001All right, welcome everybody. I'd like to call the meeting to order. All of our visitors and staff, would you please stand for the pledge? I pledge algiance 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. New Mexico. Thank you all. Um I'll go around the room and have everybody introduce themselves. Start Randy Casper Kern Casey Dus Amy Roel Susan Robinson Sto Christina Halgo Liz Wick Emly Mitchell Shannon Pierce Kath Thank you everyone. All right, we'll move on to the consent agenda. Do we have any changes or corrections to the agenda? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve. I'll make a motion to approve. Randy H2. Motion by Randy, seconded by Casey. All in favor say
002I. I. Post say. Motion carries. 40. Okay. Um, everybody have time to review the minutes from the April 21st meeting? There's no corrections or additions. I'll entertain a motion to approve as presented. Presented. Motion by Casey. Second. Second. Sure. All in favor say I post same. Motion carries 4. Business agenda. So on the cash report, um the only item that hasn't been received is the reimbursement from the rec for our Medicaid funding. Everything else has come in. Um all of the bank statements reconciled with no problems. The NMFA statement did come in on time, so that is included in the packet. Any questions on expense vouchures? Okay, I have a few bars. Uh bar 47 um is an increase um for additional impact aid revenue received. Um putting that to general supplies. Bar 48 is
003an increased bar for the forest reserve revenue that we received, which is down substantially from the average of about 2,000 down to $371. Bar 49 is an increase um in our athletic fund due to the fundraising that we did at the end of the school year. Bar 50 is in your packet. Um I would like to make a note that the function should be 2400, not 2200. U for the final allocation and the carryover from prior year. That's it. That's it. Any question on the bars? See no, we'll move on to asset disposal. Oops. It's too bad you can't see it. Um, the first item on the asset disposal, I didn't realize last year when we sold the Bears Den that we have listed the lots separate. Um, so I'm just wanting to remove those
004from our fixed asset listing. Um, we had a refrigerator at the Tedridge that went bad last year, um, that I still had on inventory. Um, laptops, computers, things that are no longer working or obsolete. Any questions on those items? All right. And we will move on to of the budget adjustments. Approve the budget adjustments. Second. You need to make an adjustment for the number change. Make sure it's on there. Yeah. The function on bar 50 should be 24 instead of 2200. friendly amendment to your motion, Casey, to include that verbage. I'll make a motion to change bar 50 to 22. 24 instead of 22,000. All in favor say I. I post. Motion carries 4. Nine. Motion to approve the asset disposal list. Okay. Casper Randy Casper by Sh. All in favor say I. I say
005same. Motion carries 5. All business locks. The dates that we had listed on the last agenda were incorrect. It's actually the 5th through the 7th which is the Thursday to the Saturday. So, just wanted to confirm that you all have those correct dates. And if you'll fill out your travel forms and leave those with us before you leave today, do that. And everybody's made their hotel reservations, right? Okay. Project update in your packet is a project update from the project manager. Um, as of this afternoon, the design development ODR is sitting on the executive director's desk at PSFA. As soon as she signs that, uh, Decker is ready to upload our construction design documents. Once they get uploaded in the PSFA website portal, um, we can then schedule what they call the page turner with
006PSFA to go over those construction documents. They do require at least a 14day lead time from the time that that's uploaded before they will schedule the page turner to make sure that all the various departments at PSFA have time to go through that. We're still on track to put out our RFP the very beginning of July around July 7th with bids due back around August 5th. Um, and then we would come to you at the August board meeting for approval of an RFP for construction. Exciting. Any questions on the project? Okay. Sale of existing school buildings and property. At last week's village council meeting, the council did vote to accept our uh proposal to buy the two buildings and the land in between um for the total price of the $100,000. We did break that
007out to be the $90,000 for this building and the parking lots and land surrounding it and then $10,000 for the cafeteria and gym building. I did present them with the reports that we had on um from the fire marshall, Palms and Associates, PSFA um and the documents and bids that we had gotten as part of the facility master plan and the um bids to try and bring everything back up to code for the gym. So, those are all in their hands. Um so, they accepted the conditions that we put on the purchase as well. I'm assuming that we're going to want to use our attorney to go ahead and draw up those sale documents. Okay. Then I will get with our attorney to draw that up. And since the sale is going to take a
008couple of years, since they can't take possession until we're out of those buildings, um Sean Jeffrey wanted to make sure, are we going to go ahead and use title services to hold that earnest money, the $10,000 earnest money, and then do closing through title services? I'd say yes. Okay. All right. Then I will go ahead and get with our attorney, get those documents drawn up and engage title services so that they can get a check cut. Any questions on that graduate profile? Okay. On page 110 in your packet and I have um two copies here. These are the final two visuals of how to present our graduate profile. One is kind of more of a um you know like a list version of the different um characteristics that we came up with to be the
