for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not to be considered a public community meeting this meeting is an in-person meeting held at 870 Coldfax here in Benton Harbor in addition a live stream of this meeting is available at the following link questions may be submitted
beforehand to Natalie.bhas.org or presented in person during the public comment section as indicated in the agenda board members may be contacted through the emails listed below requests for special assistance including for persons with disabilities may be sent to Natalie
bhjas.org i call this meeting to order officially at 6:07 p.m we'll begin by reciting the pledge of allegiance i pledge 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 secretary Tripley King please call the role president Robinson present vice President Bows present secretary Triplet
present treasure Bradley present trusty Rocket Martin present trusty Gavin present trusty Doyle madame President a quorum has been established all right next we have approval of the agenda um our agenda is for the most part similar to what we
reviewed in the work session i do want to call your attention to an additional field trip for Fairplane Middle to Washington DC to my understanding there's a boiler change order number four um that was not on the original
work session agenda we do have the ESSER funding update um as requested by Trustee Gavin and then as you all are aware we have a close session at the end of the agenda directly after our training however at this particular time we don't have Trusty Doyle present i'm
not sure if she's going to be able to make it this evening um so we'll have to discuss a little bit later uh take a recess and discuss whether we're going to proceed with the actual board training as it will not count if we do not have the full governance team present vice President Bowens
um Madame President is it possible to make an amendment or do I need to make a motion what would be the suggested amendment that we move our close session um after section F on the agenda well
section I under after we approval of the meeting minutes so um as noted in the email we can have the closed session however our attorney is currently in another board member so if there's any questions that the board may have for the attorney he will not be available to
to clarify that so that's why I have it at the end of the meeting to give us a greater opportunity to consult with him if there's any questions or clarifications needed so by us extending the meeting I mean by us putting him at the last he has committed to being at
the meeting correct he's indicated that we can call him if we need to which is why I put it at the bottom to give us a greater chance to ensure he's out of his board meeting that he's presently in okay thank you any other questions comments concerns
regarding the agenda madam you have the floor madam President I sent an email to you um about an agenda item for a update on Was that regarding the Hobart fund
update it was that I see that but it was also about Michigan rehabilitation services with driver's ed i have requested that can you speak can you speak in the the mic Dr buts i have Dr bonnie here tonight that can
address that for you okay thank you do you know exactly where you're going to plan to do that Dr butts i can do that under um where are we here under number five um under Hobart
fund by Hobart fund update so that would be item E under superintendent correct and uh Vice President Bowens can you restate what that item is it was Michigan rehabilitation services with
the driver's ed um I wanted a number of how many students would qualify for that services um how many have taken advantage with us bringing driver's ed here it could be cost savings and if there has been numbers that how many qualify for it versus how many we would
be paying i just wanted the title well I gave you more than a title thank you so um Miss Singer if you could please edit the agenda and add an E under superintendent concerning the Michigan Rehabilitative Rehabilitation Services
regarding driver's education all right any other do we have a motion to approve are you making a motion to approve on the agenda with the Amendment is there any support support the motion has been made by Vice President Bowens and supported by
Trustee Gavin questions comments and concerns hearing none secretary Triplet president Robinson yes vice President Bowen yes secretary Triplet yes treasure
Bradley yes trustee Rocket Martin yes trustee Gavin yes yes motion carried all right next on the agenda we have review of our board of education norms the board of education norms for Bitten Harbor area schools we will treat each other with respect we will listen to learn we will refrain from side
conversations we will use our time wisely starting and ending our meetings on time we will challenge ideas not people we will ask questions when in doubt there will be no surprises at the board table we will practice the seven norms of collaboration those are pausing paraphrasing posing questions putting
ideas on the table providing data paying attention to self and others and presuming positive intentions next on the agenda we have public comment on agenda items is there anyone present all right you have the floor and then I'll go ahead and read
our public comment statement the Bitten Harbor Area Schools Board of Education recognized the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on district matters today there are two areas for comment on the agenda of which you may
decide when to speak public comment on agenda items and open public comment we request that each interested participant complete a public participation form using legible writing to ensure that responses are appropriate and properly focused peritt Harvard area schools bylaw 0167.3 which governs board
participation at board meetings we request that you preface your comments with your name address and group affiliation when appropriate each statement made by a participant shall be limited to three minutes a threeminut duration and per bylaws no participant may speak more than once on the same
topic until any other persons have had the opportunity to speak on that topic participants may remove their mask when addressing the board participant shall direct all comments to the board and not to staff or other participants the board will listen take comments and questions under advisement and not respond at this
time i as president will refer questions to the superintendent for research and response please ensure that your public participation form which is located on that uh table at the entrance includes your contact information as requested if you have specific questions for the
board or executive team that require followup please email those directly to Natalie.bhas.org you have the floor thank you very much President Robinson my name is Deanna Ellis Shopan i I am an employee uh with the Benton
Harbor Area Schools i am the Swahili teacher here in the high school and I just wanted to take the time to say that as a collective this board is the one of the greatest uh group of
individuals that I've seen work together i think I can say I have a relationship with each of you some of you know me from long time ago some of you learn me know me from recent these two young men here these are my heart i can say they
grew up with me right right um uh Mama Queen uh Raquette right here yes we work back together in the day right um this lady here I don't know her but this is the
president when you say the president that's the president right there okay um if you think I know anything as a teacher if you think I know anything at all God's got my back that's my principal right there Mr
morand god's got my front my principal was Fred Roseberg but if I know anything that's my principal right there Ronaldo Triplet if I know anything I'm very disappointed that things are going the way they are going i think
that it is sometimes in our conflicts and our difficulties we think it's time to separate but it's when we should hold together stronger i'm not really crazy about the fact that my superintendent is leaving and that's why I'm coming tonight because my superintendent is
leaving okay uh if you can say that you are a friend of the Swahiti program to me you are a friend of God this man has showed that he's been a friend of God he's been a friend to the Swahiti program but there's one person that I want to although she's younger than me I want
to bow to her if God can be a woman that's her right there elanor G this is the woman that kept me in this institution when I was sent out she called me on the phone and got me back you all are doing a wonderful job do not
let evil mess up your work okay I'm going to let that stay right there and most importantly may God's will be done without any decision that's made around here hallelujah thank you anyone else for
public comment on agenda items good evening my name is James Sims i'm a resident of Benton Township Charter and uh I want to start by saying that there was a time who I I had came here and I had some
concerns and as of now in my life uh those concerns have been met and I want to say personally to the school board thank you um I really want to say congratulations as a whole for the changes that have
been made as far as what I have experienced with student attitude and I'm taking it upon as my own responsibility of being able to get out and express the changes that have
made with Benton Harour Area Schools that we are not just a school system that is going to be the best in this community state United States but globally
um I have been informed with great transparency and that's why I would reach out to the community that transparency right now is the key to our not just survival but our accomplishments of despite what happens
as we can see right now as this country is making changes with our school systems with unapologetic transparency i feel that it's our responsibility as not just taxpayers but investors into this school system that
we will be able to communicate with our concerns as well as you being able to communicate with us with decisions that you make the reason why I say this with the decisions that you make and the level of transparency that we we would have with
each other is because as you make these decisions and we know exactly what you have to do to accomplish what's right and the greater good not just for our students but for our staff and I mean that goes all the way to the maintenance
servicing the boilers to the teachers and the people who provide safety for our students that can actually lead out into our community where our young people would have a sense of ownership in this building as not only as their
city hall but as their state capital in a perfect world we have people who make investments into their future and as us as people not just of color but people in a community that we
know that the adversary wants one thing from us and that's productivity productivity can be can be can be bought from taking an area and concentrating it into a place where crime can be committed so there would be
an income flow or there would be an institution where will provide a future for this country to be able to move forward and be competitive globally this is what I see with Ben Harbor area schools and that's why I stand before
you and say thank you and then I turn and say to us we are the backbone for them if this were the leaders of the free world we would be their armed
services sir please wrap up your comment so in that I close in saying go Tigers i got your back we can do this most high bless thank you anyone else present for
comment public comment on an agenda item you have the floor robinson 380 Arbor Ridge i disagree with the decision to accept the resignation of Dr buts uh I think that this school district needs continuity it takes time
to turn something around i personally lead a congregation and uh with vision it takes time you just can't turn around overnight we he he's only been the district uh superintendent for little less than three years it
takes longer than that to make a change i think that it would be good to maybe sit back down at the table and see if something can be worked out so that he can stay and keep leading our district in the positive direction thank you
thank you anyone else present for public comment on agenda items good evening everyone god bless you so good to see you all um I wanted my husband and I to come this evening to let you all know that um we have some
time on our hands now that the those two beautiful monuments are are in place and um we would like for you to consider to call on us um we've been pretty consistent for the last almost 15 years
now in the community and I tell you it's been special it's been special coming home and um yes um we did hear about the upcoming transition for the uh superintendent and we would certainly if
there's anything that we could say or do to help to assist with that um the world our place here locally it's a crucial hour we just want to try and get it right you know before we roll up out of here okay that's where I'm at with it
okay thank you thank you anyone else present for public comment on agenda items all right hearing none we'll proceed with the agenda i do want the board to know I'm a little bit uh more laidback than I normally am my head is
killing me so anyone that has some extra positive energy to bestow upon the table I would appreciate it so that you all can kind of balance me out i have taken something for us so hopefully I'll be better in the next 30 or so minutes so if anybody has some energy they can give
to balance the table out i know I kind of set the temperature and I don't want to make anything awkward in the meeting that would be amazing all right so next we have approval of meeting minutes the meetings for review today are work session 2020
22525 close session 22525 and regular session [Music] 311205 as well as special session 32125 and work session 32525 i am noticing that I don't
see close session minutes in my packet i'm not sure if it's exactly um if it's just me miss Singer are those printed and provided to the the rest of the board i can't okay so we don't have um Secretary
Triplet have those been provided to Miss Singer just yet yes okay okay so I would ask that we um we can't we would have to strike through those minutes if they're not present
madame President you have the floor those minute uh close session those minutes were emailed on the same night to all of the um trustees on the board of education and I'm not sure that I've ever really seen close session in our
actual packet because they are secure i know they're not normally linked to the agenda yeah they're not in our packets because they're they're private and I believe that was Was I present that night yes
yes ma'am no you weren't okay okay so we'll if the board is um has received those minutes and you all are comfortable taking a vote on those we can proceed with the with the vote as noted and I will just be
abstaining as I can't recall seeing those minutes and I just don't I can't remember if that was a meeting I was absent or not but other than that if the board is comfortable and has received You can do that okay you forward it to me
okay is there a motion to approve the minutes so move is there a second or support support the motion has been made by Secretary
Triplet by Trusty Doyle and supported by Secretary Triplet any questions comments or concerns secretary Tripley King please call the vote president Robinson yes vice President Bowens yes secretary
Triplet yes treasure Bradley yes trusty Rocket Martin trusty Gavin yes trusty Doyle yes motion carried uh Trusty Doyle can you clarify the day that the time that you entered
6:24 Madam President okay thank you so I do I was present in that meeting and she has sent those to me so thank you um I think I may be thinking of the 312 close session
minutes those have not yet been provided or 311 close session i think that was the actual date I was missing so we will have those on the next agenda okay all right thank you for that clarification Secretary Triplet and
thank you for forwarding those to me i just didn't feel comfortable approving them and I couldn't remember exactly which ones they were we'll proceed with the agenda reminder protocol as of 9:13 2022 all comments will be limited to two minutes per trustee per
topic our first uh section of business is curriculum and student support services today we'll begin with the summer scholars K through8 program and that is staff report C2 director Cups you have the floor
subject: Summer Scholar K to8 instructional program reason for board consideration the board of education shall approve all textbooks or contracts used as part of the educational program of this district purchases over $28,048 need board approval according to
the most recent state of Michigan Department of Education threshold facts and analysis the district is prepared to purchase summer scholars to help achieve one key district goal improving academic performance as measured on local state and national assessments over three
