001I would like to call to order the special meeting and work session of the Newport News school board for Tuesday March 4th 2025 on behalf of the members of the school board and the superintendent I welcome each of you present or watching a quorum is present to transact the business of the school division we will begin tonight's meeting with the pledge to the flag Douglas Brown would you please do us the honors this evening thank you madam chair please rise pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you you may be seated we will now move on to section two reports and information 2.01 proposed FY 26 operating budget presentations Dr Mitchell good evening
002Madame chair and members of the school board as you know after having the opportunity to listen to teachers administrators support staff parents and the community I identified Five Focus areas to advance our School Division academics accountability safety communication climate and culture the superintendent's proposed budget prioritizes um and will continue to focus on these five areas for the 2025 2026 school year in academics we will continue to ensure we have high academic expectations and provide strong supports we are ensuring that our curriculum is aligned with the standards of learning and our strategic plan we we are working diligently to ensure that our students and teachers have the tools and resources they need for Success there will be a renewed focus on graduation certifications and completion rates this initiative includes increasing our dual enrollment participation and increasing
003our graduates with Advanced diplomas we will also expand Early Childhood programs and increase our literacy opportunities we will provide multi-tier systems of support for literacy and math and finally we will enhance our magnet and specialty school programs one of my foremost goals centering around holding is around holding each other accountable this means understanding our commitment to students families and staff as well as community members and that we will uphold the expectation of ensuring a quality education for all students and an environment where everyone can thrive Drive maintaining our Safety and Security remains a priority students staff and families must feel welcomed safe and secure in our schools and our facilities we will maintain our secure school security officers our weapon detection systems and provide additional training for staff for fiscal year 2026 we will continue
004to require clear backpacks for all students students will also be required to wear a student ID every day while at school and on the bus as we continue to increase our trust and confidence in public education in Newport News Public Schools we will continue to communicate our goals track and share our progress we continue to strive to ensure transparency trust and active listening to provide consistent and timely information to staff strengthen internal and external two-way communication and increase our parental engagement and Community Partners we will also ensure that our stakeholders have a voice in the success of Newport News public schools and the last area is culture and climate promoting an environment of social emotional and physical well-being Still Remains the top priority as the the fiscal year 2026 budget will provide sufficient funding to
005promote a positive culture and climate to support support teaching and learning enhancing student engagement is critical to Student Success engag students as you know are more likely to remain motivated and in school our programs will continue to offer student leadership opportunities mentoring programs and volunteer opportunities for our students we will continue to welcome feedback and set professional expectations consistency in terms of behavior and discipline for students and we encourage all of our students to continue to get involved in an activity a club or a sport prioritizing good mental health is vital for our Student Success as well our goals include building strong relationships with students staff and parents embracing students and respecting diversity we'll continue to foster a culture of acceptance and support of all of our students we'll work to strengthen parental involvement and
006encourage our parents to become involved in their children's education and it is our goal to support a healthy work life balance for our staff so that covers our five areas that we will continue to focus on and you'll see that in the budget you'll see that we have made a real focus a concentrated focus on that area I do want to take this opportunity to thank our valued Partners the City of Newport News all of our Community Partners our faith-based organizations as well as as our advisory groups which includes our student Advisory Group and then our student staff and families at this time Scarlet Minto our Chief Financial Officer will review the proposed operating budget for the fiscal year 2026 Miss Minto chair members of the board I am pleased to present to you the
007fiscal year 2026 superintendent operating budget um the budget process is a very big part of developing the superintendent's proposed operating budget it includes meeting with department and Senior Senior Management for Budget input presenting their challenges and priorities to the school board communicating or funding gaps to the city manager for consideration tonight we are presenting the superintendent's proposed budget and next week we will be providing an opportunity for the public to um provide comment and feedback and finally we will be seeking school board approval the superintendent Five Focus areas result in budget drivers and these include academic success student and staff supports leaderships and instruction for professional development family and Community engagement Recruitment and Retention school and Building Safety technology supports operations and maintenance the goal and developing the superintendent's proposed operating budget is to ensure
