001good afternoon Dr. Carlin and members of the board. this hearing is the first of two public hearings that are required under Florida statutes to give the public an opportunity to provide input into the proposed millage levy and the budget for this fiscal year. The superintendent submitted her advertisements detailing the FY26 tenative budget to the board on July 22nd. The advertisements appeared in the news press on July 25. The superintendent then submitted her tenative budget book to the board on July 28th. The second and final budget public hearing by your approval tonight will be held on Tuesday, September 9 at 5:05 p.m. in this boardroom. Notice of that meeting to the public will be through a direct mailing from the property appraisers office. That mail document is known as the truth and millillage notice or the
002trim notice and is sent as required by law. Under normal circumstances, the tenative budget would have been presented to the board at the same time as the advertisements or July 25th. however, there have been many things that have happened this year that m have made this budget cycle particularly difficult. first, the legislative session did not end until midJune. typically we would normally have had a legislative budget in May, but our FEFP legislative information did not come to us until a month and a half after it normally would. Then the final dispersement to school districts at the end of June for FY25 was short, $47 million statewide, which meant about a million dollars to our district, and this impacted our work in finalizing the budget as well. next, the federal DOE announced the withholding of federal
003funds that were under review that amounted to $14 million for our district. So, we went into action mode to adjust budgets if this funding was denied for the FY26 year. We were just notified this past Friday, that is three days ago, that these funds would be released to us. So dealing with these various unusual circumstances led to leading additional time to build and produce a budget for the board and the public. And we strive to be as transparent as possible with our budget process. And we regret any concern that this may have caused and we look forward to a detailed discussion of the budget today. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mrs. Lecher. Thank you. So as outlined by trim requirements, first we must discuss the millage roll back rate. The roll back
004rate is the millage rate which when applied to the current year's tax role net nets the net of adjustments for new growth would produce the same dollar amount as received in the previous year. Our roll back rate is calculated this year at 5.2441 mills. and our proposed millage rate for this year is 5.319 mills. This is a 1.43% 43% increase over the roll back rate. Sorry. The new millillage will generate about 49 million for the district. However, I want to make sure that we point out that while it generates 49 million, 31 million of that is in the required local effort. So, what happens at this time is when the required local effort goes up, our state portion goes down. So we what we will see an increase in our capital millage and our discretionary
005millage. That is the that are the two areas that we will see that increase in. This is just showing the history of our roll back rate and how it's been over the last 16 years. So as you can see this is the one of the lowest percents over a roll back rate at 1.43% that we've had for quite some time. Did you want to speak to Okay. our tax role is set at 160 Oops. 169 billion, which is a 5.39% increase over the previous year's tax rate. when you look at our millages and then compare them from one to the other, last year our required local effort was at 3.03 038. This year it's at 3.071 which is a difference of 0033 mills. And I just want to point out that this is required to
006for us to levy in order to participate in the Florida Education Finance Program. If we do not levy this, we will be losing the state portion of the Florida Education Finance Program of about $422.5 million. And our discretionary and our capital millage will stay the same. When you compare the mills our millillage over time, as you can see, we've been working towards a decline. And this year we have just a slight tick up from our previous year. Normally when you would see the tax role go up, you would see the millage goes go down. This is the first time that our tax roll went up and our millage rate went up slightly as well. our tax role this year, as I said, was 169 billion. That is up 8.6 billion from last year's. And I
007just let me point out with this slide, as Kelly just mentioned, that's a 5.39% increase in the tax role. that is the lowest increase in the tax role that we've had since 2019. And so we believe that this will be a trend based on all of the economic indicators that we've gotten from various places that this will continue over the next several years. So we can anticipate that we'll probably see lower increases in our tax role than maybe we've seen for the past six or seven years. So what does this mean for our taxpayers? So, when you look at a taxpayer whose home value was at $100,000 this year and you apply the 5.39% increase, their new value would be 105,390. Under last year's tax rate at the 100,000, they would have paid $52,860. And
008under the new value of their home and the new tax rate, they would be paying $56057. So that would be an increase of $31.97 if the value of their home was at 100,000 last year. Looking at the same thing on down the page a little bit, you see where it says 3%. If a taxpayer has the save our homes on their home, it doesn't allow them to it doesn't allow their tax taxable value to go up more than 3%. So when you apply that to this, and I just want to include this includes the $25,000 homestead exemption. Last year they would have paid $39645. This year they would be paying $414.88. So they would be paying an additional $1843 this year. When you look at the amounts that the millillage is going to generate for