years the program provides 25 comprehensive English language arts lessons 25 mathematics lessons and multiple STEM learning experiences consumable materials for students as well as multi-year access to an online instructional platform will ensure
instructional success for our teachers during this summer programming policy reference policy number 6320 purchasing policy number 2210 curriculum development funding source Michigan comprehensive literacy development grant
strategic plan reference academics Benton Harbor area schools will increase student achievement as measured on local state and national assessments recommended action that the Benton Harbor area schools board of education votes to approve the purchase of summer
scholars as presented totaling $46,91.78 is there a motion to approve staff report C2 i make a motion to approve staff report C2 i second the motion the motion has been made by Treasure Bradley and supported by Trustee Rocket Martin any questions
comments or concerns madam President yes i just got a question um last year for summer school what curriculum did we use last year for summer school uh the I was told that we had materials that the
teachers could use with and Lexia and we did not purchase a curriculum uh or program to be used for summer school and the feedback from the teachers was that they would prefer to have a program to
be able to use this coming summer so in followup to that question did the teachers get to look at the teachers that are teaching this summer school did they get to look at the
curriculum or this there were some teachers that previewed it and the instructional facilitators and principles previewed it so the Okay I like what you just said there were some teachers that did it were it the teachers that will be teaching summer school we don't have any teachers that
have been assigned to teach summer school at this time okay thank you Madam Secretary Triplet madame President I'm very concerned um and to my colleagues when we throw the word curriculum around because we do not
have an outline curriculum that has been presented to me yet these are resources that we are using um hopefully in alignment with the state standard and what have you so just for
clarification purposes we are voting on some resources to be used for the summer program but this is not a curriculum an outlying curriculum for Ben Harvard area schools because
today and for some time now I haven't seen an established written outline curriculum with this district any other questions or comments from the board trusty Rakette Martin i see the
funding source is from the Michigan Comprehensive Literacy Development Grant so I assume that is something approved by microphone the state of Michigan can you repeat that in the mic i said I see the funding source is from
the Michigan Department of Ed so I assume that it is something that is approved by them and that it would probably most likely uh satisfy the needs of of academic achievement for our students during this summer program i
have done summer school many many years and it is always best to have um some curriculum in front of you to work through and to do uh Il is a computer program that they use normally during the school year and the students use it
at home so to have something extra would be very nice to have and I think it is approved by it's not costing us right it's through a grant so um I'm good with it
i I just have a trusty Gavin um Director Couch can you tell us can can you hear me can you tell us um what was the main deciding factor for you choosing this
resource what is the greatest benefit from this particular resource so there were several factors that made this stand apart from other programs that were previewed this has both math and um ELA and comes with STEM
activities it is turnkey meaning that all of the supplies for those STEM activities are also part of the package that um we are presenting um it has the 25 lessons for both ELA and math it has
student workbooks along with an online um platform for the teachers and the only additional cost in subsequent years would be to replenish the consumables and this is aligned to state standards
and my my next question is is there a is there an opportunity for because you said that you don't have the summer school staff selected yet is there a a a window of opportunity for
training the staff and making sure that they're acclimated to these materials before um summer school starts and if so how much time will they have to train and prepare and get acclimated with the resources before they dig into them with
the students so the program does come with a full day of professional development to prepare the teachers that is planned for the week after school uh lets out for the year and that would be the week before summer school begins um
we just had a meeting today about ensuring that we have uh funding for the employee costs for summer school uh that's why we have not um made any announcements about staffing for summer school with the current climate with um
grant funding and and everything else we want to make sure that we have the funding source before we um place people into the positions thank you any other questions from the board
look at one question oh where did I miss you're asking any other questions yeah any other questions from the board regarding this particular item i just want Secretary Triplet um I I think that it it is it is critical and
this has been happening for some time um our teachers are brought into the equation after the fact and when we ask the question here at the table you know there's the the the I forgot the titles that you call
them um the teachers who the the ones who train and help the teachers uh what do you call them instructional facilitators but the ones who have to do the instruction and the ones who have to
facilitate um I would just like to have some more specific information as it relates to our teachers um being at the table because they are the ones that are actually doing the work and often times it seems like they
are surprised um uh to say the least but thank you so and I I do support it um because we need resources in order to accomplish what it is that we need to accomplish
all right so if there's no other questions we'll take a vote on staff report C2 regarding the summer scholars K through8 instructional program secretary Triplet president Robinson yes vice President Bowend yes secretary
Triplet yes treasure Bradley yes trustee Rocket Martin yes trusty Gavin yes trusty Doyle yes motion carried all right up next we have staff report C3 concerning the field trip to Padawatami
Zoo field tripadame zoo reason for board approval the board shall approve field trips and other district sponsored trips that are planned to keep students out of the district overnight or longer or out of state facts and analysis martin Luther King Junior Elementary School is
requesting permission to take 65 first grade students and seven chaperons to Padawatami Zoo in Southbend Indiana on May 30th 2025 this will be an out ofstate trip requiring students chaperrons and the bus driver to cross state lines a field trip to the zoo
provides first graders with a hands-on learning experience that enhances their understanding of animals habitats and conservation it supports science curriculum standards by allowing students to observe animal behaviors compare characteristics and explore biodiversity in real life this
experience fosters curiosity critical thinking and social emotional growth as students engage in interactive exhibits and learn about environmental stewardship by connecting classroom lessons to the real world a zoo visit makes learning meaningful memorable and exciting for young learners policy
reference policy 2340 field and other district sponsored trips funding source title one federal funds strategic plan reference learning environment benton Harbor area schools will develop maintain and implement with fidelity a multi-tered system of support that
enhances the culture and learning environment recommended action that the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board of Education votes to approve the field trip to Padawatami Zoo for first grade students as presented all right and before I call
for a motion to approve uh Director Cups can you clarify the total cost of this field trip i notice that it's not noted on the staff report i do know that in the um in the actual proposal it notates
uh per pupil cost $9.50 but the total cost is not on the staff report as previously requested um while we wait for that I'll go ahead and open up to any other questions that the board might have um and then I'll give her an opportunity to
pull that total any any questions from the board secretary Triplet madam President when I look here I'm I'm um when we talk about field trips and what have you there's I just need some clarification when they are when these
trips are day trips um they're not overnight they're not extended stay cuz I noticed that this report is written a proposal for overnight/extended student trip so I don't understand why this is written on
this particular document because it is not an overnight trip and it is not an extended uh student trip it's just a field trip and it's out of state oh is that what it is so that is in South Ben
yes I'm familiar with that so I didn't see that does that go on here so should it be on here out of state we talking about our document where where are you referencing look at you i'm looking at the proposal for um yeah the actual form that was submitted
so the title of that specifically states proposal for overnight extended student trip so it doesn't say specifically out of date so if that's going to be that that might be something when we use u that they look at further doc that it's out of state because our
kids go a lot of times they go to Chicago um you know to aquarium and what have you so those but these are the only ones that come to us the ones that are out of state overnight and extended correct okay what what what what do they mean by
extended do anybody know what is that just beyond the school day Dr buds or what is the what does technically extended mean for the school district beyond the school day in or out of state okay any other questions from the board
at this time yes is there a number because I understand this is a field trip for students that have Can you speak in your mic i think it's because we have the heater the I don't know if it's heat or air that's blowing out right now okay i understand that this
trip is for students that have positive behavior and exemplify that is there a number of how many students that will not be going due to behavior issues and are we does Title One
funding state that we have to put restrictions in doing that that would be I think you're I don't know if you're posing that question to me or Dr buds or Brock Carter it's to whoever can give an answer i'm sorry i
was I'm trying to wait on the number could you Could you repeat that question again how many students that because this is for positive behavior how many students are not able to go on the trip and does title one have any restrictions on that
title one does not have restrictions so if any students that are not going on because of positive behavior we build that's at the building level um I can I know Miss um is looking up the amount for the trip i can give her a moment to come up to
answer your question if you would like or if the board would would would uh if the board would insist that she come up and give an answer once she finds her number thank you i'll leave that to the discretion of the board what we'll do if there's no objections
from the board we'll pat we'll um suspend the order of the agenda temporarily and move proceed to field trip for Washington DC and then come back to staff report C3 um at this time we don't have a motion to approve um C3
so we'll proceed with C4 to give them an opportunity to provide that number um and then just a reminder to um curriculum as indicated on the I think it was a phone call you all were in a meeting and I was very pleasant with the reminder that I do need the funding
source um that's for whether it's curriculum or finance or um facilities and finance whatever exactly it is i do want to make sure that that total amount that you're asking the board to spend is notated on
the staff reports so we're going to uh proceed staff report C4 the Washington DC experience the board shall approve field trips and other district sponsored trips that are planned to keep students out of the district overnight or longer or out of
state facts and analysis fairplane East Middle School is requesting permission to take 35 middle school age students i apologize middle school age students and three chaprons to Washington DC from
June 12th through June 14th 2025 this will be an outofstate trip requiring students in chaprons to cross state lines a field trip to Washington DC offers middle school students a dynamic hands-on learning experience that enhances their understanding of history
government and culture by visiting landmarks such as the capital Supreme Court and national monuments students connect classroom lessons to real world sites deepening their knowledge of US civics and history access to worldclass museums enriches their cultural
awareness at no additional cost while group travel fosters independence collaborations and social emotional growth this trip not only reinforces academic content but also inspires future educational and career aspirations through exposure to national
institutions and diverse perspectives policy reference policy 2340 field and other district sponsored trips funding source title one federal funds strategic plan reference learning environment benton Harbor area schools will develop
maintain and implement with fidelity a multi-tiered system of support that enhances the culture and learning environment recommended action that the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board of Education votes to approve the field trip to Washington DC for 35 students as
presented dr buts has the copies that have the amount on it i apologize for not including that um there's also in your packet add additional information related to the uh trip the um materials
that are provided by the tour company and once the trip is approved then they're able to make the reservations and then we'll be able to provide the uh hotel stay and other travel information that's not currently in the uh
form okay so for clarification for the board under finances the total uh per student cost is the total cost for the students is $40,75 cost per student is
$1,145 and so what you're indicating at this time is that you all don't have the actual travel arrangement cost because you needed the approval the the company does not make the reservations until after the um
contract is booked so we can't give the actual hotel information until we're able to book the um trip it It's an all-incclusive it's the um travel the stay the food the tours
it's all inclusive that's included in the 10,00 okay all right any questions so I'll ask is there a motion to approve if we could update um I make a motion to approve staff report
is there a second or support i second the motion has been made by Treasurer Bradley and supported by Vice President Bowens any questions comments or concerns madame President you have the floor i think it's great that our kids are going to Washington DC
i think it's an experience i guess my question is if this trip has been already announced to the students and they were told in the beginning of the year why are we just getting this
now so I can um I'm not sure if you want that from Dr buds i can give you the viewpoint from a parent being in the meeting but I'm not sure if you want that clarification from Dr b or Dr cups i don't want to age us
but when I went to McCord Elementary well McCord Renaissance back then in September we knew we were going on a trip in April or May and we had to do fundraising we had to get our permission slip slanked and everything i understand
that this trip is not at a cost to students i just I think we're doing things backwards is what I'm stating we seen it on Facebook and everything that our kids are going to Washington
DC but the board never approved it and here we are coming now approving it if we're going to be an efficient and effective government body we have to do
things in decency and order i agree with you 100% um what I do know I believe it may have been in March that the students were um informed that they were the top 35 and that there would be a field trip
that would be presented for them as a result in the parent meeting that we had when we went over the initial information they did ensure that all parents were aware that the field trip was tentative pending board approval so Principal McGee was very clear on
letting the parents knew know that the board had to approve i did notice the Benton Harbor Area Schools posting of the field trip um and I did actually um indicate that to Dr bus today via email so you are correct i let him know that