009um acronym for bears. And then the other is kind of more of a like a graphic of it. Um, we did go ahead and put these out for a vote. We didn't get a whole lot of votes on them, but it was literally 5050 between these two. So, if the board has a preference either way, and then we'll go ahead and incorporate into these the next um agenda item, which has to do with the graduation requirements that are specific to Maxwell Schools. pass them around if you all would like to. And we do have that as an action item at the bottom of the agenda. I kind of feel like the first one is more like professional looking. Yeah. This one's a little bit elementary. Yeah. And as part of the new graduate profile law
010through peed, they're actually going to have a spot on their website where every district's graduate profile will live. So, it'll be published there. Maybe undermpowered. There's a title. Oh, sure is. Thank you. Anything else on that? Any questions? Seeing none, we will move on to new business. Auditor selection. Okay. So on March 26, I mailed out 46 letters to all audit firms that were on the state auditor's approved list. Uh we received two responses that they were not interested in providing a bid. We received three timely responses from Willoughby and Willoughby Woodard Cowan and Company and Fiero and Fiero. And then we received a late response um from accounting and financial solutions. Um it was postmarked on the day we required in the office. So I included it in these numbers. Um Willoughby and Willoughby
011came in at 14,700. Um Woodard Cowan and Company 16,800. Fiero and Pierro was 23,500 and accounting and financial solutions was 23,450. I contacted um several schools that had used both firms and actually one school had used both firms. Um Willoughby and Willoughby likes to do their audits completely remote. So that puts an additional burden on Tanya and I to scan and upload documents. Um some schools during COVID some of the larger schools are already scanning their documents into the accounting software so it's not such a burden for them. Um but the lady that used both firms preferred Woodard Cowan and company um I spoke with another business manager um from San Hon who said that Woodard was a tough firm to work with. They were very nitpicky on items that the firm wrote up as
012findings and they had to argue or defend the items to avoid the findings. The third business manager worked with Willoughby remotely but requested that the audit firm come on site to review payables. Willoughby sent one team member for one day. Um she has two people in the business office. She thought they did a decent job with their audit and didn't mind the additional time to scan and upload documents. Now when we have our previous audit firm here, they brought five people for an entire day twice. So, I didn't feel that one day on site to review payables by one person was really sufficient to look at all of our records. So, Tanya, Amy, and myself all reviewed the proposals independently and we all came to the conclusion that we would like to go with Woodard,
013Cowan, and Company out of Clovis. They were the second highest audit price at 16,800. Um, and they do provide about 120 audit hours, which is similar to what our previous firm did. Any questions on that? All right. Thank you, Susan. Moving on to policy. I4 4700 I E. Okay, these are the ones that we had on the agenda last time and I asked you to table them so that I could spend a little bit more time with the secondary staff on the graduation requirements. These two policies are the two that are required to be adopted by districts to implement the new graduate profile requirements and the new high school graduation requirements. A few years ago, we as Maxwell Schools had required 26 credits to graduate. A couple years ago, we kind of scaled that back
014and allowed students to meet graduation requirements by meeting the 24 credits that are required by PED. In meeting with the secondary staff, they would like to leave the same current 24 credits as Maxwell's graduation requirements. What that means, according to peed, they've included some flexibility in the graduation requirements that would allow schools to count certain career technical courses and certain work-based learning courses as core classes for the fourth credit. So, for example, all students have to take four credits of English in high school. That's still the requirement, but there is an additional flexibility now where if a student was taking maybe they were doing an internship in um with a newspaper for journalism for example, if we had someone who could show that the same um standards were being met under that internship as would
015be met under English 4, they could use that internship to meet their English 4 requirement instead of actually taking the course. They did the same thing under math. Instead of requiring four math requirements on the high school campus or dual credit, you could make a case for um say a construction math or a welding math class as part of an internship that would meet the same requirements as a fourth credit of math and be able to issue a math credit for that. In doing that, there used to be three different diploma pathways for students who were under an IEP. They have since removed that middle option that used to be like the career-based option because they have offered the additional flexibility within the regular curriculum to be able to meet those career-based options under a
