids in >> to

170expand. Yeah. Thank you Dr. >> And oftent times we go to Lexington you know like when you're not able to so you're keeping kids in the community as well. So >> Miss had a question. >> Yes >> Miss Springgate. >> Yes. Um one could you guys kind of the the intent with those 72 or so families before next week just so we have a better idea of you know 40 said absolutely 100% for sure or you know there's just tenative interest and and they're not going to go with us just kind of firm that up and then the second thing is um is there an existing playground there and would the bathrooms have to be refitted back down because we changed the bathrooms when we moved say harbor >> we only changed the sinks miss

171ing gate. So, they would have to be adjusted, but the sinks are just the plumbing's already there. We just raised it up. >> Yeah, it's actually um interesting. That's a good question. The child care requirements. So, for a child care facility, they're different than like a school. So, like our preschool classrooms have particular requirements that um and vice versa that our child care centers don't have. So um you know just in preparation for the possibility of this happening this year or next year whenever the board you know feels like it's a good good go um we had already had people look at it from state licensing um and they were they said it's truly good to go and so any um you know like painting and things like that that we would do you know

172we have etc funds so that none of that funding would come from from general fund. Um we also um are working with some community partners for them to also possibly contribute to um the purchase of some of the equipment and things as well. The requirements for playground equipment are are different too for that for child care center and we we've got enough we feel like we've got enough or have community partners that would be able to supply those needs. But like little tikes for instance, like those types of things are what are what's required for that age group. >> There's still the area fenced off too from the original playground that was there over there. >> Yeah, >> Mr. Wilson, did you have anything else? >> No, thank you. >> Anybody else have any questions

173or comments about wraparound program? >> All right. into a lot of modeling and projections around revenue. So, I like to start with revenue. Uh really what I like to focus on when we're thinking about budget season, what does that do? What have we done historically? And so, I've started here with revenue strategies and come up with a couple of different options, sharing with you data historical, what it would look like in the next couple of years. And so we all know, we kind of talked about it earlier, there's I think the last count with the PVA, there's over 200 building lots approved that still haven't been built yet. Going to continue to grow. We have industrial coming in, businesses coming in. What does that do? Our assessment values are going to continue to increase for

174at least the next five years that I can see in talking with the PB. We don't see it slowing down. Um this year right now the new seek formula came out and it had an 8.9% increase in assessments. Um so we were looking earlier about a month ago I was modeling about 9 and a half. Talking with the PVA they said it could be 7 to 12. So we still don't know exactly where that number is going to going to fall but we know it's definitely going to be 8 n 10% increase from last year. Um, so that's just kind of the reality of the area. Um, I know I think KT you mentioned earlier like the quadrantbased assessment every four years they're going to get reassessed in those areas. Right now this current year

175they did some pockets of her sales a little bit kind of south. Next next year will be mainly farmlands south with some little blocks throughout the county. So what we're looking at, this is the projection framework here with the caveat that this is what we know today. Next month these numbers could change because this is what we know today. We're modeling off of these. So we're looking at modeling an 8.8% increase this year, 7.5% increase for the next two years. And I'm keeping our ADA the same. So, our enrollment, I'm just saying because we don't know if it's going to go up a little bit, down a little bit, but just gives you kind of an apples to apples comparison of what everything that we're going to talk about goes through. Currently, the PVA is

176in the review period. So, we should have about next four to six weeks, we should have a better idea of what that actual assessment uh increase will look like uh year-over-year increase. >> Can you go back to that slide because I think that's a really important thing for the community to wrap their head around. Um, and I hate that Our paper's gone. Um, so when you say total assessment increase 8.8, you're talking about the PVA. >> PVA. So the value of the property tax base in the county will increase 8.8%. Um, that doesn't mean that comes to the school at at any means, and I'll show you that later. That 8 8.8% increase does not translate to an increase in school funding uh at all. >> And I also think that that's a key factor

177for people to understand and soak in. So will you say that one more time for those in the back? >> Yes. So the 8.8% increase in the tax base in the community does not translate into that increase into the school budgets. I'm going to talk about three approaches here. We're going to talk about a 4% increase. We're going to talk about a hold rate and then a 4% increase and then just a hold rate. Meaning that any three of any one of these does not raise the school tax rate at all. But one thing this does do, you can anticipate less seek next year. >> Absolutely. >> Yes. Which means that we are relying less on the state and more on our individual citizens in Woodford County to fund our school system >> because the

178state dollars that you get on any other form like your income taxes does not directly go to your school system. It goes up through the state and as we talked about, the dollar gets less valuable as it goes up and filters back down. and we're not getting it to the full capacity because of our property values being so high in Werford County. >> Absolutely. >> That was a good transition under your next >> Yep. So this is Yep. So this is our tax rate comparative right here. >> So I'm looking So pretty much throughout this information and data I'm sharing two years back current and two years forward. So that way you get a kind of a clear picture of what that looks like. So I talked about the 4%. So if you take the

1794% rate every year, so basic math, if your assessment total assessments go up above 4% and you take the 4% rate, your tax rate will automatically go down. So anytime your total assessments go up over 4%, you take the 4%, your total tax rate will go down every year for the school. And we've kind of seen that. You can see FY24, we were about 70, just over 70 cents. Currently we're at 63.3. Now, if you continue to take 4% by FY29, our tax rate will be 56 cents. Currently, and you I'll show you in a little bit later, but our current tax rate at 63 cents, we are at 52% mark of the entire state. So, we're smack in the middle of the state. That's good until we start talking about seek. when we're the

180low one of the lowest receiving seat but we're in the middle those don't kind of equate because you kind of have to balance one or the other. Uh the second one we talked about is if you were to hold not raise the rates but hold the current rate. You can see that next line even if you held it for one year and then take the 4% thereafter you still end up in FY29 at 59 cents. or if you just don't raise rates but you hold the current rate, it will just stay that 63.3% rate. And I think Miss Springate may have had a question. I didn't I heard it pop up. >> Miss Springate, did you have a question? >> Yeah, just a comment really. I do think it's important that when we're talking about

181the rates uh going down that if you attach the dollar amount that you can see that the actual dollar amount the check that we get in general property tax is going up. The rate yes goes down but the amount of money that we're getting in the general property tax actually increases. So for instance last year's actuals was 17.5 million and the current budget appropriation which Maybe more, maybe less. I'm not sure. It's 18.4 million. Yeah. >> So, just because the rate is going down, we're doing the absolute maximum rate allowed by law without recalling it. >> Um, but the rate is going down because the assessments have gone up. So, the amount of check is still more year to year if we do that maximum 4% increase. It's a maximum 4% increase of revenue. So,

182the revenue is increasing 4%. A 4% a 4% increase >> by definition is an increase, but it's not the increase that you would get from holding taxes the same. >> Right. Yeah. Right. And there's a >> the 4% is not nearly enough to cover the expenses, which is why >> Yeah. And we're looking at this. >> There's a couple of slides that'll show that in a little bit clearer >> because it doesn't necessarily translate to a 4% increase in revenue when you look at it. And and what I really will focus on here in a little bit because I want to focus on the revenue per student because when you say seat goes up and down, it's different because if I have $10 million supporting a thousand students or $10 million supporting 4,000 students, that's

183a whole different number. And so throughout here, you'll see me referring to the revenue per student because that's based on average attendance. That's based on the actual students that we're supporting. And you'll see that that actually that number is going down and not up. And so that that'll I think it'll become a little bit clearer as we get through a few more slides in the in the data and that'll help kind of clear up some of that. So, like I said, we're about the 52% mark. This is uh shows you every county and their current tax rates. Uh if you were to look um just to our our east there, Fyet, even though it looks like they're pretty close to us, they actually have an occupational tax and some other tax. So if you were

184to equivalent that out, they're closer to a dollar. They're like 98 cents uh where we're at 63. And you can also see that we're we're pretty competitive across the state because like I said, we're at 52% uh of all the counties. Now, here's where I wanted to talk about the per pupil revenue. >> Can I can we sorry, jump back real quick because I know one of the the things that I hear a lot is that we are one of the highest taxing counties in the state >> and what you just showed is that is not the case at all. No, >> we're actually right in the middle. >> Right in the middle, 52% mark. >> Okay. >> And even though we have one of the richest counties in the state, we do not get

185that revenue from every property that's on our like our agricultural properties and things of that nature. I think that that's that's rhetoric that I've heard since I was in elementary school myself. How do we >> how are we here when we have the most like we're one of the highest property valued as far as like >> Yeah. >> Um our agricultural property, the farms you drive by and that sort of thing. >> Yeah. And and a lot of that too goes that a lot of the agricultural the way that it's taxed is taxed at a much lower rate. It wouldn't be taxed at the 63% rate. Actually, it's more like 17 cents on the agricultural rate. If you were to say, you know, you pick out a horse farm, right? The the really only tax

186equivalent rate for the property tax would be on the horse barns themselves, uh, because it is a structure building. So, we would get the taxes on that. However, in Kentucky, horses are considered personal property, but they don't get taxed at the same rate, say like your motor vehicle or something like that. They get taxed at that lower really small revenue. So what I kind of share is that the county on paper looks really wealthy, but if you look at the school, we're like not as wealthy or we're really underfunded compared to what the value of the community looks like. >> And a lot of that comes with the agriculture um and the way that those taxes are are levied. >> And I think even going back to the tax rates that you had a couple

