001on visitor office remember. to the slide deck that has the um the information for our FY26 um budget proposal for next year. Um this is our official public hearing for the um official time for the board to to have this. We had to advertise it. So the information that we advertised um through the uh in the paper with our with our public notice was based on the um houseways and means numbers. We did get um some projected increases from the state fin senate finance committee meeting on just Friday. We did not build those into the presentation because um those are just um projections at this time. Um but those would help us to cover our pending state actions that we'll go over in the budget presentation. Um we'll hopefully know something soon. We hope because
002the um conference committee starts tomorrow. Um we're hoping for a timely compromise so that hopefully by the time we come back to y'all uh June 9th for y'all to vote on our budget that we would know just how the state falls with their budget. They do however have a continuing resolution that's all ready to go just in case they don't pass the budget, which we hope that they will, but um for our purposes, we we do have to pass um a budget for taxing purposes by June 30th. So, we couldn't do a continuing resolution. Um there was something else I was going to say about the conference committee, but I don't recall. I'll think about it as we go. Um, oh, the other thing was that we did not build into the presentation, um, if
003we were to get an increase in millillage from the county. Um, we did build the expenditures in, but, we haven't built in the revenues yet because we're not certain if, um, if that was going to be approved. Um, we understand that they are meeting tonight for their second um, budget reading um, after their budget presentations from the other agencies. Okay. And so we're um anticipating hearing something after those presentations this evening. Okay. So um Chad, you're going to help us tag team with this and Lisa, we're going to tag team it like our good group that we always do. Um so our 2026 budget priorities, um of course student achievement is number one um focus. The reason why we're here for this school district is to make sure that um our students are doing the
004best that they can. Um in order for us to have great student achievement, we need great quality teachers. So, we're focusing on um teacher quality, recruitment, and retention. And then encompassing all of this, we have to have the financial stewardship in order to have all of that in place for the student achievement and the teacher quality. Um sources of funds that we have in Dorchester School District 2. um specific to us. Well, these first items are not specific to us. Um everyone in the school, everyone says South Carolina has a general fund. That's where um our operations expenditures are captured. Um it's unrestricted use of funds. Our local property taxes are captured here. Our state aid to classrooms funding. Um then our special revenue funds, those are for specific programs and purposes. uh that would
005be title one and our IDEIDA um programs and then the education improvement act. Those are state funds. Um typically what happens with those in the state aided classrooms is those are called flexed over to the general fund which um is for our general operations. Um 8% funding is also um across the board with our school districts. These are funds that from proceeds of issuance of our 8% debt limit. These are used for capital projects. But specific to Dorchester 2 is we had um a referendum back in May of 2024 which passed that um the voters approved for us to be able to build certain projects. Um there was a list of $200,000 $200 million worth of projects for us to um build schools and refurbish schools and do some parking lots and safety and security.
006So that is specific to Dorchester too for that source of funding. When we're talking about our general fund revenue um items um the first line item is our local property taxes. Um the first line item indicates that from I'm sorry the first column is our FY25 budgeted revenues. Our second column is the proposed revenues for next year. And then the last column is the increase. So local property taxes from 25 to 26 um indicate a 5.5 million increase but that does not reflect the um the millage increase that was requested. This is for increases in assessed values. Um the other items that we're increasing are there's a little bit of increase from state revenue in lie of taxes which is our tier three from act 388. Um our retiree insurance revenue increased. So from 25
007to 26 our proposed revenues are at 292,710,546. This is an $ 8.6 million increase in revenues for the general fund. We wanted to provide a little bit of operating millage increase history um which we have not had a millage increase since the 2018 2019 year. This just indicates what we could have requested. The um consumer price index, the CPI and the growth percentage that is specific to Dorchester School District 2 is the calculation that would provide mill an increase in mills um each year. um and we have not requested those mills um in the past. So the very bottom section for 202526 fiscal year the consumer price index and growth percentage equal 6.94%. So we could have asked for 12.4 mills. Um right now it our millage increase um I'm sorry our millage amount decreased
008because of reassessment. So we um went from 183.6 6 mills to 178.6. I'm speaking of our general fund revenue budget for this current year. The revenues are represented by um the blue columns up on the um I'm sorry, the blue on the very top is our our local revenues which is 26.6% and most everything else is state revenue funded. So we get 26% from local and 72% from um the state. We get a little bit of federal impact aid money in the general fund but mostly it is state monies. For our expenditures um we try to put as much money as we can into instructional instructional support. Our school management is our principles transportation and safety. All of those folks are dealing with students every single day. Um, also wanted to point out that in
