001on Wednesday, May 7th. And I would like to call this special board meeting to order. Can I get a roll call? Mrs. Will? Yes. Mrs. Powers? Yes. Mr. Wilson? Yes. Mrs. Chestnut? Yes. Mrs. Mason? Yes. Please stand and join me in saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I need an approval of the agenda. Can I get a motion? So moved. Any discussion? Please call the role. Mrs. Will. Yes. Mrs. Powers. Yes. Mr. Wilson, yes. Mrs. Chestnut, yes. Mrs. Mason, yes. Uh, do we have any public participation? We do not. Okay. Um, I would just like to thank everybody for coming this afternoon. Um, we're here because
002the superintendent recently brought forward a proposal to us to offer full day tuitionfree kindergarten starting in the 25 to 26 school year. Uh naturally the board was super excited about this because we know how impactful full day kindergarten can be for everyone especially when it comes to early literacy and um long-term student success and making it accessible to families is something that we've always been very interested in. But at the same time, um, we've had to have a lot of difficult financial discussions this year, um, and over the past few years, and we've been very public about our concerns about sustainability and state funding. So before we move forward, we wanted to take a step back and have this conversation in front of the community to understand exactly how this proposal became financially viable and
003what the short and long-term implications of this may be. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Superintendent Spicer. Thank you, President Mason, members of the board community. Thank you for being here and those watching uh live and recorded. So um how did we get here? I think um you what's really important for us is that it's been a vision uh for over two years to offer all day kindergarten for all students. Um but knowing that it's just it wasn't a viable option for us. Uh and then you know each each and every year what we do um as a central office team with the help of uh Lisa Hair our EMIS director we take a look at our student numbers our enrollment our staffing uh and we try to rightsize um our
004staffing and as we were looking at that once again and as I said as we do every year but certainly almost daily um this past year um we looked at the numbers ers and our enrollment would indicate that there's the potential to have all day kindergarten for all with the current staffing that we had. So no additional staff and in the past it has always been that we would have to add staff and that's what really made it financially not a possibility. So with that, that's how we got to the potential. Uh this was a central office team discussion. Treasury Acriman part of that as well and that's how we kind of got to the proposal of you know the potential for this to um could have it. So um let's go back here. Steve,
005try it again. There we go. All right. So I think that you know what's important for us to look at is that our current uh you know enrollment projections you know this this is 2020 up through now. So we're at about 65% of our students um are enrolled in all day kindergarten. Um in the past we have given approximately $111,000 in scholarships per year. So this past year we gave and allowed um families um to have the scholarship u based on free and reduced lunch. Uh but I think that the most important statistic up here is that 90.5% families in Ohio are enrolled in all day kindergarten for all students. Uh and that's what what we believe the data will show is that um you know there's a better academic opportunity um for our students
006and families, but also um other benefits as well. So we're going to jump into a little bit of our own data. Um so I'm going to have Kelly Ellison come up and we're going to talk a little bit about MClass Dibbles. So in that last slide real quick though, John, the Yes, sir. the other side of those percentage are half day, right? So you're saying like 65% of our enrollment is full day and then we would have the rest to make up that be have to. Yes sir. Good afternoon. So the state of Ohio two years ago required a universal screener. Sorry for the um for us to adopt a universal screener. It was originally for a dyslexia screener but it's us utilized for more than that. And we chose as a district M-Class dibbles.
007And MClass dibbles is really that you early literacy screening. We give it to all K3 students and we analyze their data to see if they're on track, off track. That's one of the first things we look for. And then we start analyzing what are the areas that we need to touch base on and grow our students. So um we utilize it for screening, progress monitoring, etc. And if we look at last year, which was our first year of full implementation, um as some percentages were mentioned, last year 58% of our kiddos were in all day and 42 were in half day. And beginning of the year, um last year 56% of our kiddos that were starting with us were on track and 37% were not on track, that were in half day. And when we
008ended the year last year, 87% of our students were on track and where they needed to be. And in half day, 60% were on track. So we knew going into this school year that as first graders, we were going to need to do some intervention for those kiddos that were not on track. And you can see the level of progress. So this year um for 2425 we don't have end of year data but you can see we've already we're progressing at a wonderful rate as we've changed some interventions but all day kindergarten we're at about 67% or we were to start the school year and um for our kids in all day they started the year at 54% and already at midyear all day students were at 90%. So excited to see where we end
009the year. And then half day we started the year at 32% that were on track um where they should be and by mid year we were at 73%. So we're making progress but not um ending the year at a rate where we would like to see 100% of our kids on track. Any questions for me about that? All right. So, we did um offer a thought exchange to the community. Um I'm going to let Parker Brown uh come and speak to us a little bit about the thought exchange and what we found through the thought exchange. Yeah. So, is it still okay? We had 374 participants in our thought exchange. We had 254 unique thoughts uh from those participants. Now, you can rate all of these individual thoughts, which is how there's a difference of
010the number there. We ran that for about seven days. So, April 30th through May 6 is when we ran this. Go on the next slide. Um, so I just wanted to start with our lowest rated thoughts. I try to kind of group them together. Technically, a lot of our lowest rated thoughts are a lot of individual, very specific to them thoughts. So, I try to kind of group a lot of those ideas into a few key bullet points here, which is families are saying that $5,000 is a fair price. Still cheaper than daycare is what some of our families are saying. Given that the voucher program all day programs elsewhere elsewhere are more appealing than paying extra on top of existing taxes to Milford and that nearby districts so Lovelin West Claremont go offer tuition
011free all day kindergarten. Those were some of our lowest rated ones but still thoughts I thought we should elevate and bring up to the board. So I'm going to these were our highest rated thoughts. Same ordeal try to kind of group some of them together. Um so the source of funding would need to be clearly stated and repeated often was our highest rated topic. This is families understand this and they understand that we need to be communicating this effectively. It's conflicting given the district says they are needing financial cuts. However, I feel wonderful resource for families. Research has shown that students who attend all day kindergarten enter first grade more prepared academically. How can the district offer free kindergarten at this point? What about increased busing? Which is it? Does the district have enough money