187slides ago, you know, and Dr. to mention like the PVA assessments. So for most people, a lot of the quadrants have been done, you mentioned there's still a couple, but if we look at the current assessments that have already happened and the quadrants, the taxes that we paid last, so like if I was in a quadrant that has already been assessed and I paid taxes last year at the rate, this next year, if we held the rate the same, I would pay the exact same amount of taxes. I would not pay more in taxes than I did last year. Correct? So when we look at that trend, u if you go back one more, many people that were already assessed and then we redid the tax rates and gave a lower tax rate, more people

188got a tax break because of what we did, but then we have a funding issue in the school system. >> So, and I know you're going to get in more detail, but here just holding the rate the same for most people, it's going to keep your tax payments the same. It's not going to be an increase, but it will be a increase in revenue for the county for our schools that we really need. >> Yeah. If they if they had a tax increase, it would have been some other end to deaxing them or like you said, if they were happen to be in the reassessment quadrant that year, >> right? Um I think Miss Springgate had I heard the the bell. Did you have a comment? >> Is that my bell? Yeah. And just to

189be clear, like what we're calling whole is recallable. So that yellow line, >> correct? Correct. If there were a recallable above the maximum allowed by law 4% increase, then the yellow means recallable. So I just think we be really clear with the public that yellow means recallable. >> Correct. >> Good. Yep. Yep. >> And the 4% is what we're allowed to legally take by law without without >> recall. And that's what we took last year. >> Yes. We've taken that for past few years. Yes. >> Dr. Ra. um with with the decrease in seek every year. Every year this 4% recallable is going to happen. >> Yeah. So if your property value is still going up every single year, you're going to always have a if hold the rate is going to always be a

190recallable risk that we have to take as a board. Uh, and if we look at it from, you know, as a resident of Woodford County, I would much rather a hold the rate and not see an increase or decrease unless my property value goes up. And guess what? When I sell my house, I'm going to get that back in return. Um, so like that's I mean I I live in Woodford County. I'm in Miss Springgate's district. That is something that I as a citizen of this community, Dr. Dr. Jones as a citizen of this community understand what we're asking the board and u wanting the board to really take on for themselves is hold the rate so that we can hold our success. >> Thank you. >> And so this comparative per people and kind

191of what I spoke about like you really have to look at it per people because if I was to look three years ago um the average daily attendance is much different than it is today. So like the number you're like, "Oh, we we went up." Well, we're serving more students than we were at that lower number. And so when you basically take the total, what this does is takes the seek total and the local tax revenue only, and if you total those together, divide it by your average daily attendance, then you get your per pupil revenue. So you can see blue line is your 4%. So if you take your 4% every year, that's what it's going to look like. You can see in FY25 we're just over 10,000. This year we're at 10,427, but

192for the next three years, you can see where that line is. It's it's a flat small kind of increase by FY29. If you take the hold rate, which is the green, and then the 4%, you can kind of see where we're at. Then the hold at 63 is the yellow rate. Now, I put in there an inflation adjusted rate based on last year. So if you were to look at per pupil spending last year and you wanted to keep that same revenue which would support the same programs, the same teachers, all of those things, then that's where we would need to be. That's the only one that catches up with inflation. And uh want to preface that I use 2.5% as an inflation rate. Very conservative. I highly probably will be more than that. So,

193this is a 2.5% inflation rate for the next couple years. That's that hold rate is really the only thing that keeps up with inflation uh that funds our classroom at what we had previous years maintaining staff programs. Dr. Grivens, like you can see on your graph that everybody's looking at on their screen, if you don't hold the rate board, we can never make that gap up. Like that's a gap that will be forever. Um just like it was a gap when it was 70, we can never get back to 70 um without significant significant increases in passing nickels and we don't want to get into that. Um this is there's a gap that's going to be formed if we don't hold the rate. >> Yeah. And there's to give you some perspective. Uh I was

194at Casville last week. Uh talked to a lot of different school districts. There's a lot um I was in a room with 20 districts. um out of the 20, at least 12 of them are trying to hold the rate or increase their rates and the rest of them are adding recallable nickels uh because there's a lot of schools that are in similar circumstances. Um but we are unique because of the wealth in the community >> and we are not proposing that. We're proposing a hold the rate to the board. >> Yeah, we we say we we're not increasing taxes. We're just going to continue at the current rate >> and holding the rate is at 63.3. >> 63.3. >> So when we say hold the rate, we mean we're not increasing the taxes. >> Yes.

195The tax rate does not go up. It doesn't go down. It just stays 63. >> Unless your PVA changes, then it will stay the same. Your mortgage will stay the same as it is currently. >> I think Sherry, did you have a question or a comment? >> Just a comment. I do think we need to be clear in our language. When we're saying hold the rate, what you're saying is we will be doing a recallable rate. So it will be over the maximum amount allowed by law that we are allowed to do for our tax setting our taxes. So what we're allowed to do by law is that 4% increase. But if we hold the rate, what we're really doing is a recallable tax that is above the maximum 4% increase. And I just think

196we need to be clear with the public because if we're not and and we're all just kind of talking amongst ourselves thinking, "Hold the rate sounds great. Hold the rate sounds great. The rate staying the same and not really going that next step and saying what that means for you all is this is recallable. It's above the maximum amount that we're allowed the maximum 4% increase that we're allowed by law." And so this recallable um rate would be something that that you could do a petition and and you could you know potentially um you know have that have us have to back off of that. And I think the making me do legislation that if you go for a recallable rate and you don't get it that instead of dropping back to that 4% it

197drops back to another rate. I just think that we really need that educate ourselves and be very transparent that hold the rate leaving it the same really means that what we're doing is recall >> and I think we are being transparent with this slide where you can see where the 4% would get us a certain amount of num amount throughout the hold the rate with the 4% gets I mean hold the rate for the FY27 sorry I'm reading that wrong gives you the green and then hold for FY2729 9 projects you up higher like you could see that there's a difference there and but I do appreciate that you're clarifying that Miss Spring because I think that that is important. Do you think if anybody just looking at this slide, not in this meeting, anybody

198just looking at this slide, ourselves included, would know that hold means recallable. It means over the maximum. >> So taxes aren't going to go up. That's what I would think of it as. I mean, >> it doesn't change the tax rate. >> The the red tape of it is yes, it's a recallable rate that we're proposing, but it's also just holding the rate the same, and you wouldn't pay more taxes than you paid last year, >> unless your PVA goes up. >> Well, right. Because from our perspective, from the school board's perspective, holding the rate, yes, by holding the rate, we would generate more than the 4% >> allowable that we didn't wouldn't have to get a vote or or any kind of recall. >> Well, let's just try to put it point >> Yeah.

199And I understand and appreciate the information. I just think that we need to label things what they are. And so uh you have compensating, you have 4% and then and then you have you know I think recallable is a word that that should be included on the slides and it should be um you know in our vocabulary just so that we're clear with folks. >> Yeah, >> it is it is in an upcoming slide. Yep. >> It and it is I think you all are going to call it recallable and we don't have to worry about getting the word out to the community. The community will notify everybody it's recallable. I mean we're not trying to hide anything. >> No. But we also have a community as and you you a part of that community,

200Miss Springgate, that has said we want this for our school system. We want this vision. We want to increase all the things we talked about at the beginning. And the only way to do that is for our community to come together and to to hold the rate, which gives us more funding that we can accept to make that vision become a reality. And I think every board member here wants that to happen. >> Well, and I think the other important piece of it too is that, you know, again, I follow social media. I may not comment, but I'm on there. I hear a lot of people saying, well, I don't have a kid in school. And we have talked about this numerous times, Dr. Jones, is that let's look at the number of people that

201are running for public office. Let's look at the people that are sitting on this board right now. We are community members that we graduate from Woodford County. Hail Woodford. We graduate with it strong and proud and we come back to our communities to serve and to provide services for our communities. So you may not necessarily have a child in school. You may have never had a child. You may have had a child that was raised in a different district, but when you live in this community, you have people that are impacted by our public school system serving you. it. Look at your legal, look at your HBAC, look at your plumbing, look at the people working in your grocery stores, look at the people on your farms, look at any way, your public servants, your

202coaches for your kids. Like, I mean, well, you may not have kids, so that's kind of the point, but there's multiple people that impact our community members every single day that are Woodford County alumni. Um, and so I think that that's an important piece. You are investing in your community's future. You're investing in your own personal future because if you don't graduate people from public strong public schools, how are they going to then in turn do things for you within the community to where your your service provision comes back? You are investing in you. You're investing in your community. You're investing in your future. So you yes, you may not have a child in school here. You may have never you may be a transplant to this community and never had a child here, but

203you are still impacting your future in some capacity. And I think that that's an important piece to keep in mind. If we don't have fully funded public schools, when we hear all the the back of, well, I don't want my teachers cut or I don't want the business CTE cut or I don't want this cut, you have to fund your schools to prevent those things from happening. and we have regardless if they're here or go somewhere else, they're still impacting everyone in some capacity. Um look at the rate of public schools versus home school versus um private schools. Um people move to this community and that's part of the reason why our property values are so high is because they want their students to be here because we have a good upstanding school system and

204if that goes away that's going to be problematic for all of us. Um, and so I just want to just to highlight those things. But again, as you're driving around in your community, look at how many people are Wford County graduates that are running for office currently or currently hold a position in our offices. Um, it's pretty astronomical if you think about it compared to other communities. But that's just my two cents. But I do I agree. I think transparency is incredibly important and I think it's very important to understand how our SEK dollars are funded. I'm sure there's slides about this here in a minute. um the role our PDA plays as well as what tax rates we can take and what's recallable and what's not and what is truly going to fund our

205system. And I think that that's why we're talking about championing this hold the rate. It does not increase your tax rate. Um but it but it also funds our our schools in a an increased capacity. and we're having good stewardship with our with our um budget and that sort of thing as well, which is a key component to all of this to where things may have not been necessarily adding up in the past. Um so I think that that's an important piece of this too. >> So I thought this was a an important map to look at um because we are unique in Wolfford County because of the tax value and the state funding. So you can see this is the per pupil seek dollars by county. So the lighter the color, the less seek.