we need to make sure that we're not posting things officially until they've been officially approved so you're absolutely correct any other comments from the board vice President Bradley um I was just going to say um this is
exciting opportunity i can remember being at McCord and matter of fact I had just found some stuff from uh souvenirs from my eighth grade trip to Colorado when I was at McCord back in 2001 um I do agree with um Vice President
Bowen you know we don't want to make put stuff out there and get the students exciting and I will say that Washington DC that is going to be an exciting trip i was just there um on Capitol Hill and around the Capitol uh doing some some work for another organization I'm a part
of and it was busy and um I was just about as excited as anybody and I know that our students are going to be excited as well and um definitely it will be something that they will remember for years and years to come
uh Trusty Doyle thank you Madam President i remember at some point we had discussed um doing all these field trips at one time so we wouldn't have to keep coming back to the table um to approve them because we knew that these field trips
were coming is there some type of way we can get back to that to get that done at the beginning of the year so we can get all those field trips out the way uh Director Couch is that something that's feasible from a principal and building level standpoint to pre-plan and and
bring them to us at the beginning of the year i think we could do that for some field trips but we wouldn't be able to do that for all field trips um I can say one example would be a CTE field trip that went to Notre Dame uh that was
something that we learned of and wanted to bring to the board with a quick turnaround to ensure our students could go so sometimes there are opportunities that we learn about that we want to make sure we provide that we don't know exist or they might not have even been planned
um if we were to bring those at the beginning of the school year i think that we could certainly make uh that effort to bring as many as possible at one time but just with that understanding that there may be additional trips that we're unable to
bring at the beginning of the year i understand that thank you any other comments from the board trustee Gavin uh thank you President Robinson i'm very excited about this opportunity for our students and um just want to um show my
gratitude to the principal for making sure uh and everyone who had anything to do with making sure that this happens is experience for them um I've noticed that they're going to a lot of museums and they're getting a lot of experiences and
I was looking forward to them having an opportunity to visit the African-American History Museum as a part of the Smithsonian um they indicated that they would work on that i'm wondering you know if we vote on this now and they then are able to add
that um with you know would they still be able to add a stop on the trip and that not and we not have to go back and vote or any of that are they do they have the flexibility to go ahead and add that to the trip yep i would say yes the the itinerary
that we have in here is a sample itinerary so it's not firm it's just an idea of some of the places that they may be able to visit but you are correct she did say that they could definitely look into them doing that perfect this is awesome thank you so much um Secretary
Triplet I I too would like to say um um thank you to Principal Phillips for um organizing this trip for our students and
also the effective use of title funds to support this trip because all of our schools now we're in a situation and we really don't know what's happening what's going to happen as it relates to our titles and what have but
all of our buildings were titled and there was millions of dollars available for our students from the from individual buildings um and the district title fund and so as I said this is the reason why I think
that is important that each principal have their budgets at the beginning of the school year and they know exactly what they have and know how to write those budgets so we make sure that we're not supplanting that they and they schedule
this stuff all throughout the year at the beginning there are traditional trips there at MLK usually the first graders go to Pawatami every year those are things that we can you know at the beginning of the school year what is the major third grade trip what is the major
second grade trip those things should be planned when the teachers and staff and administrators come back um at the beginning of the school year and the work can be done so again I I just want to say I this is one of the first times
that I've seen title funds used where our kids are truly uh the benefactor where they did not have to pay any money to go as far as the the cost for them to go on this trip and we receive millions of dollars
because of the fact that our students have been identified um and and that that money is supposed to go to our student and to our school in those individual schools so I appreciate this um Miss Phillips and to Dr buts and
um director Cusp for your support and our director of finance for your guidance in this uh process for our students to have this opportunity thank you thank you i uh uh Trusty Rocket Martin there were no other hands raised you did
okay you have the floor i'm happy they have an opportunity to go and you know I I'm also pleased that you're using a company to help plan your field trip it goes so much smoother when you use a a entity that knows how to do those things
so um I'm sure the kids will have a great time and that everybody will be safe and and just enjoy themselves all right so I would like to add um a thank you to the board for allowing this to be placed on the agenda today um it
was sent to me uh maybe about an hour or so before the meeting um and so I did allow I wanted to make sure that I pointed it out i agree with Trusty Gavin um we attended the parent meeting we were both proud parents to be present um
and have our students a part of the top 35 i believe she indicated that I think it was about 15 of the top 35 is actually our sixth sixth graders so I thought that that was um extremely powerful they're coming in strong um the
number one student based on GPA is a sixth grader so I think it's wonderful that they're able to celebrate um in this manner because it will guide um their trajectory for the remainder of their uh junior high period one of the
things that I was excited about um when I learned from a parent standpoint is that there is an opportunity to earn free school credit so they actually have engagement opportunities uh that the students can do additional work um in response to the field trip and actually
earned some credit for doing so so it was a really amazing opportunity the students were proud the parents were proud Principal Phillips did an amazing Principal McGee Phillips did an amazing job at presenting it to us and so I do support this field trip um of course not
just as a parent but as a board member I think it'll be an amazing opportunity so if there's no other questions from the board I'll ask question uh yes quick question and I don't want to sound doom and gloom um have you guys since you're
have you guys been informed of a contingency plan like last week there was a big massive protest in DC no telling what the way our country is going right now what will happen if there's a protest or something that pops
up are you guys are we have a contingency it says it's built in so will you guys discuss that you're asking if we discussed it in our parent meeting mhm i don't believe that was something that they outlined specifically was it trusty Gavin do you
remember that i don't recall yeah that wasn't pointed out to us thank you all right if there's no other questions from the board Secretary Triplet can you please call the vote on staff report C4 president Robinson yes vice President
Bowens yes secretary Triplet yes treasurer Bradley yes trustee Rocket Martin yes trustee Gavin yes trustee Doyle yes motion carries all right are we prepared for staff report C3 okay so if you could just um present you can go
ahead and read staff report C3 through and then um we're going to notate the recommended action you want the whole thing again you read it once before i I can read action please be patient with me i'm not into tiptop shape today
i appreciate the patience as well recommended action that the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board of Education votes to approve the field trip to Padawatami Zoo for first grade students as presented totaling $1,266 all right is there a motion to approve staff report C3 i so move
support all right the motion has been made by Secretary Triplet and supported by Treasurer Bradley any questions comments or concerns all right hearing none Secretary Tripley can you please call the vote president Robinson yes vice President Bowens
yes secretary Triplet yes treasure Bradley yes trusty Rocket Martin yes trustee Gavin yes trusty Doyle yes motion carried all right awesome and um Director Cups if you could
um possibly send out a reminder to your principles to make sure that they I like the way that um Principal McGee Phillips did it with the total cost noted as well as the cost per students it might make it easier for uh Miss Singer when
developing the staff report all right we can proceed with facilities and finance first up we have the boiler change order number three which the board did review um last
week and then following that we have boiler change number four um I would ask I think director Dash is going to present these okay so we can start with if you could kind of give us an update on where we are with the boilers in
general what led to having four and then we'll kind of go through FAC1 and FAC2 back to back so right now they're continuing work and as they're moving through the project um they're just finding more things that
are well actually we knew about these things um they they brought them up quite a while ago I believe the the wiring situation anyway um but uh I am I misspeing on that Dr butts no um but
uh yeah everything seems to be on schedule as long as we get these things pushed through um and that's really all I all I know right now you can you can add you've been kind of quiet this evening no I'll I'll elaborate so on on change order three
that was the one Steve from C2A came and and spoke with the board about change order number four was uh dealing with some more electrical work that needed to be done um noted on on the
um on the initial plan was a an addition of an a generator for the for the gym uh the gym is a designated uh heating resource for the community when we run out of power so we uh part of the
uh project when it was first approved was to have that generated included so that if the power goes out in the city the the gym will have heat and light in there so that's part of the change order for number four okay direct Director Dash can you go
ahead and present um staff report FAC1 i know that's the one that we reviewed in the work session and then you may have more questions once we get to staff report FAC2 okay that's fine um reason for board consideration the board must vote to approve expenditures in accordance with the
revised school code and other general laws of Michigan facts and analysis the following change order has been reviewed by the director of facilities superintendent and is presented to the board for review and approval change order number three do you want me to
read all the numbers and all that stuff okay new control panel for condensate pump uh $4,651 uh new power feed pump $4,025 replace feed to condensate tank 3
or $3,860 um per bulletin five uh per bulletin 4 item B41 replace the bus duct $162,424 per bulletin 5 item
B51 revised gas service at the high school that is for $14,072 for bulletin five item B52 replace additional condensate receiver at the high school $16,349 per bulletin five item
B5.3 add sec secondary pump to condensate receiver at Fairplane East $8,275 bulletin 5 item B5.4 Four revise feed water controls at Fairplane East $5,020 deduct from the contingency
allowance,8 $81,671 total change order amount $137,05 policy reference 6320 purchasing funding source is 2017 syncing funds strategic plan reference
facilities operations benton Harbor area schools will develop implement and evaluate a fiscally responsible plan that will ensure physical and psychological safety recommended action that the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board of Education votes to approve the change
order for the Benton Harbor Area Schools boiler replacement project for the total of $137,05 is there a motion to approve staff report FAC1 i make a motion to approve staff report FAC1 is there a second or support second the
motion has been made by Treasurer Bradley and supported by Trustee Rocket Martin any questions comments or concerns from the board regarding FAC1 madame President you have the floor how many I guess my question is how many more change orders i know we
have one more how many more do you expect i know this is a whole deal answer that uh I could ask Dr buts to speak on that you can defer it to me um with that um with that with that question being said as
they go through and continue to replace so after the the heating season is over they're ready to dismantle the the main uh boiler that is there now so once they dismantle it and and continue to connect the
remainder of the new portions of the borders there's six down there we don't know what they'll actually find so these change orders are coming about we had a contingency as you can see the last amount of the contingency was 81,000 that's highlighted that is the last amount that was we used that up so as
they find new things we've gone over the contingency that we have put aside so originally it was it was 4 million plus dollars with that four million we have some contingency funds built in so what's happening is as they find new
issues as they go we we've used up the contingency and that's why we have a change order in the past um we I didn't have to bring those change orders to the board because they were part of the contingency fund but we've run out of that contingency as they find new
problems um with the age of the building madam President Secretary Triplet okay so we look at uh replace feed to um condensed state paint where it had that's
$3,860 so that needs to be an adjustment in the actual report okay so that was um and also with the um this was the one that we discussed in the work in the work session correct and
so for clarification purposes it's important and it's imperative because this can continue on and on and on it can get larger and larger and larger um so I know that we just can't just leave wide open because when he came and presented the last time he also stated
Dr buts um when we um did this project about the valves in the classrooms the heating in the classroom we need clarification on what that looks like because if we we're going to be in the you spend $4 million on this boiler
project and we specifically stated that they need to be able to adjust to the the heating in the room so we really need to know this information as soon as possible and we just can't let them say "Well now we get down here now we need
10 more wires and we need another additional wire." Does this funding when we when we since we've um gone over our allowance um are there any more funds in the sinking funds because that would be able to support so we how as a financial
committee we need to discuss again and put that into place how much we are going to put in this contingency allowance um position but they need to be able to give us some clarification and it's not just the fact that it's a old building old pipes they knew it was
a old building old pipes when we first start the project and so we had problems from the beginning because people didn't understand how long this process was going to actually take it's not like we came in and changed the boiler in our house okay so we need to get with that
our chairman um chairman Bradley if we can get together with our finance committee i'm just asking because we need to come and put at least something somewhere we have a general idea or we'll just keep on going this could end up 5 6 7 8 9 million and we cannot
afford that at all and I agree cuz we we we sat in the same meeting and we heard the same thing and I've asked some other constituents that were part of the meeting as well so they've heard the same thing so we've got to get some clarification from C2A thank you any uh
trustee Gavin uh thank you President Robinson um I I do have a couple questions the company that we're using is it the company that has been servicing our boilers all along or is
this a new company c2ae is you didn't give me the floor you have the floor thank you sir c2ae is the company that was hired as the the contractor for it uh Egan is the company that has been
working on our boilers for past I don't know how many years long before I came so yes they are the company that are working on it um that are working as subcontractors under C2AE so it's a different company than the ones that was servicing our boilers