012or not? Thank you for exploring this option. So, I kind of took it out a little bit on the side. So, our families and our community understand the benefits of kindergarten. They have the desire for equitable access for kindergarten. There's a need for a deep understanding of funds and concerns of conflicting messages over this past school year. Um, so just kind of the high level summary that thought exchange does the next slide. Uh responses to Milford exempt this village school district proposal for tuition free all day kindergarten indicates support and concern. Many respondents emphasize a financial burden current tuition place the current tuition places on families. Um so there's an understanding that the community has and the desire for all day kindergarten that we saw with the data and we're seeing with the communications and
013the feedback that we're getting. Uh the largest piece is just understanding the funding and the sudden change from $5,000 tuition increase to now all day if that's an option we want to explore. Thank you, Parker. Treasure Acriman. Treasurer Acriman. All right. Well, I don't want this to turn into nothing but a financial discussion. Obviously, we're here for bigger and better reasons. But just to lay things out, either option, whether you go with tuition or no tuition, we are not making money on this. We are still losing money. It just means that tuition isn't covering all the expenditures. But what's really important, especially as I dive into this data, is the fact that in the last two years, enrollment is down 136 students. in the last four years, 38% or 179 students. You start to see
014that nonpayment is going up. What scares me is if we raise tuition from $3,500 to 5,000, those two things will continue. Why is that a big deal? Right now, we're on the guarantee with the fair school funding plan. So we are guaranteed a certain amount of money based on fiscal year 20 numbers. The governor's proposal was going to take the guarantee away from us because enrollment is going down. It has been placed back into the bienium budget by the house. Hopefully it will stay there. It should. But in two years it will go away. If we don't start looking at a way to increase enrollment, whatever possibility we have of a guarantee is gone and we will only be funded for what we currently have or as I like to say butts and seats. So
015that could cost us anywhere from$1 to2 million. So this is more of a way of when you look at the finances, it's which part of the finances are better even though none of them are really good. If that makes sense. One positive thing, and I know we're back on transportation, it's the fact that by eliminating midday routes, we can save an additional $150,000. I think that's a big deal. Uh like I said, the other part of the big deal to me is the fact that we want to start working on enrollment. We want to start working on getting our numbers up because that shows the legislators that we're doing what we're supposed to do. So, um I don't I don't know if we have data on this, but I would venture guess that where a
016student starts kindergarten has a huge impact on where they stay. Or maybe you were going to talk about this later, but where they stay. While it could happen that students flip between kindergarten at one location and then come into Milford, I feel like it Yeah, anecdotally you are correct. Um we once we lose a student, if you will, uh either to open enrollment or to a parochial, they never come back. And if you're talking about the achievement level, I think it's been shown that they don't catch up with the full day kindergarten kids until third grade. So in those three years, could be forming negative self opinions about their ability to learn and their and their achievement. The other thing to remember is we have a brand new building which means we have some additional
017space. Not putting pressure on anyone out there, but we have spots open. So hopefully this is a way to attract some people that otherwise considered coming to Milford. So, I think the whole point is is yes, I'm the guy that's supposed to be telling you where we're not making money and what we need to do about it, but I don't want to sit here and tell you that we should take tuition from $5,000 to $8,500 to cover our loss and expenditures. I want to sit here and tell you that we need to be doing the right thing for kids. And the right thing for kids is to think about all day kindergarten at no cost to the taxpayers. No additional cost. I apologize. Do we know where the state I know the state has been
018receiving a lot of pressure to cover all day kindergarten. Do we know where Well, technically that's a good point. Um, so in the past how this works. When you receive tuition, you only get credit for half a student. When you don't receive tuition, you get credit for a full student. So in easy numbers, if we have 300 students, we only get credit for 150 of them. By going to full day kindergarten, not charging tuition, we automatically have an increase of 150 students, which will help us as we move forward with the fair funding plan or whatever else they decide that they're going to create to uh to fund schools. Does this mean students in a neighboring district could open enroll? They would also get full day kindergarten if we had spots. If we have spots.
019Do you have more after this? Uh actually um I do not. Only other tend to potentially put some of our elementary principles on the spot if they want to speak about what all day kindergarten might mean to them. Um But that would be it. I would like to just open it up for dialogue. Yeah. I mean, from my perspective, you guys know that I'm uh and I I think that you all are probably with me on this, but I'm the biggest uh um you know, opponent about the voucher system, right? It's something I speak about very very frequently. So the fact that in that thought exchange that comes up, I mean, so if you go to a private school, the state does give that school money for all day kindergarten. They do not give public
020schools money beyond a half a day. So as we cannot shy away from the competition um for our community to continue to compete with private school vouchers, which are uh you know grossly even getting uh more significant attention in the bianual budget. Um, you know, that's a hard thing not to overlook. Like when I So, when I look at this this plan, when when you take into account the fact that we're on the guarantee, it really it's an investment, right? Is that I mean, it's a fair way to look at it, right? I mean, we know we're going to be able to offset some of it with reducing midday busing. Um, we know that the district has done other things that we can talk about here this year to save money, things that we can
021track like, um, you the reduction to busing. it is, you know, um we know that that's not good. We know that families are going to struggle to get the kids there, but we can track it. We can see how we can help people get kids to the school. We can see if it's in, you know, increasing people coming late, things like that. And then we can do the same thing with what we did with sports and our um and our spendings down on on um what's the line item? Purchase services. Purchase services, which is also a cut that we made last last year. The 15% which is showing um you know money coming down. So so because as I was thinking about this I I you know I think about that full story as well
022right of like you know we the levies failed twice. Um we had to decide on many different um cuts and and we know that those all make a negative impact. But the one thing that we have to continue to do is is is increase enrollment. We got to keep families here. We got to get kids signing up for kindergarten here in Milford as the private school um you know situation will continue to grow. Now I think that there's going to be a I hope there's a swing back with the state that will pay for all day kindergarten. But in the meantime, you know, I I think we do have to take steps to to keep the families here. And I can speak from experience. You know, my daughter did half day uh this year and
023I know that she was one of the ones that scored lower on the on the dibbles, right? versus other kids that were, you know, there at all day kindergarten. So, I also know that there's a huge uh learning advantage for the kids and the I think the science, you know, kind of all the studies flesh out that they're actually at an advantage all the way up until the third grade to where it finally levels out um of kids and all day versus half a day. Um so, um you know, so that that's kind of my thoughts on it. from the perspective, I see this more as as an investment. Um, and when I look at the $111,000 that was put up there by the um scholarships that we are trying not to do this year.