206So we're currently in the bottom five for the whole state. And I highly anticipate that we will be probably moving to number four and maybe number three in the coming years u given just the way that the property values are going. So >> just kind of segueing off Miss Springate and transparency, the what you're saying is out of how many school districts? 171 >> 171 school districts, we're the fifth lowest in state revenue to support our educational process in Woodford County. Yes. >> There's 166 more districts that get more state funds than we do. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. >> And this is just a representation here. Um, are you sure? >> Okay. >> Sorry. >> So, we talked a little bit about this at the beginning. We talked about local to state funding. So what

207I did is I did inflation adjusted per pupil and I said what is the percentage by the state and what is local. So if you look at the right hand side that's where in the next couple years we'll be approaching 80% local funding um 20% state funding. So you kind of see that gap getting bigger and bigger as the local percentage of funding is where the main source of funding for our schools come from and will be less and less from the state side. kind of to wrap it up, there's that inverse relationship we talked about. Property values go up, state says you got a wealth, so we're going to give that funds to, which is the way that the formula was written for like Eastern Kentucky. They don't have the tax base, but they

208still need schools. However, we're just two things working against us. We're not really growing population or as far as student population, we're growing community population. Back to KTS, there's a lot of demand, but and there's a thing in here, I have a slide, schools is the number one driver for communities property values. So, we definitely want to maintain that, but the property values, the average property isn't necessarily bringing new students or young families to us. So, that would offset that property. We were bringing in young families, more students, then that gets multiplied on the seat formula. We'd get more money. But because we're pretty flat and the values keep going up, then those dollars will continue to go down for people. >> Yeah, I think that's important just because we've all seen over the last

209five to 10 years, more neighborhoods, more housing, but our student population has stayed relatively the same. So, because I get that question, I know everybody else says, "Oh, we're growing. Are we going to need another school? Are we going to be over capacity?" And the honest answer is we haven't seen the student population growth to warrant those fears even though we have more neighborhoods, more houses coming up. So for the school system, the growth in the community just like you mentioned isn't necessarily having the same impact on us. >> Yeah. The I have the numbers. So if you were to look at our student population, we had a 1% increase in five years. And if you go back to FY13, it's only been a 4% increase from FY13. So in FY13, we're at 3615. We're

210at like 38 now. >> 37 46. Yeah. >> So there hasn't even in a 14-year period, we haven't seen it, but it's shrank even more so in the last five years. less than a 1% increase in >> I also want to say with the AADA um that I want to thank our staff members and let the board know that our attendance went up significantly this year and it honestly saved it gave it's projected to give us about $500,000 more than we would have received in SEK dollars. So even though SEK is going down, we would have lost even more had our staff members not worked so hard >> to and our families to get our students to school. >> Yeah. If we' had the same numbers last year, we would have lost a lot. >>

211So here's the you can go to the next slide, but >> the conundrum too is our ADA went up and every of those special ed categories and so the way that it works, those special ed categories or home and hospice, they get they're like a multiplier. So you get extra money on top of that that you were a normal student. All of those categories went up. every one of them and we still lost about 900 a little over $900,000 in seat year to year. So had those not went up we we would be talking a million2 million3 loss. Um and this shows you as of 58. So that was when the last seek populated. This is what our local per people seek looks like. We kind of went up a little bit. They passed the

212new law was a 0.9% increase in seek funding. So that doesn't even keep up with inflation. And then once you take all the way from the assessment values, we're we're just continuing down that loss of state funding. >> Perfect. Miss Macau, did you have a question? >> I do. I have two questions. So I'm wondering if you've talked to the fiscal court. I'm I've been following this um industrial revenue bond situation with Castle and Key distillery and I still don't have a great understanding of how that's going to impact our school system. I've heard that there's going to be if if the fiscal court decides I I don't they may have voted on it now. I don't even know what the outcome was, but if they went along with that, they would be that distillery

213would not be paying any taxes. They would not be paying any taxes at all, but there could be a payment in lie of taxes. >> And I really don't understand it. Like I was trying to listen to it. >> Yep. So, uh I looked into this uh the last week, found out of some additional information. So two positive aspects is we don't have to accept the tax free the state and the county can say we're not going to charge you taxes but the school system we can direct bill them for the tax rate that we have so they you know whatever the value is um so I talked about there's like TRC distilling saga distilleries they're they're doing building expansion so the way that it works you know when they buy the lot that lot's

214worth x amount of dollars when they put a building on it becomes worth x amount of dollars. Once it becomes operational, that value increases. Once they buy the lot and it becomes a a business, we can begin to send them a tax bill. Okay, we're taxing you on the lot value. Okay, you built the building, now we send you the next year you get taxed at the school rate for the building value. So, we don't have to accept the tax break. Um, and I don't recommend that we do. There's a lot of other counties that are followed suit um because again that's revenue in the community that should be supporting the students in the community >> because so it would be this like that their taxes to us to the school district would not change

215even if the county says yes we're going to >> correct >> finance this for you or do whatever it is that they're doing because there was a lot of discussion today and there has been but like I was trying to listen to it on the way here about how it's going to impact the school and I'm like, has anybody talked to the school? >> Okay. >> Well, and I reached out to our magistrate too, a magistrate about this as well and I heard the same thing that they were not planning on waving the because I was concerned about it as well and I was like, I'm going to go to a magistrate because I know that they will know. Um, also what can graduate um just plug that in there. Um, but it's my understanding

216that they were not planning on waving the school rate, which is why that they never did reach out to us to begin with at the >> Yeah, the board would have to vote to wave the rate >> or not. It's up to the board whether you want to wave it because that's your jurisdiction and then the county has their jurisdiction in the state. So, almost always the state's going to give them a tax break. Um, same way with the businesses that we talked about with the Lowe's and the Publix. The state's always going to give them a five or 10 year tax break. We don't have to. Uh, the positive side of that is we still can build them for the taxes, but that is not added to our assessment value for SEK. >> Nice.

217>> So, that would help uh once those get in place, but we know that's not going to that'll probably be another two years, three years before we can start taking advantage of that. >> But it still raises our property values. Yes, it does. >> My last question was and it's and maybe it's just something for all of us to think about. What other options do we have? um in ter and and this isn't a tax vote or a tax hearing or anything like that, but I do think it's important >> to think about what what does it mean if if we do not do this, if we don't explore a recallable rate. >> That's going to mean we've cut $2.9 million. >> That's going to mean >> Yeah. two more million next year. >> So,

218I just think that that is something at some point we have to talk to our community members about. What are you willing to give up? And I have >> if if we don't, you know, to keep the >> Yeah. >> 4%. >> Yeah. And I have a slide coming up that will kind of go into what did that look like. Um because it it's roughly at 4% rate doesn't necessarily equate to 4% increase in per people spending which we need to fund the classrooms. And then when you factor in inflation, loss of seek, we would roughly, as it sets today, we about 1.8 8 million we'd have to cut next year and every year after that um to to balance a budget um and not go into a loss of contingency or able to build

219the contingency back up. >> And those losses would reflect they wouldn't be a like we wouldn't be able to hold to the goals that we set this year not impacting the classroom as as least you know minimal impact on classroom cutting programs. There's no way like another two million it would definitely impact those areas. >> Let's hit the next one. And then I also just wanted to share because I know I've talked about not really focusing on the dollars, but I wanted to show you what the dollars look like. Um this is the actual dollars when you talk about tax revenue and seat total dollars for the next couple years in each of those scenarios. And you do see like the yellow line looks like it's above of the inflation rate, but if you remember

220the previous slide, once you divide it by the per pupil spending, it actually pretty much equates out to meeting inflation. >> Yeah, Miss Springgate, you had a question or a comment. >> I didn't I didn't have a question. Just a comment on when we were talking about the enlu taxes. I was just going to ask if you guys will just look into that process for us because we have been through that before and some of the that uh was said tonight isn't really um it doesn't um add up to to how that process worked for us in the past. So, if you all don't mind just kind of looking into that. I know um I would just like to know that process and what that would look like. >> Dr. Gribbons actually has been working

221with um KDE and CASBO as well on that. >> Yeah. So the process is that the finance office would generate uh an invoice to that business based on working with the PVA because the PVA would have the value of the lot if we were going to the lot or the building or the business. So they would have the property value even though it was state uh tax exempt. And so we would just take that value apply our current tax rate generate the bill and send it to that business for payment. And then you mentioned delegated to pay it just that's coming from absolutely school district and I know we're required to go through the the sheriff's department um in collecting this one. >> They would only they only collect property tax and this isn't necessarily

222a property tax. It even though it technically is a property tax but the way that it's build is not through that same avenue. And so we would be the sole collectors of that. We would bill them. they would send us um the payment so it doesn't have to go through the sheriff and the sheriff wouldn't have to deduct his three four percent off the top. >> So is this how you're doing it with our current inl revenue? >> The current in lie of is under a different that's through like Lakeshore and some of the other ones that come in. It's in a different process, >> but we do invoice them >> and we've probably we've probably not invoiced in the future looking back. We probably missed out on some revenue at at in previous years.

