04-23-25 JCPS Board Meeting (Special Called)

001So, I'm guessing I Just talk. Yeah. Good evening everyone and welcome to the uh special called board meeting for the budget work session. Um, this meeting kind of came about due to some numbers that we saw a few months ago regarding some per pupil spending at each school and we just wanted to get kind of a better understanding of what what and all went into that. So, um, without delaying any further, I think we should just go ahead and start unless Dr. You have something just this is, uh, this is a called work session. there's no action going to be taken this evening. So, our intent, my intent, I think the board's intent is for this to be a good discussion. Um, less about a public comment, but more about going through, we have slides.

002We're not going to sit and go in detail through every single slide. But our goal here, our purpose is understanding what goes in to looking at the staffing at a school, which then impacts that per pupil amount. And so, when Mr. Mr. Jameson is right that this is a result of a lot of questions that that not just the board but us as um employees in JCPS have fielded since that very first conversation back in December I think it was at Smoky Mountain High School when we shared information about the per pupil spending at each school and I think that's been the impetus of this and what's brought about a lot of questions and a lot of misunderstandings um but also an opportunity for us to really teach what this is and how we get

003to those numbers. It's not arbitrary by any means. Um, so we do have a presentation. We're not going to sit and read every slide. And some of the things that you're going to see are repeats from the uh budget finance training that Christy Walker did all the way back in time with the board. That was wonderful. So, I'm gonna wait till the presentation pops up. And this is not led by me. This is a team effort. We're all just going to talk. And if you all as a board have a question that relates to somebody's department that's not sitting here, we're going to shout out and ask uh Laura and Greg and Adam and all the other directors are here and willing to answer questions if we know it off the top of our head.

004But I'm sure there's going to be some questions that we're going to have to say I got to dig a little bit deeper into that and I'll get back to you. So, I don't know who's running, but we can click to the next slide. Um, the first slide that you see is nothing new. This is a repeat from last year. We just wanted the the general population of people who may be viewing online. Um, and those of us who are in the audience to see that this is where our money comes from. We don't snap our fingers and get this pot of money, but there are multiple pots that it comes from. So, this is not anything new. It's really for your reference board members. The next two slides, and I am not going to

005read because that's a lot of text on there. The next two slides are just an understanding of these terms that are not normal lay person terms if you're outside of education. Headcount means that we are counting the number of students in the exceptional children's department blah blah blah and going over. But I do want to draw your attention to the last um one, ADM. And you're going to hear us say that phrase often. ADM is the average daily membership. Basically, an average of the attendance in school. You'll click to the next slide. The allotted ADM is um what you're going to see how we get our funds based on an allotted ADM. The state determines that. We do not determine that locally. Um, now my understanding from that is that that's determined the 10th day

006of school and then you have to go back and what did that say about that? I read that somewhere. When it when is that number determined? It's usually the 20th day. 20th day, not the 10th. I misunderstood. Day 20 and day 40 are the big two. Okay. Time period. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. And I have a question about the relationship of that to attendance. Um have we checked for the the people who think they're being um illreated if that's the case? I'm not sure. I've not heard. But do they have higher uh rates of truency maybe that um prevent them from getting equal amounts of funding? So it's you mind if I understand? Uh yeah, I'm just I'm not sure what her question is, but if you understand, go ahead. So average daily membership, it's

007not actually who's like which students are in attendance that day. It's who is enrolled that day. Okay? So I've already said attendance, but really it's like the total membership of that day. We also look at attendance and different things, but our funding is based on the membership who's supposed to be there. And that 20-day count when we take that number, a kiddo might be on our role, but they haven't been to school for the first 20 days, then we don't get to count them. They could be in another state, in another school district. They they could be anywhere or drop out, unfortunately. Those are good questions. All right. So, the next slide is is the money teaching slide. So, I'm going to let our uh chief finance officer, who can talk a little more eloquently

008than I can um talk about what that slide looks looks like because you haven't seen anything like this before. So this slide is um shows our calculations how we come around to our numbers for a lotments for schools. These are not position related. These are honestly just um dollars that we pass off to our schools. And we start with a base aotment of 5,000 per school. We just start at $5,000. From there we are looking at enrollment. And none of these numbers, by the way, before you say, "Hey, none of that adds up." They're just numbers I threw in there because I had cleared out the spreadsheet to begin for this year's budget cycle. Um, so these numbers are just put in there to give you an example. They This is a teaching slide. Yeah,

009they will not necessarily you will be able to multiply across and get to that number. Um, but we take the enrollment from the second um, best one of two principal monthly report which is what Adam was referring to when they did settle on our allotment average daily ADM. We plug that into this spreadsheet and it calculates for me using a poverty multiplier and small school multiplier. And I have to give a shout out to two ladies here, AG and Laura helped me several years ago to come up with this formula so that it would be equitable to all of our schools and take into account either their um smaller school student size or different factors and come out with a number that we can solidly stand on. So this is what they would receive at

010the end where you see the school total on the far right hand side. That is their allocation for that year. That would be 741488 plus 5,000. So those numbers on the very end do not include that $5,000 base. So they're going to get the last column plus $5,000. And the the $5,000 base that Christie is referring to is is something that we did in the last few years because prior to that if you had a small number of students it could be 15 or $1,800. Um so we said it a minimum everybody would at least get $5,000 and then the the enrollment would carry beyond. And I think this is the third year that we've done that, not basing it solely on the enrollment because we recognize smaller schools also need school supplies to instructional

011supplies. So that's where we came up, our leadership team came up with that base number of 5,000. And we are every budget cycle we review this. We look at schools. We have discussions within that budget committee about if this is meeting the needs. We take input from our principles. We do all of those things before any of this ever gets allocated to the schools. And for the first time this year, I was very excited. This actually was written out to the schools. So this was not managed at the district level. This was allocated directly to schools and then principles and their sit team, their school improvement teams were able to take these this funding and align it with the goals that they had established for their schools because every school doesn't need the same amount

012of postage or the same field trip money. So they had a lot of control over what happened with these funds. So, just to make sure I'm um seeing this right, Miss Walker, the like Fair View has 756 students compared to Smoky Mountain with 906. They have very similar amounts of money, $300 different, but the multiplier for poverty makes that difference. It does. So, you're going to go straight across the column, and I'm just gonna do the top number because it's easier for me to see. But, uh, for Blige, you have 135 students. You're multiplying it by the PPA, which is the per pupil allotment, 3250, and then it will multiply that number by 1.3 and then 1.3 again for the small school multiplier. So, the the small school multiplier and the poverty multiplier was something

013that we mimicked from title one funding many years ago. And the idea was was to try and have some sort of calculation in there to try and level the playing field between more affluent um schools and less affluent schools. And so that's the the foundation for those two. And again with a smaller school because one of the things, you know, we understand and respect totally the concerns that folks had when they saw the numbers about uh uh spending per student, right? Um but prior to that we would hear a lot of concerns from our smaller schools saying you know this larger school has this this this and this and we don't have that and you know the response is because of ADM. So a when ADM is driving the the boat, it creates these anomalies

014of or reality. Sometimes it's an anomaly and sometimes it's a reality of the more students you have, the the more funding's coming into you, but yet at the same time then it divides out to be less money per kid because of the the greater number of students. your base. It would be the same as if you um this is very simplistic and maybe just a stupid example, but like a pizza. Jake and I were sharing a pizza, we would could each possibly get half if we added Angie in, we're going to get smaller parts of that pizza until So that that works the same way if you think about it. It's just another when we do like per pupil funding or say this is per pupil amount, we are just looking at the data in

015a different way that makes it a little relevant to give us a different perspective on what we're seeing. Yes. Is the multiplier is each multiplier applied separately? It is. It is formula formula driven across the page. So you're not you're not saying 1.3 times that total and then 1.3 times the new total. I'm gonna do this math here real quick, but I think it is 1.3 time 1.3. It's been a five minutes since I have worked for this. It's been three a full year. Listen, I admire that so much. And we are striving through these various formulas and things to align our district's limited resources to meet every students need whether wherever they go to school at, right? Is 1.3 the max for each category? Yeah. Yeah. And again, that's mimicked with our title one.