009Lee County, when you look at our required local effort, it's 498,68,981. Our basic discretionary will generate 121,445,626 and our capital outlay millage will generate 243,54694 for a total generated amount of 863,595,301. So then when you break the budget down, the total budget that we're recommending tonight is 2 bill798,172,189. The largest parts of those are the general fund and the capital. Those come in at combined about 2 3 billion or 85% of the budget. So, we're going to talk about the different parts of the budget. There are six parts to the budget. and I'm going to go over each of these as they have specific purposes for each of the budgets. The general fund is our main budget that is the day-to-day operations and expenses for our schools and our district. We have the debt service,
010which pays our debt or certificates of participation. And as you've heard me say, that's like our mortgage on our property. Our capital is used to build new schools, buy equipment, provide maintenance services, and provide safety items for our schools. We also have our food service budget which supports breakfast and lunch for all of our students. The special revenue federal funds, which are our grants, and those these come in for specific purposes. These would be things like your IDEIDA and your title one that have specific purposes that they have to be used for. and our internal internal service accounts. These are for our insuranceances, both our health insurance and our property insurance. And I'd like to point out too that within that $2.7 billion, our internal service fund and our debt service funds are total transfers
011from other funds. So they're like duplicated throughout their in the general fund and capital funds and then again in their own fund. So looking at the general fund, this is our major source of revenue as I said for our daily operations. It's budgeted at $1.3 billion and represents 45% of the total budget. it in our it includes our estimate our fund balance which we're estimating to be about $17 million less than FY25's fund balance. and this is not including the state grants that we have in there and the hurricane funds. And we're going to continue, as we've discussed, bringing those fund balances down as we work through the budget process. this budget includes some realigned funds of 9.1 million from the superintendent's reinvestment plan and we're going to look at continuing on areas that we
012can make savings and put dollars into other things. And this the general fund will support over 100,000 kids. So, let me just reiterate that in in terms of fund balance and we'll continue to have conversation related to that. but as we projected and as we built the fund balance in FY25, the previous budget year did get spent down some. In other words, expenses were a little bit more than what revenue was. $17 million worth is why you see that fund balance come down. there are a couple but this budget was structured in such a way. there are a couple things that are happening now that one of the our superintendent's 5% reduction plan as we've discussed previously before of that total 5% 9.1 million was reduced out of the general fund in order to help
013us realign our budget. But we would do anticipate based on expenditures and budgeted circumstances that we will continue to reduce fund balance over the next couple years to our agreed upon benchmark in that financial ratio financial condition ratio. We'll talk a little bit more about that in future slides. So our general fund focus on the budget right now is the classroom. We're trying to get as many resources to the classroom as we can. We are still providing some reading initiatives at the elementary level. We are focusing on the whole child, their mental wellness, our English learners, our students who need some additional interventions and supports. And we're trying to recapture learning loss that we have had in past years. We're focusing on employee retention and we're focused on some academic objectives for core construction benchmark
014alignment lesson planning and collaborative teams and professional learning communities. So of the general fund the Florida education finance program dollars that we receive make up a portion of that and this slide is talking specifically about the FFP dollars that we get. It's about a billion dollars over just slightly over a billion dollars that we get through our Florida education finance program. About $90 million of that is for the family empowerment scholarships. this represents a $39 million increase from our previous year. And I want to point out that $15 million of that increase is for family empowerment scholarships. to kind of give you some idea. Last year though, this when I was talking to you at this time, that amount was a $67 million increase. So, it's not as lucrative. It's not as much money as
015we have seen in the past come to us. when you take out the 15 million, that leaves about 24 million for district schools and charter schools. the increase and we still have a lot of those increases. And we spoke to before about like our Florida retirement increase went up. It's going to cost us about 2 and a.5 million. And we have those things that are going up that's going to cost us money as well. This represents about $9,331 per FTE. That's a $90 increase over last year's, which is less than a 1% increase. The base student allocation is $5,37266 this year, which is a $4162 cent increase, which is also less than a 1% increase. The state is funding 40.52% of our funding through the FEFP and our local funds are picking up the other