223Just not >> we didn't this year. >> Yeah. >> So, yeah, I just wanted to give you like total dollars. That's what the total dollar amount. and we're just looking at taxes and seek um because that's the unrestricted funds. So, here's kind of where we we talked about it. Um this is where it's really important. Two years FY24 to 26, the local tax base increased over 23%. If you extrapolate that down, like what did that mean for our schools? Everybody thinks, well, your school should have got a 20% increase in budget. That's not the way it works. So that 23% in local growth when we look at it only came to our per people spending of 5.5% growth. Net dollars it was 7.6. So it's still a fraction of the local economic growth. So it's

224not a one for one. People think well the economy the assessments are going up so you must have more funding. It it doesn't translate into the oneto one. So >> leave it on is the main reason uh because of the corresponding seek reductions. >> Um well this is just for the local tax rate. So it would be because went up 23% and our tax rates are going down. So you didn't see that one to one had had the tax rate, let's just say if it was always 70 and it went up 23%. you're going to get not 23% but you get more like 18 17 18% would funnel down to the school funding but you know it doesn't you got you got kind of transitioning kind of lines >> and we were at 70 and

225then we went to 67 then we went to 63 >> and so that way it didn't translate to a and it compounds right as soon as you miss out on one year you're you never catch back up and so that's kind of where where it works at >> to be clear it's because we held we didn't hold the rate. We took the 4% which is the nonrecallable rate >> and then because the property went up 12% 13% one year it's it just it gets so out of whack it just it's hard to catch up when you when you do things like that. So all that said, so our local per pup people funding went up 5% or if you want to look at raw dollar 7.7% but if you look at inflation during the same

226period I look at two you can look at the consumer price index which is annually or you can look at the the per personal consumption u index which is updated monthly. Between those two you're looking at the low point of 8.4% 4% inflation and a high point at 9.2. So if you do the math, we actually went backwards 3% in funding or a little bit more in actual purchase value for our students. Um that's just kind of the reality of the economic situation with the county with the whole economy and what that kind of translated for our funding for our students. Now, we here's where rubber meets the road. So, our seek update in or decreased $9.5 million or we got $9.5 million this year, which was about $934,000 decrease year-over-year. So, you can see

227here in FY26 with all the payments, we got one payment left. We're actually going to be they reduced the next payment. So, it's going to be more like 10.4 million instead of 10.5. So, if you take the 4% rate, that's going to generate 1.1 million in additional revenue, subtract out that 934 loss in seek. So, your net increase would be $195,000. Now, you're serving more students this year than you were last year. So your per pup people spending went down because technically we went up $195,000 but now you're serving more students than you were last year. And so that doesn't translate per dollar to students. And that's why you would see that decrease in per pupil funding. If you hold the rate at 633, you generate $2.4 million. Subtract out that 900,000 loss and seek

228the net increase for next year would be $1.5 million. And that's where you start to build a good funding floor. You're able to rebuild not only your contingency, but you're able to continue to offer programs that we currently have. And then then the next year you're if you able to do it, then you start expanding programs. Summary, inflationary erosion. I know we all we don't like to talk about it, but inflation's real. I mean, we look back five years ago. >> Like I'd love to go back and pay five years ago. Look at your food service. Yeah. Presentation. >> Same. Same thing. Everything costs more. It never goes down. When we talk about, we were just talking about our insurance rates. Insurance rates go up. Gas rates are going up. Diesel rates are going up.

229All the things that you need to operate a school, they never go down. So, at a 4% rate, if we use like kind of that stable inflation, we're actually defunding our classrooms about 2% a year. Um, we know, I mentioned it early, good schools drive property values. So, it protects property values. And we also mentioned this like if we're not able to do this, what do we cut next year and the year after? Because that's kind of where we'll be. We'll be talking about where can we cut and what is that and how would we continue to maintain the high quality? How would we maintain our teacher quality that we have? Um, it would be difficult. Um, and then we talked about the requirements. So, here's the requirements. It is a hold rate and it

230is a recallable rate. So, the requirements are we have to publicly notice two weeks in the newspaper advertisements and there's actually specifics. It says has to be so big. We could go into all of that. Then you have to have a public hearing at least 7 to 10 days after the final advertisement. Then there's a 45day window which three qualified voters would have to go to the PVA and form a petition based on the last presidential election. They need approximately 1500 signatures for it to be uh recallable. They would come after it was certified by PVA. They would present that to the board and say you have a recallable petition. At that moment, the board would have two choices. One, they could say, "I've heard the community. We're going to just take the 4%." Second

231option, we're going to take it to the vote. Failed vote means you have to go to the compensating rate. So, that's that's the that's kind of the scary part. We know we need it. It would have to be really communicated widely in the community because if it failed to vote, it would go to compensating rate. That means next year we would lose another 2 million in funding >> which I think is important that we have a choice even after a petition. It's not required automatically like the legislation was going to be. We're not required to take it to a vote if there was a petition to get the uh turnout. Yep. >> You're not forced to have a vote. >> Yep. >> You know, it if if the board so chooses, you could be like,

232"Okay, we took it to the community. Community voiced their opinion and said they don't want it. Okay, we heard you. We'll go with the 4%." But that comes with costs. >> Okay. Can I have a can I ask a question? Um, so if we took the 4% which is the where we don't have to do the recallable rate and all that sort of. So if we took the 4% what would the two questions what would the tax rate be then because right now it's at 63 that 7 or whatever it is and that holds if we hold that that's what requires the vote so if we took the 4% what would that rate be and how much more money would we have to cut from the budget next year >> so the rate would go

233to from 60 right there it would go from 633 to 60.1 now that's with current data now once the assessments come in that change what that number would look like. >> My guess is it probably go lower than that. >> So, but then that would equate to how much more cuts next year to our budget? >> The 4%. >> And this is all hypothetical numbers >> based on current numbers, current projections, everything we know, we're looking about 1.8 million. >> So 1.8 million if we >> Take the 4% which is legally what we're allowed to do. >> Correct. Hold the rate equates to potential for it to go to a vote, but the holding the rate does not change what you're currently paying as long as your PVA does not go up. So, you're paying

234the same tax rate. >> That would equate to a revenue producing of 1 what million >> 1.5. Okay. So we gained 1.5 and we're coming up able to offer more programs to our schools, reduce the number of cuts to our educators, the stipens, all the things that have been a buzz in our community right now. If we take the compensating rate, if the vote fails, which is the consequence if we go to a vote and of our community votes to not do to hold the rate, thank you for the language. Um, what would the cut be at that point into to our budget? >> Well, it'd be another >> Hold on. >> Something about a 1 35. >> Okay. So, is that in addition to the 1.8 that already comes with the 4%? >> It

235would it would look like that. And so, I want to preface into two. So, the current then like the current budget is built on the 4% However, couple things. The distillery tax is going away. So, that revenue we're losing. We're going to lose that pretty soon. Um, that's going to go for right now is 4% less every year. However, Sazzarak currently has a lawsuit against I want to say Boom County, I don't remember, one of the counties. So, at the Supreme Court if that they're basically pushing back against the tax rate. They basically just want to accelerate the they're like it's already there based on the taxes that we paid. We want to just wipe it out. If that passes, we could lose that. That could go to zero in two years. >> And that

236really impacts us. >> Million two million we could lose technically in two years. Regardless, that 2 million is going to get phased out over the next 5 to 10 years. Um second, >> the only way we were made able to make the 4% work is that we had over $800,000 in capital outlays that we were able to move into the general fund. That won't be there next year. So that won't be there next year. >> So the compensating rate would be if I understand correctly a loss of additional 1.3 million on top of the 1.8. So we are looking at next year if the vote fails to take hold the rate which doesn't change unless your PVA goes up to what we're being taxed on right now. We took the 4% we have to cut

2371.8 8 million if maybe even more if the barrel tax thing fails. But with a compensating rate, if the vote fails and our community votes to not fund our schools at the 6.3 hold the rate now, then the compensation rate is what we will get and we will lose, if I'm doing the math correctly, about $3.1 million. >> Yep. Give or take. >> Okay. So then we would have >> that's a general estimate of >> if you look at the budget, it's in the budget. So this is the budget that you all were given. >> This first page includes the revenue here. Um your top number 19.5 is your 4% hold the 4% not hold the rate. Okay. And if you look at your comp from the last two fiscal years, you're only increasing total

