001So maybe um Evan and Mr. Lee are the chairs of finance. I know we're not specifically doing this for finance necessarily, but I think it's important to actually get started as Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Um so good afternoon and welcome to the this our second second budget workshop. Yes. Um and thank you all for being here. We're looking forward to hearing some updated information. So we appreciate this opportunity. So if you want to help. Yes. Thank y'all again for coming. Um we did get some updated information. uh and we repositioned some of the items from the slides from our last budget workshop when we met with y'all. So, we just kind of wanted to bring all up to date where we are right now today. Um wanted to make sure that we um goodness
002I thought thought I had it working. Please I think it's just a little high. Okay, I'll be patient. Oh, there we go. So, this the slide that we skipped was the same one that we had the last time just going over our budget priorities. Um, student achievement of course is top of the list. Teacher quality, recruitment, and retention, not just for teachers, but for all of our staff. And then stewardship of course for um all of our funds that we spend across the district. Um what's happening in Colombia right now? We are um we are here um which we've gone through the house ways and means. They've had their budget committee meetings went to the House floor and then it went through the Senate budget subcommittee. Um then it went to the full Senate Finance
003Committee. So that's where we are now. Then it has to go back to the Senate floor and then anything that was a difference between the Senate and the House must go to a conference committee for them to agree upon it. Um so we did have some changes come out of Senate which we'll talk about in just a few minutes. Um my screen it just takes a second delay. Um so the next um next slide that we're talking about is on revenues. We spent a lot of time on expenditures last time. So I just wanted to we just wanted to bring some information to you about um revenues. So the blue box is our general fund which is uh where we spend most all of our money on from operations comes out of the general fund.
004Um we can we receive those monies from local, state and some a little bit of federal money comes into the general fund. Um and then we had and there are unrestricted use of the funds. So local property taxes on nonowner occupied property is um for operations. our state aided classrooms. Um the property tax relief act funding under act 388 interest on investments. And then we also have some special revenue fund money which um talk about just a second when we get to another colored box. The next box is our special revenue funds. Um those are separate from the general fund. We have those in completely different um categories in our general ledger. Um, they're mainly passed from the South Carolina Department of Education. Some come directly from the US Department of Education. Some have come
005from other federal directly from other federal grants. But title one and IDA are two of the big special revenue funds talking about the most. And then the education improvement. These also earn separate funds from our operations. But the biggest piece of that is the EIA funded portion of of state aided classrooms which that money um is a separate line item that we show on our cash flow statement. It's a little further down is the transfer from that special revenue fund into our general fund. So we are able to flex that that funding over there. We've talked about that in the past. We just kind of wanted to show you that there's three different funds for observation 17, but they have to be maintained separately. Another um couple of uh funding sources that we have are
006related specifically for capital projects. So, you hear us talk about the 8% funding and that is used for capital projects. Those are they're for bigger capital projects, but they're not as big as the referendum funding. So, that is completely separate funding. And that's for a lot of bigger projects um that the the voters voted that we could have have referendum funding for that. Those cannot be used for operations at all. We can't use them for teacher salaries, staff salaries. They're only used for capital items. So, we just wanted to bring you up to date on our projected general fund revenues. Um, the first column is our FY25 budget of revenues. Then the next column is what we're proposing and what we've heard from our different funding sources for FY26. So, we will say that um
007for local property taxes, we did get some updated numbers from auditor. Yay. An additional $1.2 million. So we are up to 5.5 million increase from um property taxes but that is not without a that is not an increase in millillage that is due to additional homes coming on and a growth and assessments but we didn't have reassessment this year which um we weren't allowed to get a windfall from. So our mill rate did go down this year. Um, so this is not that's without milage go down this year when the tax bills went out in October of 24. It was this year. Um, in part of reassessment, they make sure that you at least get your funding from last year to cover what you got last year that you're not supposed to get a windfall