01659 %. and last year just so you have some kind of you know thing the state was 42% of our budget picked up that so the sources of our operating and this is our total operating not just the FFP 64% or almost 65% are from local funds 34 or 35% almost is from state sources and a very small portion 46 from federal dollars So where do those dollars go? 69% of it goes right back to our schools for direct school expenses and instruction. we have like 0.01% it doesn't even register on this for what they consider other which is basically our fee supported programs in our schools. That would be the function 9100 items. we have about 8% in contingency in reserve right now. That number will be going down after we do our roll
017forward things that are coming up in the next couple of weeks because we have to set money aside for that. 4% for support services, 14% for operations and maintenance and 5% for student transportation. So on the contingencies and reserves, we wanted to touch a little bit on that. Reserves are very important for us to have. You never know what's going to happen throughout the year and what you have to account for. and as good as planners we are, we cannot foresee everything that might come up. We are required to hold a contingency of no of no less than 3% of the new revenue and we have done that. That's about $29.8 million. Other than that, we have about 148 million that we've set aside to help with future reductions in need. So if a if
018a change in the allocation, if our student counts don't come through where we thought they were and we lose money, we have a place we can go and make that reduction. also as if needs come up throughout the schools, we need to make sure we have enough funding to take care of those needs at our schools. There is 89.6 million sitting in reserves to cover our purchase orders that roll forward from one year to the next. balances in some areas that we need to carry forward like if we have money in our educational enrichment it must stay in there and carry forward in that project and our contingency. I will refer you here to page 19 in the tenative budget book. There's a breakdown of these balances of reserves. So if you wanted to see
019the detail of that, you could see it there in terms of how much the 3% is and then how all of the rest of the numbers break down in terms of the reserves themselves. when we were discussing earlier our projected fund balance for the end of FY26, so where do we think our financial condition will be when we end FY26? you know, we do anticipate that for the end of FY25, we will and we're still finalizing those numbers. I know FY25 is is done and over as of June 30th, but the books haven't been closed out yet, so to speak, right? So, these are still estimations of what that FY25 those FY25 numbers will look like. We do estimate that our financial condition will be around 13%. Which is down from 14.4%. 4% that it
020was in FY24 as we expected and as we planned for, right? And then we will we expect that in FY26 it will probably reduce another one to one and a half% from that in order to kind of as we're satisfying the expenses and the estimates that we put into the budget for FY26. So it has to go along with a plan over the next several years to again continue to really focus in on both sides of the equation both revenues and expenditures in order to make sure at the end of FY27 we are balanced out with our budget in terms of revenues and expenditures in the year of FY28. So our next fund I want to talk about is our food service fund. It's budgeted at $67 million and it represents 2% of our total
021budget. It includes breakfast and lunch for every child at our school. We are in all schools are comm are in the community eligibility program. So no one will pay for any breakfast or lunch, no student. and during the superintendent's reinvestment plan, we came up with about 707 $778,000 in this fund to reinvest under our special revenue. Our grants, which is like I said before, our title one idea and other grants is currently budgeted at 50 million or about 2% of the total budget. These will continue to increase as we receive future grants coming through and the dollars actually come through and are finalized. will be increasing that and you'll see that in the budget amendments that come to you on a monthly basis. We are reviewing all of our grants closely because we do expect
022that in 27 those ones that were frozen, we're probably going to see some reductions in the amounts. And so we're looking very closely at what are in those grants and trying to prioritize as a district what we need to continue and what might, you know, be a nice thing to have but not a priority. during the review of the superintendent's reinvestment plan, there was about $1.7 million that we found in the grants that we could utilize for other things. Our capital funds is the next one. It is the second largest. It's at 1.1 billion and represents 40% of our total budget. During the superintendent's reinvestment plan, we found about $8.8 million that we could reinvest in this fund. This includes the largest part of this comes from our local property taxes and sales tax. We
023do get other revenue for things like from impact fees, but it doesn't make come close to the amounts in these two areas. So, our major focus is safety and security upgrades, maintenance and renovations of our existing buildings, technology, and providing new classroom space for our students that are coming. And the five-year capital plan right now, it includes funding for three new elementary schools, a new middle school, a new high school, and a pre-K to 8 school, all in the east zone. One addition, two rebuilds, four remodels or renovations, and some of these are some that have been going on and are finishing up now, and an additional addition at our technical centers. So, our debt service is about $71 million or 3% of the total budget. the law requires that we can't spend more than