016regular diploma. So now there's only two options for a diploma for a student with an IEP and that would be the standard diploma or the ability pathway diploma for those with the most significant disabilities. Currently we do not have anyone um who would need to utilize a work-based learning or a career technical option for their fourth English credit or fourth math credit. But that flexibility is now there under peed guidelines should we need that in the future. Where the options come in for each individual district for um local control. Basically, they have said that each school district and each local school board has to set two units for what will be unique to their school that coincides with their graduate profile of what they want their graduates to be able to do when they leave
017high school. And those two units are unique to each individual local school board. So each APS as a whole has to decide on what those two units would be for all of APS schools. For us, it's just the one high school. What the teachers, what our teachers would like to do is to go ahead and leave those two essentially as elective offerings. So all students would still have to take four credits of English. All students would still have to take four credits of math. They have removed the requirement that all students take and pass algebra 2. That's now if a student cannot pass algebra 2, it will not hold them from graduating as we could substitute a different math. However, our staff would like to still make that kind of the primary track for all
018students and all students attempt algebra 2. Um, science will still require three credits, two of those being a laboratory science. Social studies will still require four credits. They have changed up how you can group them if you'd like to, but our staff would like to leave them the way that we currently have them, which would mean freshman would take New Mexico history and geography. Uh, sophomores would take world history. Juniors would take US history and seniors would take government and economics. All students are required to have one unit of PE. All students are required to have a half a credit in health and that still can be offered at 8th grade. And we would like to continue to do that. Then it used to be that there was seven and a half elective credits. Now,
019they've broken that out and said there has to be five and a half elective credits with two units being a career technical education pathway. So, you have to take two sequential courses in the same career technical path. So, if you're taking uh food science, for example, maybe the first course would be like a nutrition class and then the second one would be um like a food science. If you were doing an A class, maybe it's introduction to agriculture and the second one being animal science or you know construction would be a construction one and construction two. So all students now have to have a twounit pathway within that five and a half elective units and then there's those two units that could be unique to each school. So the way that the policy service wrote
020the policy for all of the schools that utilize the policy service is to include those two electives into or I'm sorry those two units into general electives that gives the most flexibility for students um also if any students change high schools during the course of their high school career maybe a family has to move from here to say TRC the receiving school is required to accept whatever those two units were from the school that the student has already completed. So that allows the most flexibility for any students who may have to be moving around as well. Our staff would like to continue to make the primary schedule still be a dual credit class or a distance learning class simply because if we can have students who are juniors or seniors go ahead and take a
021remote dual learning class while they're a junior or a senior here at Maxwell Schools. We actually schedule them into a teacher's classroom who's familiar with that area during that period of the day to help them with that content, help them through, help them organize the class load. Um, then they're able to experience what the rigor of a college class is like while they're still in high school, while they still have our supports as opposed to waiting until they go off to college that initial freshman year and then they end up bombing some classes. So, they kind of get to try it out while they have those additional supports here with us and it's free to the to the families as well. So, long story short, after talking with our staff, they would like to keep
022our 24 credits the same as what they have been for the last several years. All of our students would still take algebra 2 with very few exceptions to that. all of our students would still take either a dual credit or a distance learning class so that they can experience that here while they have that opportunity. Uh and then that would meet the requirements for peed. I know that was a lot of complicated jargony stuff. Any questions on that? So the way the policy is written on page basically what they did and I'm not sure what page it is in your packet. Let me look real quick. In the policy itself, it's on page nine of 12 of the policy. It says seven and one half elective units that meet department academic content and performance standards.