024You know, it's important for people to realize like I see that as probably being 111,000 of debt to families. It's the, you know, there, you know, you can, you know, when you, you acrew school debt over the years up until you get to the end and the school is constantly doing things to try to to get that uh paid for, whether it's through help from our local uh partners or, you know, people eventually find a way to pay it. But, you know, people people get a spot in kindergarten, they pay, and then they start to have financial trouble. you know, that $111,000 could just amount to debt to a family and and that that's very very stressful. Um, and also just there's there's other things that would play into that that impact our family. So,
025um, so that's that's why it's like that's the way I'm kind of looking at this. This is investment. You got to kind of look at look at it in that way. It's just how much is the investment? Um, and it's like when you take away the debt part, 1,000. You take away the fact that there's going to be more debt uh incurred by families that that can't pay it this year that we don't necessarily get back right away. Um and it really is a loss in enrollment because when we see that sign when we see that signal in the governor's part of the budget before it even got changed in the bannual budget, we know that that's going to be an important part. So, as we continue to um you know, be an excellent district,
026we we have to continue to to take the steps to get the enrollment up. And there's not many ways to do it. Those are my thoughts. So, um I know we didn't want to make this into a financial discussion, but I do have some financial questions. Sure. Um, so when we all got together in December for our special meeting, we were told, "Okay, we can't afford to offer it for free." I'm just wondering what's changed since then that makes this financially possible. Specifically, like what data I know you talked about taking away the bus routes, so that's a piece of it. And then the enrollment part is that was specifically making up all of this difference. I think there's a better understanding now that and in not being part of the original discussion. I'm coming
027in, I'm doing this internal audit and then I'm bringing information to Mr. Spiser and then of course to you. One thing that the district didn't understand is that with tuition, you only get credit for half a student, not a full student. So, there's one. Now, granted, we're on the guarantee, but in December, we didn't know about the bianium budget yet. We didn't know that enrollment was going to be affected. We knew the guarantee was going away, but we didn't think it was going to go away until the full till the uh the uh fair funding plan was fully phased in, which would be another two years. When we found out that right away we could lose between one and $2 million, okay, we start to panic. So the easiest way obviously is to come back
028and say, what can we do to take care of this problem? The problem is enrollment's going down. And when Mrs. Harris showed us what our numbers really were in the last few years, it tells me that they're only going to get worse as you take tuition up. Also looking at the numbers and looking at salary and benefits and and of course transportation costs that are still included, you realize that those numbers are only going to go up, which means either you take tuition up or you say, forgive me, you don't want to say this, cut your losses. I I apologize for saying that. That's not what we're doing here. But you realize, okay, this is an investment. It's an investment in our kids. It's an investment in the future. We have to do what we
029need to do right now to start moving forward when they do take the guarantee away or if they don't take it away but only give it to people with increasing enrollment. Let's start now. So, it's more so if you go back to December at that point, you know, we were more worried about the gradebanded schools. We were more worried about paytoplay. Tuition was already included. This district has been charging tuition for probably 15 years. At that time, you only got credit for half a student. Things have changed since then. So, we're just catching up. So, that kind of leads me into another question, too. So with all of the turmoil going on in the state house with the bannual budget and things are changing especially with this 30% cap our cap are we confident that
030if we go to tuition free all day kindergarten we will be able to continue that because I would hate to I would hate to say we're going you don't go back you don't go back you're right you're right but I still think I don't want this to be about that this needs to be about educating the kids and getting them started at the right time at the right age. So if it means that we have to look at other reductions and we will look at other reductions, we are going to be fiscally responsible. We are not going to stop doing that. And I'm going to keep saying it and saying it and saying it until you guys get tired of me saying it, but I have to say it. but we're going to continue to
031do that. So then we just go and we reanalyze and say, "Okay, where can we cut something else? What don't we need?" And that's honestly the joy why I I love the five-year forecast doing it and budgeting is because every day I get to say, "Okay, well this worked or this didn't work, so now let's try something else." And yes, we are coming back a few years later. I don't mind taking blame for this. I wasn't here, but I'll take blame. I don't care. The point is is that this is about education and I I believe it's the right thing to do. I think of So, are we friendly with So, Warthingington schools recently went through this. Do you know anybody at Warthingington, John? We can make contact with someone. Yeah. So, a few things
032that I I saw when I was looking through this was Warthingington was one of them where they recently eliminated a $3,15 a year tuition and implemented a universal no cost full day. So, that's somebody who we can, you know, speak with about, you know, how how their enrollment, you know, because that it was not sure they've been through a year of it yet. So, we might not get back the information for them to see how their enrollment uh is. Well, we'll know how it's shaping up for next year. So, that's one of them. Um, I'd also be curious to see I know West Claremont does free, you know, and I know they struggle with the levy yesterday, right? So, I would be curious to see kind of what expenditures coming out of their general fund
033over there at West Claremont. So, those are two places I think we can look for some for some data. Um uh because you know I agree with you Emily like I I'm I'm for the I you know I'm for this. I just I just want and I know that we're saving money in lots of places but we're only recognizing that in like purchase services and there's a few other areas we're starting to see slope down a little bit right with some retirements and things like that and obviously with the busing. Um but those are two places we can look. Um, you know, and there's a couple of states like, you know, Colorado. I know obviously Ohio seems to be going the opposite direction here, but there are some some areas that we can look at