that's correct so when we set out the RFP C2AE won the bid egan did not bid because they were going to be doing the work themselves so it was almost when it came up it was like a conflict of interest for them to do it and do the work i I can't remember all the
specifics when we went through that whole process but I I do remember I do recall myself Treasure Clayton at the time and um it was one of the board member that was with us that went through an entire training on the RFP
process and the bid process so the the architect is C2 AE the contractor is Egan which is the same entity that has been servicing the boilers and so when they did the architecture and they collaborated with Egan they didn't see any of these
things until now that they're further into the work um that's rhetorical the other um issue that I have is do we have a is it our
process to have our attorney review the contract with it being a multi-million dollar contract um did the attorney provide any type of protections for us or stipulations in the contract to
ensure that there wouldn't be a lot of change orders um did they speak to that at all and did the attorney speak to the question that I've been asking about um regulating the heat in the classrooms so
the you have the floor thank you you have the floor throughout her question please okay thank you so at the time of of this we had a different um we had a chief finance officer and a chief of uh student services slash uh facilities
as well they did submit um this contract to our attorneys and got feedback from it so from the from the feedback that we got and I would have to go back and research that paperwork from the feedback that we got everything was okay through the attorneys that they used
that was one of the questions that treasurer Kraton had at the time as well and also chairman of that of that committee um at that particular time speaking your mic secretary yeah when we were doing the boiler that was one of
the concerns because we knew we didn't know to what degree but we knew that the things that we had going on in this building this building 150 something odd years old some
components of this building is 150 years old and so we knew that that would be probably run into some things because there was a lot of unknown there was a lot of uh pipings and things that were acceptable in the state of Michigan that
no longer are acceptable here so we found out all of those different things when the city came in about the lead and all of those different things so we did know but we didn't know to this level where now you're talking about another $150,000
uh being used to for this that's why we say we have to cap it off we did know because some of the things uh with Egan Egan served as since they had been working on the boilers for so long like an advisor because the boilers and what
have you that we had in the building those things some of those things were outdated couldn't even find parts that people still made the parts for those things so they were just patching up so we did know and as Dr bus said we did have uh the attorney at that particular time for to the best of their ability to
look at and say "Okay this is something that you all can go off into." So the at Thank you Secretary Triplet and so the attorney the contract um my other question is since then have we heard
from the attorney in regards to the regulation of the heat in the classrooms teachers or staff members being able to regulate the temperature in the classroom so I did go and speak
with Egan about that um they can regulate the amount of steam going to different part parts of the building but they're not aware of any um per classroom regulations so that's one of the things that I've got to send back i
got to find which attorneys that um our former chief of finance and former chief of student services spoke with to see if that was specifically addressed have to find out who the attorney is that can address this question that
we've been asking for quite a while um is is it possible to put a deadline on you know when we can talk to when we can get information from the attorney about the question so what I have to do
is go through and go through their emails because I did assign that project out to them so I will I will go back and and and and have our technology department to look through their emails when the attorneys responded the technology department to figure out
who our attorney is they can go back through their emails to determine the response that we got from the attorneys thank you President Roberts all right so at this uh trusty rocket Martin Dr butts can you kind of
tell us can you put your mic a little bit closer to your Can you kind of tell us about how close we are to being done do you have a Yes ma'am so um once the weather is is has warmed up and typically I know we give at least two to
three weeks of of warm weather before we start shutting the boilers down once we shut the boilers down then the the work will be um the work to remove that last big old boiler out so the completion date is around
July a little towards the middle middle towards the end of July that it should be the the final component should be connected as far as the the the boilers now the the um work for the generator will be around around that
time as well because they kind of working hand in hand okay thank you secretary Tripler wanted a quick clarification when we went into this agreement it the the it's further out it it was an 18month process at first they
had told us that it would be 24 months and that's two years yep but it could be within 18 months from when they start uh Miss Rocket so we talking about possibly you know there are certain times that they can do more work which is in the summertime when the students are not
here and what have you but we have an 18month window from the start of the project so that can go off into October September and October but we will have heat because once we move the old boiler out three will automatically come online yep
okay the only thing that I want to add and I'll do so really quickly um I want to call your attention to this original change order um for FAC1 it was presented to us February 5th of 2025 and so I know we discussed it in
our work session and then we are um here now in April of 24 April 8th of 24 so I agree with Secretary Triplet i don't know what that potential um cost would be like or how much would
be recommended to put additionally in a contingency i know that that would have to come before the board but I would definitely agree with us if we have a pocket of money and I'm not meaning to make uh director Carter anxious cuz I know that's not enough budget that she been
getting together well um if there's any pennies left over that we could consider putting in that um in that fund it would probably be a good idea so that we don't have any any delays in the work actually being done however given limitations
with current finances I know that might be a little bit much but definitely something for the committee to consider so at this time I'll ask Secretary Triplet and I know we rarely we don't often pull from the syncing fund i don't know what the total amount in that fund
is at this time but Secretary Tripley can you call for the vote for stamp for FAC1 we didn't call for the vote we didn't Oh we just did the motion i'm sorry i just put the yes the motion was made by Treasurer Bradley and supported by
Trustee Ret president Robinson yes vice President Bowen yes sir secretary Triplet yes treasure Kraton i mean Bradley yes
trusty Rocket Martin yes trusty Gavin yes trusty Doyle yes motion carry all right up next we have um staff report FAC2 this change order was sent April
2nd so we have a quick turnaround on this one i'll allow uh Director Dash to present the staff report and I do want you all to make sure you're paying attention to the additional amount as
well this is an additional amount on top of what we just approved director Dash okay boiler replacement change order number four uh reason for board consideration the board must vote to approve expenditures in accordance with the revised school code and other
general laws of Michigan facts and analysis the f following change order has been reviewed by the facilities director superintendent and is presented to the board for review and approval change order number three per bulletin six item
B6.1 revised hydronic piping and high school boiler room $17,210 per bulletin 6 item B6.2 two revise hydronulic pumps to match pre-work test and balance report $5,490 per bulletin 6 item
B6.3 revise condensate receiver schedule $0 per bulletin 6 item B6.4 Four delete pumps P-2 $8,626 per bulletin 7 item B7 revise electrical to correct inspector
identified bare neutrals $1,000 or $122,19 total change order amount 136,183 policy reference 6320 purchasing funding source 2017 syncing funds strategic plan reference
facilities and operations Benton Harbor Area Schools will develop implement and evaluate a fiscally responsible plan to ensure physical and psychological safety recommended action that Benton Harbor Area Schools Board of Education votes to approve the change order for the Benton
Harbor Area Schools boiler replacement project for the total of $136,183 all right so um is there a motion to approve staff report FAC2 madam President I make a motion that we approve staff report FAC2 i'll make a motion to approve staff
report are you are you supporting that i support okay all right the motion has been by Vice President Bu and supported by trustee Raquette Martin any questions comments or concerns madame President yes
is it possible that you do you ask the financial uh director how much do we have in a scing fund or is that something that they don't I think she has it ready uh doc I think Dr
of us might also have it handy um on the monthly financial reports under the statement of financial position the balance of the sinking fund is [Music] 9,711,373 and that is updated on the
monthly reports so when I get to my section I'll show you where it is so every month you can be updated on the balance thank you i just wanted the public to also hear it thank you okay so the only thing that I will add
um we did just approve the amount as noted which was1 $137,5 with approval of this one for $136,183 we are approving a total of $273,188 towards the boilers and when I got this when I had to calculate myself
and make sure I understood what um I was asking of the board so I just want to make sure everyone is clear on that are there any other questions treasurer Bradley uh I would just make this comment like you said I had to calculate myself and um you know I'm glad that we're getting this project done um I
remember when we have the old system in there and we spent $250,000 to get it up to date so to add to that calculation now um we're spending about half a million dollars on top of the already millions of dollars we're spending on the system and I would just also add that we want it fixed right and we want
to make sure it's done done good so like I said sometimes you have to just make that sacrifice in order to do that so I mean that's a part of leadership that we have to just uh grapple with sometimes making sure that when we spend that
money that we make sure that it's done right and professionally all right if there's no other question Secretary Triplet this is not a question it's a comment we got to get this done it's not cheap you have $9 million
and I you know and I I've been saying this for some time and we've had millions of dollars in this sinking fund which is done which is there for buildings for major projects and all of those things and our building just sat there and dilapidated and I don't know why people is not for us just to sit
there and not use it you know that's why we have a sinking fund and it you know for us to say well yeah we got $9 million but this wall is getting ready to fall so $200,000 and $250,000 with $9 million
left for our kids to be warned whatever we need to do by any means necessary we need to spend the money it's not for us to sit up and be like my father just save money and then you die and other people use it so we got to use the money
we got to use the money so I think it's a good thing it's not Don't get nervous about it it's got to be done it's got to be done full and complete because there are warranties on this as well so it's not that they're just doing this and we don't have any warranty on the work that
they're giving us thank you uh sec if there's no other question Secretary Triplet can you call the vote for staff report FAC2 president Robinson yes vice President Bowen yes secretary Triplick yes treasure Bradley
yes trusty Rocket Martin yes trustee Gavin yes trusty Doyle motion carried all right up next we have our monthly financial report staff report F1 i believe in Director Brock
Carter's absence Dr bus did go over the financials for us um unless there's anything pertinent for you to highlight in the financials you can proceed to your staff report and then we'll we'll move forward thank you Madame President i'm going to
move forward with staff report F1 reason for board consideration a set of financial reports is provided to the board of education each month facts and analysis this evening it is recommended that the Febru February 2025 payments be
approved for all of the district's funds policy reference 6470 payment of claims strategic plan goal reference facilities/operations venton Harbor area schools will develop implement and
evaluate a physically responsible plan that will ensure physical and psychological safety recommended action that the board of education approve the February 1st to February 28th payments
for the following funds general fund 652,632.73 food service fund $134,786.38 2017 syncing fund $251,46053 student activity fund $3,2648 with a total of $1,42 I'm sorry
[Music] 1,42,14412 12 cents is there a motion to approve staff report F1 i make a motion to approve staff report F1 is there a second or support i support the motion has been made by Treasure Bradley and supported by Secretary Triplet any
questions comments or concerns trustee Gavin thank you President Robinson um with our report i see somewhere where it says
that revenue is expected to be more than originally budgeted for the fiscal year can you um explain that um that is the yeartoate revenues
um based on year to date at this time last year so we have more revenues this I don't want to say it wrong does that mean that we have more revenues this year than last year or Well from July 1st
2020 4 to February 28 2025 compared to July 1st 2023 through February end of February 2024 at this point based on the revenue
received up until that date we are higher than we were during the last period okay thank you for that and so if we were looking to know what is our balance with all expenses paid with those expenses paid what is our current
balance that we have uh in the bank if you go to page If you look at page 23 of the monthly reports the statement of revenue expenditures and changes in fund balances that gives
you fund balance at the end of the period for each fund the first section is the general fund next section is the sinking fund and the next following section is our non- major funds which is our athletic fund and food service fund
what is that balance you want all of them or each i would like the total total of all fund balances at the end of the period was $34,662,54 that's after expenses yes ma'am so
expenses are paid and we have 34 million yes if we count all of our fund balances yes thank you so much secretary Triplet clarification when you say fund balance what do you mean is that the $20 million
added into that as well that's right so correct yeah i just want to make sure that that we understand that that that is there off to the side in case of emergencies it cannot be used on a regular it's not correct it's off to the
side so when you look at that it would be like 14 million well if you It will be about 10 okay point of clarity go ahead what's the 10 uh if we subtract the fund balance what's our fund balance
at the end of last year and what we have if we come if we end the year in a deficit we go into our fund balance the 24 million that we have I'm subtracting that from the 34 million all
together and that will leave us with 10 the 24 million represents what that is included in our general affairs so you're saying just extra no when I told you we had 34 million in all of our
fund balances the 24 million was included in that so Mr triple asks what is our balance after we subtract our fund balance and that would be 10 million what can be used what can be used what
can the fund balance be used for um well it is to be used if our budget goes into a deficit so if our expenses outweigh our revenue then we go into our fund balance thank you you're welcome so
be I guess you could from a personal standpoint you could look at it like savings start actually madam President Vice President Bradley um I was also going to say I know from with the financial training too um that
that savings that's a savings account that is required by law that every district has has to have and um then that's not including that's including the ESA funds too right that that 34 million um