008we allocate the appropriate resources to support support these activities ensuring their students academic success to graduate college career and citizen ready this is their state revenue for fiscal year 2026 based on the governor's proposed budget the superintendent's proposed budget I am presenting tonight is based on the governor's proposed budget comparing fiscal year 2025 we are anticipating $4 million increase in state revenue the governor is recommending a 3% salary increase for s Q positions effective uh 7125 and while the governor did provide 9.2 million for a 3% salary increase reductions in our basic Aid due to reduced student enrollment ultimately reduce the total new funding the School Division will receive so we're just um with the governor's proposal we're only looking at $4 million increase this is our state revenue Trend as you can see even
009with the imminent changes EST state revenue has slowly climbed up since the Great Recession for fiscal year 2026 we are projecting a total of 27.2 million in state revenue based on the governor's proposed budget this is our city Revenue without Debt Service for fiscal year 2026 we are requesting 2.4 million additional reoccurring funds from the city to support salaries and benefits the amount of Revenue that we expect to receive from the state and locality drives what we'll be able to accomplish in their budget taking into account the state revenue funding formula includes the number of students the dis the School Division will serve and the number of positions needed for each School Division this is our current Revenue projection for 2026 for all sources 46.3 million or 6.4 million increase over fiscal year 25 $4
010million increase in state funding $2.4 million in City funding request and we don't expect any change this current year it's a little confusing with Federal because they're on a calendar year and they're always behind so right now we're not um expecting a change in federal funding we're not expecting a change in other Revenue which includes fees and athletic events and rentals um as we have discussed the majority of your state funding is calculated on a per student basis as you can see here their student enrollment does continue to Trend down we are projected to lose an additional 129 students by the time fiscal year 2026 begins even though our general enrollment is down our most vulnerable populations enrollments are trending up pre-k student enrollment is expected to grow by 138 students in fiscal year 2026
011moving on to our special education student population we are anticipating an additional 87 students more uh for fiscal year 2026 and our English language learner enrollment is projected to increase 336 students in fiscal year 2026 our military connected students are associated with the impact aid program funding which partially uh compensates the locality for the education of children who live and work on federally owned property such as military bases or low rent housing currently our projections are showing a loss of 246 students for this calendar year funding which overlaps fiscal years we um understand some town homes and apartments are now partially funded through lowincome housing credits and this is affecting our revenue from the impact Aid not sure how we fix that yet $46.3 million is the total of the superintendent's proposed budget for fiscal
012year 2026 we will review how these dollars are allocated in their upcoming slides at a very high level this visual shows how the funding is allocated to each of the superintendent's Five Focus areas with the majority of air funding 66.5% being allocated to academics 23.3% allocated to accountability 88.8% allocated to climate and culture 3% allocated to Communications and 2.1% allocated to safety for a total of 46.3 million and I'm going to go into a little more detail on the next slides beginning with academics 27.2 million of the superintendent proposed budget is allocated to academics funding for these initiatives includes all Associated Staffing to support these programs of course these are examples that are included under academics and it's not all inclusive um increase graduation rates with Advanced diploma increase dual enrollment participation expand Early Childhood
013programs focus on Advanced learning Associated withies magnet programs stem or steam multi-tiered system of support for literacy and math and one toone program student and family supports safety for excuse me safety for students and staff remains a top priority the superintendent's proposed operating budget allocates $8.5 million to maintain air safety initiatives such as appropriately Staffing air security team maintaining K9 services and security systems we have in place such as air weapons detection security cameras and access control the focus area of communication ensuring we can communicate consistently And Timely information to all staff and family and community supports the superintendent proposed fiscal year 2026 budget includes $1.3 million to enhance a communication system provide internal and external operating and capital budget dashboards to improve transparency to all stakeholders and a an appropriate funding to ensure successful
014implementation of their family engagement program and Community Partnerships moving on to accountability the superintendent's proposed fiscal year 2026 operating budget will allocate 90.5 million to maintain accountability initiatives ensuring our students remain at the Forefront of actions our actions staff are accountable and we cultivate a premier Workforce ensure State staff and students have Network infrastructure they need to be successful with online learning and operations and maintenance of their schools and Facilities um funding is allocated to one to one computers Recruitment and Retention we will continue our career switcher program associate degree programs continue our employee tuition assistant program encourage and support the national board cohort funding is allocated to support professional development and coaching of our staff and administrators and maintenance of our computer network infrastructure student Wi-Fi connectivity and online content monitoring will all fall