034there where it did drive a lot more full day enrollment to to kindergarten. So yeah, I think this is the problem with the states not being uh very clear because what some of you are saying, Doug, is like we're we know that there's some things that are going to be based off enrollment by doing. So the way I understand is there's three ways to to to code the financial for kindergarteners. You have you have half day, you have full day with no tuition, and full day with tuition. Yeah. So when you have full day with tuition, then your enrollment automatically shows in half. Correct. And so and then as soon as you go to full day without tuition, you you automatically enrollment goes up a little bit. So part of the state not being very
035clear in their budget as they had the governor's budget and then now the house now the senate's reviewing it is we are trying to make decisions right now based off of limited information from them that could potentially add more kids before next year. If we make this decision, say at the next board meeting, and there's families out there that we're going to send their kid to private school or families that are considering moving into the area or families that could be considering moving out of the area, I know that we have 56 seats available, 59 59 seats available right now to fill. Um, so not only do you get that um that full day, you know, that all that kids being counted as half day is now full day as enrollment going up, but then
036you also, you know, hopefully we would by making this decision early enough, we could fill those seats. And that again, you know, we don't know what the state's going to do, but they've signified that they are going to ding schools with flat or lowering enrollment, which I guess I can't blame them for that, but um other questions do we have? I think one of the other factors from, you know, mentioned December to now is is just the you looking at the enrollment and looking at the staff and now looking at it being able to determine that we don't need to add new staff in order to do it. But I think the other piece that's important is that if you do nothing and two new subdivisions come in and and and children come in, 1.2
037two children come in per home, you're going to add staff, right? So, we we staff the elementaryaries based on enrollment. So, um that's how we are now. That's like, so if there is an influx and we start to bring back, let's say, 300 kids for whatever reason, everybody's flocking to Milford to come to all day K. I mean, we we would have to add staff. Yeah, that's that's fair. And we do know on a on a negative side of this, since I've been very positive, we do know the state doesn't fully give us enough money for each one of our students even as our enrollment grows. Right? So that is one of the catches of like we want to grow our enrollment and painfully they don't pay us enough per student. So growing your enrollment
038helps you and and hurts you. But if we don't have a growing enrollment then we don't have kids for all of our schools and classes and to help our community with workers. So, we have uh 59 empty seats. Um we're fairly confident that we're not going to get more people than that to fill those seats just based on past enrollment. We Yes. I mean, obviously, we don't know until we know, but I our projections would indicate that there are 59 seats, so probably 50 seats. Um we we know of um a handful of families that have left for all day specifically that would likely come back uh and then the potential for more to come back. Um but we would have 50 seats um throughout the district to offer. Yes. And we're keeping about the
039same teacher student ratio as well. It would stay the same. Okay. Yes. Our cap our cap is not changing based on the reductions and the efficiencies that we did um in this early spring. Curious curious children. That's a great that's a great one. I was just getting ready to say, you know, when Myra was talking about that, I mean, I'm going in my head the amount of staffing that you're pouring into those into those students above and beyond. I mean, we we could guesstimate probably one staff member per building minimally. Yeah. That's another fact that when I was looking into this that they they kind of call out some of these other studies from some of the other districts that did this were exactly that like how what's the cost of catching the kids up
040later and also what's the cost of kids that fall behind a grade entirely, right? So now you have another, you know, that student is now going to get one whole extra year, you know, that because they they they fell back a year. Um so there that there's that. I do think I mean we're here for the students. I would say that's the job of a school district is to educate students and so when we know they do better with full day kindergarten, we have better retention, we get to keep them in the family, they get to, you know, that I think there's a pride that comes with your school that you get um from from kind of spending all that time here. So I look at it as how might we retain every student who
041wants a seat, who could have a seat, you know, we want them in our schools. Um, and then sort of tertiary, I heard recently from a community member who sends her kids to private schools that the increase in vouchers been really positive for them and more kids are coming to private schools and you know, like this is where the piece of my heart breaks a little bit. Like if private school is right for you, please choose it. But I don't like that vouchers are driving families to that option um with public funds. That's the plan. I would go ahead. No, you giving you some space here. Go ahead. I was just going to say that u I haven't heard any teacher I get contacted by a lot of teachers and staff on a regular basis
042because I know so many people and I that the day the announcement was made to the district, my phone was blowing up with joyous texts which is like wow this doesn't happen often. Yay. But uh and no one more than first grade teachers, you know, because they know exactly the difference that's going to make quickly. So if it's possible to do, I don't know how we can't we would not do it. Well, I think too adding to that, it would be really interesting to track the changes um for like once we move to full day to see how our how our students are improving, what is the difference between um their literacy skills. Just take a look at all of those numbers and see how different it is with full day, everybody at full day
043versus our half and half system that we have right now. Yeah. And some other things that you know it opens up the time for the parents, right, with the kids being at at kindergarten uh full day, you know, so it gives them more opportunity to kind of volunteer if they want to or participate with the kindergarten class. And also if you lose busing, I kept thinking the whole time if I was a kindergarten half day parent, I might as well just sit in the parking lot when I drop them off and pick them up at lunchtime. Yeah. And it, you know, beyond the the actual learning piece of social learning is so much better with full day. So we kind of experienced that too this year. Does any of the principles want to speak? I
044I think we should let the principal speak and then take some questions from people that decided to be here. Is that okay with the board? Melissa Carer wants to apparently [Laughter] she's gonna step up to the mic. Sarah Grab is next. No, I'm kidding. Only if you want to. I actually access. Additional longer opportunity to engage that play time. also have strength in different areas than just kindergarten. exposure. They don't Tom Wilson. I knew he would do it. Thank you, Tom. I was talking to Josh the other day. perspective. I think we have sixth grade. Sorry about that. So, going back to kind of what I was saying, so talking to Josh and just seeing the increase of access at our junior middle school now for our sixth graders. I know we all have choir.