008when when the properties more than 15%. Um, we brought out last time that our tier three money, so the $1.5 million shown there is an increase from the state that they're projecting to help us make up for the difference in the what we aren't getting from property owners on taxes. Retirey in retirey insurance revenue is going up a little bit. So overall, our total revenues are increasing by 8.6 6 million in this projected general for our general fund. So, speaking of local taxes, we just wanted to make sure that we brought this back to you with um some additional information. U Mr. had asked us for what is your what was our CPI and growth percentage because we brought to y'all last time that our mills that we weren't that we asked well that we
009were allowed to get that we uh that we didn't actually realize getting any increases. So the first line was 3.25% which was six mills 2.73% was our um CPI and growth for the next year 5.87 10.26 26 and so on. So those were the percentages in our consumer price index plus growth specifically to Doorchester 2 which equated to the millillage that we could have asked for. And again we have the three-year look back of 43 mills and then the current year the CPI and growth percentage is 6.94% which would equate to 12.4. So overall when you look at our um total revenues for general fund budget, this is just this is going on current year information for FY25. Um our state revenues are at 72.2%. Um the state recommendation for our specific district with the
010index of tax payability specifically for our district is 7030. So local would be close should be closer to 30% and it's at 26.61%. Also wanted to give you an update on our expenditures for fiscal year 25. Little note to the side. Um, one of the questions that we hear is that um, our district office is topheavy. So, we wanted to make sure that we brought the point out that when we had our salary study done that was presented in August of 23, um, of the 10 districts that were compared, I know that they were local districts and similarsized districts in the state, um, DD2 had the lowest ratio of central office leaders to students. And again, our salaries and benefits make up 86.3% of our budget. So really, um, that's expenditures and then I mean
011salaries and benefits and then programs, um, repairs and maintenance, securities, transportation is all in that remaining 13.7%. our teacher teacher salary comparison from the our neighboring districts um in Hertford and they're a little far away but they're they're close in our student count so we and they're they're sort of so we wanted to show where all of us um fall on the on this bar chart for bachelor's bachelor's 18 masters master's 30 and doctorate so tester 2 sadly is the first bar on every one of those. We're the lowest of every one of those. But if you look at our our next slide, our starting teacher salary history, we've done we've made great strides since 2018. We have made great strides. Um it's not comparison to our neighbors. We'll keep trying. Um, so we had
012an updated slide for our class sizes u versus our class ratios that u Mr. Ro is going to go over. Yeah, if you look at that slide there talks about our our district standard class ratios have been in place for several years. We follow the projected allocations and so this year we're kind of right sizing the district. We were um looking for an increase of a thousand students this year and actually we're down to 595 students and that's where you get the word right sizing um having less allocations and so basically we would be having about 52 less classroom allocations. Um and then also we'll have two district office allocations left. So that's a total of 54 positions that were kind of right sized in the district due to due to um the the less
013number of students that we have received. Uh also you can see there what we're able to do. We pulled the state average uh the state standard for classroom sizes. We got Charleston and Berkeley and then ours. And you can kind of see where our class size ratios will be next year um when we actually put these in into play those 52 positions coming out of the classrooms due to those numbers. So I may not have um updated this but um oh I did. So these have been in place for several years. These ratios we're not changing the ratios. Um so the ratios will be in place. We're trying to as Mr. Jordy said right size the class sizes because this the number of students in the classes have been low to the number of teacher
014allocations that we had. But these are ratios have been in place for several years. I'll give you an example. Uh we you know when we're doing our allocations for our high school south actually rich high schools for chance I believe at least 3 to 400 students they actually kind of went down and kind of maintain and so we're able to go do those took a few allocations out of a rich high school but enough students again uh trying to maintain those classroom sizes um and so again trying to not impact that classroom as much as we can uh but again to try to be able to give our teachers and our staff a greatest year. So, these are some things that we look at. And the other thing that we're looking at as well, it's