015under accountability climate and culture the superintendent's proposed operating budget focus in climate and culture ensur ensuring social emotional and mental health supports remain in place we have allocated 35.9 million this funding ensures we can continue to promote an environment of social emotional and physical wellbeing ensuring funding to support activities clubs and sports uh encouraging student participation and maintaining our youth development program initiatives employee compensation remains a top priority as 87% of the superintendent superintendent's proposed operating budget for fiscal year 2026 is for salaries and benefits I think you've heard that before as we plan for fiscal year 2026 we reviewed how we compare to our peer School divisions for both the bachelor's and the Master's Degree teachers the top of the slide these are comparisons of teacher salaries for those with bachelor's degrees and at
016the bottom it's the teachers with master's degrees for Bachelors we remain and for U Masters we remain very competitive for years 10 through 30 but we for years zero through five years of experience we uh need to continue some work on that to remain competitive this is a peer review of our bus drivers as you can see the bus driver page remain very competitive as we raise the hourly rate so does their peers we definitely need to continue this work and what really doesn't show here is that we we are also competing with the likes of like Amazon FedEx all anyone who's driving anything is competing with us so we definitely have to continue to work on that and then we have our support staff as we have with other positions as we raise our
017hourly rates so to the peer School Division for these other positions for custodians Child Nutrition instructional assistance security officers and School nurses um again we have to work to maintain um competitive with these other school divisions for these positions especially so having done our homework we know we have to continue to Monitor and manage our staff salaries to ensure we attract and retain the best staff for fiscal year 2026 the superintendent's proposed operating budget allocates funding for 3% salary increase for all staff we will continue to maintain our teacher scales we will increase associate teacher and teacher starting pay in line with their 3% increase we will work to provide sign on bonuses for high need license positions um maintaining Total Staffing levels affords us the ability to contain cost and utilize new funding to
018ensure competitive salaries and benefits and and that we have the tools to support air Student Success air enrollment Trends and Associated funding projections do not support increase in their Staffing levels however the needs of our students are changing over time and we must find ways to ensure Student Success with appropriate Staffing so therefore as we move forward we do not plan to increase um our overall full-time equivalents however we will instead repurpose our vacant positions or underutilized positions and we will align teacher allocation funding with our current student enrollment projections and our goal here is to meet our staffing needs with a net zero increase to the operating Budget moving on to benefits um it is important to share that the cost of the health fund continues to grow this graphic shows the cost per
019member for employee health benefits it does include the dependence and as you can see here for calendar year 2025 we increased um from 7,163 per member to 7,745 per member because we just started our 2025 year because we're on a calendar year for benefits um since fiscal year 2015 our cost per member on average has increased $260 per year but if you just take the last five years from 2020 to 25 you will see that it's actually increasing now at $442 per year per member so it's it's that's why you see this increase um over the same time okay going back to uh the school board's premium so the school board's premium has increased 14 million in five years so that means you're putting in that money to cover claims because it's not coming in
020from the employees or any other kind of way so just so you know that um however for 23 and 24 we did get a 3% increase for the employees and we are again recommending that for 2026 which would be if you look here at the bottom of the screen an individual increase would be5 to $764 per month and for family increase it would be 22 to $30.7 cents per month so I want you to consider that this is our fiscal year 2026 um our operating budget Revenue projections with 67.7% from the common wealth of Virginia which is 9% from the city or 125.5 million is what we're asking for uh 8% from federal funding sources and 6% from other sources such as the athletic events driver's ed and rent of your school buildings make up
021the other 5.6 million for a total of 46.3 million this is a superintendent's proposed operating budget for fiscal year 26 by function with instructional Services being 70.6% or 2869 million operations and maintenance at 11.5% or 46.9 million Transportation 6.8% or 27.5 million technology 4.4% or 17.8 million and the remaining function 6.7% or 27.2 million is Administration attendance and Health Services again for a total of 406 .3 million this is an overview of the superintendent's proposed Staffing plan for fiscal year 2026 instructional staff to include teachers and instructional assistant positions total 21545 full-time equivalents or 55.4% of the staff uh 12% of our staff in is transportation and this includes 31177 bus drivers another 12% of our staff and includes other professional which you'll see on the right there covers nurses school counselors psychologists media Specialists
022and Technology um Staffing and support positions 5% of our staffing is administrators and another 11% is custodial maintenance and security for a total of 38955 full-time positions okay so the superintendent's proposed operating budget for FIS year 2026 includes uh 6.4 million in new Revenue but we had an increase in cost of 18.9 million in expenditures projected so we have worked together to identify ways to reduce these expenditures and balance a budget beginning with the increases to provide all staff a 3% increase and the associated increase in retirement and taxes will be 8.7 million to maintain our staffing Market competitor Ness we want to begin that process and that will be just half of that would be about 700,000 again to maintain our staff being competitiveness and to attract the most qualified staff we also included