02475% of our capital millage dollars on paying debt. And so, we like to let you know where we are as we go through this. We are at 31.3% of that 75% allowed amount. And then the board in the past has recommended that we not utilize more than 50% of our capital millage to pay for our debt. And we're at 47% of the recommended amount. So that concludes our discussion for you today for our school district of Lee County FY26 tentative budget that was painstakingly painstakingly compiled to support 120 schools over a 100,000 students. So we continue to grow all the initiatives of the state and safety, security and student achievement goals that are set out in the superintendent's envision 2030. As Chair Fischer mentioned earlier, it is our mission to ensure each student reaches his
025or her highest personal potential and we truly believe that our budget is structured to help the district do just that. So, we do respectfully submit it in support of our mission and the students and employees of the Lee County School District and the citizens of Lee County to the board here this evening. Thank you, team. I appreciate it. the next item on the agenda is public hearing. We'll now recess the special school board meeting and open the public hearing to consider the adoption of the tenative proposed millage rates and the tenative budget for 2025 2026. The time is 5:31 p.m. and Dr. Carlin, we stand by for your recommendations whenever you're ready. Thank you, Mr. Fischer. I recommend number one that the Lee County School Board adopt the 2025 2026 tentative proposed required local effort
026millage of 3.071 mills with a proposed amount to be raised of $498,68,981. Recommendation two, I recommend that the Lee County School Board adopt the 2025 2026 tentative proposed basic discretionary mill of.748 mills with a proposed amount to be raised of 121,445,626. Recommendation number three, I recommend that the Lee County School Board adopt the 2025 2026 tentative proposed capital outlay millillage of 1.50 500 with a proposed amount to be raised of $243,540,694. The total millage will equal 5.319 mills with a total amount to be raised of $863,595,31. The total millage rate to be levied is more than the roll back rate. It is an increase in the roll back rate of 1.43%. Recommendation four, I recommend that the Lee County School Board adopt the resolution determining revenues and millages levied and the resolution adopting the tenative
027millillage rates for the fiscal year 2025 2026. Recommendation five, I recommend that the Lee County School Board adopt the tenative budget and related resolution adopting the tenative budget for the 2025 2026 school year as follows. Number one, general operating in the amount of 1 bill258,324,73. Number two, special revenue budget in the amount of 117,280,254. Number three, debt service budget in the amount of 71,50,46. Number four, capital outlay budget in the amount of 1 bill129,782,490. Number five, internal service budget in the amount of 221,734,696 for a total tenative budget of $2 bill798,172,189. Recommendation number six, I recommend that the Lee County School Board accept the 2025 certification of taxable value for Lee County form DR420S and authorize the superintendent to complete and execute the form. Recommendation seven, I recommend that the Lee County School Board schedule
028a public hearing on the final 202526 millage levies and final budget for the 202526 school year for Tuesday, September 9, 2025 at a specially scheduled board meeting to begin at 5:05 p.m. here in the Lee County Public Education Center boardroom. Thank you, Madam Superintendent. At this time, the public will be invited to speak on these matters. The time allowed for comment is three minutes per speaker. At this moment, if I'm looking at it correctly, I'm showing seven speakers have signed up. If anyone has not signed up to speak and wishes to speak, could you please raise your hand so we can get you on there. Okay. At this point, seeing none, so I will ask if you could please line up Kathy Wyn, Denise Eil, Patrick Fininkler, Christopher Meow, and Cochran Davius, please. And whenever
029you're ready, please proceed. All right. Hello everybody. I'm Kathy Wyn. I'm a graduate from the Lee County School System, as are my daughters. After substitute teaching here for nine years, I became a prevention specialist for Hanley Foundation and then here in 2018, the same year the surgeon general declared youth vaping was an epidemic with much of the blame being placed on Jewel vaping devices. For the past seven years, my prevention colleague and I have worked tirelessly to equip the district with educational prevention materials, presentations for students, parents, and staff, quarterly newsletters, online courses for student infractions, and manage two prevention initiatives funded by a United Way grant among many, many other things. When the state mandated that every student have a lesson about substance use and abuse without providing us with curriculum, we and Leicia
030Roy, as the in-house experts, created this urgently needed instructional material for grades K through 5. These videos allowed us to be in compliance. I learned after my annual review that our positions were in jeopardy due to budget. My contract has not been renewed. I was an M in disbelief that our district would consider prevention a want and not a need and be unable to find a way to keep our two PE teaching positions in the 2526 budget. We've received much of our 200 $2.2 million from the 200 2023 Juul settlement with its intention being to remediate youth vaping. According to the jewel settlement work settlement workshop in 2024, we'll be getting $268,000 more this December and in December 2026. One would think it would be a priority to use part of this money to expand