015not on this sheet, but other areas we're looking at is safety security. Right now, when you go to like a volleyball game, a soccer match, we have four um security officers, which could be a resource officer and three security people. We're looking to go down to three. Uh like in volleyball, soccer, some of those are less attended. we think we can do away and maybe only have two to three. So, that could be a savings there that we feel like we could do, but obviously at the big events, we're using our open gate. Um, we'll still have to maintain those score. Um, but again, looking at ways that we can get creative, but still do the open gate, still make sure safety and security is a priority and still be able to do that. Um,
016so we're looking at that. The other thing we're looking at, looking at all of our instructional programs and our service contracts. So I know Tina's been working with CNI and also technology looking at those contracts. I'll give you an example. One thing we're looking at doing is our NWA contract that we do. And we use NWA grades three through eight. And we do that fall, winter, and spring. And we use that as kind of a formative assessment. See where students are rate growth. And so what we're looking at doing with that contract is maybe decreasing by 30,000 for training. we have great people in our district and we feel like they can take over that training and so we're just looking at some additional ways that we can save save money with those contracts. So
017that's something we'll be bringing to the board uh probably in the next couple meetings and um working on that right now. So I think that'll be something we'll probably see. I like the facilities contracts like part of the program and stuff like that like re-evaluating those. Yeah. And I'll give you an example. One thing we're looking at, uh, we have a particular company used for landscaping and so especially our three high schools, but we're looking at maybe doing a team approach at two high schools. Um, for example, they're supposed to have one person doing their landscaping per building for each high school, but sometimes they get pulled to do other things. So, we're looking at doing a teaming approach and having two people go to one high school, then they go to the other high
018school. too. But then we still may need to use the landscaping company for the other high. Just not enough there. But again, looking at that, I think we pay one one of the contracts. I believe it's $29,000 uh to take care of one of our high schools, but we feel like if we can maybe get that team approach, we maybe will not use some of the landscape. So just looking at some creative ways and how we can save some dollars like open to like negotiate with like other companies to see if there's like better price out there anymore. Is that something that Yeah, for sure. But again, we've already got these people employed. So we thought why not try to do that team approach rather than employees. That's good. Um, so those are just some
019ways that we're trying to get creative, but we'll definitely bring that back to the board the next couple meetings to see which things contracts are, when we get saved, um, and negotiate. Uh, particularly, we did have one contract that we were involved with. Uh, I know Tina and I were on conference call with one trying to get out of the contract. Um, and so that could have been additional savings of maybe 30 $40,000 still here on So, uh, just just looking at some of those. So, Yeah. So, every bit counts and I really appreciate the team has done a great job. Our principles have been very good at of working with us when we're looking at these allocation meetings. They have been very very good. They understand that we're trying to right size. We're not
020eliminating anybody's job. Um, but just trying to rightsize and absorb um when they lose teachers. And so, again, trying to do that. So, again, not trying to say, you know, it's bad. We're not cutting. We're not again just trying to write size. Well, it's encouraging to see that you're looking at everything and you know, wherever we can save a dollar, that's a dollar saved. So, I appreciate it. Yeah, it's it's been good. I mean, it's been good for us really looking on the oversight and looking at some of these programs. Are they doing the same thing? Are they not doing the same thing? So, technology, the CNI team and district leadership has done a really good job trying to really look at those contracts. So, again, I know we have a really good start on
021it. We're looking at how many years is the contract and how much is it? What does it do for us? So, we'll bring that all all back to you all. So, you can kind of see the graph there. Um, let's say I'm I'm not familiar with that side of education. So, I know we have basically cut to the bone as much as we can so we could have a certain number of her class. What happens if we have this all of a sudden DD2 is the place to be? Do we have a plan for making sure those classes don't go 35 40? Yeah, and that's that's a great question, Miss Pal, because I think when we look at let's say if we go up 1,600 students and that means, you know, we get about an