no ESA funds that we have for this physical school year uh to cover the expenses that go with it so it really when we get in ESR funds we've already spent it we're just drawing down what we've already spent so it kind of nets
out to zero so I wouldn't say that ES funds for 2425 are anywhere unbalanced okay if there's no other questions um from the table uh Miss Singer can you call or I can
being that you can we get her a mic sometimes she has to Okay can you call the role for the vote for staff for F1 yes vice President Owens yes secretary Triplet treasurer Bradley yes trustee Rocket
Martin yes trustee Gavin yes and Trusty Doyle yes all right motion uh carries and passes for staff report F1 i just want to um do a time check for the board at 7:39 um we're we're making it through um
this agenda just a reminder we do have a very extensive work session where we go through all of these um these agenda items and and have our discussion so we want to try to make sure that we either get our questions answered in that work session or try to get them answered
prior to coming to the table so we can get through our agenda as quickly as possible we're not really too delayed in time today however I do want you all to remember that we do have a training as well as a close session planned for the remainder of the evening so we need to try to get through the remainder of the
standard agenda portion as quickly as possible so that we're not here too late in the hour um so at this time we will proceed to human resources um separation of staff staff report H1 no
I'm sorry staff cost reduction staff report F1 director Bar Carter i'm going to defer to Dr buts and this is not I'm sorry uh it's not a staff report that's correct thank you thank
you uh director block the staff cost reductions are we put there so that you can go ahead and pre preview them for the next work session that was something that we wanted to make sure we go ahead and get out to you as soon as possible
okay so it's not for discussion today just to give us access to it yes ma'am president all right one second trusty Gavin can you send this because I know it's embedded in the agenda but can you se send this out as a separate email to the board with the actual title so it's
easier yes okay yes ma'am trusty Gavin president Robinson I'm trying to understand how is the item on our agenda that we cannot discuss um especially one
that speaks to staff reductions um is it that it it I guess my question is is um Dr b's office prepared to explain the staff
reductions uh cuz we just see numbers here we don't see who's going to be cut you know how they're going to be cut it's just we for some reason we need to cut uh two to3 million dollars but there is
no clarity as to who why how and when dr buts thank you Madam President i'll give a brief um overview with the staff cost reductions we are as we we've stated before the ESSA funds have ended
and we got to balance our expenditures and our revenues as presented to you prior to in a work session and board meeting um director Black Carter has stated and and shown in a previous um slide the
reduction in the funding that we will get this staff cost reduction is what the principles have um come up with from their budgets and um is being presented to you from the principal standpoint of what they decided that they wanted to
um uh reduce from their buildings to help us with the overall cost reductions the overall cost reductions that we need for 20 256 school year approximately 5 million however with the recent
um administration's freeze on on ESSA funding I will get to that in my superintendent report as you know as noted on the uh agenda items president Robin Trusty Gavin okay um couple things are coming up for me um
one is when um Dr bus when you indicate that this is what the principles want I'm wondering what the premise was that was given to the principles was it we have to make cuts you know these are you know
what are the cuts that you want um or what are the cuts that you would make if you had to um I'm wondering if they are given the truth about the $30 million that we have um and if they're given an
opportunity to look for other creative ways um so that they don't have to cut their staff um and then also we're given this presentation with no details no details as to what schools you're
looking to close what staff you're looking to remove why those particular schools why that particular staff what is the overall cost analysis um in terms of losing staff versus
keeping them um and then what other um ideas you have for um retaining and recruiting students as it is in your contract to increase enrollment and also
um yeah we just don't have the details here and also when are you looking to do this when are you looking to do this so for the first part um the as far as the
meticulous part I'll I'll defer to um director Carter as she went to each building what we what we presented to the principles was the the fact that we had to cut um at least 5 million out of the budget there were no premises given to how they should do it or there was no
directive of how they should do it we sat down with them to see what their needs were per building and uh came up with the cost reductions based on what they perceived as their needs as far as uh the part of my contract where it was
for student um uh student growth initiative that was presented in in several uh board meetings before I actually gave a a binder um with the proposals that I had come up with and and timelines on that that you
should have had previously in your in one of your binders i can reproduce that for you if you like um it won't be at tonight's meeting and I can have it ready for you by the work session but that was already presented and and approved by the board um as far as what was presented to clarity what was
approved by the board my uh student student proposal for enrollment i had presented that to the board so as far as uh what was actually presented Miss Bro Miss Black Carter actually spoke with the principles and I'll let her speak to that
part thank you Dr buts um yes I've visited each building and share the details more details and the pres
perspective details behind it um until things are realized I've been willing to cause a stir
and present things that may change so until everything is finalized um that's why I didn't include those details in this slideshow and this is the changes are set for the
2526 school year uh so the changes that we are proposing are for next school year uh not this one so um the changes will take effect July 1st going forward and when I met with
the principles my specific question was what made you building um what we remember was each position the cost of each position with salaries and benefits and
that was all that we went through the whole building and they indicated what were the needs for their building and their students uh for academic success so that's how we came
to the final numbers that are there vice President Bowens yes thank you Madam Chair um Madame President I guess my question is and I'm so glad that our financial director or chief went to um the schools and discussed this with the
principles i want to know did the whole cabinet did we get this from a curriculum what would be effective what would not be effective did we discuss this with HR did we because the HR committee I mean we had a presentation
me Mr triplet and Trusty Doyle but that was it we have not seen anything submitted to the HR committee um nor have we heard from you know if we need to have a meeting with the curriculum committee also to make sure that we are
doing what's best we're making sure we're not hindering our students and cutting positions that we need i just know I'm kind of lost with this i mean I've seen it once we got this with the PowerPoint presentation
about the total savings when we do get that email I agree i hope we have more detail um on the positions and everything of that nature and even if we can have the why you know why did the principal see this as this going on so
thank you so thank you uh Vice President Bowens this that's why we pre-es this tonight so that when we start having our small meetings again the details will be discussed thank you y'all got me sitting in my chair
against Secretary Triplet good work you know when I when I look at this um when you first when you just see staff reduction it rings out trauma alarm
um you know you get rumors innuendo you know things that are said that weren't said things that were said that people took back retracted all of these different things i think for me when I when I look at this and I've been saying this for some time I've been on this
board in order for you to be able to make informed decision when we talking about these reductions do we look at general fund what comes out of title one what
comes out of title 9 what comes out of 31A if these monies are available we're not looking at people we're looking at what we might have to cut and so it's it to me
this just to see this with no context is very difficult you know so if we look at in many of our schools when you're talking about cutting staff well we have vacancies in in many of our schools and
so nobody has to be cut so how do we break those things down and and and basically rightize the district the way in which it's supposed to be u right side and so for me it just seemed um kind of
generic if you will so this is something saying we're going to cut five million we're going to cut four million you know you don't have to cut a teacher that you don't have so we don't have to lose an individual okay so based on what they have up here they should have a whole
bunch of money so when you talking about cutting staff you about cutting edge staff the money we paying ED staff and making the necessary adjustment so that our staff will remain in place that had to be somebody else time because I
know Yeah so y'all tighten that up and because I'm not gonna play with y'all tonight this is serious business you know it always the only time it change is when I'm talking well so unchammited and we gonna finish this right here because this is a very serious matter you know yeah you know so when you I
mean seriously when we talking about that's why it is important it is really really seriously important um Director Brock Carter that's very important because we can't just put these things out in our community and we have not done our due
diligence you know when you guys send us a report and say this many people are vacant that this that there there's this many vacancies in these buildings without certified teachers in them then
how are we saving what are we doing how do we make the necessary adjustments i'm looking forward if you will for me to even be able to embrace any of this cuz right now this is just a sheet that discovery and going to cut $1.4 million
with nothing on it okay and you'll get those yes you'll get those details when we meet again and we're small groups and when I met with the principles we also looked at how each position is funded if it's funded from a grant if it's funded
from general fund and all of those details so again we need again those small groups you'll have all of those details because we really don't know how if title one is going to be cut we really don't know if 31A funds are going
to be affected and so I think it's just premature to be honest with you for us to present this to our community in that manner and at one point people were a little nervous they're getting ready to cut teachers we They going to cut administrator they going to cut this they going to cut that they going to cut
you know I think it need to be a serious conversation even from the top because the top is strong the top is about the top what we pay in salaries at the top covers more than we pay for
teachers in some areas and so in some particular building or specifically and so when we talking about cutting we really got to we we it may be inclusive or it might you know we have to look at that in a different way of how we're doing it because we can't have 25 chiefs
and only 10 people working up under them so thank you so very much you're welcome trustee Rocket Martin yes i'd like to commend you um Mrs card for just including the principles coming from a
principal standpoint we were never really given that kind of opportunity to uh look inside of our buildings and make those kinds of decisions and so I applaud you that you did use the principles to to take a look uh at their
buildings and they know their needs trust me they know and since they know um you know I trust their judgment i trust their judgment so like you said I await also uh the details of your
findings and how we're going to do this because not all the time the staff have to be cut it could be shared i mean there are ways to save money and also save personnel so I look forward to to um hearing from you guys in those
meetings thank you all right so we are um if the board has no objections can we take a quick break yes a quick recess is um is our trainer present already miss Singer is she in the room okay can you God
bless you i'm not sure what time did you get here today before 6:00 okay i tried to catch them to let you know that you didn't have to it's No okay thank you and I think it's
important that you were here to hear that part of the conversation as well um because um our training is is right on time for that so we're going to take a a brief recess it's 7:56 now um we'll come back at about 8:05 if there's no
objections to that um prior to recess and just reminder to the board we still have human resources superintendent updates we still have a CBA training as well as a closed session so we we do need to try to move expeditiously
through the remainder of this agenda um thank you all so we'll res recess and we'll be back at 8:05 all right so we'll call the meeting back to order at 11:00 p.m 8:11 p.m i'll ask if the members of the
public could uh be seated and bring their conversations to a minimum we are at our human resources section uh separation of staff staff report H1 director McDermott president Robinson staff
report H1 reason for board consideration a list of employees whose employment relationship with the district is or will be separated is submitted to the board each month facts and analysis it is recommended that the board of education votes to accept the separation
of employment of the following staff policy reference 3140/4140 resignation of professional and support staff strategic plan goal reference personnel leadership personal/ leadership bon Harbor area schools will
recruit hire develop and retain the best staff to improve student outcomes separation of employment by ways of resignation we have Laura Brahma from the position of graduation advisor uh effective 328 at Benton Harbor High
School uh the recommended action that the Ben Harbor Area Schools Board of Education vote to accept the separation of employment of the aforementioned staff is there a motion to approve staff report H1 i make a motion to approve staff report H1 is there a second or
support i support the motion has been made by Treasure Bradley and supported by Secretary Triplet any questions comments or concerns have a question trusty Gavin um is
there who is who is doing this um duty currently while the advisor um since this advisor has resigned sure i know we still have another graduation adviser here at the high school um in regards to specifically that person's
duties I would have to defer to our high school administrative team to see what decisions they've made internally however for the record we still have another graduation adviser here at the high school we have one servicing the high school and Kate
don't believe she's servicing Kate so there is one of our guidance counselors support Kate not the graduation advisor there is no graduation advisor for Kate designated to Kate no they have seniors
to my knowledge they do director Cubs is there any additional clarification you were nodding your head so it's the graduation the guidance counselor services Kate okay do they do graduation advisory type of duties with
Kate can you say yes in the mic cuz the recording can see yes ma'am the one of our guidance counselors has been working with CAPE they have done the um credit audits uh they had meetings
with director Roseberg students and parents uh for seniors preparing for graduation and then uh they started with juniors after that uh I'm not positive if they've gotten into the sophomores that are at Cape yet but they have been
uh meeting together students parents uh the guidance counselor and director Roseberg Secretary Triplet no this are are you saying this i saw Dr b shaking his head and your head went with his head you this this this is
what's happening right i saw Dr b like this and you just went good too so what's up that's that's the that's the real deal what you just said to us yes we could we could bring Director Roseberg to consult on us no I just saw Dr then
you would say get ready say he start moving i ain't know what was what you do know that just said to us you know that right for yourself yes I do okay thank you so very much any other questions pertaining to staff report