0238 million for sign on bonus for high need licensed positions we also show here the increase of their health plan for 2.4 million the increase in New Horizon's cost was is.2 million and that's associated with when we get raises they get raises they need more money so that's how that happens increase in fuel and utilities .2 million increase in general liability insurance 0.5 million increase in operation and maintenance of our buildings 5.2 million and then we have our decreases on the right which is a total of 12.5 million a reduction of our 12.7 teaching positions in line with the projected decrease in student enroll enrollment is 1.1 million in savings passing 400,000 on to of the increase in health cost to the employees we also show a decrease in City pension of 0.2 million um
024also we paid off we are paying off the vrs debt from the early 90s this year is our last year we have to pay a million dollars a year so that's a savings of a million dollars we have reduced Contract Services by 2.99 million in part some of it went to the textbook fund and other items were actually just pulled out of the budget which I'm going show on next slide we saved in software and materials and supplies and stuff like that another 400,000 lastly we also have to take into account and we have agreed to do this with you know in the past to project turnover attrition and so I'm subtracting 5.2 million for that and we also have 1.3 million in onetime costs in fiscal year 25 that should not occur and fiscal
025year 26 over here on the left you see these are additional requests to the city of 3.1 million uh 1 million is for cash Capital needs which we can use as we see fit and they're uh we're discussing with them $18,350 to support um Aviation Academy students to help pay their tuition for their pilot license I believe it's $263 for a class and it's very it's very expensive and cost prohibitive for the students so um we got a good um feeling about that um the city also continues to maintain that they're going to give us two more million dollars for technology Replacements again so in addition to the 2.4 million we're asking for reoccurring we're asking for this 3.1 million in onetime funding there are some things we weren't able to so far find the
026funding for um the other part of the staff Market adjustments would be like another million dollars and then you have this list of non-personnel carpentry electrical Paving marquee signs Roofing PA clock Replacements HVAC for a total of 3.6 million we're still waiting to see if we're going to get funding once the final budget comes in or some other way so our next step include a public hearing on March 11th and we we will ask the school board to for approval on March 18th and so this completes the present presentation of the superintendent's proposed operating budget for fiscal year 2026 and I would be happy to take any questions all right board members questions at this time I just had a and thank you for all the into this just a couple of um clarification questions
027thinking those that might be listening might not the terms and that so i' pass so when we kind of did the first slide with all the collective commitments um is dual enrollment participation is that the Early College it is it is the early college and we've been in a situation where our high school teachers were not dual endorsed and they have to be dual endorsed in order for the students to get the college credit okay so we now have an initiative to build that um Bank back up okay all right thank you um um and I'm trying to I don't know if there were any others that were right on this page but that was one that I thought might be helpful to because our goal really is for them to be able to walk
028out with a high school diploma and an associates degree at the same time okay so with the vision in that case be they don't just go say senior spring they can take more classes in addition which would be fabulous go do I have a question and this is specific to I guess and um Dr Mitchell this might be something um you can help me to understand so slide 20 um in terms of aligning the budget to our priorities Advanced learning does that include IB program it does okay do that's what I it includes the IB program the Dual credit it also includes advancing or retooling if you will some of our magnet programs and Specialty okay great taking it to another level okay and um what I love about the plan is that it's tying
029into the accountability plan uh in terms of the Readiness uh portion of our high school students so thank you I appreciate that thank you okay Mr Brown oh no I thought you were waiting to I usually am but okay all right well I have um just a question that I've gotten recently um some some folks didn't realize that we pay for AP testing um and we have done so year over year is that possibly anything that's going to fall by the wayside be reduced wonder what you saw up here as far as Cuts is all that we've taken out okay um I'm excited I had the Dual endorsement on there because that's been a big question for me you know going to the to the graduations and I'm I'm excited that our students will be
030able to do that and I I will thank Dr Rogers because he has worked hard with his team he's worked with the Peninsula Community College um to to do some things differently so that we can increase our students opportunities thank you Dr Rogers um the technology future now I see that we have a projection of a little over over two million that the city would help us with technology and you are you saying is it going to cost us more than 2 million I know it will yes so I'm just wondering for you know as in the future what are the does that look like a static number that we would be hoping that they could help us with kind of like we do with the budget uh the buses or is it an organic