022additional allocation of $6,000 per student. So, we can say yes, here is a need, here's the growth, then that allocation will go there. So, instead of the 52s that we had to eliminate, then maybe we have to add a few allocations. And I think we have that at one of our sheets. We've kind of scrubbed it down, went through all a lot of times. And so we know where some of those areas are. Um special ed being one of them. Again, not trying to, you know, cut those services to students, but looking at ways that, hey, we know we have a couple that we're looking at right now. You know, like a half position and we make it a full position or six students shy. So again, we're looking at all of those. We don't
023want to commit to it until we know exactly what our budget is. So last year for the current fiscal year, we thought we were going to grow by a thousand students. In fact, we've we've shrunk by almost 600. So it's pretty big swing. Yes. And what are we thinking in terms of projection for next year? We have Well, right now our numbers are pretty good. I mean, right now I mean last year we just lost I want to say 400 elementary. We think a lot of that was some real prep, but a lot of those students are coming back. We lost about 195 students in the middle school and then we lost um well we actually did eight I'm sorry I guess it was 89 and so yes I mean when you look at those
024projections u we are projected to grow again according to the demographer but we'll see um we do have a meeting set up sometime with the county they want to talk to us about impact fees and so that's been something I know we'll have the board be part of that as well but how can we gen generate some more revenue So a word on the street and I'm just saying what they're saying out there. We are getting in a lot more of the children from Charleston because of the way they have been based u a lot of people have been out taxed down there and they can't afford the housing. So they're moving more in this direction. So um I'm sure we're keeping an eye on that to make sure. Well, that's it's an interesting I
025didn't hear that. I heard like in Charleston. So, you're going to see the movement coming up more up in that Fort Charleston area, you know, in the Fort Dorchester High School area. We have heard the exact same thing that you were they're starting to move up this way and back for affordable housing in that area. So, we're encouraged. So, I hope that's the case. Like Mr. George said, we would get some additional funding from the state. member um they look at our 45day count and they'll give us more state money. So, we will definitely hire us more allocations. Pretty well about getting those paperwork in that we need in order to have um I think we had to get them in by the 45th day of some account that the district office needed in order
026to present to the state. So if they come back late, there a late date or anything where you can get those additional No, we just So there's a 45day count, then there's a 135th day count, which we just finished that and we'll be certifying that this week sent to the state. So if we have grown since our 45th day, then they'll chew us up and they'll give us more money because we haven't really 45 was we didn't shrink. We didn't shrink. We really didn't had a lot of time getting parent to turn the paperwork in. That could be the federal cars that you're thinking. It's the federal car, but it's also is getting them so they don't bring the kids like they should. So they get out too deep in the beats. Okay. To me,
027and maybe this is too simplistic, but you know, we had the day 35 last year. We thought we were going to go by a thousand. You got to day 45 and we found that Trump. Okay, day 135, we didn't shrink any further. We rebounded a little bit. Nobody is thinking that we're going to shrink again next year. Okay, so what I don't want anybody to get their heads wrapped around is that number last year is probably an anomaly and going into this year, yeah, it's a great problem. If we grow a little more and there's revenue that comes with that, you guys can react in terms of allocations. That's wonderful. Okay. I don't want to go into the start of the year with a bad projection and we're short. We're being very conservative and going
028with where we are right now because we also kind of have an explanation about what happened last year, understanding that that school opening. So, I think knowing that that's not happening again. I mean, there's not going to be an additional school like that opening, right? We're in a little bit better place. allocations were all determined before that school came online and right so there's really no way to take that into account predicted it would have been and going back to what Mr. Leah said said is, you know, you don't want to cut yourself so thin, especially when you're looking at special services. Um, we tried to, you know, keep those conservative. Um, we still think we could cut even more at some of our levels, but we did not do that. Kept it conservative. Um,