H1 hearing none secretary Triplet president Robinson yes vice President Bowens yes secretary Triplet yes treasurer Bradley yes trusty Rocket Martin yes trusty Gavin yes trusty Doyle
she stepped out momentarily but she'll be returning prior to training motion carried all right um next on the agenda we have superintendent um items the first one is the ESSER funding and district project impact update yes ma'am so the question
came up last time in reference to when when MD put out a statement that the current administration had frozen um not frozen but given a deadline for the ESA funds to fight before we knew that they were being u rescended um adjustments
are being made to ensure that our projects that we have um ongoing now are covered so the boilers if you see in your packet the boilers the remaining amount for the boilers um without the change order it's
$2,429,725 which will come out of the syncing fund the roof repairs that we had in the um ESS funds the in limbo if you would was 500,000 that will be coming from the sinking fund driver's ed program we will reallocate funds from
the general fund 40,000 from the general fund to cover the driver's ed uh program with that um the allowable the allowable amounts from the sinking u funds off for border repair roof repairs or capital project repairs to the buildings so we
can we have with the 9 million that we have in the syncup funds we have um enough to cover those funds now with the funds being held by the department of education i do know that MDE will be going into litigation for those funds
because those funds were allocated and given to the states so the question is now can can the federal government withhold money that has already been allocated to the states and we got to wait for litigation to that so what we have to account for is the 2425 school
year which is this school year that we will take those monies from those from the syncing fund and general general uh general fund however if those funds are released after litigation we can go back and put those funds back into those
respective accounts trusty Gavin thank you so much Dr buzz for um checking into that um this is good to hear and so just to be clear these projects can move forward without being
interrupted and it does not require a new board vote that's correct so we what we did as I indicated to you on on the email we were just going to re we reallocated the funds from different accounts so as you'll see again we went
into the syncing fund and then to the general fund that's why I have a stall by the general fund because it has a possible reimbursement so what what as far as the driver's ed go as far as the general fund I will be asking the Benhar Education Foundation to reimburse for
those so in order to again try to salvage and save our fund balance and um so I'll be asking for a reimbursement for that so I have a stop by because I don't I haven't gotten approval yet but I will be asking for a reimbursement for
for the driver is there so in short nothing will stop uh everything will keep moving as as we originally promised so we will continue business as usual all of the the the reallocations are done behind the scene but I will I
wanted to let the public know tonight that nothing will be stopped driver's ed will continue um pending instructors but driver's ed will continue the b the boiler project and the roof repairs will continue as as previously planned
great news secretary triplet um so the 40,000 I know originally it was 80 the is that can you clarify that so I
originally reported the it was 88,000 when I look back at the the allocated amount was 65 so we put 40 here to make sure that we can cover all of the other expenses that are associated with it so either either way
excuse me either way we do have the monies um allocated for that program not to be disrupted okay so so just for clarity it was 80 and then when you look back it was
65 but now 40 and another 25 is put to the sides for material and other needs if necessary okay so so there is there will be the same amount allocated same amount allocated the other side the other part
is put aside is it's so much like a contingency fund almost like the boilers we want to make sure we have a contingency fund in case we go over and we won't have to come back to the board and then I think the Ben Harbor Education Foundation they they denied us
the first time right correct okay and so even if they deny this again we can still move forward okay thank you so much Secretary Triplet you know whenever this
is one thing that I've kind of like struggled with um for some time serving on the board of education is that the monies that we get it just never seems to get down to our kids i I
mean just like directly to our kids and so you know for the things that they need and and and millions and millions of dollars are given to our are given to our school district because of quote unquote the antonyms that they use to
describe our children as being underprivileged um and all of those different things that's that's what they describe them as and or lowinccome and all these different things so we get millions of dollars and a lot of times a lot of that money goes to staffing and everything
but it just never gets down to our children and so the driver education piece is a is a great piece and there should be some funds and I just feel honored that we're not um the president
and myself we were talking you know when she came on this board we were like it was a $18 million deficit for like about 10 years that's what they said it was $18 million for 10 years so when she came on this board that was really
hardly anything and so it feels good it feels good to have a board of education that is forward thinking it's good to say okay these things are happening but because we have been fiscally
responsible that we can do some things and it still won't throw us completely off and really mess us up and that we remain in this vein because the number one priority is our children our children and anything that we can do
for our children in this community and in this district we must do that has to become the number one priority so thank you Dr bus for be able to present that and to our director of finance as well
because she's very tight and I'm so glad that at least she said yes thank you so much ma'am all right and Dr but just a quick clarification because I did um you know I'm very overprotective of our board and I did have some conversations with individuals i also
saw Trusty Gavin on a particular uh media site kind of swore fighting with words with a few uh members of the public regarding the funding and what we should have spent it and and things of that nature and so can you provide some
clarifications regarding the extension that was provided um to the district for the use of the funding and the reasons why we have not spent the funding prior as it relates to certain projects delays with projects things of that nature just super briefly yes ma'am so we were given
an extension to March of 2026 um the way we the way those funds work is we pay the money out and then we reimburse it so we have to have a receipt to re to to get the reimbursement the the boiler project is
not complete the roofing repairs are not complete so we have to pay for those first and then re request the reimbursements with the receipts so that's why those funds have had not been drawn down because uh again we had some transition with uh with our
previous finance department as as the public know I worked for a year we had some other we had two other people there in that position so it was not like it was not as if we were derelict in our duties there was some transition which
caused some delays um we were very fortunate when we when we got on track to draw everything down with the exception of 2.9 or approximately 3 million so very fortunate with that and very fortunate that we were with our
funds and and built up our fund balance and our all of our balances so that we can cover these without any disruption to the district thank you one thing that I would like to note is that there were 27 school district that were impacted a total of 40 million and so there was a
particular press um article that came out and the title was kind of misleading in that it almost sounded as if it was 40 million that Benton Harour Area Schools hadn't spent but the additional details were provided within the article another thing to note is that Benton
Harour Area Schools is the only district within Berian County that was one of the 27 districts that were impacted and so we know that we're a big media sensation here and so we tend to be targeted by biased opinions i would say um some
members of surrounding communities and how we operate and so there was a lot of negative things that were said on different media channels that I could see in relation to the fact that we had 2.9 million plus that was um withdrawn i
think it's important for the public to know what you just clarified as well as the fact that that notice was provided to the district on it was a March 31st 2025 notice that was provided for funds that were put on hold or frozen or
however on March as of March 28th 2025 correct so they gave us a 3-day delay in even informing us of the change so there was no way that we could even go back and try to say "Okay well let us pay in advance or let us figure some things out." We had no opportunity to do that
um so I just want to make sure that that's also clarified for the public i know that you gave your PC statement i think the way that the federal government determined to to move in this manner is egregious and unethical the district was given an extension by the
Department of Education the Michigan Department of Education and I just want to thank the state superintendent and especially the president as well for the fight that they are taking as well as our attorney generals that are working in litigation to resolve this issue not only for Benton Harvard area schools but
the other impacted districts um one question that I did have and I haven't had an opportunity to request yet is how many of those districts that have funds on hold are partnership districts i do know um like clarify okay so I do know Flint
was one of the one of the school districts that um had $15 million that weren't drawn down and if I'm not mistaken they are under the partnership as well so there are some partnership districts with uh a significant amount more money not drone than ours we've
been very strategic in what we were doing and we did not want to prepay for services and and then I receive those services i know from my board president to make sure that change orders and money was spent um very uh
carefully and I I follow those orders so thank you and I appreciate the politically correct response that you gave in your interviews when we're requested to give statements if I if I don't have anything positive to say I hold my tongue and let you respond so I
thank you for your leadership in helping us through this transition because I probably would have had some things in the paper that they didn't want me to say um are there any other comments for our state super for our state superintendent and our uh state
president uh of our state board of education Dr pew like you said I think I just thank them and our attorney general as you said who fighting for us um so I think we should give them a round of applause as well all righty so we can if there's no other
comments from the board we can move forward with the quick strategic plan update that strategic plan update is in your packet it's just it's it provides you with the different KPIs that were that are being used as I give those updates so I'll give you a chance to
digest those and and and if we need any any um adjustments to those that those could be made a lot of those have been we've we've gone through them and have have um completed those but I just wanted to make sure that you you know
what what the question has been brought up what what measurements are we using so those are the different KPIs that are being used as far as our strategic plan to see if we're meeting our benchmarks and our goals all right next up we have the master's
facility plan timeline update i know that I have kind of put the pressure to the metal on us getting um an updated facilities plan because we are slightly delayed from what we originally approved for last year we should have been done i
believe December of 2024 was the original timeline provided but there have been some delays in that so I wanted to ensure that we actually had a visible um facilities master plan timeline that was adjusted so I thank Dr buds and our uh chair of the committee
um treasure Bradley for ensuring that we did get this adjusted if you want to give a brief overview of this yes ma'am it it has been adjusted and also I in your package you should have um the unused facility survey i did take the
liberty to print that off that survey is ready the link is ready to be sent out i just wanted you all to view it before it was sent out as far as his master facilities plan timeline it has been pushed to June of 26 that would be the end of next school
year um that that timeline was pushed out in to see if um if we get the responses and the the ultimate goal would be a a bond issuance um so what we've got to do now in order
to stay on track is get this survey out get those back discuss the surveys and and steps moving forward possibly we could move this back a little bit by a month or so just depends on the um it
depends this moving forward is going to depend on how the board would like to move forward i know in the last survey we only got 176 participants um depending on the the number of participants we get from the survey if the board will feel like it is it's enough or it's not enough then it will
be to the board's pleasure how we move how we move forward okay Dr bus can you provide a quick clarification i know that you uh clarified for me an email that the September board presentation date was very important is that an approval of the plan or is a finalized
plan in June that's uh the board presentation would be an approval of the plan okay and so when you write when you are pushing because I think I heard I think it may have been Secretary Triplet the way that you phrased it kind of gives the impression that the actual plan would
not be finalized until June the 26th but you're you're indicating that's a target for everything being finalized to be able to appropriately apply for a bond if the if the district decided that it wanted to go that direction but you would anticipate that the plan would be
finalized by September of this year for a board approval yes ma'am and I'm sorry if I if I made that unclear any questions from the board at this time um we can dig into this further in our um work session later this month but any questions from the
board at this time regarding the adjusted timeline trusty Gavin President Robinson um first of all Dr dr bus thank you for giving us the opportunity to put the plan back out so that more respondents um can
participate in the plan um I believe you said that the plan will go to the students during tiger time is that correct yes ma'am okay and I'm assuming that the staff will also have an opportunity to complete um complete it
during tiger time as well yes ma'am all their planning okay perfect um I guess my question and if you're not able to answer right now you're able to answer later that's fine what was coming up for me this week is we have these names of
the buildings and we're asking people you know what do you want to do with them right i'm wondering if the company that we've hired um have the capabilities to offer any type of renderings of possibilities right if if we're looking to condense to a certain
number of buildings are they able to provide any type of computer renderings of this is what you know this is what this could look like if we had three buildings or this is what this would look like if we turn this into a tech center or you know are they able to
after they get this information are they able to provide any type of renderings that will visually show folks uh what the options are so actually they could so that's again that's up to the pleasure of the board once once we get
the um responses back depending on how you would like to move forward that it sounds like you're asking for one more one additional survey with that with those renderings because if they do that then that's you're going to have to send it back out to the community for for
more input so are you asking for this to be done and then a rendering and then another survey i know that it's up to the board but I know that our folks are visual i won't I can't speak for everybody i'm a visual person and if I can see what those
different options look like it's a lot easier for me to agree um to an idea than just seeing our old buildings and asking like "What do you want to do with that?" I I would love to see what's possible um with the you know so are you