031number um it was number that was projected when things were more stable that we thought a reoccurring cost but there's no cost in the budget that's going to stay the same and definitely the city will have to come back to the table with us and understand that we can't all of a sudden not refresh part of the computers we have to stay on a schedule so we will have to definitely talk to them when we know the right now the increase in cost is minimal but if all these T tariffs go into place I'm not really sure right now what that's going to look like great thank you and then you answered my question about the RS and when that debt surface was over so that's this this are last year for that okay and
032then the last question is just about bus drivers can we go back to the bus slide for bus drivers here oops here we [Music] go okay so just look at all those years up down up down up down it just shows that everyone really needs these bus drivers to get these students transported so I this is maybe a question for later um and I know that the board has asked this several times have there been has there been an in-depth look at our bus routes to make sure that we are using using our bus drivers in the way that is going to best meet our needs with our resources I can just say that we have in my opinion we have the most sophisticated transportation planning system out there and the people using it know
033what they're doing so I feel Rusty there's Rusty right Rusty would you say yeah I mean we are impressive and we have more yes as are they and I'm just trying to figure out what we can do to help in that that area well thank you so much uh this is chair I just wanted to tag on to that yes and again this might be a later I mean have we looked at I know some of it's also set by budget and we probably have more routes and more need for overtime than a lot of cities strictly because of our unusual shape and size um I mean have we looked at the Supply that you know the bus drivers that number of bus drivers that are out there and are consist you know our shortages
034if are they consistently predictable and have we looked critically to see okay what do we do about this you know how do we have an arrangement that works with what we feel like the marketplace of drivers is going to be able to give us even with higher or lower even with higher rates I would say yes we have um I think Rusty and his team and I know Rusty look like he was getting up but um I think Rusty and his team have truly researched looked at all possible options I will also say that while our student enrollment is going down much like across the country keep in mind that our more vulnerable populations are going up and so if a student has an IEP there may be fewer students on that bus um which
035still requires a bus driver so there may be fewer students going to particular school um and you and we don't have students necessarily with certain disabilities on the same bus as students said are considered non disa and I wanted to just I forgot to ask um the high need sign the high need areas the sign on bonus is that something a one-time thing or is that something that there's opportunities content on successive years so we don't get someone who's got a great subject area and then we lose them the next year to another this is a a sign on bonus so yes it's a one-time thing okay and we're actually using some of the vacancy dollars from that position not being filled to cover that to cover that and are we seeing when we bring
036somebody on with that are we losing them the next year are they sticking around I mean does the bonus versus Salary you know does it impact I I will speak for Dr fish in the back and if I'm wrong feel free to tell me they tend to stick around in part because they appreciate the bonus and the other part as Scarlet showed the salary comparison while we're not at the top everywhere we do really well in certain places and we also in most cases with the exception of the beginning are higher on this side of the water yes than anyone else in terms of the salary so I think that's part of why we stay around as well thank you would that be correct Dr Faris and Jo thank you any additional questions comments from
037the board at this time okay thank you so much we appreciate your presentation so we will now move on to section two I'm I'm sorry um we'll have comments by the superintendent Dr Mitchell I have very minimal comments I do want to um let parents know they should have already received an email text message Etc we will be cancelling after school sports and activities tomorrow due to the potential for extremely high winds we don't want to put students on buses um when winds are could be approximately 60 miles per hour so um just wanted to let parents know yes we will have school tomorrow but we will not have after school activities and sports thank you for that announcement and uh we'll move on to Matters by the school board so I will start with
038Mr Hunter no I have no comments Mr chairman thank you Miss Aman um I also say no comment but thank you guys for all your effort Mr Brown all right well uh thank you as well for a a good budget presentation and I'll just Echo some of the comments of the questions as well I think that there's potential future work for this board to do when it relates to our bus zones and how we're setting up zones so I certainly think that our staff has done everything they can do to optimize the routes within the policy framework that we have prescribed and it may be time for us to look at our policy framework to see where we can uh save resources time and money particularly in our in our zones uh for the buses
039Miss Hower um I just want to say thank you U for the presentation today um and no comment okay just thank you Miss Harris yes no comments but also thank you for that being a newbie trying to take it all in thank you very very um insightful and explanatory so thank you for that well we look forward to our next time together when we get to hear from the public and I'll adjourn this meeting