023So that would allow the most flexibility for any kids who have to transfer schools and allow the most flexibility for kids to actually take classes that are meaningful and interesting to them and not just having to take a certain class because the state says we have to take this class. sense to me. Following the staff's recommendation. Yeah. Okay. And then the next set of policies had actually just come in and this is related to it's the graduation exercises and student discipline. This one is the result of the passage of the um law this last legislative session that went into effect immediately allowing students to wear tribal regalia at graduation exercises. This um specifically states that no student um will be disciplined for wearing any tribal regalia and neither the district or any school shall impose
024any consequences for students who wear tribal regalia or objects of cultural significance at graduations. Next one, fine arts act grant application. This is the application that we bring to you every year that um pays for our art teacher for the elementary art program. The application is the same as last year um and would fully fund our half day once a week art teacher and supplies for the year that next is the superintendent contract. You all had um when you did my evaluation earlier in the year, you had elected to go ahead and add an additional year keeping the three-year. We were waiting on the actual contract until budget language came out requiring the what percent for the raises. So the contract reflects that threeyear um term along with the mandatory 4% raise. questions on contract
025budget. I'm going to move to the table so that I can spread out. Okay. So, there were a couple of changes from the budget hearing that we held last month that I just wanted to bring to your attention. Um the transportation allocation did come in at 72,172 which was a decrease of 23,148. The local SP9 projection came in at $46,07. The state SP9 match for FY25 is 70,500. Um I believe that was a decrease of about 5,000 from prior year. The adalorum taxes were corrected in our debt service for both the geo bond and the edtech food service projections. The USDA and the state match healthy meals um have decreased about $8,000. Title one, two, and four allocations have been provided. The idea B application, sorry, allocations uh came in on Thursday afternoon. We still
026have no allocations in federal grants for the fresh fruits and vegetable program, the Carl's Perkins program, and the REAp, which is the rural education achievement program. Family income index, which is a state grant, um in the amount of $20,000, will not be funded. Uh we still have no allocations for state grants for the geo bond for library materials, the New Mexico grown fresh fruits and vegetables and the CTE which is about $81,000 in our budget. So with the addition of the $140,000 that we were facing, we're looking at a decrease in funding of another $189,000 so far. Um some of those funings, those allocations may come through, but we just don't know. So, a lot of these expenditures had to be moved to the operational budget. Um, there have been concerns from the legislature that
027many districts are sitting on large cash balances. Um, the ideal cash balance is somewhere between 12 and 15% of SEG and even as high as 18% for rural districts. Um, Maxwell is currently sitting at 15% for FY25 and 15.41 for FY26. Um, so we're kind of right in line with where we need to be. Um, Nancy Ross was a business manager. I believe it was an Aztec when I first started. And when I sat in on one of her budget sessions, she always said, "You have to live within your means. So, you should be spending your SEG. You shouldn't be saving it." So, I looked at FY25's SEG, which was 2,783,000. and our operational expenditures are estimated to be 2,781,000 which means we're pretty much spending our SG that we get. So we're not in,
028you know, increasing our cash balance. It's gone up a little bit, but not in a percentage that would be out of the norm. I think Amy said she went to a legislative session meeting Yeah. last week in Moscow and they were questioning why Mero had such a large cash balance. So I think ours is reasonable. I mean we need to have money at the beginning of the year to pay all of our upfront costs, our insurance bills and a lot of our federal don't start until October, but we have payroll in August. So we're covering August and September until federal funds come in. So that's why we our cash balance is about a month and a half if we had no SEG. Okay. So and reimbursements are more timely. Thank goodness. Yes. Um when I
029I I always put the summary page in there just so that you can see that we have a valid balanced budget. Um I did a a kind of a comparison of the revenues from FY25 to FY26. And um this was right after our IDB allocations came in. So the budget I've presented to you, I had no idea allocations. So the expenditures were shifted to operational. So now I can move some of those back down because the the funding has come in. Um, but like I said, the the funding that affects kind of salaries and benefits and operational type expenses, um, I was down $171,000, um, which, um, forced me to shift about a 1.15 FTE from state and federal funds up to operational funds. So, um, in the budget hearing, I had recom I had
030said that we were going to have a 2.86 million SEG. Um, and there was one factor, two factors that changed our at risk. Um, they projected it at 15.2% and it was actually 15.6. So, that gave us um, a couple thousand dollars more. And then there was a hold harmless feature built into the SEG which gave us another $2,000. So, um, from last year to this year, we've got an increase of $7,600. Um, indirect cost revenue has decreased because of the federal funds um, not being received. Uh, transportation, like I said, went down about $23,000 from this year, which is based on writership and mileage. Uh, food services, um, we are using up some of our cash balance. So, this year we'll start with a little bit less of a cash balance in the USDA