016You're doing 1.3 times 1.3. So that you got a poverty multiplier west and then you have a small school multiplier. So going across if you take the per pupil amount that one actually works out. So 3250 times 135 students times 1.3 * 1.3 is $7,414.88. So it is taking that 3250 * 135 and multiplying it by 1.3 twice. So 2.6 These are all good questions. Is there more regarding moving? That's very clear to me. I'm going to let Christie or Veter talk a little bit about the the next slide with the state aotments. Again, this is not new information, but I didn't know if you wanted to bring attention. This was the same slide from last July. Um, Veter or Christie, either one. So, basically, we get two types of there's either a position allotment

017that comes from the state or there's a lotments that are funded through dollars. Um, so typically, which we've talked about before, we try to put some of our staff members that have a higher salary and some of our position allotments so we can save some of the dollar aotments. And uh, as you can see, there's a list of some different categories that fall into those, whether they be positioned or state funded allotments. And I will just add to that, Mr. Veter and I work very closely together. He works to find the best person for that position. And then I'm taking those things and trying to put put them into these funds to maximize them. And so, um, you're going to, like you said, put your most expensive in there and you're just trying to align

018the resources with or the dollars with what we need for these different schools. I was going to say, does that make sense? Yeah. So, we want the state to pay for the most expensive employees. Sure. Is why we're doing that shuffling. And we're permitted to do that. Mhm. And that's best practice everybody. Oh, absolutely. Why would you not? Yeah, that's good stewardship. The next slide just lists some of the the bare minimum people that we would have to have in a school to to operate it. Obviously, at each of our schools, we have many more staff members and what's listed here, but um these are kind of some of the bare minimum folks that we need. we felt like you really needed to know if if a school was at its absolute bare bones. This

019is what we can operate with. Um, and so that varies, especially for a school like JCEC, they have a ca a custodian, but thankfully we don't have to pay for that custodian. That custodian um works with SEC instead of us. And then school nutrition, Laura has multiple positions that are either shared or bouncing around as our serving multiple positions. And it's not, you know, you have to have someone serving these roles at each school, but that's not to say that every school has to have someone full-time doing these things, right? So, we are we are very blessed to live where we live and have the resources that we have in our community because there are a lot of districts that are far less supported um by their commissioners than we are for these additional uh

020positions that we have all over the district. Um and so it would not Exactly. So counselors is a great one, Miss Woody, that it would there there are schools that have a counselor part-time, right? that's there on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you know, that are the same size as some of some of our schools. So, we're very fortunate to have what we have. So, even when we say a minimum, that doesn't mean full-time. You have to have full-time counselor. Um, we can't imagine a world where we didn't provide that for our kids, but there are plenty schools in North Carolina that don't. Well, and one of the things that I have been firstly very gratified for for all the years that I've been the part of the school system and all is that we have art

021teachers, visual art teachers at every school. We are the only county that has that. I mean, I talked to I would go to state art conventions. There were people that had three schools teaching art from a cart. Kids, my grandchildren go to a award-winning school in Hickory that has no art teacher in elementary school, no visual art teacher. So, we are very fortunate and I think this is the and will you please correct me if I'm wrong? This is the slide that to me makes the most sense of why the aotment per pupil is so different because in a large school you have all these required people. You have all the required people in a small school but you're dividing these positions by a smaller number of people. So it's more per child like that

022pizza. Yes. Whereas in the large school Fair View, you're dividing it among a lot more students. So it's less per student. Is am I correct? That is completely correct. Okay. And I think that will help our our community, those that are listening to understand, you know, we have all these positions and our our school system works very hard to not sllight any school with these essential pieces. And I think you're going to see that a little further as we go through the schools because in lay person terms a school like Blue Ridge Early College, we have to have for grades 9 through 12 a certified math teacher, a certified science teacher, a certain for those four. But at Blue Ridge Ear, and I'm just using that as an example, Nathan, I'm not picking on you.

023Um but at Blige Early College you might have one first period might have eight kids because everybody's not in math one during that first period and second period for that math teacher might have 13 kids and third period might have nine children and then that teacher has a planning for the fourth period. So whereas at Smoky Mountain High School, a math teacher might be teaching three periods of 25 students period because their ADM is so large. But that doesn't mean that our Blue Ridge students don't also get and deserve a certified teacher for mathematics and science and English. And one of the other things that really So Dr. S is not the only person that's huge fan of us getting to middle school. um and it solves a lot of problems and and one of

024the ones that it's going to help with. So, if you could imagine at Smoky Mountain Elementary where they have 350 students and they have an art teacher um which which like we've said we don't have to have but we do and we're dedicated to having that. That also helps create a um specials block to create a planning time for teachers. Fairview has, you know, two and a half times the number of students. They also have one art teacher 1.5 1.5 but that's a very recent thing that that Dr. So, but you get my my point. That's not true. I did that was my first position. I didn't but still even with that one and a half to to 850 kids versus one two. So, you end up with creating an imbalance in the number of

025but however a lot of that is is impacted by our middle schools by the fact that we are trying to recreate a middle school in each one of our K8 schools. And so that's why we keep talking about and these conversations help to support that that when we do have a proper middle school, it will free up a lot of breathing room not just for space in our in our K5 schools, but also for staffing at our K5 schools because now they will be serving that those specials teachers won't necessarily be serving that entire student body. So this kind of looks at some of our state positions from this year and some that we're able to forecast or project for next year. So this year we had 155 and some change um state allotted positions

026and we had eight K5 program enhancement positions and we get one of those positions for every 191 students. So that's the formula that the state uses. So we had eight of those. Um that's mostly PE. Uh what are some other positions in the language, art, art, music? So those kind of make up the the K5 enhancements. Um for CTE, we had 208 months of employment this year. And then it just goes on and talks about some different programs, different departments, and some of the funding that re that they received this year. Looking at next year, um the projected aotment or what we're going to get from the state is going to go we're going to lose four teaching positions based off of the state aotment for this coming school year. So, does that mean that

027we're going to automatically lose four teachers? No. That means we're going to have to be creative or we're going to have to find a way to um make our positions work if we need to look at other funding sources that Christie will allow us to be flexible with because we don't want to lose anybody. But based off of our ADM, the state is projecting us to lose four positions. Our K5 enhancement program enhancement numbers stayed the same. Our months of employment for CTE decreased, which is a result of our ADM decreasing as well. And then we don't have enough information yet or at the time of this presentation being put together for EC AIG and a few of the other categories at the bottom. So, those are areas that we're going to have to work

028on in the coming weeks when that information becomes available. And I I will say that we have been very cognizant of the fact that we were probably losing state funded positions because our decrease in enrollment. Um, I'm not going to I'm not going to say out loud who, but we have one school in particular that that we went ahead and did cut those positions per se, but really through attrition, some retirements or or transferring and we knew with the class size law, we could still uh be in be legal in those class sizes. So that one school is not filling those two positions that will be vacated. So that will address part of this. We're trying to be wise about not being over staff. We don't want to lose people, but if somebody retires, then

029we don't fill that position again. The next slide looks at some of our federally funded uh positions. Currently, we have a little over 11 11.04 04 positions allocated to title one. Our total program federal program position count is at almost 12 and a half. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, we're not sure about next year and the funding sources that are going to what that's going to look like for next year. So this exceptional children, that's a fourth of a person. [Music] really what is that? That's just telling you the percent of that person's salary that is paid for those funds. So it's not actually just a quarter of a person. That's a good question. And that is not all the EC money that we get by any means. The most is is state.