it sounds like you're you're speaking more to like the scope of work or let's say for example if we decide that we want we we decide on a mass facilities plan and then we decide we want to potentially go out for a bond we would
develop a scope of work to say okay if we're going to go out for a bond what particularly are we trying to do within that within that bond there is a period where the community will have an opportunity to give us feedback on a potential scope of work as to what a bond would be used for are you speaking
more so relating to the bond scope of work or are you saying prior to that before the master's facility facilities plan is actually voted on in September are you wanting them to have more of a visual prior to that it if it's feasible
I think that like say if there were from this surveys there were some top options right and from those top options the uh community could see if you all wanted to keep the buildings this is what this could look like right if you wanted to
close buildings and condense buildings into this this is what that would look like um I think that if if the community can see you know what are the options what is it what could that visually look like in our community i think they will be able to make a more informed decision
whether it's about a bond or whatever i just feel like there that's a step that would help us be clear as to what we would want to do moving forward good i'm sorry so I do see that there is right under um board update there's a is that
sharet options option development review option right is that more so speaking to what Trusty Gavin is talking about the option the options for the master's plan that will be and it will also include some cost cost analysis and so would we be able to wedge a survey in at that
particular time we could at any time too because there is a period after the the board update where we uh finalize preferred option phasing and we could maybe try to wedge a survey in that period so we can get the feedback from the community on what it is that we're thinking about as it relates to option
and we could I just want to I just want to pre uh preface that with with the with the survey it's going to add an additional month because it takes approximately a month to get it out make sure that everyone gets a chance to respond and
again if the board if we don't get the number of responses just like with this one we we're putting it back out again so there's a potential of an additional month being added every time you put a survey in so could we merge that within the finalized preferred option phasing
or cuz there's like some stuff that's going on in the month of July could we use the month of July when we Okay let's let's maybe that's more of a personal question for the for the We'll do that at the work session but thank you for that um feedback Trusty Gavin secretary
Tripley thank you yes um um we do have we still have spring conferences coming up and so I think that that would be a great time i think we need to come up with some creative ways um to get our parents engaged
um competitions you know as far as the surveys and what have you are concerned they're open thank you they already have spring they have them in March oh wow okay all right well that won't work
thank you all right uh Vice Treasure Bradley um I'm I'm happy that we're getting this you know on the road and um everything my main concern is if we're if we're going to be um trying to pursue a bond
and go out to the community after this is all said and done we're um as a board will have to think about how will we have stable leadership in this district because if the voters can't trust us to keep stable leadership and they want we
ask for a bond to put in new buildings so I want you all to keep that in the top of their mind um and then the other thing with the survey is that um we can probably put this pass this on to our um local pastors and our churches as well
so that their membership can chime in vice President Bowens you know I am so excited to hear this i um about this agreement i toured the schools and everything and when my mom first came here I asked her when they first came from New
Orleans what school did she go to and she said Hall well what middle school did you go to hall well then I asked her when she got to high school it was you know the high school so to see some of these buildings are still up um speaks to the testament but we
also have to have a honest conversation um we can look at stable leadership and St joe had three superintendent and they did not pass the bond and they had stable leadership but
we also got to look at the message we're sending when we expect people to vote for this and we're laying them off or we're getting rid of them how are we telling the community that I love you and you we cherish the kids and they
can't afford to pay the millage or the bond that we're imposed i've been a big bond person i say tear them down and let's build our three schools but I also talk to some of the
taxpayers and I listen to them so I hope we go on a listening tour and see what they're stating listen to what the people are saying about the heartbreak and we do have to admit some of the
stuff um I went to a school and I seen well I went to a locker and I seen something that said 2004 um and it was like wow I was a freshman in there and I seen the names and it still run true if we think this
is acceptable for our children then we have to have that honest conversation when we have these honest conversations some of them are not going to we're not going to like what they're saying but it's also truth sometimes the truth hurts when we're telling our staff and
them to go into closed buildings for 10 years to get curriculum that stuff hurts it's filled with mold and everything and then we're turning around asking them to vote for a bond that's redundant so I hope we're having honest
conversations thank you working two and three thank you Vice President Bowens i would just like to add what I um what Secretary Triplet referenced uh when we came back from recess is that I was sharing with him that when I came to the board in 2020 I
was on fire about the status of the facilities um and former President Taylor had to get me together and throw me on the facilities committee i think I was on there with Treasurer Bradley so that I could have a full understanding of what the actual status of our
buildings was comparatively to the funding and I soon understood that we lack the funding to make the types of upgrades that I thought I was coming in to make us make and so I have been um kind of diligently pushing for us to to
get this plan done so that regardless of what the leadership looks like in the district as it relates to the superintendent or the board of education there's a road map that's been developed and I think that's important for us with the community to work towards maintaining that trust that Vice
President Bowens mentioned because we'll actually have a plan to tell them this is what we want Benton Harvard area schools to look like and this is the time frame that we anticipate it's going to take us to do that and so when people have a visual when you have a plan when you're able to discuss it and they see
the work they're willing to get behind the district they may feel more comfortable in bringing their students back because they see a plan has been mapped out and may come into fruition so I would definitely urge the finance and facilities committee to stay on top of this to ensure that we don't fall behind
anymore um and then I look I'm excited about doing the tours and things of that nature i'm always willing to go to the municipalities and make a presentation and ask them to support us with the surveys the last time I did it I ended up on the news and I hate press
interviews but I'm always willing to to do that um in order to make sure the messaging is out there so as we get further in this process um I just ask that you guys maintain excitement but also hold us um each of us accountable for making sure that we don't get off
track with this schedule as it stands so if there's no other comments we'll proceed with the Hbert Fund update this was a potential request this was a request from Vice President Bowens yes ma'am so with the hopeathon update we've
not been able to find any funding source or any um history of it i I I'm going to also defer to um Miss B Carter i know she went through some some files from
previous um finance directors or chiefs and uh director Brock Carter thank you Dr buts um just so we know we don't believe these funds are missing we
just think the name may be misconstrued so I wanted to go over the name of the scholarship funds that we have and maybe we can match the name of Miss Hobart i couldn't find anything that specifically said
Hobart but we have several scholarship funds um with violence vice President Brenn can you re can you clarify again for me i know you've been asking for it for a while but where did you get this it's been here for years it's not a
scholarship fund it's a CD if I'm correct yes it's a CD okay we have we have several CDs um and I don't want to go into details of but we have
several at um different banks so if you would allow me an opportunity to reach out and see if Hobart that name is attached to one of those CDs then we can find out
exactly to the robot soon i think the last expense for my research was around 20 okay was it 2015 it would 2016 and calendars yeah and it was they did it twice it was before COVID and they had
to stop yeah it it it was it would like I said it it's not a scholarship this money has been sitting there and the last person the last group of people that used it was and and and I think it has something to do with history
okay it has a history around it um Princella Tobias and our students did an amazing a beautiful historical calendar and our kids were also it was like journalism
history were in um partnership with her and we had students down at that newspaper and that money I don't know how it but that money was continual it wasn't like it was all used it should not be gone and and I don't think it's
gone i just want to make that clear right i don't think it's gone i just think the name of the CD on the bank statement may be different from the name that Pesky Bones is sharing so that's why I want to check with the
bank and make sure and and get the name behind the statement name and see if it is directly related to okay thank you cuz we have [Music]
several that haven't been touched in a long time all right right so if there's no other questions or we had uh trustee Gavin I'm just so I'm I'm familiar with the Hobart
funds as well alice Hobart bequath $6,000 for specific purposes as outlined um below and Dr hobart request had a distribution of 76 thou 76 that's
76,453 it it's something about specific purposes of remembering the the history of Benton Harbor and I don't I received something a long time ago i remember that name because it said like uh certificate of deposit 2010
$190,000 and $190,4264 2011 $196,74711 it looks like something that grows and I'm just trying to understand how is it that we have this amount of substantial funds for a specific reason for us to remember
our history and there was a program in which our students were involved um and they were helping us do that and then it's just we not know what happened to it how does that happen i can tell
you with the transition and so that was uh 9 to 10 years ago so I can tell you with the transition when I came in that was that that CD was never mentioned the year that I did uh CFO for the district none of the banks
reached out because typically when a when a city city has a has a time span four 6 months one year five year five years typically the max and when they're when they're up the banks will contact the district and ask us if we want to renew it or we want to cash it out so
all the the ones that the year that I was CFO that fund that CD never came up so we can again I I'm going to defer back over to Miss Bon Carter but I can tell you during my year of CFO that no banks reach reached out to let us know
that that particular fund was or that particular CD was up for renewal record I No thank you for responding i guess I guess I'm thinking about our record and this this is no assault on
anybody but I'm just thinking about our recordkeeping and if we have any funds I don't think it should be left up to a bank to tell us we have funds we should be keeping track of our funds and so I'm sorry that's correct but when we
have a change in leadership and and the records are not um it it it was we we hired a company to come in to kind of get the records together because those records were out of order um so to speak so we can
research that um typically when we have a turnover in staff sometimes um as Mr triple has stated earlier in previous board meetings that um paperwork um or
records get um lost in the shuffle if you would i guess for me I know that um I know that Vice President Bowens had been asking about the Hobart funds for quite a while now and I know that um Princella
Tobias had was working on this not too long ago and so I'm pretty I wouldn't I wouldn't be surprised if she hadn't asked about it as well and you know I I don't I want I'm glad that we pass audits and things of that nature but I'm
just I don't know i guess I'm just curious as to how we don't know where our money is i think we were looking at it from a standpoint of I thought it was a a scholarship so it was never explained that it wasn't a scholarship so I was we were looking for scholarships if if if I'm sorry Madam
President if you when she just read the two things that was almost a quarter million dollar again I'm like I'm like uh Trusty Gavit i wouldn't care if they transition 70
times that right there is dangerous for us not to it It's very concerning for our administration not to even know and our finance department not to even have a clue and it was so huge
and again that was specifically when I say things that get down to our students that just never get there that was specifically for our kid it's supposed to be used for our
children and so that's you know people think well you're just saying this and this know these are the things that we know from a historical perspective as well you know and like she said this has absolutely nothing to do with you because you can't you can't do anything
about something that you don't know and with the transition in the finance department um the the you know with finance and and what have you transition or what have you that's why come we have to have systems when we ask and we ask for who's the teacher that stuff should
already be in the system it shouldn't be like we got to go back next week and we'll pull up we're working that that should that that should be something you can push tonight and come forth you know what I mean so that's that's that's that's some some good work and hopefully
you we'll find out what's going on we don't want to accuse anybody of anything i listen madam president one quick wrap up um thank you for doing um for putting this on the agenda i
believe that money is probably over like you guys said a half a million not that and her request was to make sure the history of Bitten Harbor is taught to the kids and remains taught um she was a pioneer back in the day died in 17 1971
buried at Morton Hill Cemetery um so I hope we can find some information and as we're going through this it would be interesting to see what else we find you know what other CDs and stuff that we're setting on that we have not tapped into
so thank you all right if there's no other questions pertaining to this topic can I make one more comment please yes thank you President Robinson um as I stated before all of our
CDs all of our bank accounts are accounted for there has been no changes or nothing besides reconciling the wonderful interest every month that
has happened with these accounts and again the the name and the labeling of the account in our financial statements is apparently off somewhere so we just need to make sure we put the right name
on the right account so we'll know which account is Hobart we'll have the balance and we'll continue to move forward with those funds thank you all right up next we have the U michigan Rehabilitation
Services update uh Director Bernie thank you so much for your patience this evening as we work to your section of the agenda good evening everyone uh so current
Yeah I think you should just hold it so currently we have 56 students that are eligible for MRS services at the high school and three of which I know have open cases there is another two that I
think have an open case so that's a total of five kids that could potentially be receiving driver's education training through MRS but ultimately the MRS counselor works with
the student and the family to decide what is the best path so driver's education may or may not be part of that equation i've emailed our MRS uh person to try to get a little bit more
information so hopefully that answers what I can now or satisfactory now oh sorry madam president you have the floor thank you so that's 56 students how many students do we have in the senior class or is it the senior and junior class or