009the salary study that was presented in August of 23 of the 10 districts that were compared, um, DD2 had the lowest ratio of central office leaders to students. So, we do a lot with a little for on the leadership side. It takes everybody to to to work at the entire school district. for our expenditures by object group. Um 86.3% of our salary of our budget is for salaries and benefits and all other program expenditures um operational expenditures, safety, transportation, um every other program expenditure is made up of the 13.7. Okay, if you do the next slide, if you can look in here at the bar graph, you can see DD2 is at the far left. D2 is the blue bar as you can see in the orange is Bufort. Berkeley is in the green and
010the light blue is Charleston. As you can see the pay scales there. Um next year Berkeley is supposed to go up to 567 starting teacher pay and 64,000 is for Charleston County. And so you can kind of see where we are currently at. And then you can see where the DD2 starting teacher salary history. You can see we put a lot of money in our teachers and our starting teacher salaries the past three years. Um a huge significant increase. Um we're hoping to go up to 51,000 for this year. Um that's a proposed uh 2026 increase up to $2,000 increase 4 uh% increase. And so with this budget, that's what we're hoping to get. And so where where do we get this? And so you can see here at this graph um with our class
011sizes. Uh this past year we were projected to go grow almost at 500 excuse me a thousand students. This year we actually lost 595 students. 400 of those students were at the elementary 195 were at the middle school. We actually gained 90 students at the high school. Um and so what we needed to do it's almost 1,600 swing in students. And so what we did was uh we were able to absorb almost 53 54 positions throughout the district. And so no teachers lost their jobs. And so we're able to absorb those because we had those positions for growth. And so when you look at this with our class size ratios again, we're still staying under the state standard for those ratios. And then moving on um you can see the proposed reductions again 18 positions
012at the elementary again due to growth we lost 400 students um of elementary middle school students we lost 195 again hence why we absorb 14 positions and at the high schools we were able to absorb 20 positions because we were accounting for growth and so then we're reducing two positions at the district office for a total of 54 positions And so we're have a savings of $5.1 million that we'll put toward teacher salaries. So you can see here the mandates and required increases that we have to do. Um we're mandated for a teacher step 2% um salary increase for bus drivers. Estimated hazardous transportation fee that we had we just received from South Carolina Department of Education for 50,000. And then also when you look at the SRO contracts again those are projected increases of
013$80,000 and then projected energy costs of $250,000 and then increased cost of maintenance materials and services for 500,000. So um there are some mandates there for 3.1 million. Um and so this is what Mrs. Manet was talking about earlier. These are mandates that we did not have have originally in our budget. Um that kind of are things that are that we're going to have to pay for. Um now they're potential they are mandates. And so there's going to be an increase in our health insurance um that the employer has to take care of, not the employee, which we're grateful for that. Um so there's $400,000 that we'll have to come up with. And then a potential uh mandate uh for possible parental leave to 12 weeks. Now, uh that could be costing the district almost
014up to $600,000 for that. And then moving on, looking at classroom allocations. Um one thing that I do want to point out and we do want to point out is we are not cutting any programming. Um we're still going to be able to offer the same type of programming that we've offered the past year. Even though with those 54 positions, we're again we're kind of right sizing and again we're still going to be offer the the quality programming that uh we've always been able to offer here. And you can see fine arts will get a few positions, special ed teachers and also some other TA requests for special ed. And so those are requests there that we do need to have. That's $1 million. Content specialists and IT positions. You can see this these are
015district level content specialists. There's eight of those. Um for instructional technology, there's six positions there. Um we are asking in the budget there for a Mac position. We are having more. Um we're looking at software and types of computers, Macs, which are Apple products. And then we are actually removing four positions uh that were currently funded in general fund there. And uh those are four content specialists there. So you can see that for an addition of $1.1 million. So going into this uh the salary increase priorities requires additional millage. Um we went down and uh we're able to give our budget presentation to county council. And you can see here our step for classified and certified staff not paid on the teacher scale. Um that's $1.6 million. You see the salary increase of $1,500 increase
016to all steps of the teacher salary scale bringing the starting salary to 50,500. That's $3.4 million. And then a 1% increase for classified and certified staff not paid on the teacher scale at $800,000. So that's 5.8 uh million. And that would require additional mills. Um and you can see there that's 4.9 mills needed. And then adding an additional $500 to all steps of the teacher salary scale bring that salary to 51,000. So each teacher would receive $2,000. So that's another $1.1 million. And again, the cumulative needed um we asked for for county council were 7.6 mills. Um ones are in the gray. Um we just felt like uh the additional $1,000 uh steps of the salary scale bringing that starting side to 52,000. Um at this point, we didn't feel we we'd love to have