030Right. Right. You don't need to have any indication yet. I know this is a moving target, but how our federal funds are looking for. So, the last um that I heard just watching different news and reading different things was that there was a continuation budget passed that um kind of secured the funding for federal going forward for this next year. Okay. Um beyond that, I couldn't tell you when that would be ify because it's an everchanging landscape, but um they're telling every as finance officers, we meet um across the state and we meet with lots of people from DPI um and they're just telling us be conservative. There's nothing wrong with being a little conservative and not, you know, making putting yourself out there to where you put yourself in a position that you may

031have to uh stretch your funding beyond what your need is. You know what percentage of our funds are? Oh, yes, I do. Look at this PowerPoint. Yeah, it's not um it wasn't a big somewhere around 15 to 20% if I remember correctly. 14% most of the federal money goes to colleges and yeah or goes to the state and then comes to us roundabout we don't get right 11% of our total funding 11 okay Laura deals we do not receive money from head start at all mountain projects head start is our we're not the pass through I think is what yeah I Do they have it comes are but we are not I heard it was talking about getting shocked unrelated to us think not good for our kids and our community. Your state funding list

032makes up um half of your whole budget and that's mostly your salaries. um that yeah it's like 70% salaries and there's a slide in here in just a minute right I remember seeing that and that's really if you think about the the purpose and mission of the school system that really is what it needs to be is your salary should be the majority of your expenses or the largest chunk of your expenses um I know the purpose of this meeting is not for um making changes or anything like that. I just would like to make this comment to have it on our radar. In talking to people in the community and teachers and some administrators and all, the thing I keep hearing over and over is the need for help with English language learners. And

033particularly in upper grades like middle school and high school when you have a student come in who has no English and may not read their native language because of being um migratory or or whatever and and to really serve those students. A classroom teacher can't take all the time out of teaching math one or physics to help bring a student up to English proficiency. That's I would love to see us make a concerted effort to have um I I've been kind of looking into what some other school systems are doing and some have what they call a new school. They send kids for a limited amount of time to a place where they just are immersed in English. Now, they get some coursework, but you can't have all the subjects there, but it's more efficient

034than that student struggling for a whole semester in a class with very limited English. You know, we have heard that same comment years over years and that population of students has increased, right? Um, but I think that over the years our budget committee has tried to look at ways to increase those supports. I'm going to refer to Laura as she directs that program. Okay. So, she can kind of tell you a little bit about how much money we get per year, which is astonishing astonishing low um in comparison and the advocacy that the principles and then she has made and kind of how that's changed over the past couple years and how we've increased those services if you don't mind that. So the state funds related to ESL services, we refer to the students as

035multilingual services, multilingual students, but they're getting English as a second language service. Um the state funding is the average of the last three years of students identified as multilingual learners. So it our numbers have been on a steep incline increase in our numbers and so that funding takes a long time, okay, to catch up as you can imagine. our current numbers, I think the last one I pulled was like 368 and just a couple years ago we were in the high 200s. So to get that increase and that takes time. Um our budget committee we fund about 2.6 if I remember correctly with those state funds it's about $230,000. We fund 2.6ish 2.5 positions and the budget committee gratefully funds two additional positions in addition to that. so that we've got positions um for our

036schools. I also bring to the budget committee asking for additional funds. Um this year I even considered um a teacher assistant who might work with those new students especially that teacher assistant were bilingual themselves and they can work on language acquisition for those students. A new program is going to be popular or if it's more popular in your larger urban areas. Yes. um we only have 365 36 something students and of those students I'd say maybe 15 or so maybe 20 would really need those extensive language supports that you're speaking about particularly at that middle and high school level. So it would we would have to consider that in a budget to pull them to a central location. Um, but if we can get some ways for the the ESL teachers who some of them

037have case loads of 90 students, yes, for them to have civil suspense, that's what we're always looking at. So, as a district, we are and federal funding for that, not to be disrespectful, is quite laughable. It's about $23,000 has to be supplemented, something different and above what you would normally do with the funds. So, we do professional development for tutors and things like that. um across the state there's been a big push to increase who's the state funding for that. So that would lie with our legislators um or the state schoolboard association um they have the flexibility to control for that. But we are blessed that even though it still feels like a not enough and I recognize that when I speak to teachers with the concerns you expressed, our budget team is doing a

038good job of allocating the two additional positions so that we don't have um someone with a case load of 100 at Valley and 40 at Scotts Creek that those are are different positions that so um I think we have to monitor that given the the happenings in our world to see what those numbers need to be um and things like that. But thank you for being an advocate for that. And I think we are doing as best we can with the funds we have for those students, but we can always do more. And we're trying to also train teachers more in ways that they can help differentiate their instruction. You don't have to translate every single thing. And you're right, a common misunderstanding is they're a ninth grader. Just try to translate that text into

039Spanish for them. many of the countries they're coming from, you know, school was not a priority for them survival was. Sure. Exactly. And Laura, I know last year we were talking about our highest numbers ever. Yes. Um but we talked most recently in the last four months, we've seen almost a a a stagnancy in our numbers. Yeah. in the last three to four months and I were speaking about it earlier and I think new to our country enrolling in our district we've only had excuse me three or four since Okay, we've had students move um it is changing other places. So um but our numbers are still high. Yeah. Well and and please understand Miss Dills, I am not being critical at all. I think you all are doing an amazing job with and I've

040talked to some of those teachers and uh you knowve I've known Lisa Dean for years and and we've had several conversations over the years and I I think you all are doing amazing. I just think it's real important we keep that in the forefront of our consciousness so that when there's an opportunity and I personally really like and and I know about this much about it but I love the idea of a teacher aid type position of a multilingual person who is helping the classroom teacher and you know I've I've said this from the very beginning of my term on this board. One of my personal goals is to try to lessen the load on teacher classroom teachers. Having been one myself, we keep every new program that comes on, we put more and more

041on classroom teachers and they are so amazing and do wonderful things. But to be most effective, we need to lighten that load for them. And and and like you mentioned, I think that teacher aid would be a wonderful Okay. I I have a question regarding that. Are we making adequate use of bilingual students because when you go to an ESL classroom, like this is a table, this is a chair, and you're naming things, but when you get into a mathematics classroom, they uh a student who's in that classroom who's bilingual could translate all the mathematical instructions to another. We do. We do that in pockets. But it's not the responsibility of a student to miss out on their own education if I'm over here whispering in Wes's ear in his native language. But we do

042tap into that that student um that peer group that we can use. But I don't want to take away from your learning all day so that you can help to Well, we're not talking about all day. We're just talking about class by class. That maybe that would relieve some of the pressure if we had a couple of students who could translate what's going on in the English class or the math class who are also in that class. So that the translation would be appropriate. Okay. question next. That means move on to the next slide. Um, I didn't know if you guys wanted to talk about these or if you had questions. So, I'm I think the most important piece is the part at the bottom. Christy, if you want to talk about what that funding

043and a rears means. Okay. So, um, prior to this up this year, as Adam has shared with us, there was two reports. the first and second month 20th and 40 days and they uh they being NCDPI would take the best of those two enrollment numbers and provide our funding from those. Um however that meant that the planning aotments that we received from the state would fluctuate during the year and so you couldn't count on the fact that you had 155 teachers. You may have a reduction midyear which means you were scrambling to realign resources. So in attempt to provide some further stability they are now looking backwards. So they will look at for next year they will look at our best one of two of those reports and that's what we will be funded off