031prevention services, not eliminate it. My understanding of our rightsiz sizing initiative is that it's intended to reduce bureaucracy. Prevention education is not bureaucracy. It's lifesaving essential instruction. We plan to launch a cartoon series for our K through5 students in quarter 1 this year. We created Prevention Pals as a fun way to engage young students while teaching them not just that vaping is unhealthy, but why to help them make the decision not to do it. Topics of smoking, alcohol, peer pressure were to follow. I would love the opportunity to share all these new things that we've created for the upcoming school year with you. I'm asking you all to consider redirecting a portion of the jewel monies to maintain our positions. Please don't cut lessons that save children's lives for the sake of our students, their
032health, and their future. Thank you for your leadership on this vital issue. Please approach Good evening, Dindy Severly. How have you tonight? I'll start off with this way. NNN falls under the capital plan. You all act like $22.5 million is nothing. This is on top of the initial estimate of 140 million. But it's okay because it's for infrastructure. Well, this wouldn't be needed if you built the NN high school in Lehi acres where it should be, where the greatest population of students live. And that property has all needed infrastructure. So, it would save taxpayers $22.5 million as it stands now. Every student would be to be need to be bust. This is a substantial cost year-over-year. So, let's add this to the cost associated with NNN in Alva. How many tens of millions of dollars
033will that cost us? If this school is built in Lehi, which has 8,000 students, Alva has just 700. There are many students that can walk or ride bikes to school within the two-m safe walk radius. In Alva, there may be 10. No sidewalks, nothing. You know what Alba looks like. There's no houses. You're voting on a property tax increase of $40 million. Eliminate that $22.5 million that it would cost for N&N and Alva. And that would eliminate the need to increase your property taxes $40 million. The 22.5 million in off-site expenses does not fall under the half penny sales tax because it's not eligible. It's off-site infrastructure. But now by adding $40 million to our property taxes under the capital plan, the district is backdooring the cost of overspending expenses that are outside the scope
034of the half penny sales tax. My opinion, this is an evasive maneuver to avoid accountability for exceeding the original budget of $140 million. A bait and switch on taxpayers. And by the way, I watched the workshop. You all even do Mr. Rickenbacher doesn't know. You said 500 gallons. You said I think I don't remember what you said. Debbie Rickenbacher said 50,000 gallons. It's 500,000 gallons. Thank you. Well, Mr. Finkler approaches. Could you please line up Rainald Polland and Carol Robinson, please? Good evening, Patrick Fininkler. nice to see many of you again and I hope to see work with you over the coming weeks on the budget. what I wanted to say today changed a little bit based on the presentation, but I'll go briefly with what my comments were. The same prudence which in private
035life would forbid us from forbid our paying our money for unexplained projects forbids it in the disposition of public monies. Thomas Jefferson wrote this in 1808. This idea from 200 years ago continues to apply today as the board votes to increase taxes for the residents of Lee County. Fundamentally, the question before you is whether to approve the tax increase. This board has to approve the tax increase and this board and the district I feel has not been transparent with the public. I would have loved to study the PowerPoint that was put up here earlier. I would have changed my comments and I do hope that I get to meet with many of you over the coming weeks to continue to talk about the budget and the millage. My primary objection right now against the millage
036increase is the lack of trans transparency. When I was on the strategic planning committee, one of the two of the recommendations that we passed were around lack of were around transparency and reporting to the public. And I think that is true here today. One of the things I would love to see in advance is we can get this information out to the public earlier. We can study it. We can drill into that information. So, I think that's part of at least for me, some of the other folks in Elba, our issue is we want to see that information. We want to be able to talk with you and work with you on the specific budget points. We may not agree on these specific budget points or the millillage, but the opportunity to have that and
037to be able to see that on the district website is very important to many of us. So, I would ask you tonight at least to vote no on the millage increase until we have an opportunity to further look at the information and have an opportunity to meet with many of you. I'll give some of you a call in the coming weeks and I hope that we can meet. Thank you. Okay. I'm Joyce Pini, but I'm speaking on behalf of my husband. we moved here two years ago, and I thought, you know, Florida was a great place to move. I lived in a absolutely drop deadad gorgeous area in Pennsylvania. And I'm finding that our taxes are pretty much the same or more than I spent here, but our area up there was even more gorgeous.