029and letting our teachers and our principles work because I just give you an example of high school. You know, when you're looking at FTEES, they they still have some room that they they wanted to they maybe got a few more positions. We didn't do that. Um, we want them to be able to have some autonomy and flexibility with that's a little leeway. If they do grow before the 40 last thing, never do this. We would never cut you never cut somebody in the middle of never add another allocation like after the 45day. Absolutely. And so we we told principles that we're just holding the line right now. Um we're going to look and see what our protections are this year. Um see what happens if we get additional funding later on and because we have
030a list here of priorities which which ones we would go ahead and fill if we get some additional dollar. So horrible sneeze all the way across the room and you know even know we have some questions. we are doing a recruitment fair and so again I mean like I said we're still positions that we're still hiding so you know that's that's a positive so these were the um proposed reductions that Mr. Gordy was talking about for the um the school positions and district office positions um so Mr. 40 went over that piece. We did some moving around and Lisa, here you can go. Lisa's turn. So, we moved some things around. We've added some more detail on some things and there's a couple things that are changed, but a lot of the information is the
031same as what you saw last time. So, I'm just going to go through and highlight some of the things that changed and were updated. So, the proposed reductions, those are the same as we reported last time. still like the 540 overall positions and $5 million in savings. On the mandates and required increases, we moved the um projected increase in SRO fun tracks that factory on that um the projected energy cost increase and the increase in maintenance materials up to this section because while they're not state mandated, they are required to have on this slide. you were talking about. Yeah. So, a couple pending state actions that could result in mandates or could result in some additional cost. We just don't know enough yet or have enough information to complete that. The first is the change
032in the health insurance. So, what we reported last meeting was that the health insurance increase, House Ways, and Means was going to do a 0% increase for employers, but the $36 a month for employees. um coming out of Senate Finance just last week, they have appropriated they're proposing appropriating more money so that that would pull that cost off the employees. Um we don't know yet if they are intending to fund that whole difference or if employers would have to pick up some of that difference. So we are kind of holding that out there. We've calculated that if we did have to pay that 3.9% increase, it would be about $400,000 and impact us. But we are hoping, well, hope is never a strategy that we won't have to do that. So, um, and then the
033other thing is House Ways and Means gave a what they call a favorable as amended report to a bill to expand paid parental leave. a couple years ago, paid for leave came on at six weeks and six weeks for the person that gave birth or adopted and then two weeks for um a spouse. They're proposing double impact. Um it's going to move forward on the agenda, but we don't know what's going to happen with that either. Um if it's doubled from what we anticipated it to be the first time, it would be another $600,000 potentially. It's always that's always up in the air because you never really know how many people are going to utilize it, but that's an estimate. Um, so again, like Tina said, we're it's going to the full Senate this week
034and then anything where there's differences between the House and Senate, they have to come that. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen until the first week of May. So, we still have a little while until you have some s um the classroom allocation classroom allocation request has unchanged from your last meeting as well and the content specialist and its is not changed in numbers. Um but we thought it was important to clarify that there have not been positions added overall because of this and it's actually a reduction of 11 positions. um they were just paid from a different funding source last year and the federal funding isn't going to allow us to cover those. So had to shift the funding around and um but actually so we got to 11 positions which we wanted to appear that we
035were adding positions to just kind of follow the numbers. But based on the budget proposal you've identified about $5.1 million in savings. Great job. We've identified about $3.1 million in mandated costs, but basically it's about $2.2 million in potential savings along the payment. Come back to the pending action. So based on uh the classroom allocations, content specialists and all that stuff, that's about $2.1 million cost that I'm assuming is not in base number. So if everything stayed the way of thinking yes everything stayed the way we would be able to fund and cover our costs except there's also a pending action that could result in another million dollars. Am I following the So we get to the summary because we also dipped into fund balance last year. So our expenditures were higher than our revenue