238about $400,000. >> And that's with the 4% >> 4% increase. While the revenue is more than 400,000 with the distilled taxes going down, we're not having increases there either. So, it is in your budget. Just so we're learning how to read that budget that's there. >> So, if we equated $3.1 million because we know our um our employment costs are the highest amount of our costs. >> I just for the public would like to know how many teachers that would equate to educators in our buildings. Now, of course, we have the I just want people to put this into tangible >> understanding of what that looks like. >> 65,000 is an average teacher salary, >> okay? >> With fringe benefits and everything else. Now, they're not making 65,000. That's what >> But that's what we're

239paying out. >> We have about a 30 something% uh increase to our salary. >> So, we're certified only, not classified. >> And then I can give you some historical data on that. So in FY23, if you look at gross payroll to revenue, we were roughly 78% payroll, gross payroll to revenue. In FY24, that went to 87.6. In FY25, it went to 89. That percentage of our budget pays for our >> revenue >> staff. >> And then the current budget is roughly 83. So we've kind of pulled back. Ideally, you want to be below anything above 85. Anything that comes up, roof leaks, whatever, is all debt. 80 and below is where you start to build contingency. you have these funds available should things come up. So you really want to be closer to that 80%

240mark of gross payroll to revenue because that gives you some flexibility for things that you don't foresee coming up. So >> we kind of went up but we're kind of back on the right track getting back to where we need to be and that's kind of where we talked about >> perfect >> for good management. I think everybody had questions too. So I'll start. Miss Macauen, you have >> I just wanted to say on the um budget information that we got maybe January or maybe this was se No, this would have been January. Um when we talk about the distillery tax phase out, it says that based on projected statewide growth in the industry, the industry estimates an increase in barrel tax revenues through before those revenues begin to decline. So, I just wanted to

241point that out. That was provided to us. So, I don't think we can say yet >> we'reing tax income in two years because I don't know if that's >> Yeah, the the actual tax is 4% lower this year even though the production was up. Um, the current industry um that stopped production because the demand is down for bourbon across >> a lot. I mean, you've probably seen there's a lot of bankruptcies in some distilleries. Sazarak's actually buying them all up right now, but they're not producing at the quantity that they have been, which means there's going to be fewer barrels in storage to levy the tax as there has been the last couple years because it was higher in the last couple years than anybody thought it would be because the bourbon industry was really

242producing a lot more than than they had previously because it's a very, you know, you have to project out five years, 10 years. >> Yeah. But they've stopped producing at that level, which means there's going to be fewer barrels in the warehouse going in that will get the new taxes and the tax rate is actually going to be 4% lower every year. >> Yeah, I see that. But the value is still going to be higher. We're still because there are so many of them. Like the it's not going to start to drop significantly. We're not going to see >> Yeah, we'll still have >> we're not going to see a decrease really in the revenue until 2035 >> unless the lawsuit goes through, which is what you were talking about that >> to wash it

243out. Yeah. >> Immediately. >> Yes. Unless that happens. >> There's a there's that balance. I always like it's not a for sure, so I don't necessarily want to count on it. We factor it in, but I I don't I like to be very conservative. I like to be very transparent and what I project. This is what I know as of today is the best estimate that I can provide with the information that I have right now. >> And that that Miss Macau, I'm glad you brought that up. That was provided from the state. So yeah, those numbers were >> Mr. Wilson. >> Yes. Uh, one of you mentioned 400,000. If if if we do something, it would generate 400 thou only 400,000 in new revenue. Did I hear that number? >> Uh, the the >>

244for the budget. >> Yeah, for the budget. The current budget with the 4% factored in it technically for local taxes is 400,000 >> and that doesn't >> but that doesn't include the seat drop. That's just >> but that does that doesn't even pay the automatic >> salary increase each year >> 540,000. >> So I mean you're >> you're going backwards 145 for >> the other aspect and the reason that it would we talked about going back is because we were able to fill that over $800,000 hole with capital outlay funds that we were able to transfer into general funds. >> But that's a one-year thing. We don't have that moving forward now. Thank you. Um, so that means that 800,000 is automatically next year we got to find reduce it or find the revenue. >>

245All right, Miss Springgate. I just want to point out also that your total revenue that we have in our budget is at a decrease total. >> All right, Miss Springgate. >> Um, yes. I was just going to ask um when uh PT was asking about the different rates, what those numbers would be, what that would look like. If we could just get a slide and that can be added to the presentation, I think that would be helpful. Um it just kind of throw the numbers out. You know, it's just hard to kind of keep up with. So just a slide 4% equals this much revenue. Uh compensating equals this much revenue. Uh you know, with all the full flat, whatever those three options, just what that >> question mean, I just I just need to

246add the compensation. Yeah, I have it all in there except for the compensating rate which will get added. >> Okay. Okay. >> Um I just wanted to say if I have done my math correctly, $3.1 million at $65,000 per how much with fringe benefits and salary that equates to a little over 47 teacher positions. So if we put that in I mean if that if I've done my math correctly. So I did 3.1 million divided by 65 that's 47.69. Yeah, if you did it 100% personnel, that's what it would be. Or you have >> which we wouldn't do 100% personnel. We couldn't do that. But I just want to put >> it's a good way to think about how it equates. >> It's like elementary school. >> Anybody else have any questions before we move

247on? >> All right. So I have um heard that the there needs to be a correction. Um and I think that what was sent wasn't necessarily what the message was supposed to be. Um so I want to acknowledge this to the board that of what happened. So, we are required by law to notify anybody by May 15th of any personnel decisions that are going to be made. Uh, a stipen is one of those positions that is not renewed every single year. We're supposed to notify those staff members that we have reduced them. Um, that is a practice that has not been done, which should have been done. So, we were correcting that. So every year moving forward, everybody that receives a stipened position, coaches are a stipen position. Uh extra duties are a stipen position.

248Those are a year-to-year commitment from the board to that individual. Um and so as far as it's concerned, we have to notify them that those positions are not going to be renewed. Now that doesn't mean that we are cutting that position. And I think that's where a lot of people jump to conclusions. Um, and that was not what should have happened. Um, these are steps that we were taking for personnel to make sure that we can make sure that everybody that's supposed to get that stipen does get that because if you don't roll over and you just roll over that stipen every year, what comes up to be is that we have somebody that is doing getting a stipen that's not doing the work while somebody who is doing the stipen is also getting paid.

249that we have duplicate stipens happening. And so, just to be clear, that um is a practice that should have been occurring, that was not occurring, that is occurring now. Um and then anytime there is potential for a salary reduction, we have to notify that staff member. So, we don't have the we'll get into that in just a second. We don't have an approved salary schedule. The additives for classified staff members are also a year-to-year commitment from the board which would require a notification that may and I say may because in the notice that even says that may occur a salary reduction may occur not will occur. Um so please note that I apologize to you board members that um you all were bombarded and that was not the intention of Dr. Jones or myself to

250bombard you with that. um it was strictly a routine letter that should have been received by every single individual. That has not been the case. Um and that does not mean that those stipens are going away. So I just want to let you know that that is the case. Um and so >> thanks for clearing that. I will I just want to say thank you and and for everybody. So you'll get that notification every single year from going on out. >> Yeah. So, anybody that gets a stipen will receive a notification at around May sometime that, hey, you completed your stipen for this school year. Thank you for your service. Next year, your your service is complete at the end of this school year. And that's all a stipen can be. Just like a limited

251contract, a limited contract only exists for the school year. It's not something it has nothing to do with their permanent certified classified position that is on the salary schedule. So, um, again, apologize for that. >> Thank you. >> Um, we we tried Thank you very much. >> Yeah, we tried to send notice prior to it. >> People didn't read their emails, which happens, and when they actually got the notice, they made jump to conclusions that were not accurate. >> It's the same thing as being on a year-to-year contract essentially. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, a stipend is a year-to-year contract. Yes. Um on your papers, on your packets, you have the salary schedule that we're proposing for the May meeting. Um and all of these salary schedules that are on here are reflected in the budget.

252So the budget that we are going to be approving are the salary schedules that are here. Um you will see that there are no salary increases to the certified. Anything in red in your document will represent a change. Um so the salary schedule, there are no changes to certified. we left that at 188 days. Um, part of the original discussion was removing that down to 187, but because we put back in those two uh staff work days or I'm sorry, we removed those two staff work days and put them back as instructional days, um, that helps us in so many ways, but that was a compromise that we made to our certified staff members that we're going to leave you at 188 days. So, they did not receive a notice for that. Um, you can

253also see the next page is our daily breakdown. Um, if you ever wanted to know what a certified person makes per hour, sometimes we have to give that to them for extra duties, that is why we have this page here. And then the next page over here is if you ever wanted to know what our step increase is by year. Um, I added that column in here. And this will not appear in the final working or the final budget or sorry, final salary schedule. Um, this is for information only for you all tonight to see every single year. Um, and we don't like to call it this, but every single year we as certified and classified staff members receive a step increase for that year of service, which means our pay increases every single year.