044of in basically a year behind. Yeah. Okay. And then that way um they have put in some provisions in place in case you have like a a huge increase in your enrollment. There are things a process in place where you can let them know that and they will review it. You submit certain things and they can adjust your funding. But overall, it's going to help it be stable so that you know what you're given in your planning a lotments is what you can rely on. I think we are which is this? Okay. And this was just some um if this example was not new to you, I did this in the budget training and it was just an oversimpl simplification to say that when we have those changes, it doesn't occur in pockets. So, it's

045not as easy to realign resources as you would think when someone says, "Okay, you're down 20 students." Um, that's going to hit different places, which sometimes is great, but other times makes it a challenge. So, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it unless anybody has questions or or would like further information. May I go back just a second? Sure. Um, you know, we have programs like heights and that kind of thing. How do we decide what schools get those programs? Is it based on need or whoever gets the grant or is Megan here today? Megan is here. All of our schools are served by Heights. Megan, do you want to jump in? Yes. So, Heights has multiple programs that all schools can opt into. They primarily serve middle school and high

046school students though. Um, but we do have some schools that, for example, have a Blue Ridge Health Clinic colllocated on campus. Um, and so Blige Health, we've partnered with them to increase the amount of services they're providing. Um, and they we are talking with them about increasing the number of clinicians and therapists that they're providing, but right now they are only serving the schools that have those health clinics on their campus. Um, but we do have Jackson County Public Schools Project Aware funded clinicians on every campus and that is based on need and number of students. It's how we kind of decide who gets the number of those. But that that is one of those examples of, you know, that smaller schools, you know, will feel that they don't have access to something that larger

047schools do. But when we first initiated that relationship with Blige Health, it was for the the nursing clinics that are at Fair View and at Smoky Mountain High School. And so when we were in our first conversations with them, you know, they're this is a financial model for them, right? They're a nonprofit, but they still have to pay their their salary. So when they look at a school with 280 students versus a school with 850 students, they're like, "Well, we're going to put our clinic here because we need the numbers to generate re revenue, too." So again, that's one of those when we talk about the the sparaging size of our schools just because where they are in their community. Um that's one of those advantages where a large school has the advantage of being

048attractive to an outside agency to come in and serve more kids. I'm just wondering if we are allocating those services [Music] um barely among all schools. Were there any schools that lack because it wasn't applied for because it wasn't convenient or in the district? Well, it it a lot of that looks different based on the school. So, like I said, they're physically at a couple of locations because the size warranted them to be staffed whereas they're they're being um remote and then as far as like the number of days. So with our own staff that manage that Megan oversees, you know, that again is based on, you know, some schools have because of their numbers, they're going to have somebody there five days a week for their case load, whereas other schools are going to

049have to share them between a person between a couple of schools to get the the case load because it's again based on numbers and Medicaid. So if is it is it balanced equitably? It is based on ADM. that doesn't necessarily feel. That's the whole nature of this conversation. Right. Right. Is that it doesn't feel equal. It doesn't feel equal. But when you're going by the ADM, the the numbers don't lie. The numbers are what they are. Enrollment is what enrollment is. And when you're allocating resources based on that, then you know it it is what it is when you're basing it on numbers. But I'm going to go back to the the heights as an agency we have anou with. We don't we don't control where they choose. We have the option to allow them

050and agree that they're in our building. And if we said, "No, I'm sorry. You're not going to go to Smokey High or Blige Health because it has the largest population." We are at risk of losing them for everybody. So, we want to keep that agreement because we want services for our students, but like Jake said, they're a nonprofit, but they have to make the money to pay for their people, and they're going to choose the largest schools to be housed in. and they're caring people and they want to serve all the schools and so they will do and they will work with those other schools but it just looks different um because of the nature of of the numbers that I just feel like that may be um a reflection of the complaints about disparity

051the numbers of extra people that were putting at some schools but not at others or whatever. Mhm. I mean I think it's quite fair to go by ADM for the people who are paid by the state and the federal government. But when we start getting into these independent contracts, are we serving I mean well we always enter into those um you know wanting those services and we have said had vendors for different reasons what you know that have engaged with us and and to be perfectly honest they've said you know it just doesn't make sense for us to go to Smokey Mountain Elementary or to go to Blue Ridge because of the distance because we're coming from Asheville and the cost and so we're like well if you can't serve all of schools, you're not

052going to serve any of them. So, we do do that on on some things, but again, you get to a point where you shoot yourself in the foot by saying, "Well, we're we would get the services that we can get." And I understand, but when you get into these other schools who don't have the kinds of services that other people have, it's not really what you're doing with the allocated teachers and administrators and that kind of thing. It's what these other services that we bring in and we say, "Well, you don't have the ADM. we can't afford to do that and I understand that but I'm just saying that's where the the um opinion of disparity may may be coming from sure I think that's definitely true and that's a good point Dr. Gillard. And

053if you if you look at I'm going to use Jackson Community School as an example here. Um Heights has a home base there. So it looks like they have 47 counselors coming in and out of their building every day, right? But this just their landing spot. They're not they're not staying there serving those kids all day long. So I think you're right. It's the perception a lot of times of what people believe um when they don't understand how much of what we do is based on that average daily. Are the Heights employees if we're looking at the numbers that triggered this like the per pupil spending at each school? Are the Heights employees distributed amongst every school or if they're housed at J Jackson Community School, are they all going towards that? We didn't count

054them. They're not our employees. their heights employees. So in the per pup people spending they were not counted as we only counted our employees. That makes sense. Good question. And I would further add um numbers are just numbers without context and as Dr. S mentioned that perception is very very important but as a team here I've seen the leadership um finance is one component of factors considered when you're talking about the needs of the students in this district. So, um, we try to come together as I am I am not tasked with saying no. I'm tasked with show us some different options. There's no doesn't necessarily become one of those and it's it's not always Jake always says find the money or Christy still has checks. Um, but I do see these money. Yeah. But

055I do have to say I I love working with this leadership team because that's what they do. They come in and they say, "Hey, this is the need of the school. No matter how great or how small, this is what we have. what can we do to meet it? And we're looking at our different resources and trying to align it to those needs. So, I do realize that sometimes that perspective is kind of skewed and we do have to have formulas and things that play out, but I have seen um this district rise to many challenges. Yes, that's great. And Christie, that's um just to add on what you were saying, that's where we get really creative with our funding because there are so many fiscal rules that bind you for different pots or PRC

056codes of money. And so when we can kind of come together and figure out what is allowable for this pot of money and what is allowable that pot of money, like when you saw that 0.25 of an easy person, how do we pick up the 75? And that's where the creativity comes in with what we're allowed to do with the fiscal restrictions that the state federal government put on these funds. So that's sometimes it's a chess game. It's like is this going to work or is this going to work? Um and it's just trying to figure out how all those puzzle pieces fit together to make it all happen. We have a lot of people in the district that are funded out of two maybe three different funding sources to make sure that their kids

057are getting the services they need by X position or Y position. Yeah. And we ask all of the the principles Christie this year Christie sent out a um a Google doc prior um but we solicit requests from the the principles in these budget meetings. And so we just want them to talk to us about what they're trying to accomplish because sometimes like Angie's saying that, you know, the way that I express as a principal, I'm like, I need this. And so as we talk it through, we're like, well, could this person be doing this and be doing this and also doing that because that would open up this pot of money to pay for this person or part of this person or things like that. We do the same thing with the the directors. Come

058in and talk to us about not just like I need a person, but talk to us about what's your vision. What are you trying to accomplish? Tell us what you're trying to get done. And then we can start piecing things together. Um and see what see what we can come up with to try and give our schools and our kiddos what they need. feel like and I know we've not gotten through the whole presentation but I feel like what what showed was that you know the bare minimum that is required for each school kind of puts the larger schools at a disadvantage as far as employees per pupil. So, I think maybe something that potentially that we're asking maybe is there a way to look at trying to close that gap by asking for additional

059funds from the county or you know something something of that nature. So, I I will say that I'm looking at the presentation from December. this in my mind because this is what was the trigger for all of this conversation. And I I'm just going to say out loud, we were talking about Jackson Community School. This nothing new recorded conversation. And that per pupil spending for for that school it was when we presented this last December was around $37,000 which is in some instances compared to our three largest schools Fair View Kohi Valley and Smoky Mountain High School almost three times in some cases larger. And that's what that's what people are upset about. And I don't mean that in a bad way. We're parents. We got to advocate for our kids and for our schools.