045My choirs ranged from five kids to 20 kids and it's all about having access. And I feel like with going to the all day piece, it just it opens access for everybody. When I look at my list right now of potential full days and I'm looking at the thinking about the $5,000, I'm kind of going through my mind, well, who who who's not going to be able to afford this and how that's going to change. Uh when I look at my half-day kindergarten right now, I think we'd all agree there's a number of kids in those classes that would more than benefit to what Melissa said, being in a full day program. So again, to me, it's all about access and I'd love to see every student have that opportunity. I think bringing up choir
046and band is a good point because uh I I have a grandson that's sixth grade this year and it's a pain to go to school an hour early for band and choir. And um I would imagine that's why the numbers went up because it's just going to be part of the school date. Uh thank you to our principles. Um certainly my team you know as we have tried to envision this for a couple years and um you know coming to this conclusion most recently that again no new staff. I think that's the important piece. That's what really the vision, the looking at the the data that we saw is that we didn't have to add new staff. And then Doug, what can it look like? Can we make it happen? Um, and so again, we
047know the academic importance. We know the the human resources piece. We have that piece. It's just, you know, getting, I guess, really Doug's blessing and yours, of course. But, uh, again, it's it's just been a vision for a couple years, if not longer. I'm sure, you know, Bob Frell probably had the same idea and, uh, had to go the tuition route. And and that's the whole point is this same conversation occurred 15 years ago. Same conversation. The only difference is that you only got credit for half a student. There was no full student at that time. So tuition was the only way to get kids in the door on a daily basis. Well, the land in Ohio has changed drastically in 15 years. I mean, the increase of the the voucher system, the decrease in
048the amount of state funds, you know, the increase of options, which again to Emily Chesna's point, if it's an option that you need, I fully support that, right? But the the landscape has changed too and we have to you know that's our job is to monitor that and and try to you know make the right decisions as the landscape changes um to adapt to it and try our best to get out in front of it which I don't feel like districts always had to do. I mean our districts have done a good job at that but I mean there's just different challenges that we face today that we didn't face before and a lot of uncertainty too. So what question? I mean the people showed up. So I mean I'm all for answering questions. People
049want to raise their hand and we can try to repeat the questions into the microphone to make sure that people that showed up here feel that we've asked the questions that the community would want to ask and we'll try to get the best answer possible. Kelly, thank you. I'm Diane Snow. I'm um a community member and I'm also a parent of a future high schooler. And I don't think there's any question about the benefits of all day kindergarten. But my concern, and I haven't heard anything mentioned about this at all, is how the community will react. your your voters, those same voters who you've been telling over and over again, we don't have money. You cut our busing and now you're telling us, oh, but we have money to do all day kindergarten. And it
050really concerns me that if you do go that route that the voters will be really turned off by that. And I was wondering how you guys I I didn't hear that addressed. So, I would like that addressed. Yeah, that's why I was asking some of those financial questions because I do think it's important. What I heard from you is that the situation is different than it was in December because of all the things that you talked about um with the the state counting for a full student um us looking at enrollment staffing um cutting the bus routes like this is opportunity that we can take care of this financially where we couldn't like bring back blessing or something like that because there are so many different things about that decision. Is that correct? Sure. I
051I think the way to view this is number one, we didn't know about the governor's proposal taking away the guarantee, but he's taken that that an argument on the other the devil's advocate of that is currently that's off the table though. Currently off the table, two years from now, it's back on the table. Right. Yeah. Right. So, we just want to make sure that we're when I opened up, I wanted everyone to know that no matter which scenario, it's a negative impact. Meaning, financially speaking, you're not making money, you're losing money. So, it's either are you losing this amount of money, this amount of money, or this amount of money. But I don't want that to this to be about that. I want this to be about educating the kids. So in a way what
052you're trying to do is say okay we're losing money. How to you know we don't make anything we don't sell anything but how do we create a scenario we're moving forward we're not only educating kids which is what we're here to do. We're making sure that we don't lose as much money without raising tuition higher than $5,000. The problem with raising tuition, we discussed it, is enrollment is going to continue to go down, which affects our fair school funding plan or eventually the guarantee whether we're on it or not. And delink delinquencies, non-payment, waiverss, whatever you want to call it, are going to go up. So, you're taking a hit right there. I believe the only way to look at this is to move forward and say, "Okay, even $5,000 is not enough." But if
053we could roll back the $5,000, show the state that we're making improvements as far as ADM, that's only going to help us a couple years from now. You have to explain what ADM is. ADM average daily membership. It's your It's your enrollment. Butts and seats. Butts and seats. It's your butts and seats. So, this is all about butts and seats right now. People are laughing, I know, but that's what it is. That's how the fair school funding plan is now designed. They're paying you on your number of students that you're educating. The two variables that come into play are your property values. By the way, Claremont County had the highest prop increase in property values in the state in 2023 and income. That's also high. When those go up and your enrollment goes down, the
054state will not give you any more money. But we don't get any more money because of those going up. Well, as long as enrollment's going up, that will help us from getting less money. Yeah, it'll help us from getting less money. It doesn't It's always good to point that out because some people in the community believe that when you say something like our property values are the highest in the state or very high, our income is going up. They think, well, then surely the school district's getting more money. Correct. Because of House Bill, what is it? 90 920. 920. We don't. So, I just want to put that in so that everyone understands what that means is we've been lucky. There's a certain amount of millage that's been passed. That's the amount of money we
055get. When your property value goes up, there's something called effective rates. They just go down. So, you get the same amount of money. Yeah. If a new subdivision comes in, new subdivision comes in, you actually don't get credit for those homes until they're evaluated. And once they're valuated, then everyone else's taxes go down because theirs go up. I I would say the um one of the comparisons to think about. So transportation is very onetoone. We cut busing, we save $500,000. Like onetoone, we can see that we can feel it. When we talk about this, it's a whole bunch of factors. So tonight, I heard, you know, and I even heard some new ones tonight, but we're talking about retention across 13 years. We're talking about additional support. M will brought this up um to catch
056those students up until third grade. So we have all these extra reading aids. We have lost opportunities like Mr. Wilson said for students. So it's not as easy to say do this. I mean there is there is a number associated to it, but it's not the only number. It's a very holistic picture. Um and so we're here to do what's best for students and give them the opportunities. And so I I personally feel when you roll all of these things together that it's a pretty clear how do how do we get all these students here and to for her question like this is something I'd like to see at our um I know we have our finance committee tomorrow and then what I'd like to see for the board meeting is that um you know