254Some districts, it only increases at the 5year mark or the 10-year mark or the 15ear mark. Ours increases every single year and we get a salary increase. Like I said, that is not what we that's outside of raises. This is something that we give our employees every single year at the cost of $540,000 um is what that equates to. And you can see that it it ranges between years of service. You know, that fiveyear mark of service is really um one of those pivotal years that uh we want to award our um educators and our classified staff members for their years of service. So at five years, we bump it up a little bit higher and then it kind of goes down, but it averages out to be about a 1.4 4 1.5% over the

255life of every single year. So every single year um now some people call that a cost of living adjustment. Whatever you want to call it, that's what is given by the board. Um it doesn't equal a cost of living adjustment, but uh that is the commitment from the board to that. Um on the next page, you will see that the certified or the classified administrative pay is there. Um you will also notice that we have left um the assistant superintendent uh the chief information officer on here. Um but we are striking the coordinator of alternative programs because that was one of the positions. That does not mean that we are filling those positions. Just because it exists on here does not mean that we are filling it. It's a lot more work in the future

256if our budget gets into play and that we are able to do that or if things change and Dr. Jones decides and wants to come to the board, it's a lot easier to go ahead and have it on there. It's not in the budget. it's not going to be hired. Okay. Also note that our director of staff services will appear on the certified and the classified for the point whenever if we were ever to get to that point that um we could hire that person. We have the flexibility to either have a classified or certified individual there. Um that also is not in the budget. Um I will be proposing to you at the May board meeting an alternative education. We're going to request the board to change that title. The more that Dr. Jones

257and I thought about what that role is is they are the principal of alternative programs and alternative education. They needed the title of it. Um it just will not have the 240 days to go along with it. Uh the high school assistant principal that is listed on there um is currently there has been there um has never appeared on our salary schedule. That is a correction to our salary schedule. So um you can see that those are there. Again, it some of this is we don't have it on the paper and it's time to clean it up. The next page is our extended day schedule for everybody that would exist um that would ex get extended days. Um you know, you can see that some individuals get 52. That's a 240day contract. Other individuals get

258different ones. Um the gifted and talented coordinator is also still on here, although the budget is not there to support it. it is if we ever get that funding or if our grant increases where we can add that coordinator back into there, they would have that fiveday um availability. And then um for our uh guidance counselors on the next page, um what I found is we have guidance counselors all over the page, all over the place. Um it's not equitable, it's not consistent. I can't fix it this year. It's going to be something that we're going to review for next year and kind of realigning our extended days for our guidance counselors. Um, but I can't do it this year. So, um, it is at it is what it is for this year. Uh, and

259WVLA was not on there. We're adding that one. We're changing the gifted or I'm sorry, the central office one that was there is the 504 halftime halftime h home hospital which was approved um earlier this year for the um summer school days. And then um one of the things that we have for some programs and not other programs is extended days to support our um CTSOs or um career technical and technical student organizations that go to nationals that go to different places outside of agriculture. Our a teachers are required to have 52 days. Uh we provide four extended days to cover those. um state competitions, the national competitions, uh and all of that other stuff. Well, we weren't doing that for all of our pathways. So, this one is if we can get CTE funds

260to do it, we're going to use our CTE supplemental funds to support this extended days, not general fund, CTE. Um >> so, just for clar, so that's giving basically the sponsor the staff sponsors of those organizations. It's giving them >> like days for those. If you teach family and consumer sciences, you are entitled to four extended days to cover your time at um FCCLA. >> Yes. >> Nationals, FCCLA state, um and so forth. >> Um and then you can see our special education. We're reducing those five days for our department chairs um who also receive a stipen. So that is just what they will receive as a stipen. Um on the next page, these are positions that are different. So these positions existed on the salary schedule as stipens. And when we had to send

261these notices, we had to send them as, hey, guess what, Mr. Collins, as the band director, you're now going to lose your band director stipen because you're the band director, but it's on a it's on the stipen schedule. That's not how it should be. He gets that stipen because it's his role. Um, and the band director gets that stipen. So these positions here are not stipened positions. These are you get this position because get this because of your um your role, not because it's an extra duty. Um so those are the positions that were on there that are going to be there. Um I did leave the grades as the same as what they were on the original salary schedule or the stipen schedule. Uh but just know that that is there. And just like

262the same thing, we had to non-renew our national board certified teachers. Well, they get that automatically. So this is just allowing it to not have that non-renewal spot. So, now we're getting into our stipen services. These are um all of the positions that will be um on our bank. So, anything that is in red, we are asking it's either going to be a change in location or a change in general. Um and so on this page, you're going to see an orientation and mobility stipen. Uh we currently are spending about 60 to $70,000 in O andM services for our exceptional child children that need those services. um we have somebody on staff now that can support that program. Uh and so offering that as a stipen for them and not having to pay $60 to

263$70,000 for that service is going to save us a lot of money. So that is what we are doing there. >> I think Miss Springgate, did you have a question? >> Yeah, I'm just I'm stuck back on a screen about 10 slides ago. Do you care? >> Uh these are >> get a copy of this presentation. I don't think >> these are not in the presentation. These are just printed. I can put them on my screen. I guess I can show you. Um, >> will this information like all of this information we're getting tonight, is all of this going to be attached to the budget transparency page? Is it shared with the public? >> Yes, we're not hiding anything. >> Um, so I'm just going through each of the tabs, Miss Spring 8, of the

264stipens. So I'll apologize. I didn't see you. I forgot about you. Sorry. Um, so we're on this page here. just so that's what that is. The next page is all of our WCHS stipens. Um they have the most stipens of anybody. Um they're two pages long. Uh and all anything that I'm changing on the first page is updating the name from flag and bugle corp to what they really are which is the color guard director. That's just a change name. Um and then on the second page >> can I ask a question about that real quick? >> How are these stipens set? I guess is my question because like when we look at the academic coach, the football coach, >> they're all based on a grade based off their years of experience. >> Okay? So,

265for example, our basketball coaches get $7,600, right? Our baseball coach, soccer, soccer, softball, volleyball, lacrosse, etc. gets $5,800. our assistant for those higher paying positions and our cheerleading coach gets $3,400. Like, how is it determined? >> Why are they not all paid the same? >> We can. We haven't. This is how it's always been set up. So, that's what I mean. If you would like me to pay all of them the same, like I can. It's just going to be an added income. I don't disagree with what you're saying. I'm just saying that that's how it's always been. So, um I think what our plan is moving forward is that we didn't get a chance to get to the siphons this year. >> We didn't get a chance to get to the uh certificates this

266year. >> We can't change some of these things and we don't have time before next week to change these things, >> but we can review them next year and have a better plan for next year. So, like I don't disagree with what you're saying at all. >> Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. >> Well, and I I I think about the >> I think Mr. Asher wants to >> go ahead >> say something as well. A quick answer to that. Um, yes, it has been established, but a long while ago, I don't know how many years, but I mean, a lot goes into it like length of the season, >> uh, practices, if there's a spring and a fall season. Uh, football, for example, has spring practices. So, that was analyzed again. It's been long

267ago probably due to uh due to do that again. Uh, but that's the original basis. >> And Mr. Are they also the size of the team? >> The football team has more participants than the golf team. >> Well, but then if you look at the basketball team compared to the football team or the track team has quite a few people. Correct. And cross country it that doesn't equate I was I was thinking about that too like is it the number of students? >> Uh I'm not 100% sure about that one. Like I said that is our plan for next year to >> to reanalyze >> statements. And I think that that also might motivate coaches to say, "Hey, well, let's look at spring training for this." Or >> I promise you I will bring you

268back every paid position. How many paid or everything next year? I can't this year. >> But but next year we can look at it. >> Yeah. And Miss Spring, uh to your question there, um all of this will be uploaded as well. >> Um so the other thing that is been added here, so these are positions that u were not filled. So we just took them off. uh the ones that are struck, we strike them. Um the CTSO, we only offered one position to a CTSO lead, which is the student organizations for FCCLA, FH, FFA, um DECA, all of those organizations, the HOSA, we only offered one stipen to those positions. So, we're offering it to anybody that offers that. Esports was not on the sports page, so I don't know why that was. So

269that's um the same pay but it was just in a random spot. We used to dictate to the high school what their department chairs are. I think that's a little much. Let the site base do that not the board. Um the only exception is we are dictating that they have a special ed lead for the high school. Um and then the bar teacher leaders that is school or grant paid from the title funds that they offer uh there. So that is on that and then um we did add based off of some discussion an assistant musical director for this school year. >> Can you explain to me again because I know our coordinator of gifted and talented services for the district has been dismantled because of the cuts. >> Yeah. >> But then you have

270general positions of gifted and talented coordinator. Is that per school? >> Yeah. So each school will have a they currently have one. We're adding it's u sorry it's on the the page before the high school undercertified gift gifted and talented district coordinator and that will be paid out of the uh GT GT funds. >> Okay. So we will still have someone over the district the positions in the each school will remain the same. >> So each school will continue to have their coordinator but then there will be a district coordinator and then curriculum instruction will follow suit with all of the requirements there >> and that's what sitebased determines who's that gifted and talented person for their school. Is that correct or is that a principal decision? >> It's principal. >> Okay. Thank you, >>