036coming into this year. So I asked too soon. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's good. Okay. So, the next things we talked about were salary increases. Um, one thing that we did was we moved the step for other eligible employees up on the list. We felt that it was important that other eligible other people that are eligible for a step were included before we start considering other increases. The teacher step is mandated. So that's up in the mandates and we felt it was important to step the other and then dropping down the next line is is an additional $1,500 increase to the teacher salary scale bring in our starting salary to,500. Um we would need under this proposal three mills to be able to make that happen. So it's not we don't it's not the full
0373.4 4 million, but enough to get us to be able to fund that whole amount if we need three mills to do that under this. Then we had other salary considerations um adding 1% for people not paid on the teacher scale, adding another 1,500 potentially to teacher salaries to bring that beginning salary to 52,000 and then potentially another 2% increase for others bringing that 3%. And you can see the mills associated with that. And then the only other request is under the departmental request and that's for an additional position in personnel for teacher leader recruiting, mentoring and production. So the next slide is the summary of all of those expenditures we just went through. um if we were able to increase by 16.9 mill all the things that we wanted to add or that we
038feel our needs um for FY26. So this is the page the page after is our budget summary. This is where we show the revenue against the expenditures. You can see here that our projected revenue that we showed on slide earlier that Tina had chopped out was 292.7 million with the requests that we just went over. Adding those requ those net requests to what our expenditures were last year, that brings our expenditures to 200 almost 300 million, 299.9. The difference between those two, the 292 and the 299 is the $7.2 million that's highlighted in yellow. And if you look down to the bottom right, that's where we see that that's what equates to the 16.9 mills we need to fund. from keeping up with signals. Hope that makes sense. So if if you Yeah. So if
039you we started out last year with revenues of 28 and expenditures of 28 288. So adding the additional 8 million takes our 284 to 292. So we have a we're making up for the act. We have to make up for that difference. Most of that form will replace uh o recurring items instead of non occurring. Okay. So recently we don't have anything by way of last year we went into use. Yeah. Right now we have a step we have a step increase in the budget without a millillage increase we don't have a raise right you are right now so no raise and no well no yes but right now the has been included for teachers not as well as um not everybody not only what you said was logic. Does it make sense? Second question,
040um the the 292 that includes the projected increase in revenue. So right out of the gate, we're still 7.2 million shy of be. That's without even talking about how we would fund that. That's just flat. That's after, you know, the additional $8 million in projected revenue. That 7 million is that taking account all the Yes, those are all the items down here. It shows um ting all those items. So, we're 7 million in the whole if we do all that, right? So if we were to get millillage increases, we could do some of these things. And as leadership, we kind of did the a priority, but of course you're the board, so please give us some other direction if you think that your salary. Right. Right. I think most of us feel that way. I
041can't speak for the board, but I would assume when you you've explained everything is logical. It makes sense. Um, couple of observations. Even if we were to take these additional steps to try and increase teacher salaries and whatnot, get it up to 52 whatever was the number, we're still not even remotely competitive. Never going to be able to be with Charles. Be a little bit more precise. We're way beyond. Okay. I understand much more technical ter. It's a great district. all those wonderful things that can compensate for some degree of remuneration. That's great. But the practical reality is that the the dis the difference between where we are and where the surrounding districts are at is pretty substantial. And even taking these steps, it's still substantial. It's still very substantial. We didn't really focus any
042on why we are so far off. We talked a lot about Act 388 last time and the difference in our tax base versus Berkeley's tax base and Charleston's tax base and why they get more money. They just get more money for their operations that we do here in Dorchester County because of we are so heavily funded. Uh we are so heavily um our tax based heavily own heavily own Yes. which when that was so prideful for us, we didn't, you know, we were so happy about that. And then when act 38A came along, took away all of those taxes from folks who were bringing us students, that's when it really went took a left turn for us in DB2. Whereas Charleston and Berkeley were able to bring in more business and industry just by where