060But our hopefully our goal and purpose in this is to at least explain a little bit about why it looks like that. And I think we're getting to a better place. But then your next question and what you're tasking us to do is how do you make this a little more fair? Yeah. because I mean I think Gail landed on it with the slide that showed the minimum position school that I think that's a lot of where your discrepancy is, right? And I do think Angie's point about us being prek8s is a a piece of that too that is problematic and it's going to be resolved in three to five years. But you know, a couple things I can say not to not to sit here and say the solution is to take away things

061from Jackassson Community School or take away things from Blue Ridge Early College or Blue Ridge School because those are the locations with the largest per pupil. But we do recognize and our team has already made some staffing changes at Jackson Community School for the upcoming year in the grand picture. I'm not telling anybody's names, but this is pretty common knowledge at this point. There are going to be four less um positions there than there are right now. Now, that's not that we're yanking people away and saying you don't need that. We've repurposed a couple of positions. But of those four, two of those are because we are moving the middle school program to Smoky Mountain Elementary School. And that means a teacher and a teacher assistant and a handful of students, five or six students.

062So that that is going to change and that number a little bit um because because they're so small that's why that number looks so inflated, but it it is inflated. But again, we're back to that because we need certified teachers in math and science and social studies and English. So, I'm not picking on Jackson Community School in particular, but they are going to have four less employees in that building than they have currently this year, which will even this out. But our goal is not to punish one school. We still have the people to meet the needs of our kids. Also, with that change, some schools are going to have some added positions that they don't currently have. We've we've talked in close session about a couple different Yeah. Uh a couple different which I'm

063not at liberty to share, but in the end some schools are going to be gaining a position or two here. And then I I guess I would further add on Dr. Ers's words. Um those numbers and I'm looking at the slide that was um at our board meeting. It's not in this presentation, but at those per per pupil numbers, you have to have that base amount to operate any building. You're going to have those utility costs despite the people who come in and out or house there. And it goes back to that pizza example. Um, when you divide those costs among smaller numbers, then you're going to have a larger per pupil number than taking those same top costs and putting them with larger groups of students like 813 students. If you took Jackson Community

064School's number, and I'm not picking on them either, Dr. S, and divided it by another school's number, you would see a very different figure. Those um you can bring them in alignment like Dr. Ays is talking somewhat, but you have to remember with those minimums, a principal doesn't cost have a price tag to it that is set for all nine principles. The state has made those scales to be based off their experience and what they bring to the table. So, um, while you can even up some of that, you're never going to get it to where all of your schools, all nine of them cost exactly the same. And you could, we could have divided this number by per staff and looked at it that way just to see um, we were just trying to

065get perspectives on what we were talking about and make that data meaningful when you were having your discussions as a factor in that discussion, not as the whole um, decision that you that whole that information shouldn't be the only thing you based your decision off of. But I I think um one of the things you know talking about what can we do I think we are engaged in the process of planning for a middle school and so I think that it would be extremely appropriate for the the board to um direct and and and to expect from us to um look at this look at it through that lens as we start to talk about resources of what will what will when Fairview is a a preK through five school, how are we allocating those

066resources? And when when Scots Creek is a preK through five school and you know, how are we re reallocating those resources? Because we've already begun to have those conversations. Um because, you know, when you pull that number of students out, right, then you're talking about the specials. I wouldn't even want to consider maintenance of the building that they're in as a part of that number either. I feel like that's a an off-the-top expense that Sure. which is driven by the age of the building. Not sure. Yeah. But I think that would be something that we we have talked about, but would be a really good thing for us all to be committed to as as we move into this Yeah. reformationation of what Jackson County Public Schools is that we're mindful of some of those

067things like what is the ratio for a PE teacher now that we don't have middle school kids in there? What is the ratio for an art teacher now that we don't have middle schools in there? and having to make a middle school specials uh uh rotation work. What should I think that's extremely appropriate for us to be thinking about moving forward. I think it's also we should note that like we have nine children like like schools and like I have five of my own children and I'm not spending I'm not allocating money like seriously. I mean, they have different needs as adults here. You know, I have one child that's going to SEC. If he comes to me and says, "Well, you're paying more for the girl that's going to Liberty, so I want the

068rest of my money." You know, I would say, "No, grow up." You could have went to Liberty. I mean, I don't care. You know, whatever. You know, I'm So, so at the end of the day, it's going to be a little wonky. And uh but but as long as we're trying to get each school what they need, I mean, I think that's what we should be telling the public. Is there something at your school that you need or are you just looking over there at that school? Cuz if we're giving more to smoking because they got all of these athletic programs or do you want that athletic program at your school? You know, that's the question. Then you can coach, you can and drive a bus and drive a bus, please. You know, so I

069don't know. I think it's it's a discussion that we should lean more toward like we're all a big family and we all have to work together and the money is not always going to just like be evened out. is we got nine. I think I think that's absolutely accurate and when you're basing it off ADM um that is going to change drastically and the lensure and all of those things but this team recognizes Fairview needs more things not just Fairview like all schools could use a TA a full-time TA in first second and third grade the state doesn't give us the money for that but we know that that would be incredibly helpful to first grade teachers at Koi and Blue Ridge and SME and Fair View. So, it's not when we know we need

070staff, it's not just one school that needs additional staffing positions. It's it's all of them. And y'all, it's not for the school, it's for our kids. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's the for the impact That's right. on our students. And and when I look at a school like Fairview and I I see Eleanor running Fairview with one AP and and two coaches and all the other people, I could probably drop in her lap a dozen more teachers or employees and she could easily find places that they are definitely needed and wanted and use. But we come back to that funding piece of that and the asking of money of our commissioners, which I think we do a really good job of asking um for that money. And on May 6th, I'll be asking for an even

071bigger number than I've ever asked before. Um, but it's just about the the fairness of how we determine if we get this extra $50,000, how do we spend that that's going to most impact students? That makes sense. Okay. The only thing I would add to that is that when we talk to parents and community members, we have to understand that they don't understand the difference between reality and their perceptions of what reality is. So we have to adjust our comments in that way and be very definite like we've been in here today. Um and maybe what after a period of time we can get them to understand. And I think Mr. Buchanan has made some very excellent comments and and thoughtful about when we have the middle school. But if my child's in sixth or

072seventh grade right now, that doesn't help me feel better about what they're getting right now or in the next two years while this school's being built. So, I think we have to be as a board very careful about how we're excited about a middle school, but those kids right now at school are our focus. That's what's most important. And I think if we keep communicating that to parents, that's going to be real important. You have somebody in middle school now, don't you? High school, middle school. Yeah. Elementary. So what I'm saying is, you know, even for for me, you know, for Mr. Jameson, three years from now is not going to help. What's happen? I hope it's here three years from now. We will have one in middle school. Okay. But you know what I'm