031reimbursements. Um the safe and healthy or the universal healthy meals has not put out an allocation. They told us to use our best guess. Um again, that's still a decrease because we're going to have less students um at school. Um the athletic fund, uh we had a a bump in our cash balance by about $3,800 due to that raffle fundraiser that we held at the end of the year. Um, I didn't budget as much in fundraising for athletics because we're going to have less students with that big class that just left. Um, so I I decreased um the revenue there. Um, our activity funds, our cash balance decreased by almost $9,700, but that was due to the seniors using all of their money. Um, I think they left about a$130. Um, let's see. Title One
032had a a decrease in our allocation of $5,600. Idea B had a decrease in the allocation of $7,000. Um, IDAB preschool decreased $500. Medicaid uh was a decrease of about $1,000. Um, our reap uh had a decrease of $9,100. Um, I have no allocation for the library, the geobond library, um, yet. We we probably will see something. um the 31100 which is our geo bond of course um because we're spending money. We're starting with about $300,000 less because we've used it. Um 31100 has a declining cash balance. Those are the funds that we were given for uh building and ground maintenance. Um so that is allowing us to save our SB9 funds for anything that comes up with the new building. um estate match I said we don't have an allocation yet and then 43,000
033um we had advelum at zero because the bond will be paid off in July on the expenditure side of things um I just kind of made some some notes for myself as far as estimated to projected um salaries, we have some level changes that are going to occur. Um we have FTE that wasn't funded out of a state grant, so that increased um our operational FTE. Um we did budget for um a gifted teacher because I was told that we may have um a student that comes in next year that is gifted and then we are required to have a teacher that has a gifted endorsement. So I just budgeted for it just in case. Um, do you have anybody on staff that's effect? We have one teacher who has started the course. So, um,
034like I said, in this current in the budget that you have, there is $43,000 of idea B that now that I have the allocation, I can transfer those out of operational. Um, health insurance. Um I always try to budget a little bit higher than what is necessary because we never know what kind of changes a family member or you know our teachers may have in their family um where they might need to add benefits. So I try to budget a little bit there. Um, I did budget for um unemployment um both in our uh 1000 function and in our uh counselor function just in case. Um, I did include um hiring an additional or the rec contracting with the RC for an additional day of social work means we won't have a counselor on staff
035see auditing um in FY25 we have 9500 budgeted and in FY26 I have 18. It was because of the way that the previous firm they build in the prior year when they did their preliminary and then they build their final. So it was kind of split over two years. So that's why we had a significant increase there. Um legal I did go ahead and reduce that [Music] down in the um custodial budget area. I did in um increase um health insurance for um again a life event that might change or somebody that needs benefits and the same in our food service. Um we have one person that's paid out of operational and one person that is paid out of the national lunch program. So I just wanted to make sure that if somebody decides to
036add benefits come January when we have open enrollment that we've got enough budget authority to do that. Um, I did budget in our transportation fund um with the hopes of hiring an actual bus driver. So, I budgeted for one FTE and then family benefits for that person. Um, we had a decrease in our ad valorum cash balance. So um the budget is reduced just due to available revenues. Um lunch program we talked about um those numbers are directly tied to the reimbursements from kids. So those those expenditures are down, revenues are down. Um 24101 our title one um because the funding is down we had to shift additional FTE to operational. Um our IDB allocation is down. We had to shift additional FTE to operational 2410 24154. That's our teacher training it. Um we are
037going to um have funds that will revert if we don't spend them. Um, so we're paying for the gifted features endorsement and coursework just so that we don't lose those funds. Uh, 24189. Um, that was a flat allocation. Um, we got $10,000 last year. We're getting $10,000 again this year. Uh, reap funding. Uh, we won't have that. Hopefully hopefully we'll have it in October. Um 27107 that is the carryover for our library funds and we're kind of holding that in case we need some additional library materials and it's for text for books or for computers, bookshelves, so things that we might need in the new school. We're kind of holding that funding for that. Um I've got $700,000 in the geo bond. Uh so that is for finishing the design phase and moving into the
038construction phase. Uh 31200 that is the uh repair and maintenance for buildings and grounds. We have about $94,000 left there. And then our SP9 both local and state um our balances are increasing because we're preserving those for um any spending at the new school that the state will not participate in funding. And then 41,000 the reserve amount is collected. Um, this budget I have 181,000 left going into the reserve and that goes to pay the payment in August because we won't have time to collect it before the payment's due. Um, and then the 43,000 is our edtech. Um, I've estimated we'll have about $9,600 left after we make the final principal payment and that can be transferred to the 41,000 to cover that debt service payment. That's the budget in a nutshell. Yes. Unfortunately, questions
039for Susan. Thank you. You're welcome. else. Anybody? Okay. And now we'll move on to other business attendees report. Okay. Liz Wick is here to talk about an update on science materials. Um yeah. Um, I am not with them yet. I have not made a choice. I was actually just filling out the grant for New Mexico beef or the foods program. So, I thought about that and then I was like, I wonder what would happen if I Googled it. It's just an application. So, hopefully we get some money for that for the foods program next year. Um, and that would be for her food science class, not the science separate from science. But um I talked to Terry Coyle today from the textbook that I really like and they're just having like a back an issue