017that, but just what we're we'd be putting on our businesses and our business community at this time. Um the 7.6 was something that we felt like we just needed, but we didn't go any further than that. Um and so you can kind of see that. And going to the next scale on the next page, the summary of the fiscal year 2026 expenditure changes. And I'll I'll hand this over to Miss Manet. We added this is a new slide. This is a summary of our um salaries um benefits and other expenditures just to kind of summarize everything that we have been talking about um compared from FY25 to our proposed um FY26 prop um expenditures. So we were starting at 288 million um for this current year that we're in and next year with those increases
018that Mr. Dhy just went over it would be $295,960,72. So the increase in expenditures is $7.2 million. Um then when you go to this slide is what the millage increase was that we requested from Dorchester County Council. Um the the local revenues um state revenues the total for a total of $295.9 million we would need $3.2 2 million um dollars as a millage increase which as you can see on the far right bottom um equates to the 7.6 mills. Um in the middle section is the proposed expenditure summary where we started with the 288 as we showed on the last slide and then with um the increases and decreases as Mr. already just went over. It will bring us to the also balanced at $295,960,72 for expenditures. Um we also provided this slide that shows
019um based on the information that we received from the county auditor that the value of a mill in Dorchester School District 2 is um $432,743. So our request for 7.6 6 ms. Um if you calculate that out on a business that is valued the assessed value of 500,000, it would be a $228 increase um on their tax bills. And it shows the calculation on the bottom. Um the next two slides were budget requests that we had received from departments and schools and principles and district leadership that we felt were very important. Um we wanted everyone to know that these were these are not just silly wants. These are actual needs as well, but um at this time, as Mr. Dhy said, we just weren't able to fill all of those into the budget into the
020into the request that we felt like we could um request from county council. So, those were our budget additional budget request and um needs for $13 million. We'll keep working on that. Um this last slide shows our budget calendar where we started back in January when we started working with um again principles and um department heads, district leadership and we are pretty close to the bottom here. We still have a little we are we still have for the board to approve the budget. Um county council will approve their budget on June 16th and hopefully it'll all work out for June 30th and July 1. We'll be ready to go. So, that was all the information that we had tonight for our public hearing. Um, if there are any questions, y'all could be giving the presentation
021at this point. comments I'd like to make. I think what this two comments I'd like to make. I think what what this budget uh represents is is the uh efforts by the district and by the board to try and focus on good stewardship. Um there's an awful lot that's been done to rightsize and find ways to to do more with less than what we have, but also importantly focusing on our district's goals. Student achievement being first and foremost. Uh, but I think it also points out the continuing issues we have in dealing with unsustainable funding for our schools. And, uh, glad to see some members of the public here tonight. Hopefully, other members of the public are online watching this. But, uh, understand that, you know, at some point in time, you have to deal
022with the laws of physics and math. And, uh, the fact is it costs money to run a school district. We have buildings, we have salaries, and we have a growing number of children. Even though this year uh be look around, there's a lot more growth still coming. So, there's going to be more children coming and they need to be addressed. So, appreciate the work uh that uh Miss Mun and team have done. Uh Superintendent Dhy uh done a good job. Appreciate all the conversations along the way. Um but uh in terms of of questions, appreciate the new slide. U that was good. So, that that made it different. We have seen this a few times. Uh but uh are you getting indications? Okay, we we we've confirmed now that the two potential mandates are in
023fact real mandates. So that's another million dollars we got to come up with out of hide. Okay. Uh any other comments in general you'd like to to make or point out to help inform the public uh about what's what's going on and any indications about anything coming down the pike perhaps here in the the final uh period of horse wrangling that will take place in Colombia and they settle on a budget. So conference, like Tina said earlier, the conference committee meets starting at 12:30 tomorrow afternoon. They do still have to come to an agreement on these things. They're not a complete done deal, but we do expect those two to go forward. And it's truly not a done deal until it makes it to the governor and gets signed, but we should have a better
024indication going forward. I don't know that there's anything else um potential mandate wise that we know that's on the horizon out there and they can only discuss discrepancies that they had between the House and Senate. So we don't expect anything new to come up other than what we already know about. Then we hope to hear something back soon um from the conference committee if those Senate um finance projections, that additional revenue can help us to pay for those mandates and um waiting to hear from the county. So that's where we are with that. All right, thank you all that great presentation. Appreciate it very much. Um, so that concludes the new business and the next item on our agenda this evening is our public comments. And we do have a public comment. Thank you very