073saying is that this is what's going on right now is important. Well, when I came onto the board, I didn't have one child in any school in Jacksonville. When I talk to the public, what I try to tell them is that we're all in this together. Like my daughter is going to work with somebody else's son and or be employed by somebody's nephew. Like, we're all in this together. All these kids are ours. like they need to quit thinking it so separately and we need to sell Jackson County Public Schools as a family because that's what I'm trying to say about the whole nine kids thing like we need to quit comparing Blue Ridge to Scots Creek because my children are different like they have different needs and I I just think that instead of

074having like a divided attitude about it should come at the table as this school has these these needs and this school has these needs and not put numbers on it or anything. Wes called me out. I mean, I was thinking about numbers cuz I was all business at the when I saw Jackson County Community Schools. I said, "Whoa." I was like, "Business?" My business brain said numbers. He said, "Oh, no, no." He pulled me back to kids and I was glad of that. I walked away from it thinking he's right. It has nothing to do with numbers. It has everything to do with kids and all of us like working together and it not being like my school, that school, this school. Like no, Jackson County public schools. We're going to be the best county,

075the best schools in this whole district. Like that's what we want. And it's going to take a little bit to turn the ship. I mean, I know we got to think about the kids this year, but you can't turn a ship in a in a day. Can you hear me? It takes a minute to turn something this and I think just really promoting a middle school and promoting um Jackson County is just we're trying to make changes. We're trying to make changes. We're having a hard decision. You know what you say to people who and of course I hear this all the time. Well, we paid this portion of Jackson County's taxes and what are we getting back for it? I'm just saying that needs to be addressed by a lot of different people. I

076mean, the only answer to that is our funds are equally allocated based on the average daily membership. Evelyn can't help that she only she can't put 482 kids at JC. She's gonna try. She's trying real hard to get a hundred of them for freshman class. But I I mean that is the reality of and we didn't create this model. The state created this model. The feds created this model. We everything is is funded based off from the state funds average daily. And I don't know how I I've said that to so many people your end of the county and the other end of the county. They just if you're not in education, you don't really understand that. I don't know how they think, but they're paying more. Yeah. The social studies teacher in me says,

077you know, if you pay three times the amount of taxes, you don't get to vote three times. You don't the the fire department doesn't come three times as fast to your house. Um, you know, taxes are a part of citizenship and so you're you're contri contributing as a citizen. That's a really great analogy. social studies. Yeah. But, you know, we we appreciate those that that can pay more um to contribute to the to the community good and we thank them for that, but that you know, that doesn't entitle them to more services because they're paying more in taxes. So, that's what you say, Lyn. Thank you for your contribution. I have another one. I have a really good accountant that could get you out of a lot of those taxes. see me afterwards. No, we

078we want them to pay the tax, you know, we need it in a way. And it's been explained to me if we just reexlain it when we hear that. Sure. Yeah. They just need to talk to a good high school social studies teacher. Send them to Jake. Send them to Mr. Kerr or Dr. Pel. We got a room full of social studies teachers in here. I was never very good in social studies, but I'll probably borrow that for sure not to be like should I wait. It's it's mainly this slide this presentation and Dr. Ays and I talked about this before was just to create conversation. We didn't have to go through it slide by slide. We I do want to I just want to pause for a moment and let let Veter just make

079sure you're aware of this class size information. Maybe I need better to make sure the people watching are aware of this class size information which really drives a lot of our decision making. And then we don't have to go through every slide, but I think the next like three we need to say verbally and then we can kind of skip to the end. So the state allotss us on each grade level by a certain number of students. So for kindergarten, we're allotted one teacher for every 18 students. And you can see all the way down to 12th grade. It's one teacher for every 29 students. About 10 years ago, the state did what it typically does from time to time and it gave us an unfunded mandate where in K3 they came in with the

080class size law 115C301. So in kindergarten they want no more than 18 students, first grade 16, second grade 17, third grade 17 as well. And it's changed over time uh the the accountability model, but at one point the superintendent had to sign an affidavit every year, sometimes twice a year that attested that each county, each district was in compliance with the class- size law. Um they do give us a little bit of leniency and they give us like a district average. So even though the number is 18 for kindergarten, if the district average um across the district is 18, we could have 19 or 20, no more than 21 in a kindergarten classroom, provided the district average is 18 or below. So if we had a a kindergarten classroom at Koi Valley with only 15

081kids in it, then that would give us a three student cushion either in one of their kindergarten classrooms or in another one uh throughout the district. Oh, okay. Can you throw up three grade levels for us to uh fourth, fifth, and sixth? Sure. We can start at fourth grade and we can go all the way to 12th grade. And the state has no stipulations on the number of students that you can have in those classrooms. Of course, best practice, you know, we don't want to put 35 or 40 students in in any classroom. Um, but we're only funded in fourth grade, one aotment, one teacher for every 24 students. And that's how it is for fourth, fifth, and sixth. seventh and eighth, it goes down to 23 students. We get an aotment and then it

082kind of goes up progressively um once you get to high school. So, there are no requirements there, but once again, our team, our principles do a really good job of, you know, using best practices and not putting, you know, 48 kids in a sixth grade math class except for PE. Well, that's how they do the teacher. We're not gonna talk about that. No, let's not talk about that. Um, and the next slide just looks at all the grade levels and the total ADM. And as you can see, it's um going to be a little bit lower. These are just projections for 26, but it will be kind of lower across the board and some grade levels could go up, some could go down. It's it's so tricky with the with the ADM stuff because, you

083know, we're enrolling kids and kids are moving and going to different schools throughout the course of the year. So these numbers we could have uploaded them today and and they're going to change most likely tomorrow or the next day. The next couple of slides if you can skip that one and go to this one. I think this one is a really important slide for everybody to see is and I I had a good conversation with one of our commissioners about it. I don't think the general public realizes when I go and ask money from the county commissioners. Whatever they give me, some of it is a pass through that goes directly to charter school funding. So this past year, and that one blue slide's a little light to read on there, but this past year

084um past full year, we gave nearly a million dollars of our funding to charter schools. And so in my ask for the upcoming school year, as Christy and I hammered through, we're looking at probably 1.4, I think, or 1.5 that we might be the pass through um for that funding. So when I asked the county commissioners for $14.5 million, that's the number out of my head, but I think it's pretty close. $14.5 million, about 1.5 of that we're never going to see. we're going to turn around and pass it back out. And so most of the general population doesn't realize that that we're a pass through. And I wanted you all to see that. Um which means we're giving 2528 per student. I think well they don't have to be in this county, but the

085student has to live here. So if a student went to a charter school in Asheville, but they reside in Jackson County, their state money comes to us and and then we pass it to them. And currently on the slide right before, but you have it in paper, we currently have 460 students who would be JCPS students who are enrolled in charter schools here locally. like closest to us. I can think of Mountain Discovery and um Summit that are right here either not in our county but really close to us. But again, if they reside in our county and they go to charter school in Madison County, we have to pay Madison. Some it's in Jackson County. Some it is in Jackson. That's right. It's in Cash, Mount Discoveries in Swing County. And then the next

086slide. And Gail, you asked this question earlier and you were right. About 70% of our funds go to pay people. Yeah. Which is good. It is good people. It is good. So the next several slides and I I think I'm hearing that you don't want to go through all of them. Um I would say this is a generic one and we can go through all of them, but I think that that maybe was what Miss Woody was asking about. No, I mean it's fine. I was just wondering I had a question about it later. Okay. Yes, ma'am. So, the next slide is a really generic slide about how we figure out each year how many teachers a school is going to get. So, this is not any school. This is a generic slide, but all