040because everybody wants to see their textbooks. So she said as soon as they come in they'll be sent so that I can um offer up elementary. She is sending some elementary and some high school so we can see if we want to go K12 on that. So June, I promise. I promise if I have to drive somewhere and pick up the books myself to look at them and make a really good, you know, I want to make a really good decision because I'm not going to be here forever and the new school, well, no one is forever, but you know, some someday I'll ride off into the sunset. That was just I just finished year 27. So well I know you talk like 40. So um but I will have I will have some information
041in June. Promise. And we don't have budget authority to order those until after July one anyway. So we still have time. Okay. Teacher Carol has been in the business for 40 years. Got a ways to go yet. Yeah, I think I think that would have to come with a straight jacket, but maybe I can get you one of those. And then Madalgo can give you an update on the summer literacy program that we are hosting this year. Yes, our program is slated to start June 2nd. Right now on our roster, I have seven kids on our roster. Three are Maxwell kids, three are Springer kids, and one Roy. Wow. Yeah. So, Monday through Thursday, 8 to 12, and we have a whole curriculum that we have to use. And so, and it's being paid directly
042from peed in the state. So, they are paying a coordinator and then we had three staff members volunteer to be teachers for the program. Um, and it'll run June 2nd through the 26th. And people still can sign up. The more the marrier. June 2nd through the 26th. It's from 8 to 12. All literacy. Students who are going into kindergarten all the way through students who are exiting 8th grade are eligible. And they don't have to be Maxwell kids. It can be anybody. Great. We did have a um staff member resignation last week. Kevin Hoy has resigned. He's going back on the road for construction work. So, I have not posted that job opening yet. I'm doing some calculations to see if if we'll be posting another full-time custodian or if we need a full-time position
043there given our financial situation. So, I'm I'm evaluating that and then we'll proceed accordingly. We did post um all of our coaches and athletic director positions two weeks ago. The cuto off for applications was today and I'll be setting up um a committee to do interviews for all of those positions. Um that'll probably have to be next week with the holiday come. And then as Susan mentioned, I did attend the legislative finance committee meeting that was held in Moscow last Tuesday. That was a really awesome experience. Um the entire legislative finance committee went to Mscaro. So there was a a large number of both state representatives and state senators that were present. Um they asked uh Dr. Brun and uh Mr. Flumen from Roy to do a presentation on rural education and the challenges particularly
044the financial challenges of being a rural school district and funding everything that needs to be funded. Um and also looking at you know capital outlay funds and building new schools since so many of us up here in this region right now are in that process. Mascarero is about a year ahead of us in that building project and we were actually able to go through and tour their um facility as it's in the construction phase um which was another really awesome experience. Um they have kind of a mixture of different projects going on. They were funded for 10 teaches. They are also using HomeSpot, which is who we were looking at going with. And some of their teaches were actually like at the finishing stage. So, we were able to walk through those and see the
045quality of the the construction of the homes. Um, and I think that's going to be perfect for what we need for them because they are so remote and there's no hotels or motel available in the area. They actually have set up one of their teacher jes almost like an Airbnb and if there's an emergency they have several staff that commute from I guess their principal is an angel fire. Um but if there's a weather issue then they have somewhere where people can stay for the night and be safe. Um they are looking at doing their rent for their teges on a sliding scale depending on salary which may be something that we want to look at. you know, when we put in the new teacher, we probably want to look at our rent structures. Um,
046and so I thought that was a really great idea. They have both a brand new building that they built, you know, from the foundation up, but then they also have like a renovation that has new construction attached to it, which is similar to what Springer is going to be dealing with with their old gym. Um, and she talked about the challenges that came with that. And as they, you know, tearing down walls and trying to add on, they discovered that there were a lot of issues in that old construction they hadn't anticipated that caused a lot of um, a lot of delays and a lot of issues. The um, legislators, it was very interesting because some of them were extremely supportive of rural education. um and the challenges that we face in terms of finding,
047you know, certified qualified staff, being able to keep our certified qualified staff um and and being able to offer the variety of programs that need to be offered to kids when you're so small and have limited resources. Um some of them really hammered hard on the cash balance that they had. And so they explained both the reimbursement style of budgeting that we have to do as well as the fact that there's several things that the state will not contribute towards paying towards when you're building a new building and that you have to reserve some of your funds back for those items. Um they talked a lot about outcomes. Um, one state senator questioned how Moscow can have a 100% graduation rate and only a 35% math proficiency rate. Um, and so she talked a lot