038and they found a way to keep taxes down. I can guarantee you that every one of you that are sitting here today, I don't know you personally, but I guarantee you, you know, something can be cut. I know you know it. You just don't want to rock the boat. Okay, we're living in a state where Ronda Sanders has offered to cut the property taxes entirely and yet you want to increase. I'm looking at all the excuse me crap that you put up here with numbers and I myself who have never been to one of your things can find a whole lot of things that you're doing wrong. Okay. Now, every one of you know down deep inside you can fix this and you can speak up, but you just choose to all sit and vote
039vote for it. You know, I'm kind of ashamed of that because I come from a town where you do the right thing for your county because you know what? It's going to come back and get you in the end. Do the right thing. We all live here. Let's help this town and the county and do the right thing, please. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Christopher Mio. I'm a resident of Alva. I live very close to the property where the proposed new high school and middle school would be built. I am concerned about the cost that these buildings will incur. mainly because of the the busing as Denise already Mr. D already pointed out there is a very small percentage of students within the walking distance of these proposed schools and h about half
040of those are my children and by the time the school is built they will be moved out and on their own and off to college. So that will that number will fall even more. the demographics in the in the in the area is well beyond childbearing years. So the chances of having students in this school that can walk is very low. the other thing is that the infrastructure as it was touched on is lacking. I would challenge all of you to please take a look at the area. The largest roads in the area are only two lanes and then some are a lane and a half like the Styles road that I live on. very dangerous. We have lots of problems every morning at the bus stops that are already there. So, I am very
041concerned about the safety of that area unless there's a large amount of funds going to be put into the infrastructure of roads, sewers, and water. I'm also with the Ala Fire Department, and I know what it takes to get water to Alva to fight any fires. So, please take that into consideration as well. the other is if these schools are built or and on this property has the consideration I know it's been brought up before but it seems to be brushed over and that is that a large majority of the neighboring properties have their own private gun ranges and what is going to happen Monday through Friday which I hear all the time because I work from home when the when a resident decides to use their gun range and your school is locked down
042Monday through Friday and the students don't get an education because they're on lockdown. Are we going to infringe on the property owners rights of using their own gun range during these hours or are we going to have a school that's completely useless? Again, I encourage you to please look at the Lehigh Acre location and consider that over the Alva. Thank you. We allowed to ask questions or not? No sir. We allowed to ask questions? No sir. Somebody can come up? No. Can we ask the budget lady question? No. No sir. You may make comment after that if you wish to address somebody afterwards in Is that the consensus or is he the boss? I don't know. Sir, please. 47% is Sir, I'm going to give you a warning. Either please comply and give your comments
043or you're not going to be able to. Okay. So, please address us as a whole. I'm going to Who do you want me to speak to? speak to the board is in I want to ask a question and you can answer it maybe at some other time when it gets out. Is 47% of this budget paid for the debt? I may have misunderstood that. I just I want a clarification. So maybe somebody could could let us know on that. I saw the slideshow. maybe I missed it. But I didn't say I didn't see anything on there about teacher increase in salary. And I find that troubling especially today after watching reading a story that Lee County has the least salary of any county in Southwest Florida in our school district. So the turnover on school
044teachers, that could be partly the problem. You know, we pay our fair share. We have a few parcels of property in Lee County for the last 40 years, and we pay for school taxes, and we don't mind paying school taxes if it's spent right. my father who is the greatest man in the world told me people always are a little bit careless spending other people's money and that's what we feel like as citizens. you know million here school board last session that I was at millions 50 40 $60 million for overruns for school projects rebuilds we're going to rebuild two schools build another school we signed a $400 million loan so it's really important if it's 47% of the general fund that we're paying for debt that's a problem. There's a guy that is my