057we know the savings are coming down from purch from purchase services so we save money there. We know that we're saving money with the local busing, but we do know that that's a negative impact on the community members. So, it's hard to feel the recognize a savings when you know it's it's a negative impact if you're somebody who has to drive your kid to the school. But to your point, Emily, it is a a onetoone savings um to do it that way. And we also have some retirements that have happened this year and some people have taken early retirement which um you know help us in that salary and benefit category. We know that Doug is working with our ESC right now to help um our employees look at their benefits more holistically in the
058in the way of their their family structure to see if there's ways that they can save on benefits which in turn saves our school district in and benefits. Um, we do have the paytoplay aspect that we that we changed and we'll be monitoring how that's been responded to by our boosters and also how our engagement in those sports have have uh increased or decreased. So, you know, there has been a lot of changes to to save money that we need to look at and recognize to see how that's impacted and and then Doug will also be bringing the five-year forecast forward that we can we can take a look at to see see how this would be carried throughout because to me what I'm trying to view is when we go back out to the
059public for a levy when whenever that might be which you know might be next November you know I think that the the consistency in these changes in the way that this board is leading the district that we'll be able to put a levy out there that is explained better than the last one. We'll know more about the bianual bannual budget at that time. Um well we'll know exactly what it is at that time. will have already passed and um and we can and we can uh look at look at that way. But the one thing that I think I've been at least steadfast in in my time here is that we can't just you know you can't just burn it all down because a levy hasn't passed twice, right? We still have to compete. We
060still have to deliver for the community. We still got to deliver for the kids. And so that although we do got to make tough decisions like busing and see how our community responds, you know, we also can't um you know, it's it's hard because we made the decision the 27 to the 5,000. We saw that we had to look at every I guess let me also say that there's only so many ways that a district can save money, right? So we were kind of looking at all of them before. I think that some of them have um garnered more savings than we would have predicted as as well, right? So, I think that there is an opportunity here to make I I only see this as an investment. I think that we're investing whether we
061have half day and $5,000 tuition and we're investing if we we do it this way. we just, you know, some of it is offset by the $150,000 in busing and there'll be other small offsets and then the benefit of increased enrollment, but it really is an investment to try to compete and to do what's right for the community. Um, so that would be my message to to to the community on on kind of how we can make this decision, but hopefully we can bring kind of try to formulate that and I can work with you and and committee to try to do that because that's that's the way I would like to see it of like what what have our decisions yielded that we made already and did it yield enough to kind of make
062an investment. And I do think this is an investment. I think we are talking about an investment. Like you said, either way, we're going to lose. So, we have to start talking about what's important to the district. I think we've heard from so many people and the evidence backs it up that all day kindergarten is really, really important for student success. I think that what's really important for us in our community though is that there when we make a decision like this, there's somewhere they can go and they can hear like these are all of the financial decisions that went into this because we've been telling the public for two levy cycles that were running out of money. we're running out of money and now it looks like we're expanding services and we suddenly came
063up with new money and I know that like we've explained that that's not what it is and I know that there are a lot of factors that went into even talking about this. So I think if there is a place where everybody can come and see like these are all the things that went into this including the things about like we will not have to hire as many reading aids and all of those considerations that go into it I think are really really important to be transparent to the public. John, when you first uh called about this, you were talking about some decisions like the the retirements was that much money, the kindergarten money coming coming in would be more from the state and uh and saving on the busing, the midday routes and it
064wasn't a wash like but it was very negligible. I think I was wondering if maybe for next board meeting you guys could share. Well, one thing that was determined was because of the guarantee that Yeah, the guarantee kind of changes that number a bit, but what we can talk about is the 150. We can show that. We can show the 150 and then um you will be um at personnel tomorrow at that committee. There will be on there three uh potential retires and then and then are actually there's four. One of them is going to be an efficiency that would save the district $100,000. And I think Jenny's also going to talk tomorrow a little bit more about u what Michael talk about uh it's EMS um which is um the benefits that Jenny's been
065working with them through swoosh um with um our partner in swoosh but also neighbor Kings um year over year is saving a million dollars and so um there's the potential for that. So I I think you know the messaging is we're continue we will continue to be fiscally responsible. We will continue to find efficiencies where we can. Um and again it you know is this something we this is what we do at Milford. Is this similar to art, music and PE at the elementary? That's what we do. That's what we offer. We're not getting rid of that. And I think that this should be um something as well. Looking at the the slides up, 90.5% of families in Ohio, we're in we are in the super minority of those that don't offer all day kindergarten
066for our students. I did when I was doing research on this. We are there are pockets where there's everybody's tuition free, right? I mean, we are kind of on the uh outskirts of that, which you know, I think that we deserve a little ding for not doing more better research on this when we raise it to 5,000. I think You know, we I think that you know, we went from 2,700 to then trying to make money on the 5,000 aspect. I think what we did was got too high to where it impact. I think we just overshot, right? People were just finding other options. Well, no, I think the data would indicate that as Doug said that the the data indicated it's it's been before this. Yeah, it's before that. And so um you know
067the answer I think is also comes where Doug Treasure Acriman says we should be charging 8500 if you want to fully collect what it costs to do that. So you know I don't think we overshot it but I also you know 38% the last four years we're down 38% over the last four years. So I don't think this has to do with the 5,000 and um and over that we always learn to ask better qu like I think if at the beginning of year I'm just speaking for myself at this point right just saying like if I would have known enrollment had steadily been going down like that I knew it was flat but I didn't know how bad we you know that is a significant drop year-over-year so we probably could have anticipated going
068to 5,000 wouldn't exactly bring that in the correction but we were also researching all of our options that's why I think bringing back some of those things that we talked about a minute ago to see where our savings have happened this year because the one number that I always look at is our deficit, right? Because that's what we constantly look at to see how far out we can go, right? So, we're in deficit spending. So, we always look at that deficit to see how far out we can go, right? That's what John Espie used to show us all the time and it was when will we hit fiscal caution, you know, that that sort of stuff. So, I think what would be important to see in the the new five-year forecast is that number, right?