048about that and talked a lot about, you know, when you have small classes, for example, this year our junior class only had four kids. So if two of those students who, you know, have IEPs don't test proficient, well, we're at a 50% rate. but with their accommodations and such, they're still able to graduate and earn a diploma. And so, we talked a lot about how, you know, very small changes in one or two students in a rural small school can really impact those types of numbers. Um, both Senator Compost and Representative Sanchez were there. Um, and both of course were very supportive of rural education. Um and I think a lot of um a lot of the legislators eyes were kind of opened, you know, both on the drive in to how remote that is
049and as to what Moscow is has been able to to do given their limited resources. So that was very positive. And that is it for me. Questions though. I love that word. Yeah, for sure. Literally. Question. Yes, Kathy. On the um posting for the uh all your coaches, why why do you do that? Uh we didn't do it last year, but we did do it this year. um part of it this year, you know, last year at the beginning of the year, we restructured our increment schedule for pay. We separated out the varsity coaches and the junior high coaches. This year, we had some challenges in terms of having enough students to to make a team. So, we were able to start with a junior high volleyball team, but we couldn't finish the year. We
050had the discussions about whether to co-op with junior high or not co-op. We ended up doing a co-ed team. So this year, you know, with our limited budgets, we went ahead and did a poll with all of the kids who will be here next year to see what they were willing to commit to participating in to figure out how many teams for each thing we were going to have. So because some of those teams structures changed, I felt like it was only fair for teach for coaches to be able to apply for the the coaching positions that they wanted now that all of that has changed. There were so many things that had shifted that I felt like I needed to open that back up and let people apply for what they wanted. So, it
051was like if they don't want to do a co- team, right, then they wouldn't have to apply for that. Or now that we had separated out um like junior high and varsity track, if somebody only wanted junior high or only wanted varsity, they could apply for that. I think those have always been separated. The only one that separated cross country and maybe cheer. Yeah. I don't think they I don't think she ever got it separated, but see on the whatever the different things in I don't think I ever saw them either last year. Any other questions? Call Any questions from the board? Okay, seeing no, we'll move on to item number nine, hearing from the delegation. And Miss Pierce is asked to address the board it up to her and then anybody else wishes to
052speak. So, I'm an elementary teacher. I've been an elementary teacher for this is the finish of my 24th year. Um tried to do a little bit of research just to come up with a little bit of a philosophy um not only for myself but um looking at a lot of data. Um, so this is kind of what I came up with with kind of a uh bringing in a whole lot of research and some of my own ideas about an elementary teacher. Um, ele elementary teacher focuses on academic, social, and emotional growth. We use identified standards and benchmarks based on foundational skills in kindergarten through fifth grade to assess readiness and growth. The basic literary, numerical, and social abilities on which a child's education is built are referred to as foundational skills. A successful transition
053from year to year relies on the establishment of a strong educational foundation built during the elementary years. With that being said, I'm here to speak about how I feel about the rift of our district's elementary teacher. I am extremely honored to know that you have confidence in the decision to have elementary teachers take on more responsibilities and more duties and that you believe we can teach combined classes with success. I do believe that elementary educators here in Maxwell have been able to combine classes with the best success possible. However, it is not ideal. I feel there are other alternative solutions to the riff of another elementary educator so that we do not have to have another combined class because if you don't know we already have one we already have one combined class and we
054only have one um educational assistant to assist in now having a second combined class. I don't want anybody to lose their job and I can't imagine what it felt like for the three employees to find out that they were rifted. But I can think of other ideas that I feel would be best for the education of our students. Following the budget meeting information that our district was not doing well monetarily, a meeting was held the next day with the staff and informed that a reduction in force, which is a riff, would have to take place. Miss Roble encouraged us to come to her with any ideas we might have. It took me some time to gather information from colleagues in the district and I finally went to Miss Robble with some of these ideas that
055I had come up with. Since speaking with Miss Roble, I have come up with other ideas as well that I wish to share with you tonight. We have already been teaching at the elementary level with one combined class. I believe these ideas could possibly free up some funding so that we can keep our other elementary teacher that was Rift. I have been working at Maxwell Municipal Schools for 10 years and in the 10 years we have only had a PE teacher for the last three years. The other years our district seemed to function just fine without that maybe I guess FTE. However, it was my suggestion that since our students did need one credit of phys physical education and a half credit of health and a warm body to sit and supervise the half credit
056of driver's education that maybe we could just have a half-time teacher or FTE instead of a full-time. Thinking back, I can also remember that in the 10 years of my employment here in Maxwell, I don't recall having a full-time shop teacher. and what our district did offer previously did provide our students with what they needed to graduate. So, since our district seemed to function just fine with half day or half FTE in this area, we might be able to do so again. Um, I have also just recently, of course, I I was gone when that came up, but I I was recently informed about one of the custodians resigning. Therefore, I feel that could free up funding if the district would consider hiring a part-time custodian instead of a full-time custodian to free up those