271Miss Springgate. >> Yeah, I apologize. This may be a silly question. I just can't see the documents very well. So, does that document does it show like the salary of district positions um that kind of stuff on there as well? >> Uh no, we've never put that on the salary schedule because that changes per year u based on the position that is held. So, um, we can't necessarily put that on the salary schedule. It's all also it's all based off the salary schedule what your district administrators make. >> So, where would that information be found if someone wanted to to know that? >> So, the each district employee that is a district administrator, you have a calculation here. So, you have your base pay, then your base pay is 188 days. You take that divided

272by 188 that gets your daily rate which is available on this page which is the second page. You take your daily rate and multiply it by your extended days and that gets you your second part. You get three pages um when we set them up. So whatever your extended days are that's your second screen and then your third screen is your index factor here on top of that. >> So you have >> So these positions will be listed under this index factor. Yeah, they're always listed here. We just don't have a like it's not based off like you know you can't say that my position is this amount of money because it's based off of those three screens there >> like your years of experience >> years of experience >> and it's actually at the

273bottom of the certified >> the formula is at the bottom >> on this index sheet it'll have all the district employees I could look on there and find any position and I can be like okay this is the index for that position that's on there. Yes. The factor. Yes. >> Yes. >> And then extended days are there too. >> Yep. It's all that. >> Can I ask another question? And I don't want to belabor this issue, but with the I know that Mr. Asher had said about the time spent was kind of the original formula for our athletics coaches. Um we look at like the cheerleading coach for example for the high school was way way down but they're in one of the highest paid positions for the middle school. Same way with um the

274track coach. Track coach was way way down before. Now it's on the highest pay positions at the middle school. And I I just again I think about these I know we're in a budget crisis so I don't want to spend too much time on this but if you c if you factor out the amount of hours these coaches are spending with our kids they're not getting paid minimum wage. I mean this is this is insane. Um and they they devote a whole lot of time and are so beneficial to our students all the way down to um you know other robotics and things of that nature. But um I also wanted to ask about the bar teach teacher leaders. Are we doing away with bar or we're just doing away with the leads for those?

275>> We are still using bar. >> Okay, good. >> Yeah, >> thank you for clarifying that. Just double checking. >> Um, I don't disagree. Like I said, I don't disagree and have we're going to have a year to go through it all. I promise we'll have a year. >> Just wanted to highlight that though. >> What page are we on on the presentation? >> Uh, we're at WCMS extra duties. >> Okay. Um the same thing for WCMS is uh those changes that were at the high school level at WCMS as well. Um one of the things that I added to every level is a school discretionary position. So schools use their funds, they decide that, you know, girls flag football wants to be a thing, um, which is now a thing, uh, that if the

276high school wanted to bring that on, they could use their funds to support that and then that would give us data to add it to next year's salary schedule. So each of them, that's kind of what's happened at the elementary level. Each year they're adding more and more things like they're adding cross country, they're adding archery, they're adding um these things that they haven't always had. And so now we're starting to add those positions to our salary schedule to reflect that. So um giving the schools a little bit of freedom to choose that. So we're on the uh elementary. Um I need to fix that. It says WCS elementary, but it's really elementary at the top up there. Let me fix that now. Um so any questions related to stipens? Okay. >> Um, so just

277for your information, um, we have 335 certified individuals. Uh, they are listed on here, uh, rank four to rank one with a doctorate. The total number and the total years of service for each of those, so if you ever wanted to do some math, you could. Um, but we have 112. Um we have quite a bit of our staff that are in the rank two and rank one which is amazing. Um it just means it costs a little more. Uh so that is that and then we have 332 classified individuals. So before I get into this one I want to the next page on here is your substitute pay um which has been a con uh discussion that we are making a compromise on and asking the board for to approve this one. Um, we

278are changing the DWT, which is the daily wage threshold based on when they retire. Uh, KTRS, the Kentucky Teacher Retirement System says you are to be paid this amount for your daily wage. You know, that's what that is. We cap it currently this year at $300. Um, we are not able to support that anymore. So, we're proposing that we make it $225 cap. Um, we do recognize that the long-term sub positions, we would much rather have a retired certified individual in that classroom. Um, so after 11 days, we are asking the board to up that to 275 days from day 11 on until that's finished. Um, we had to clean up a little bit of language to make it a little bit clearer. So that is the procedure at the bottom there to that has

279to be the same in same same employee that's out on medical leave or out on parental leave that a DWT would get that. So it's not going to be a one day you've worked 11 consecutive days but it's been for 11 different teachers you're going to get 275. That's not how it's going to be. Um it's I worked 11 same day, same classroom, same kids, built relationships with those kids. Now I'm going to get paid a little bit more for that service from day 11 on, not from day one. From day 11. So that is a compromise we are proposing for you. Um, and just so you know, this is a neighboring county. Um, that is their proposed rate of pay that pays a lot more than we do uh for certified, but not for

280our substitute teachers. So >> they're actually lower. Yeah, I think I saw it was going down to 180 or something like that. Yeah. So, um not to mention names, but you could do some Right. >> You can do some Googling to figure that one out. >> Um let's talk about classified salaries uh real quick, which is the stipen program or I'm sorry, the uh degree and certification program. Inside your packet, you have all of the classified salary schedules as well as the year-over-year increases just like you do for the certified um and all of the grades are on that as well. So, you can see all of that. Um the certified certificate and degree program um we have 111 classified individuals who have a an associates degree all the way up to a doctorate. So

281we have 111 that are receiving that extra pay and then we have 108 that are receiving the degrees or certifications. So in total we have 111 degrees and 108 certificates. About 143 staff members uh with about 330 total staff members where about 43% of our classified staff members are participating in our uh degree additive program and certificate additive program and it's costing us about $375,000 a year. Uh when the board was told to um that at the very beginning that was going to be about 200,000 because we didn't know um and now we know. So now we have um data to support that. So we need to do some changing to our program and what we are proposing. Um so this would be on your page that has the um certificate the degree state salary

282page here. Um and I'm going to show it on the screen and then I'll go back to my presentation. Let's see. So currently uh for the FY26, which is the 2526 school year, we give an additional up to $6 an hour to our classified staff members. So it's like the one of the last few pages on your um document. uh we give up to $6 an hour to a classified individual based off of if they have a degree up to $4 an hour and if they have a certificate up to $2. What we're finding is that while we have budgeted $375,000, we're actually spending more than $375,000 because that money is going into overtime. Um, so our classified individuals are they're allowed overtime and when they get overtime they get paid time and a half.

283They're not getting paid time and a half just on their base pay which is what we say is in our salary schedule based off their grade. They're getting their base pay at time and a half and they're getting their classified degree at time and a half as well. So we did um we budgeted for this school year $337,000. Next year's 375. Um, and we are already at the last payroll. Uh, we had six payrolls. So, prior to the May 8th, we were at $295,000 spent. Um, if you project that out for six more payrolls, we're we have $100,000 left to pay. Um, and we only budgeted 332. So, we're overbudget for our certification and degree program. We have no way of from a budgetary standpoint putting any value or any not value any monetary restrictions

284on it so that we can't it's just free money based on overtime and overtime is where we're really seeing the biggest hit. So the proposals that you're going to have for you for this program is how can we still offer this program set it up for success for future to allow more classified individuals to use it and to earn a certificate but still have budgetary control to not allow for overtime. And the way that you do that is by giving it as a supplement and not as an hourly rate. So, um, on your last two pages of your packet, you have the proposed, um, changes to our program. And what that would basically be is now you can still get up to the $4 an hour. You can still get up to the $2 an

285hour for the certificate. It's just going to be you get a chunk of money put out over 24 paychecks instead of you work 37 hours but you're only supposed to work 32 and you've got that extra seven or extra five hours that we're now giving you this money for too. So, um, I did some math for you on this as well. And the, so a grade three, so this is an instructional assistant, um, would be 180 days on this one. 180day, they would make what's on there. And from the old salary schedule to the new salary schedule, there's no change to their pay. where they would see any change would be if they're working overtime. That's where they would see a change because they would only be allowed that hourly rate to get time and

286a half for that. So that $17.81. Um so because it's a range of 180 to 183, I wanted you to see that some people are taking a small deduct from their pay because we're doing a range instead of um based off that. So 182 would be a $146 off their paycheck. Um but they're they're still getting the value of that certificate and degree program. Um and it goes all the way up. So I have a range based off of where most of our employees are. Um that's why you see so many different ones. And I I had I started out with three and I ended up with six. Uh because I would do the math and I was like that's too much money to lose. So I tried to keep it at a dollar to$2

287dollars less per check not total >> too much for the employee to lose. >> Yes. Too much for the employee to lose. Like >> um so that's why I continuously like even today beforehand I added an additional one because it was too much for an employee like a a set of employees to lose based off of their days. So um you know like it really is still adding value but giving budgetary control to the program. Um the last thing that I want to talk to you about is our salary pay schedule which will also be on the May the May board meeting. Um the only difference we are changing is we are proposing to the board um which is I have it here so you don't have it but I'll give it to you before