025much for your attendance. Um, Miss Wheeler. Yeah, absolutely. You have the microphone so we can hear you. I do appreciate everything that y'all do. I think that y'all should have more a voice than what county councils have proven because this is going to be disastrous. They've approved 22,000 new homes between the town of Somerville and Dorchester County. Well, in researching records, we've come across something that I think the school board should get behind because this is money that the school districts are losing. It's going to affect us as homeowners, especially when y'all come up with another bond referendum because 22,000 new students to mean, I mean, new homes means about 35,000 more students, which at 1,200 students to school, you're talking 25 schools. And at a hund00 million each school, we're talking $2.5 billion dollars
026that's going to be put on the taxpayers. And that's not something I can afford. I've lived in Dorchester County all my life and all I've done is watch the prices just keep going and the taxes going up. But I just want to read something kind of short to you. I did present this to council and I do have the South Carolina Department of Revenue uh reviewing it. Following companies are listed as public companies traded on the stock exchange. Homes, Dr. Horton, Lenar, and Beaser. The main purpose of agricultural zoning is to preserve farmland for agricultural production. Property held for development by a public company, even if used for agricultural purposes, generally cannot get agricultural zoning status. Agricultural zoning is primarily designed to protect and preserve farmland for agricultural production, not for development or speculation. Public
027companies are typically involved in development activities which are often inconsistent with the goals of agricultural zonage. Act 388 for school funding in 2006 says when a property is sold, it is reassessed and the assessment is based on the sales price except if you're a developer in Dorchester County. South Carolina code of laws which I had the law here says real property which is extensively used for agricultural property but which in is in reality used for other purpose is not agricultural property. The agricultural use of the property must be genuine in nature as opposed to sham or deception. County assessors in determining whether the tract in question is bonafide agricultural real properties should be using the following factors and there's a list of them. Then it gets down here to the qualifications. And the qualifications cannot
028have more than 10 shareholders. Cannot have as a shareholder person other than an estate who's not an individual such as a shell company such as BRD, Charleston Timber, uh Dr. Horton, DV Timber. Those are all under one umbrella, fourstar. They cannot have a non-resident alien as a shareholder. Lindseay Jarvis, the CEO, is the major stockholder of Dr. Horton, is listed as being in New Zealand and cannot have more than one class of stock. And the application for agricultural does not ask these questions. Roll back taxes changed one 121, now only a three-year period rather than the previous 5-year period. Period. advantageous to developers saving two years worth of roll back tax. Are the roll back taxes based on the market value or county's assessed value? We've done some spreadsheets here and I do have an
029extra couple of copies. Just 29 of these properties. Okay. The county is missing out. Well, the county and the state under act 388, it comes out to like $1.7 million in taxes because they got a piece of property. I'll give you for instance, fourstar for the Yerby development. Okay, $ 38 million is what the tax record showed it was paid. They're paying a total of about $900 in taxes for a $38 million piece of property. they should be paying 805,000. Um there's a couple more and unfortunately the way the records in the courthouse go once something is released. The county no longer shows the records. So I cannot go further back on some of this. Um I've got one here, Homes. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Orangeburg Road, but the
030Sweets Grass Station that's over there, there's probably a hundred homes there now. They're still getting agricultural zoning. They should be paying about $105,000 in taxes. They're paying $230 in taxes. That's a lot of money that our school district is missing out because of this. And what I would like is for y'all to bring this up to county. They keep saying there's a letter, and there is, and I'll let you read it, that was given from the assessor's office. However, that this letter doesn't really make any sense. They're comparing apples and oranges. They took a piece of property out at Middleton, which is owned by one family, and tried to take agricultural away from them. But yet they're giving these developers the agricultural zoning and it's costing us a lot of money. And I know y'all
031going to catch flack for this. I know you are. I've already heard it from council. I know you need the 7.6 mills. And you're going to need a whole lot more. But you're going to start getting push back from a lot of people about this because you know us that have lived in Somerville all our life. We can't afford this. You know I it just $2.5 billion dollars. Where's the school board going to come up with that kind of money from? They need to start pushing this because this is only 29 properties. I hate to see how many there is, you know. And like I said, you're welcome to look at it. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um and that is our only public comment for this evening. So I believe that concludes our
032agenda. And so at this time we will adjourn the meeting.