087the rest of the slides are how we figure out um the the the allocation of teachers from state funding pots. And then there's a whole worksheet that talks about what that looks like for CTE and what that looks like for exceptional um staffing. So, it is very much based on the class- size law and what we call best practice. As as Mr. Veter said, we don't have we have a moral obligation to not put 58 kids in a sixth grade math class because that's setting up the student and a teacher for failure. And so, we would never want to do that. But this is like the work if you click back to one and I don't care which one. This is a worksheet of how we figure out okay this is what the population of

088students the projected ADM average daily membership for the following year the upcoming year is going to be and this is what we think the teachers were going to need there this is the state funded teachers this is not EC this is not CTE um there's another pot that I can't read and and one of the things I'll point out on here is again because we we have little mini middle schools and all of our K8 schools, the middle school numbers on here never make any sense because each one of them do it differently based on their size. So you have some staff certification. Absolutely. A staff certification. So you might have some that have, you know, a a a math teacher at each grade level or a math teacher for two grade levels or a

089person who's teaching science and math um for this grade level, but this these two grade levels, it's the same. So it's it's kind of all over the place. So it's we really have to drive you have to look at the the enrollment numbers, but you like Dr. keep saying you really for our middle schools you have to look at their certifications and just the number of sections it it takes to make a school function. It gets even trickier at the high school level with trying to make sure we have enough certified teachers to teach all the courses they need to be able to graduate. So it can be even trickier at the high school level. Yeah. Because it's really driven um as much like we have conversations with Mr. Robson and previously with Miss Graining

090that we you almost need to see what the registration is like. What have the students signed up to take? What is what is driving to make some of the decisions? And these worksheets are part of our budget uh committee work and we bring in those principles and have a conversation with them regarding what what the numbers look like and get their input. So, I would ask the board, do you want to go through each of these worksheets or do you want to go toward the end and talk about some of the other funding sources we have? Are there are there questions that we as a team haven't answered? Just want to make sure that we're being very thorough. the state funed positions for kindergarten versus the number needed like at Smoky Mountain Elementary by the

091parent. Are those 18 state funded kindergarten positions for the district or I'm not sure I understand going through one or two so that everybody understands the flow to look at the so to start with kindergarten can be tricky. We really have to kind of guess with that one because we don't really know till open house or the first day of school. Um, but basically what happens is we take the projected number of uh students that we think we're going to have and the other grade levels are easier because you can just move them up one. Um, we look at the class size ratio. So looking at first grade, the most we can possibly have is 21. That's with the the district with the plus three with the district average coming in under uh 19, excuse

092me, 18. And then we calculate that with the formula. And as you can see with first grade, they're going to be nine under. So it looks like they're going to have to either move a teacher around or if students uh decide to go to another school. Um that might not be the best example there. And that's something that we worked through when we met with Mr. Kerr about some of the options that he may need to look at possibly combination class um which will be a last resort of course. Um, but looking at different ways to kind of make the positions work because when we meet with our principles, we give them the autonomy within their school if they have an abundance of first graders, if they need to move a third grade teacher down

093to first grade for next year to make the class size numbers work. Um, because being nine students on the whole, that could uh cause problems when it comes to the class size law. So, if it was one or two, then the district average might cover it. But when you're looking at a nine student discrepancy, then some changes might have to be made. Yeah. And Mr. Bennet, I think, and Mr. Jameson, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think part of his question, too, is it's like where it says state funded positions. Is that actually a lot? Is that how many kids can be in the class? No, that's the number of kids that generate a position. Gotcha. Okay. And so you That's not actually 18 state funed positions. That's so if we took 35 state

094and divided by the 18 which is what they allow us then it comes to 1.9 teachers. So one of the things that might jump off at you is like but this doesn't make any sense because they say the class size is um is uh smaller than the number of teachers that we all lot per kid. And the answer is like yes. Of course, the state of North Carolina says you have to have a smaller number of students in a class than they're going to fund you for. Of course they are. And this is one thing that the public and I think parents in particular need to think about this when you vote. The legislature makes the decisions about these things and about our funding. And we all recognize, everyone I talked to, yes, we need

095more funding, but they have the the authority to make that decision. And so we need to advocate with your your legislators, legislators who are often not educators. 90% of the time, not educators. So, I think that um Jake made a comment regarding like we do have a mini middle school in every in every one of our elementary schools. So, if you look down, we're still looking at Smokeoky E. If you look down at grades six, seven, and eight, then what what you see is they look like they are they appear that they're overstacked when you look at the available seats. But guess what? you got to have a middle school certification to teach middle school science. I can't take a K6 teacher and put them in an eighth grade science place. So there's where that

096that lensure area then impacts even more and looks like it's it's overstaffed or overinflated there. And then like sixth grade's real small, seventh is more in Russ. We can't control that. That's No, that's I was going to say I can remember classes that were small. Right. Right. And then big. Exactly. When there was a blizzard. Oh, does that help Abigail? I think so. Okay. And I I want to make sure that we are all able to answer questions of people and trust me, we don't know all the answers. So sometimes we'll run back and say, "Oh, we need to reook at this and and and figure this out." But if we just put this out to the public, no one's going to understand this. And it's even hard for us to comprehend it, but the

097general public is not going to understand what this means. Jackson County Early College. All right. I mean, so you have to remember that there is one teacher per core content, a math, and science and social studies and an English. But remember that most of those students are taking at least one class at SEC. Okay? So there, Miss Granny's campus is a constant flow of kids going back and forth. So you're not that I'm aware of, Miss Granny. I will never walk in a class and see 40 kids in one class period. Gotcha. They are. Okay, you could stack them on top of each other, but but but that's 40 freshmen who are taking math and science and English and social studies and SEC classes that are flowing in about and that's also the projected number

098too. That's not the number that are currently that's just yeah we're projecting and that is what makes high school so tricky. It is when particularly when you're looking at Smake Mountain High School because we're aotted based on how many students are in those grade levels. But then here we're having to try to figure out now how many teachers go in each department. So when Jake was talking about looking at registration, okay, how many English teachers do we need so that every student 9th through 12th grade has an English class because there's four required classes, right? But then, okay, well, let's look over here at science. It might look a little different. We may not need as many sciences because every student nth grade through the 12th grade is not taking science. So, that's that careful

099dance looking at also how many students are coming in um versus which departments have four requirements, which departments have three requirements. It is a little trickier to try to figure all that out inside. And it's teachers know this. Do the teachers like are they aware of how much goes into this? Because I know if you walked up to me and said absolutely like you need to move. Like if a principal had to go to a teacher and say I I don't need you right now in fourth grade. I need you in a first grade class. And that happens quite often when we're talking about K6. And the principles make those decisions and they are great at saying you know Angie Dills I could move her to second grade and she'd be great because we don't

100have as many fourth graders and she was in fourth grade and and they are having those conversations constantly with teachers a lot of our teachers in our schools that that happens quite often understand that that happens so those conversations work through um but as far as getting into the weeds and the way that all of this is allocated it it's a complex process Like when we're sitting down with this like our budget committee probably by the time we meet I would say at least 15 times during the year for two hours each time or longer. I mean there's hours and hours of work that go into this before you know we're sitting down and actually working with principles. And so then the principles in a K8 school do have some autonomy to be able to

101look at their staff, look at strengths, look at areas of need and be able to make those allocations that that they know what is going to be best for their school within the constraints of what we can actually afford. I think a lot of teachers do know. I mean, I knew a lot. There would be a class with a hundred students. The fourth grade say had a hundred students. Everyone knew that it was a huge fourth grade. You had to have five teachers instead of four. And then the next year maybe you'd have 75 in that grade. So those, you know, those things happen. And and even at the high school, there's just population fluctuation. Well, I got a question about like what really goes into the the small school and poverty multiplier because what