057funds as well. I also remember when we had a part-time nurse instead of a full-time nurse. That might be something to look in as well. Um, again, all of these are just things that I look back in the 10 years that I've been here of those things that did work and were able to um maybe look at that again. I feel that the budget meeting was held and overnight the decision seemed to be made about the riff. However, I don't think it was the was beneficial for our students to lose another elementary teacher and have another combined class. So, in conclusion, um I looked over the schoolboard policy and the educational philosophy listed on your schoolboard policy. Um I'm not going to read it verbatim. I'm just going to say one of the biggest things
058I f focused on there as I read it and it says we which is the school board will accomplish our mission by providing a diverse well-trained staff dedicated to delivering a sequential comprehensive curriculum based upon fiscal responsibility community involvement sound management practices and a commitment to measurable academic progress. I just want to know from you guys, is it is this decision to riff an elementary teacher in the best interest of our student success here at Maxwell Schools? I feel that that foundational building starts from that kindergarten through fifth grade. But yet, that's where you're combining classes. That's where you're combining duties. That's where you're combining responsibilities. Not that we can't do it. It's been done one with one combined class. I I'm just concerned about two combined classes now and how that will affect the
059outcome and the measurable academic progress of our students which is stated in the schoolboard policy as your educational philosophy. Um, I know there is no perfect scenario to respond to the budget cuts or the funding cuts that we are now seeing, but I do know that there are other ways and other avenues to approach. And like I said, I did go to Miss Roel and give her those and some came up with some more um as after I sat with her and gave her some thoughts that maybe could be put into place so that we could um save that position um because that's what's best for our students. Thank you, Mr. Anybody else? If you'll excuse my hat, but I've been working all day wrench and I just can't um I just like to make
060a point that uh when I was reviewing the minutes and I've caught this another time and I need to uh bring it up, but at your last meeting when you went when you went into your closed meeting, of course, you came back and your president came back in and she said that that no um decisions were made. So, uh if you know it's my thinking that you went in and you were given a briefing on uh the rifts um you know that were going to have to be made but um so and and just um that's like an outline. So to me should have come back in and discussed that you know what in open meetings so that maybe there'd be more people here you know that would know what went on and what risks
061were made okay because I don't think I don't think the public's getting enough information about you know just you know that this should be an open discussion okay do you understand what I'm trying to say that you know that it's okay to go into those closed sessions and discuss stuff and like come out of the course to say no no no uh there was nothing there was no decisions made but you have to come back and still discuss you know in some form of you know what was you what um what the platform was and what decisions you're going to have to make and maybe you can make it clear you know for me to understand how those decisions were made without your input or you know in a public Well, the the board doesn't
062have any authority to hire and so technically I mean I think it's you know it was an informative session the board doesn't know we might make the decision to riff but we we don't have input on hiring firing of individuals. Okay. So, so that the so that's just the difference how you're making it is that a reduction in force not so much that it is that anybody was being fired and um even to well now that uh Mrs. Pierce brought up about the significance of you know a teacher being caught up in that risk. Um that will have a you know a big impact on students because they do need those they we do need those teachers especially in the elementary grade because that's where the kids learn you know a lot of what's going
063to help them get through the rest of their years. from people in high, you know, in school without without that good strong background. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Moving on to the consent agenda. There's no further discussion. and entertain a motion to approve the graduate profile which one. I like the one better the live one. Yeah. Yes. With the typo correct. Yes. So voting to accept that one. Yes. motion to accept the first choice. Second favor say I post. Motion carries four zero. Item B, approval of policy I4700, student schedules and course loads. Entertain a motion to approve the policy as presented by Miss Rob by Randy. Second. Second. See? All in favor say I. Motion carries for zero. Approval of policy I 7350 IKFF graduation requirements. Get
064a motion to approve. Make a motion to approve. Motion by SH. Second Randy. Second by Randy. All in favor say I. Both say the policy I 4750 I pay NFB graduation exercises. Motion made by Casey. Second. Second. Sure. All in favor say I. Post. Approval of policy J4600/JK student discipline obtain a motion to approve by Casey. Second Randy. All in favor say I. Post same. Approval of fine arts grant. Motion. Motion by Casey. Second by SH. No. All in favor say I. I. Same. Approval of superintendent contract as was outline with the legislative increase in adding a year. Char second. Casey. All in favor say I. Post say. Motion carries. Approval of FY26 preliminary budget by Randy, second by Casey. All in favor say I. Post same. All right. Next board meeting is June 16th.
065We have a problem with that one. So seeing none I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn second by shiver say I post mean at 7:39 possible.