043by virtue of where they are. And Charleston has a lot of rental properties right on the water. And that's just that's 6% property that they can bring in operations for school districts. So that's um just the different tax base makeup that we are in D2. We didn't include any of the slides this time because we did a lot of talking on that last time, but bring them back. But you know at some point it almost like well you unless you've experienced that there Christmas is coming but you won't this particular group won't be getting any Christmas gift. Mom has or dad whomever has to sit out and have that conversation. And I think we're at a point now where we need to have a candid conversation with the members of DD2 that include the community
044because I really don't believe that they understand where we are and what we are what we who we are competing against. Yeah, they know it but they don't know it. Right. We're working on education piece like that. Um Brian Ban and I sat down and he talks about how he can make it look pretty with pictures and non-financial words um so that we can like an educational packet for folks to really understand what the difference is in the door too. Well, until they get it, we'll continue to have complaints and this and that. Yes. And the big thing I think Mr. Lee mentioned touched on, I mean, we're losing a lot of investing, right? I mean, they're going across, you know, in Berkeley, in Charleston for $10,000 more in Charleston 5, $6,000 more. We're seeing
045that administrators as well. About every employee in this district could go across more money. However, you know, they want to stay here. They love the environment. They love the relationships and the climate culture that has been provided here. But at some point, you know, they're going to say the cost of things, the cost of this are going up. And so that's where we're at with with some of this and the principles have done a really good job of really trying to work on that morale piece they're building and we think of Johnson's Renaissance captured kids are trying to make it where you know they are recognizing their teachers. Um so they've done a very good job coming to do that despite you know the salary differences. Well, we, you know, I've had a number of
046folks come and talk to me about and said, you know, I just can't give that up as much as I love being here. And I understand because I love DD2. I still love DD2. But to be honest, if they were paying me a certain amount and I was at a certain point, I would go to need to the other district. I mean, it's not faded the entire time, but it does matter where you work and how they treat you and the environment of the kids and all that you have to deal with, but at the same time, that initial opportunity to finally get paid is weighing heavy. And I have a hard time saying to them, well, don't leave us. I mean, I say it, but I don't press it because I understand that's what
047I would have done. And so, um, we're trying all we can to tell them how wonderful it still is. And they know that. They will tell me that. But the bottom line is we need to be paid. Well, I think if you look go back to the the I think uh where is that one slide that talks about salaries there? I think it's slide 12. I mean, that just shows the commitment there from the board of trustees there and how much you've really poured into salaries. you can see uh 2023 you know 3% 6% 12% last year. So I mean that's a huge that's a huge investment in what everybody has done here. And so I mean that's I think those are things we just don't have which what the other counties have in order
048to bring about what we want to do. And um I'm from I I don't know how to get those that have the ability to give us more because you can't tell me there is not more available. So the kinds of things you've talked about and whatnot. It's clear you're trying to kick over the final piece and you know respectfully that 30,000 here and there on a $300 million budget is good. That's the attitude we should have. But that doesn't move the needle in the areas for concerns. Then we ask this um it's not a loyal question. Okay. Then we ask this. What else should we look at? Is there anything else we should look at? Phrase the formal question. Then it has to go like into each department and like look even closer at all
049that too. So I don't I don't know. I don't know where else you could turn over. Well, as a rock, our expenditures by object group, 87% is salaries and benefits. It's really in the people and the other 13% covers or operations, transportation, and those are all also essential. Don't know where you It's not like we're spending money on funding stuff, right? No reason. It has no purpose. I think when you start cutting more people lose a service touch being able to manage things buildings like those are the administrators and those are the teachers principles and it's harder to manage um and then that that affects your culture and climate and I think we can look at we look at all those those positions that we think that we do without s district office we're going