045second one of my one of my heroes is a guy named David Ramsey. He has a Christian financial planning class. And I would recommend whoever spending all the taxpayer money take his class. It's the reason I don't let my children have credit cards. Never had credit cards. But if we're paying this kind of money for debt, we're we're we're we're in big trouble. Lee County Commissioners want 2.8 billion. You guys want 2.8 billion. RSW is 200 million over. Riverdale is 50 million over. you know, I don't know if I'm making sense here or not, but I just think that we probably ought to be a little more careful. Maybe we could find out how to keep the contractors on the bid on the estimate if they say it's $150 million. I mean, if there's any
046way to keep them at $150 million and just Thank you for your comments, sir. Your time is up. What is your name? So, what's your name, sir? For the record. My name's Co. Darus. Okay. Somebody will come over and address your question, sir. Thank you. Good followup. Hello, I'm Carol Robinson. I live at 1072 Brevity Lane. And my whole adult life, I have tutored math at various schools. And for the last so I tutored in 2020, I tutored first graders at Heights Elementary. ended up that closed in March, but by then I was tutoring 140 kids in math and first grade. They did great. Then I also tutored at Pace for Girls, seventh and eighth graders, algebra, geometry, and basic math. And then I read the book The Other West Moore that was written by
047the governor of Maryland. And I realized that first grade and second grader really need to know their math. And so I had the pleasure of starting to to tutor at Franklin Park Elementary. I am a past school board member in Ohio. I don't know how you guys do it. Our budget was 20 million and we had 3,000 students. So, but what I would like to suggest you figure out in your budget is how to incorporate more manipulatives in the elementary school so that the kids can feel how to learn math. It is the best way for kids to learn. We have the manipulatives in the schools, but we need more training for the teachers to know how to use them. So, if you could add that into your program. Also, vocabulary is big. a child
048that has a math problem that says combine eight and four might not know what combine means in the third grade. I'm suggesting that somehow you set up a program with Zoom with the FGCU and other college students that have community service so that they can link into the classroom and read stories to the children so that they build their vocabulary. let me see what else. take a look at the breakfast meals. I wouldn't eat them. the other thing is after school there is no transportation. the only kids that can participate in that those pro projects programs the chess club, math club, STEM have to have a means to get home. The math club which I was helping was for fourth and fifth graders. There were roughly 60 students in the fourth and fifth grade. only
04910 were participating. So, we have kids in the title one schools that need a lot of vocabulary building and basic math. We have some kids that are doing great in our in class and Franklin Park Elementary did great this year. And then we have really kids that are well ahead. there are several second graders that were at fifth grade level and they need the challenges that are available after school. So, I'm asking you to look at Ma'am, your time is up. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Your time is up, ma'am. At this point, I'm seeing no other public comment. I will close the public hearing and reconvene the special school board meeting of July 29th, 2025. The time is 5:56 p.m. The board will now consider each of the super superintendent's recommendations. Dr. Carlin, in
050one moment, I'm going to ask you to restate your recommendations. I just want to let the public know we're in the middle of a budget board meeting right now. Once this meeting concludes, we'll then start with our regular board action meeting. So stay tuned, please. Whenever you're ready, Dr. Car. Thank you, Chair Fischer. recommendation one, I recommend that the Lee County School Board adopt the 202526 tentative proposed required local effort millage of 3.071 071 mills with a proposed amount to be raised of $498,68,981. Board members, you've heard the super superintendent's recommendation. Is there a motion to approve? I move to approve the recommendation of the Lee County School Board adopt the 2025 26 tentative proposed required local effort millage. Okay. Is there a second? I second a motion. Okay. Any discussion? Moved by Miss Langford