069Is that number flat? Has that number gone down? Have we extended it through what we did this year? And then I think that will really give us an indication on are we in a position to make an investment or not? You know, I think one thing we haven't emphasized enough is until this year, August one, when the middle school will open, we had no chance of all day kindergarten because we had schools that were like kids falling out the windows. You know, Scipel Boyd have classes in closets. So, it wasn't an option because there was nowhere to do that. Now, we do have an option. That's a real good point. Thank you. See, that's why I just I just I just talked until something really good comes. So, we have a new five-year forecast coming
070up this month that's going to be presented. Is this decision going to be reflected in that five-year forecast? No. Okay. Because we haven't voted on yet. Correct. Still a thought. Still a glimmer in our eyes, right? But I'm smiling. Yep. Yep. I know. I know. We at least one more question. Oh, you sure? Okay. Please. Can we get just give you the mic because it there it's being recorded so that way people can hear your question. I I fully support the full day and I see all of it. I guess that aside, I've already had several people ask me, "What about those high schoolers who can't get to school?" So, I am bringing it back to the busing because if you are spending money towards anything, you're going to get a back a lot of
071backlash. I do I fully believe that as somebody who fully supported you guys through all of these levies and have tried my very best to keep up with this information to feed it to our neighbors and anyone out there. I do believe you're going to get a lot of backlash for this bus situation. high schoolers aren't going to make it to school and that's I think I don't know Molly is that what you were gonna agree with back just so people on the I again I support half day and I've been nothing but a com and I can actually speak candidly I've explored before my children started at Milford I have a first grader I explored the ed choice I I came from St. Elizabeth Seaton, don't don't stone me, but we love Milford schools.
072We believe in the Milford schools and we pay the taxes to be here. And but I will tell you that I um brought this up because I'm also a half dayer. Again, do not please keep comments to yourself. I said to some friends, they're I think they're going to go all day. What am I going to do? And they said, they better not when we have kids that can't get to school. I mean, this is going to be So, I think just asking for transparency if if you lay it out because I mean, I learned that we're looking at enrollment going down because of ed choice because and once you put those butts in other seats, they're not going to get out. So, I I will reiterate that information to my friends, but I think
073if you guys do it as well, it really will help. Yeah, that's good. Well, and as for the busing, like when we cut the busing, it was a large chunk of our budget. And so it's, as I'm understanding it, it's not like apples and oranges. And then we're also since we will not have those half day bus routes, that is giving us money to go towards this balance of the full going to full day kindergarten. Is that correct? Sure. Sure. is there. So, there are other districts that have cut high school busing. Our students are going to make it. They're they're going to get to school. We're going to make sure they get to school. We're going to work with families and um the community in and of itself will work together to make sure
074that students get to school. So, I mean, we hear you and I we recognize that. Um so, you know, that of course it's an impact. I think I'm not I'm not the treasurer, but I can tell you that a million plus compounding over time versus I I mean I'm thinking more in terms of staffing. We're not adding staff. I mean, that's that's our that's what we're in the people business. We hire people and um they pour into your children and that is that's our largest expense. And so we're not adding staffing. And that's how we kind of got here was this idea that oh we can do this without adding more staff. Um so I we're not going to make everyone happy and and if ultimately this is the decision that we go forth with
075um I think it's going to prove to make Milford school community um you know better a better place. Um I would also say that I don't ed choice vouchers is not what's driving down our um enrollment. 90 I think it's 98% of those that take the vouchers were already either on or in parochial etc. So they're not it's not new folks necessarily going in. And um there you get outside of Claremont County going east, there really is no choice because there aren't 15 pros, you know, elementary schools, etc. or high schools. And um I I briefly talked about that at the last board meeting, but we're not afraid of competition. We're good. Right. And I And the other piece too is um having a good friend that sends their child to a prochial micnic. They
076raise their tuition by $1,000 because that's the minimum amount that you know approximately that you would get from Ed Choice. So um yeah, I think my part on the voucher is just making sure we stay as appealing as possible to the new families, right? So yeah, you're 100% right on the numbers. Um, and I I just don't, you know, it just keeps coming at us. So, it's just kind of that like that was a point. That's a good point to make about the the numbers and the enrollment just um I think that we have to be Parker. Is there a way we can do another survey to see on the high school busing or is there a way that we can better understand that impact to make sure that we we're far enough ahead of
077it now where we I mean we can't make decision to bring it back but we we can but we're not going to I don't want to put that out there. I just want to I'm wondering if there's ways that we can make sure that families are finding a way to do it or I'm I'm just posing this question. I'm not sure that a survey is going to tell us anything except that people are really upset that they don't have busing. Yeah. Yeah. I think it would be more of something coming from the high school uh or, you know, from each building about um people generally how can we how can if if you're struggling getting, you know, having ideas of getting your child to school, how can we help? Yeah, that's a good more so
078an outreach because we're usually tracking who's going to sign up for it anyways, right? every year for busing. Before we got busing, we had to make sure all the routes and we knew where to pick people up and everything like that. Yep. And ridership, I believe, um is about 30%. So, we don't have full ridership anyway. Okay. So, we can we can at least consider that to make sure that we're is 20. I completely agree. That's why it's good to bring it up. It's good to talk through. It's good to make sure we have some sort of talk track. Even if we do make the decision and yeah, everybody's not happy. We want to be able to make sure that our decision was backed by as much as we possibly can get. And the, you
079know, I'll say the I I have two eighth graders, so I'm looking for, you know, I've already reached out to be a text to some friends who, so that both the paytoplay fees and the busing hits me doubly hard. Um, and you know, Emily also has an eighth grader headed that way, too. So, you know, we as a board are all touched by these decisions we're making, too. So, um, we know what it's like and we see the numbers and, you know, we're kind playing the balancing act and trying to form. But we really appreciate folks here learning, spreading because I think you have to hear it 20 times before it sinks in. Like I still hear people ask me, I had somebody asked me yesterday, how do I vote on the Milford levy? And
080I was like, well, that's not today, but thank you. Hopefully, you were going to vote for it. Um, but you know, so people are still just just not informed because there's so much information coming. And so having all of us as a community share that is helpful. All right. Well, anything else? I feel like we're wrapping up our discussion. Does anybody else have any they'd like to discuss about this? I'm good. I think that we've set a good foundation for getting some more stuff. Oh, we got one more. Okay. Kelly's getting her steps. Yeah. So, if I understand correctly, um this isn't a for sure thing yet. This still has to be um voted on and decided. Is there a timeline or a deadline on when this decision is going to go in effect? I