102it ends up doing is giving some schools a 70% bump on their, you know, per student aotment on top of that $5,000. So what what actually drives have those numbers come up? You mean the title funding? Who created multiplier? Yeah, we we modeled from title one and and the only thing that that's for is for um instructional supplies it that has does not impact a lotment of teachers or anything like that. And that's not the multipliers we use. the categories what they call advance. So those multipliers are specific to what the budget committee decided many moons ago I think when Dr. was large but I know that the budget may have changes but it is very common practice in title one funding to look at even amongst your lowincome schools where are the highest concentrations

103of poverty and giving them a higherable allotment because I think we even at one time did we not or at one time look at the number of homeless students at a school too and it impacted their I think that's more for the social worker own. There's a couple of different small supply things that we looked at for some of those. Yes, we have like one school with an extremely high concentration almost half of our total homeless students identified in the county. So that was good. About how much the I'm sorry. No, I was just going to point out typically we start with that when we know we've got $135,000 to spend, we work backwards. So in years where we only had 125 on that bottom line, then you h might have to adjust that per

104pupil aotment because we only have $125,000. How are we going to divide it in a more equally proportioned out way? Is that a is that an accurate number for school supply money for the whole district that 134? Typically we're doing more. So the state gave about $110,000 last year for this aotment. And so what we're doing is we Yeah. for the whole district. And so what we're doing is saying that we're going to do that $5,000 base and then we're going to take and try to do as much as we can for for that a lotment which ends up coming out of our local funds. Yeah. And we do that purposefully so that the schools are not restricted to some of the state requirements and funding that go along with that instructional supply money that

105they provide. So it gives them more flexibility and we trade it off with our local budget. I have a question about um the federal money if they close the Department of Education federally and to give all that money back to the states in addition to the money that the states already have. How's that going to affect us? Is it going to be positive for us? I don't think they're going to give it to States have to come up with it. I just think that's such an unknown. We can't even predict. I mean, I I would love to project, but we're we're just focusing on what we have right now and finish this finishing the school year. Another questions um on the additional funding sponses. I think it's the last slide. Well, questions. Um, these funds

106are some of the ones that Mrs. Dills was talking about that are targeted to a certain population. Correct. Yes. And um are these figured into that aotment that the students get? No, definitely. These are just things that are restricted. Okay. So, I think sometimes that could, you know, it probably wouldn't change the equity. No, if you're talking about well at PPA, are you talking about where we do the school a lotments for instructional supplies or are you talking about when the slide for uh the board meeting that said per pupil? Yes, that's the one. Yes, they are included. They are included. Okay. I wondered about that because obviously this does impact and you'll notice here, you know, we we talked about how it looks like Smoky Mountain. It and it's it doesn't just look like

107Smoky Mountain Elementary has a high per higher per people aotment, but they're getting that money that's just targeted for them. So correct the community schools and the Indian. That's correct. Exactly. So when you go from the side of the SL the information that we provided for your discussion for Jackson community school that was from the expense approach. We this would be from the revenue approach. So you're you're trying you can't kind of mix them. Okay. You we pulled all expenses that were tagged to a school if they and that it comes down to their location code. So when Angie pays for an invoice then she puts a budget code on there not to get too much in the weeds at the end there is typically a school associated with that expense. And so that's the

108data flows that way and DPI looks at things like that when they put out those more public um information like the school report card. They're going to tag those expenses to a school. So if you choose to leave off your school code, they will put all of those funds together in one pot and divide it by nine. and all schools will get a chunk of that expense. So you can look at it from revenue side and from expense side but this is more would be from the revenue side. Revenue. Okay. Then the last question I had was if a a a teacher writes a grant and gets funds, like every year I was at Smoky Mountain High School, I generated about $2,500 in funds for grants that I got mostly for supplies because we were

109on supplies. But is that then figured in individual teachers getting grants? Does that help figure into what that per student any any monies any um expenses that were on our books for that year was divided out and I think I stopped at 2024 because 2025 was we're in the middle of it and we didn't want to cloud those discussions with projections of what we thought might happen. So yes, any funds that were available for expenses um that had went to the schools, we pulled those numbers and provided it in a per pupil amount. And I know some of those like I always got a learning links grant and Indian art and some of those are drying up. I know they don't. So in our district our grants um if they are $10,000 and less and

110contain no payroll components. The schools actually manage those grants figured into that. They would have had to been significantly sized grades 2000 and above or have payroll which though several of the schools have been successful getting large. Oh, that's good. But it was so the question is so we don't look like we're whispering up here. these additional funds that are allocated to a school. Uh what Abigail was asking is if they are part of the individual schools. These no because this is state funding for those teachers. However, those extra funding sources were calculated into that December 17th per pupil. As Christie was saying, every bit of money that ended in that same in that code that is allocated to her in a school, she pulled all of the funding sources there. And one thing I

111we didn't put on here is both Blige Early College and Jackson Community School, they have a JAG teacher. And that's one thing that I neglected to put on here that was counted in this per pupil allotment, but that is not money that came from the state for us. So, but when we're doing the school aotment calculations, we don't take any of that into consideration. None of that is dollars. So, those none of the what you're looking at in the school calculations, those are positions. So, we are not matching dollars. They're people um human beings or teachers or that. I'm just asking so when there's these additional funding sources though that's not taken into consideration at all when we're allocating these funds directly to schools. No, that and that's purely the slide that you're looking at

112is purely for instructional supplies. That doesn't count the people we hire for JAG or the person who is the CIS person. That's a good question. It's just this total amount divided by this ADM multiplier and all that. And when we're looking at these individual school sheets, these are core teachers. These are teaching core classrooms. It does not include art, CTE, EC, all of those others. Those are added on top of this. Doesn't count your school counselor, your social worker, things like that. Those are configured differently. Yeah, there's a lot of moving pieces. Yeah. you have other questions that we can answer. It's a team effort. We've been working real hard. Those were excellent explanations and I appreciate it your hard work. Thank you. I agree. I think it all just boils down to we always

113need more money and there will always be needs that we can't completely meet. And I think the the overriding message I hope the community hears is that we're not picking a school to get more resources than another school. We're trying to be very equitable for every student in Jackson County schools. Is that fair to say? So it's very fair to say that we're looking at the needs of every student in every school. Yes. Yeah. Well, I thank all of you. Um, there's just one individual board member I have had the pleasure of working with just watching the principles, the administration, just really try to work as a team um for the same goal. Um, when I came on here, I had like all of these calls and emails and um, trails, bunny trails people were

114sending me down, you know, and I was like real quiet for the first little while cuz I just wanted to hear. And after two years of being on the board, this is one of the most welloiled machines that I have seen um on all the companies I've worked for um teams I've worked with. This is this is beautiful. Um, I've also got to go to state um, training for boards and talk to other board members and there's so much division and so much strife and but this this is really beautiful and always have your stuff together and we really drill you, but you do a good job of getting our questions answered. So, thank you. Um, thank you for answering emails, calls, and just just really really trying to do the best for our students

115here in Jacksonville. Appreciate it. Yeah. Uh, just to echo what Kim and Gail said, I appreciate all the time and effort y'all put into this and being here to answer questions that we've had and yeah, for for everybody else who showed up as well to either participate or hear. Um, and I did not make a motion to open this meeting. I don't know if I needed to or not. We're good to go. So, little late now. Yeah. But you have attorney. If nobody else has any questions or any statements or anything they want to make, then I think that we can consider this meeting adjourned. Thank you all for coming.