050to do without a couple positions here when we think that that could be more beneficial in the classroom soon but I I you have a great question Mr. Lane and where is that continue to look the last few slides that we have that you see in your packet we've had gone over the last time for um proposed spending from other sources for those line items and then line items that we weren't able to include in our budget proposal. So, um those were the last things that we had and then our budget calendar. Um we still have um so tomorrow is Chad and I are going to meet with Jason Ward and their CFO at county. Um not sure if JJ is attending or not. Just to present them with this um we come back to
051y'all for another workshop. We're having a public hearing to get some additional public input on April 28th and we go to this county council on May 12th. Maybe read we'll talk about that date if you'all have any further questions from us. I know we're running close to the next meeting. Um, thank you. You've done a job here. I don't have any other questions at this point and uh appreciate all the hard work you guys have done as updates and all that. Um let us know if there's anything that we can do to help you guys keep doing what you're doing. Talk to some folks at the state maybe. Try to have conversations everywhere I can. That's perfect. that that will be helpful because um I know our county council folks feel kind of torn because
052it's we have millage increases on businesses. Um that's and then you got to bring businesses in and then that creates the whole another issue of like okay well we tax them a lot and they don't want to come and then that further impacts us then we don't have more business in a site. Went down. What did he go down like five? Five ms. He got the extra five mills to go back to that be five mills for us is teacher. It would be the initial teacher raise and the raise for the staff. I don't think that's quite a windfall, but the 50,500 starting plus the 1% increase to it's kind of like back to you. I mean, not to beat a dead horse, but you know, underlying all the problem is the way that we
053fund education has a fundamental systemic problem and we're trying to whittle around the edges, try and find all these little interim solutions to fix it. Not going to fix it. Even, you know, to Evan's point, even if they hadn't taken the windfall away from us, we're still short about $5 million based on what is maybe offer is too strong a word, but I think it's it's in the ballpark to where we can barely do the things we have to do and we're still not competitive, which is a real issue. I think the problem is there's just so many people like if you look at state as a state issue, there's so many people that benefit from it the way it is. So it's like there there's no it's not hurting so a majority of people
054and so the people it is hurting it's like well where's the political will you know and that I mean that's a serious issue. I was telling Ashley in a meeting that we had like to me if that were me sitting in a room as a legislator and I saw some kids were getting 20,000 and some are getting five I'd be like well gosh let's like even that out. But um there was a one time for a funding formula to be uh per student across the entire state um so that you're really funding education by each individual student not by where you but um that didn't make it because there would be some losers in that. So really that 3DA learners the best because now like addressing that you're going to have losers and people are
055going to advocate for losers. They're not going to be like this. Let us lose money. That's that's the position. Well, a lot of shaker. Not all of them. Understand something. Their kids and their kids go to private schools. Yes. Doesn't And that's not all of them because you know, I know a few of them don't. But at the same time, you know, as long as I'm okay, so sorry about the rest of y'all. People don't care until it hurts individually. personally. So we um Lisa did a calculation for us that every Oh, and Ashley asked me this earlier. If we were to go up by one mill, what would it cost? So if they were a business that their assessed value is $500,000 um if we went up five mills, it would cost them an
056additional $15 $150. $150. Yes. [Music] So if we could break it downual $50 for $100,000 every $100,000 of your assessment is $6. And you know Brian's probably paying attention and that all feeds real well. I almost feel like I need Sarah McLaclin to start singing or something because for only 19 cents a day. Yeah. And I get it. We've got to come up with creative solutions. But for me personally, what is frustrating is that we keep trying to kick these cans down the road. Policy tax policy matters. And while I understand that Act 388 seemed to benefit homeowners, if I'm a homeowner and my schools are awful, what was that kind of a benefit? What kind of message was that? That that's tax policy. Some of those things are outside of our hands. But as
057a board, we know what our priorities are and what we want to do. We know what the size of the challenge is. Now we just have to keep having the conversation get through this year. Thank you very much. I know we we're leading to the next meeting, you know. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you all for all the great information. Appreciate it. Appreciate all your work every possible way to Yeah. Thank you all so much.