288you leave. um is that we're not going to pay stipens on the first paycheck. It's going to be once we hit the 20 paycheck because we don't have enough time on that first paycheck for a principal to say you get the stipen or you don't get the stipen. So stipens won't be on the first two paychecks um or the first four paychecks. So whenever it says 20, that's when it'll occur. >> How does that impact somebody who's not like a full-time employee like a coach? That's >> they'll still be paid the same way. They get it. >> So they doesn't change their a certified individual gets it over the course of their paycheck. Um, a coach gets it at the end of their season. That'll still remain the same. >> Okay. Um, how much money

289are we spending in overtime costs in general? I hadn't thought about that until you just mentioned that, but what does that look like? And is there a way to get those overtime costs lowered in any capacity? Is it like is it a huge factor? Is it not really a big deal? But it sounded like it was. So, >> Oh, no. It's a big deal. >> Okay. I figured it was, but I was just trying to see all the options. makes fun of me because that my favorite word has become no. And people don't like me because I say no. And it's because we say no to overtime. >> Overtime as much as we can is bleeding our budgets. So >> So when I think about like bus drivers who may be taking a group of

290athletes to a game or something like that, what does that look like? Is that considered overtime for them or is that something that's already factored into? That's a different That's a different >> There's a difference. I should rephrase. >> Okay. >> If it's directly going to support something like that, they get overtime. If it's just I can't complete my work in my 40 hours, we need to figure out why you can't complete your work in your 40 hours. >> Awesome. Okay. Thank you. >> So, that's salary schedule. Um there, >> real quick, if you would, I updated the slides. Could you go to 30? >> I don't even know. 34. Real fast. It take me 1 minute. >> 1 minute. So, here I added in the compensating rate. So, you can see this is what

291the per people looks like. Compensating rate. Blue line at the bottom. >> Oh, wow. >> Goes way down. Go two slides forward. One more. One more. Right. Uh, no. Keep going. Right there. That's what the total tax revenue looks like. So, blue line, you can see compensating rate way down. And then one more right there. And then back one. And there's your combined revenue outlook. And then should be slide 41. >> I think you went the right way. Oh well, that's fine. But that just gives you an idea like it that off a cliff. >> Yep. Thank you. And >> I will say Dr. Gubans and I do plan to do a community um road show this summer um explaining this to our community um with several groups. So um so we have some policy

292updates that we'll also be doing your first reading on at the May meeting. Um and you just made me think of one more that I didn't have on here. So thank you for that reminder, Dr. Gold, that I have to add one more and I'll email it out to you. Um so our vacation policy is this is the current one um where we are giving 20 vacation days from day one. Um instead of what it was a few years ago which this is the verbiage from a few years ago. Basically you start out at 10 after five years you earn a day up to 20 days. So every year you get an extra day up to 20 days. So by the end of 15ish years you've got 20 days in the district. And that's not

293years of service, that's years of employment in Woodford County. Um to promote people staying longer and to give them um and so that's 260 employees would be our um central office classified individuals, not certified. Um district administration do not get vacation days other than one person um who's in her contract gets that vacation day. Um and then um custodial staff members and um one bookkeeper get 260. So um that's just goes over it. So a maximum carry forward of 40 days. And so what we have to do now is because we have a maximum of 80 days is if this policy passes before July 1, which is why we have to do it in May and June, um first reading, second reading, that in July, anybody that would have over that 40day now has this

294magic number of banked hours that they're going to get or banked days that they're going to get that we're not going to add to or take away from that they get to keep until they retire. And at retirement, they'll get paid out for them just as if they would right now. Um, but we they'll have that time, so they're not going to lose it, but they're not going to gain. It's not going to grow anymore. It's not going to be part of that 40. It's just going to be this magic bank that you kept your time from that time forward. So, um, we can't we can't take that away from them because we had 80 days. So, that's how we're going to equate for the 40 days. And then the second fundraiser or second policy

295that we're going to ask the board to move away from is the restrictions on fundraisers because of all of the funding issues that we've had. Um, one of the constant things that we hear from our activities and our classrooms and our clubs and our sponsors is we restrict fundraising way too much. Um, so we are going to ask that the board remove all of those restrictions. >> I like the graphic there. >> Yeah. Um, and then the third one will be an overtime compensation compensating something coming for that one. I've got it in my head. I just got to put it on there and I forgot about it, but it'll be emailed to you. >> And does this go along with Redbook or does this like do we have to update Red Book? Red Book

296is a Woodford County thing, not a Redbook thing. >> Perfect. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. you look at other policies and I'm like I have looked at it because they're all 09.33 anybody go check it on it KSBA every district 172 of us all subscribe to the same thing 09.33 fundraising and we're the only ones that put these nice little restrictions on everything and I understand why but we're not able to have these restrictions anymore that's our that's our recommendation so >> I I want to publicly thank Dr. Rayburn because all of us work extremely hard. But I'm going to tell you and he he would not like me saying this publicly, but I have >> I don't like you saying this publicly. >> Well, I'm going to I'm going to say it, too. So,

297go ahead. >> He works day and night. Yeah, he works day and night and we are always trying to think about how can we do this and still take care of our employees and still I mean day and night and he's really doing three jobs right now and has been since November. So, thank you. >> Have you all completed your presentation? >> No. I was going to Thank you for >> recommendations. >> What? >> My recommendations. >> Oh, okay. Go ahead. >> That's fast. >> Anytime you all hesitate, I think that's it. >> I know. I'm sorry. U my recommendations are to adopt the budget as presented. Um approve the salary schedule as presented. Amend the 260day employee uh vacation policy. um hold the tax rate for the hive, hold for the hive. Um and

298I also think it is fiscally responsible for us, the board, to um sell the Pisca property. And that goes to the um 702 K4090. Um that process is laid out there. It um allows you as a board to decide whether you want to take open bids or close bids on that property with a reserve. Um and we would not be able to talk about the the amount or anything like that in open session. That would be in close session. And I also am recommending the other policies that we that we pass the other policies as recommended. I'm also recommending that we adopt the new proposed breakfast and lunch prices. Those are my recommendations. >> Thank you, Dr. Jones. Thank you, Dr. Gribbons, Dr. Rurn. I know this was a lot of information for everybody. I

299know you all hit that gavvel. Now, what >> I'm going to give them their props first because a lot of people put a lot of work into this and and I know that mainly the three of you presenting, but I do want to recognize everybody else as well that helped pull this together. This impacts a lot of people. We always have to keep our students and our staff in the forefront of our minds when we make these decisions. So, really appreciate everybody putting this together. Um, before we finish up, Mr. Wilson, any last thoughts? >> Dr. Jones, Dr. Rayurn, Dr. ribbons. I've sat through a lot of these meetings. I've never seen one as more transparent, more informative. It I mean, it was wonderful. And I know you all spent a lot of time. Heck,

300you hadn't been here all any time, have you? I mean, how long have you been here? >> Months. >> Two months. Look at that. >> We made it part of his interview to make sure that he can do calculations. Like, we gave him a calculator and said, "Can you do this?" We don't know if he was right or not, but clearly he was. >> I do I do like to kid a lot, but I'm being dead serious now. The information that you three provided us will make it so much easier for us to make a decision and communicate that to our constituents. And thank you all three for that. Thank you. >> Uh Miss Springy, do you have anything to add? You don't have to. I'm just giving everybody an opportunity. >> Yeah. Yeah. Thank

301you uh so much for the presentation. Um definitely we'll look at those over the coming week and reach out to constituents and kind of discuss some of the the big um big questions and um appreciate the information. Um so that'll all be uploaded on the transparency or somewhere on the website. Um and I'll just let everybody know that's where they can go to find that. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Frankie. Dr. Ghoul. >> I just want to say thank you all. Um to echo what everybody said. I know I'm longwinded, so I won't take too much time, but I I do appreciate and I want to give a shout out to Courtney because I know I asked really hard questions and I appreciate all the information that she put together and to all of

302you all for all the time that you've spent um doing this. I think that, you know, budgets are hard, numbers are hard. It's hard to take in all this information and make sense of it. um for our community members especially who haven't had the training that we've had as board members and that's part of the reason why we go to training so we understand the budget process and the seek and all the things all the acronyms that were shouted out today. Um but I I just I really encourage you all to continue to consider what this looks like for our district and what we want moving forward along with the strategic plan that we've put out. And I appreciate I'm excited to see what the road show looks like. Um, I know we've talked about

303that and putting it on a level that everybody understands and can ask questions about and I have no doubt that you all will not do those things for our community and our and our county and our district and all the people that are impacted by it because our kids are our future and we have to go back to our kids every single time we make a decision on this board. Um, so thank you all so much for your tireless efforts and to listen to me. I appreciate that, too. So, >> hey T, I'm glad you brought up the road show. Would it be helpful for you at board members? >> I was getting ready to say that I will be calling. >> Let me know when you go to midway and I'll be with you.

304>> I'm happy to help encouraged. Yeah. You let me let us know when >> just get ready. Yeah. >> Yeah, we're ready. >> All right. Um with that, can I have a motion to move? >> Motion by Mr. Wilson. >> I'll second because Sarah's on here. >> Yes. It's our first in favor. >> I thank you all. Bye. >> Passes. >> Bye, Sherry. Have a good evening. >> Thank you everybody. Thank you. >> Jason, >> nice job. >> I just said that so you know I knew your name. >> I've been practicing writing it down a hundred times. Jason. Jason. Jason. God God delivered him to us.