081would guess next board meeting. Well, talk about it. You don't have to vote on it, but we can bring it to you Thursday. Um so, next Thursday. Yeah. So, we have committees tomorrow and committees range across a whole host of things. So, we'll be able to discuss this a little bit, which those are open to the public. Uh just so just I want to say that even though no one ever comes. Nobody comes. But I just want to make I don't want to say that so it doesn't sound like we're discussing things in private, but it's in committee. So we'll have tomorrow to discuss it more as a committee and then yeah, to John's point, we don't have to vote on it, but I mean we we will just just because it's such a a
082big decision. Well, and sooner is better for our families because they need to make a decision yesterday. We really are trying to at least in my own mind of just just try like I said earlier like if we can make it earlier where people can make a decision for next year and just and not decide to do something different or just get that ease that you know now they would have money back in their pocket would be would be good. So um and is enrollment still open for kindergarten if there are families? Yes. I was just going to say that, you know, thank you to Lisa and her team, Cindy and Sarah up front and uh all the enrollment that happens and the data they're on top of of trends and and birth rates are
083down, etc. So, um yes, you know, we definitely want we definitely want kids to enroll. We don't want sometimes some of our principles can say like the bus goes by in August and say, "Oh, I got to sign my kid up for kindergarten." That happens. No, sometimes they just jump on the bus. Yeah. Yeah. So, we're definitely open for uh for those folks to enroll their students in kindergarten. We want them as soon as possible. Spread the word. And just to add real fast, another comment um to kind of piggyback on the busing, too. For someone who has a child who's going to be going to all day kindergarten, you know, there's a lot of parents out there that um the busing effects, and I understand that. Um, but there's also a lot of parents
084who are two household um, you know, full-time workers where busing doesn't even really take an effect because we have to go to work before busing is even picked up or even dropped off and we might not have the support system to even have someone get a kid on and off. So, they're doing the, you know, the programs at school for the right at school and that's that's very expensive too. So the fact that you know this is a possibility where you can get a free tuition so that that takes that financial burden off those parents who still have to pay for their kids to go before school and after school. You know like half day is not an option for me because there's no way for me to get my kid at a half day.
085It has to be all day. So that's something that is is very exciting. I can see both sides of it. You know when I was in school we lost busing for a year and I I know what that's like. I was a a middle schooler. I was a high schooler. It was it was very tough. Um, but I know I've talked to a lot of other uh friends and community members who are very on the fence on, you know, who they were going to Milford and have now switched or considering switching. So, I do think that this is going to help and it kind of starts at kindergarten because, like you said, if you get them at kindergarten, hopefully they'll stay and and that will increase um um the amount of kids. hit the mic
086so because it just so it goes through the recording. Yay. Fun. Um, so what are we doing to accommodate if anyone wants to keep their kid in half day? What how does that work? They'll they'll reach out to their building principal to make sure that they know and then you can still come pick your child up perhaps. And then will there be a half day at each school or just at certain schools or does it depend on numbers? It it would be at each school. So it won't be a half day program. It'll be a full day program and they'll only stay for half a day. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So my understanding that the academic things would be in that half day. Okay, that makes sense. Just because I think I saw a couple people
087commenting online like I wanted my kid to have half day. How does that work? That's fine. Whatever. Hey, my wife my wife wanted half day, too. So that's fine. You're not alone. the accommodations to to be able to make everyone at least happy on the AMM side is like just so wonderful. So I appreciate that because to get a child prepared in 80ome days to guess what you hate preschool and you only go three days now you're going every day all day see you later was going to be an uphill battle. Would he probably eventually get used to it? Of course. We will figure out what we're going to do. And I I do appreciate that. Without Is that what you're trying to tell me? Yeah. It's do like a six week like introduction to
088full day situation. I mean, we did that back in the 90s, but that was different. Contact your building principal so that you know if it's approved, if it's AM or if it's PM. So, we've got some different it could be different in each building. I would maybe just come out and say that like if you are wanting half day, we can have a discussion about it. Just don't hardline people into full day in case they don't want to take it. They'll let they'll let us know. Yeah. I don't know. Um, but also Michael, I think the point you made like 20 minutes ago about being like, hey, maybe we should say that we made the best decision with the information that we had, but it maybe wasn't as full of a scope of information as
089we would have loved to have had, but also say that like we're making this information, we're pivoting now because we have the right people in place, i.e. Doug, and we can pivot and make these decisions that may come across as bullish, but there's a lot of research behind them. I think just admitting that like yeah, we may have maybe misstepped, but this is a better step. I think again give people I'm okay with that. I gotta interrupt you. I'm okay with that. But we didn't make a mistake. I know. But so I won't say that. We didn't make a mistake. No, I would not say mistake. You made the best decision you had with the information that you had. But people will because people are black and white will view that as mistake, not best
090decision with information. But I think admitting that goes like a phenomenally long way with people. Yeah, I think it's always valuable to be able to u make another a different decision with more information. So, you know what I mean? So, yeah, I think that there's like all the stuff that we pointed out that will will compile that with the the benefits that have come from the decisions that we have made that will allow this decision to be made without um without so much negative impact on the finances, but a lot of impact on the community and the future for the kids. and the competitiveness for the district. Mary Mary playing us off like that uh that uh whatever the award show is, but yeah. No, we'll uh Yeah, we'll work through that. Thank you. Okay,
091kind of a silly question, but do we have any public participation? We do not. We do not. Okay. Uh we will be dismissing to executive session. I just wanted to say our next regular board meeting is May 17th. Um it will be here in this building at 630 and when we go into executive session, we're not voting on anything. Um I think it's May 15th. Sorry, the 17th. It says 17th there, but I think it's actually the 15th. May 15th. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Um we will be adjourning from here, but we will not be making any decisions or having any discussion out here. Um so with that um you say the purpose Yes. I So I would like a um motion to withdraw into executive session to consider the purchase of property for public
092purposes. So moved. Second. Can I get a roll call? Mrs. Will? Yes. Mrs. Powers? Yes. Mr. Wilson? Yes. Mrs. Chestnut? Yes. Mrs. Mason? Yes. Thank you everybody.