051Fleming, seconded by Mr. person. Do we have any discussion? I do have one point of clarification if could I ask Dr. Desimor real quick. Who sets the required local effort? The required local effort is set by the legislature through the Florida Education Finance Program. The required local effort is set through legislative action and must be levied by school districts if we are to receive any of the state revenue that is slated to come through us through the FFP. Okay. So, the state sets that military. The state sets the military. Okay. Thank you. Anyone have any questions before we proceed to vote? Okay. Please record your vote. Motion passes 70. Next up, Dr. Carlin. Recommendation number two. Yes. My second recommendation is to is I recommend that the Lee County School Board adopt the 20252026 tentative
052proposed basic discretionary millage of.748 mills with a proposed amount to be raised of 121,445,626. Thank you board members. You've heard the superintendent's recommendation. Is there a motion to approve? Okay, I'll second. Okay. Moved by Mr. Ribble, seconded by Miss Juvenelli. Do we have any discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Motion carries 70. Recommendation number three, Dr. Carlin. I recommend that the Lee County School Board adopt the 2025 2026 tentative proposed capital outlay millillage of 1.50 with a proposed amount to be raised of $243,540,694. The total millage will equal 5.319 mills with a total amount to be raised of 863,595,31. The total millage rate to be levied is more than the roll back rate. It is an increase in the roll back rate of 1.43%. Thank you. Board members, you've heard the superintendent's recommendation. Do we have
053a motion to approve? Somebody. I motion to approve. Okay. Miss Javiano. Seconded by Miss Jordan. Any discussion? Seeing none, please proceed to vote. Motion carries 70. Recommendation number four. Dr. Carlin. I recommend that the Lake County School Board adopt the resolution determining revenues and millages levied in the resolution adopting the tentative mill rates for the fiscal year 2025 2026. Board members, you've heard the superintendent's recommendation. Do we have a motion to approve? Miss Jordan, I move to approve the FY26 tenative budget and related resolutions adopting the tenative budget. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. Moved by Miss Jordan, second Mrs. Chaviano. Do we have any discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Motion carries 7 $46 capital outlay budget in the amount of 1 billion129782,490 internal service budget in the amount of 221734,696 for a total
054tentative budget of 2 billion. 798,172,189. Board members, you've heard the superintendent's recommendation. Is there a motion to approve? Mr. Ribble? I'll make the motion. Second. I'll second. moved by Mr. Ribble, seconded by Miss Langford Fleming. Do we have any discussion? Mr. Persons. I just want to point out that this tenative budget is $12 million less than last year's budget. That's quite a savings. You know, we've done a lot of cuts. So, that was all. Okay. Any other discussion? Seeing none, please record your vote. Motion carry 70. Recommendation number six. Dr. Carl, I recommend that the Lee County School Board accept the 2025 certification of taxable value for Lee County form DR420S and authorize the superintendent to complete and execute the form. Board members, you've heard the superintendent's recommendation. Do you have a motion to approve,
055Miss Jordan? I move to approve the acceptance of the 2025 certification of school taxable value. Do we have a second? I'll second it. Moved by Miss Jordan, second Miss Juvenelli. Do we have any discussion? Seeing none, please proceed to vote. Motion carries 70. Last recommendation number seven, Dr. Carlin. I recommend that the Lee County School Board schedule a public hearing on the final 2025 2026 millage levies and final budget for the 2025 2026 school year for Tuesday, September 9, 2025 at a specially scheduled board meeting to begin at 5:05 p.m. right here in the Lee County Public Education Center boardroom. Board, you've heard the superintendent's recommendation. Is there a motion to approve? I make a motion. Oh, sorry. Make a motion to approve the scheduling of the final budget public hearing. Second. Okay. Moved by
056Miss Javiano. Sorry about that. And Miss Jordan. Any discussion? Seeing none, please proceed to vote. Motion carries 70. At this point, due to time, I'm going to wave comments from board members, board attorney, and the superintendent. At this point, we are going to adjourn this meeting. No other business come before this body. And seeing no objection, this meeting is adjourned. The time is 6:05