that would qualify for driver's ed in the senior miss Cubs had that information like 16 oh there's their age you're 16 and up sorry sorry Miss Cups put you on the spot like there
how many students that would you get my question 16 and up that were eligible 16 and up that are eligible when we start driver's ed right now we have 86
students K sorry 9 through 12 including Cape high school and Cape we have 86 students that are over 18 we have 362 students that are aged 15 to just below
18 and we have 58 students that are under 15 okay thank you all right any other questions from the board for uh Director Bernardet trusty Gavin thank you i'll be brief
um thank you uh Dr bernett so you said that there are 56 students in your program there are eligible for the Michigan Rehabilitation Services yes there's approximately 56 students
that would be eligible for MRS services that could potentially include driver's education okay and you said that those services could cover the cost of driver's education for them uh
potentially yes is there a transfer of So how how could that benefit us financially is there a way that those um funds can offset our driver's education
fees um from our general fund or how would that work i would have to work with Miss Couch to look at the the list but I I imagine that if they had signed up for driver's
education with us and with MRS we could Yeah we could talk to them and and and figure it out those so so if we calculated how much it would cost per student to
um offer that service to them there is a possibility that those 56 students along the way those dollars can be put back into the fund I if it's part of their potentially
yeah okay and so in regards to next steps what is it that we need to do to make sure that we're qualifying for those dollars to offset the costs well I I I've emailed the MRS representative to hopefully get some more information and
some more specifics uh regarding this and then I can work with Director Couch regarding uh who's on the I I I haven't seen the list of you know who's interested or the interest survey that that went out so we
can start uh seeing who's interested and who potentially could receive MRS services and meet with them and the parent and the MRS representative and have a discussion okay thank you so much so I guess I think it's important for the curriculum committee then to make
sure that we have a process um and that we don't let uh this we don't let this die that we actually allow for these dollars to be used so thank you Dr bernard thank you um Vice President Bowens for bringing this to our
attention as well go ahead sorry you looking at me you had another question i was just going to say it oh okay go ahead so how it worked back in the day I feel awkward saying that um back then they would come up to the high school do a presentation they would have us all in the class you had
to do the um driver's ed book then they would pay a third party Mr and he would take you out on the road and then you would do your road test so it's a win-win and it's I'm glad that we know something and I'm glad that you made that uh connection cuz this could
be a cost savings but also provide other additional resources for our students and it looks like we have 56 students so that's a great thing so thank you Madam President have the floor thank you Madam President thank you Dr bernick
madam President I know you said you needed some some good energy in the room tonight i do want to announce because I I don't want I don't want um anyone to leave before uh the I'm making a a quick announcement before my announcements but I would like to recognize Miss Terrell
she won um the our our student reader program from WSBTV her classroom her students read more uh had more reading hours than any other class in the county in Bering County
all right congratulations Miss did she want to say anything she said "No thank you oh you serve he took L play okay l oh Lord all right so um if there's no other
questions we'll uh get on to we'll get on with our agenda um we have old business um I don't have anything listed i would just like to I would like for the board to just take into consideration and we don't have to
have this conversation now but I want us to really look at whether we are using our time wisely as it relates to the way our meetings are set up um our work session that we had which is our individual committee meetings where we dig and do this work ask our questions
it went for a total of 4 hours and 9 minutes and we are here now approaching just about 3 hours in a meeting that should have only been votes and so I just want us to kind of self assess i know sometimes the discussions
are needed but our work session is when we're supposed to have done our homework get those questions asked at the table have those conversations and then we have from the work session which was the 25th of the month through the 4th to see
if there's any additional questions that we have that could be present to the superintendent so we can have those questions and clarifications provided so that when we come to the table for this meeting This meeting should really just be doing our staff reports and voting
and so what I see us doing is we are duplicating the work sessions and we are having conversations that have already been had asking questions that may have already been answered or of course I understand there's always additional questions that may come to the table so
I'm in no way trying to discount anyone's ability to have discussion at the table but I just want us to kind of reenter on that and realize that the way that we went to the framework that we went to was so that we wouldn't have people at the table saying they needed more information they were missing
things um and so we're we should be no further than maybe 7:30 with getting to to the end of this agenda and we're at 9:00 and we still have a training that might be two plus hours and a closed session and so I've been kind of saying
this at different points in the agenda to remind everyone of where we are and what we're doing and I and I think sometimes when I do that it falls on deaf ears so I just I'm asking that we do the work in the work session use the
window of time between the work session and the regular board meeting to send any additional clarifications that we need to administration so that when we come to the table we can be prepared to vote and not have these additional conversations um so I just I have to say that because
we we we're often fried by the time we leave here but it's because we're duplicating the work session and doing it both times um so I just I just wanted to throw that under old business i have nothing for no new business i'll ask at
this time is there anyone here for open public comment and that would be your opportunity to respond to anything that we've discussed in today's meeting and I read our public comment statement earlier do you need me to read it for you Mr
sorry do you need me to read you the public okay you have the floor okay so uh Brenda Terrell Fairplane East um and I would like to thank Dr bus for his hard work
we hope that um that there will be a turnaround that you won't leave us because we are we are tired of the in and out we're tired of people coming and leaving and and we got to get this work we got to
get this work stable and it's not right now we have to get it we have to we can't get keep having it people coming in and out i do want to say one thing about um our team and um we we are serious about
education we are not happy about some things that's going on right now hopefully we can have this conversation with you all because some things we don't need to put out but we will if we have to but uh we would like to have a conversation at some point with you all
because we do take uh our um education of our kids serious and some things that we're seeing that's happening we're not happy with so we uh we would like to have that conversation we would also like for the teachers to be more
involved um when you when we're when we're making changes when there are changes being made because we are um we are experts whether people want to believe it or not we are experts and um a lot of times we
say things and we get some backlash from people not that we care because we going to say what we need to say and it and that's the that's it but um we are concerned about um people calling curriculums
curriculums when they're not curriculums okay when we we are ready to do the work now we're not doing it for free but we are work because it's a lot of work we're we're really ready to sit down and put this curriculum together like it
needs to be now if you guys trust us to do this we can we can work with whoever but people know us and they say "Here come FPE." They say that because they know we're not full of no stuff we we're going to tell you what we need to tell
you and but we're not trying to start trouble well it is good trouble trouble because these are our kids the these are kids and our kids are looking up to us they're looking for us to do these things for them cuz they want to go to college they want to go to the service and they want to go off and live a a
good life and God is holding us accountable for making sure this happens to them and I'm not going to be in trouble with God for not letting it happen i want you all to know that i want everybody in here to know that okay so we have to get serious about the work
of the kids and we cannot keep we don't need to keep buying stuff and like um Brock Carter said we we don't have to spend all this money cuz we got so much stuff that we can use and you guys have to sit just
sit down and have a conversation with us we got a lot to tell you anybody know she said they're standing in support with you but if you had Okay all right anyone else present for open public
comment just want to address Mr triplet's um repeat of that it's about the the children to get it get what we do to the children and I would need feedback from
you all on somehow why just around the corner the gallery is there and we've worked hard for seven years to sustain that place the two monuments came out of that
place it's it belongs to the community all of it this is not about the Browns it's about the children it's about the community and so if there's something that again that we can do or say we've had charter
schools come Monasuri comes three years relationship with them but not been harbors 7 years in January we've been over there at 725 Broadway it took something y'all y'all talking about
planning and talking about making sure that uh the result is something positive the our work shows our work shows and we haven't asked for much the biggest thing we've asked for
is the response to be able to give the gifts that we've worked hard for to give it to back to the people and we need your help to do that to bring the children to us thank you thank you anyone else for open public
comment you have the floor do you are you familiar with the public comment statement do you need me to read that jar McAfee Fairplane Middle School okay go ahead triple 7 um I'm just here it's very disheartening to hear about Dr but
sudden departure um Dr but has done a wonderful job and it's coming from the staff at Fred Point Middle School i speak from all we going to miss you and we speak just like Miss Terrell said we hope that you can change your mind we hoping that you guys up here can help
them change his mind um Dr buts has been attacked viciously on Facebook our kids know about it but yet nobody up here has done anything about it this lady has done a lot and I was very sad that nobody had his back and nobody would
just stop that from happening because he's trying to change i am one of the last two years my job has been up on the chopping block so I'm speaking from experience with my job being on the chopping block I didn't take it personally i didn't because it's about
the kids it's not about me having a job god will give me another one dr books uh Dr marvin as I call him jokingly when my job was terminated last year they found me something in the
school district at CIS i took that job because it didn't matter whether I was a Ben Harvard area school employee as long as I was in this district making a difference that's what meant that was that's what was my goal when they came back to me said "Well your position is not over you can come back." I came
right back no questions asked this year my job might be up thanks Dr us Marvin for coming to us early and telling us "Hey guys this might happen again but we're going to try our hardest to keep you around whatever you can do wherever
we can fit you in it doesn't matter i'll go back to being a janitor like I was in 2015 so I can go help these kids i don't have to stay in my position." That's where I think we getting caught up a lot of my co-workers fellow co-workers it's not about the title if
it's really about the kids you will be a janitor my wife and tourist their spit off desk anything you got to do to help them encourage them to succeed i'm just hoping that we as a district can come
together and stop running good folks up out of here and stop allowing people from different areas that do not belong here should not be standing up here does not have a Bon Harbor address from coming up here talking and disrupting our leaders as Dr bus and also our
pastor pastor McAfee for pastor McAfee has done a lot for this district he's fed some of us he's did pageant he's done pageantss miss Ben Harbor privately he don't like me saying this but that's what he's doing he's he don't do just funerals he making sure that when he
come up to school that things are getting done kids are being taken care of he goes and buy coats when that's people jobs at the school already we don't have coats he go gets the coats no asks for no money don't go to the church this is out of his own pocket and we
allow people to come in and attack our own leaders and we have to stop that we have to become one it is about the kids and I'll say this and I'm done if I lose my job this year that does not stop me from making a difference at these schools i'm still going to go volunteer at Fair Point Middle School because all
the kids know me whether I'm Mr mcafee or Janitor McAfee I am about the kids and I believe that we have to get back to being about the kids and it don't matter what you making if you're here for the kids shouldn't matter
thank you anyone else for open public comment all right hearing none we'll proceed um superintendent announcements and comments and just for the public we are doing the announcements and comments now because after them we'll go into our
training which is going to be um by MASB and she's going to talk to us about budgets of course you all are welcome to stay but in the event that you want to take your exit we wanted to go ahead and put the announcements and comments prior to um the actual training dr buds thank
you Madam President um I'd like to thank uh everyone for coming out for the support tonight i really do thank you um we have found the home funds uh just was notified so um we will give you an update on the on
the uh work session so no monies was lost and and nothing nefarious so uh again thank you for allowing me to to shepherd the district as we move forward
um and and I yield the floor ma'am president all right trusty Gavin board member announcements and comments trusty Gavin um thank you President Robinson um I just
want to speak to um there are a lot of people who because of the way power works they don't speak up but they do talk to us um their
voices matter too and the things that they have gone through matter too and um when we make I'm not going to speak for anybody else i'm going to speak for myself cuz I don't have a right to speak for anybody else when I make the
decisions that I make when I say what I say it is because I've listened to a lot of people who are afraid of retaliation who are afraid of um being
bullied who do care about their jobs and they do care about the kids and they understand that their job is to care for our kids and if their job is taken away they can't be there for our kids if the
school is closed they can't be there for our kids and so I'm very clear on that i'm very clear that there is a real entity that wanted Benton Harbor area
schools to be no more i have led town halls in which we have received letters that MLK was going to be closed this school was going to be closed that school was going to be closed and so I
understand the history there and I understand that if you have the dollars to keep our people employed and if you have the plan to make sure that those people are
equipped to do their jobs and be there for our kids not only can we provide a stellar education to our children but we could also be one of the top employers ers in the county as well and I think
that it's important for us to look for creative ways to do both and if I got to be the bad guy because I'm fighting for jobs I'm fighting for kids to have driver's education i'm fighting for us to get debt forgiven and I'm fighting to make sure that we keep our land i'll be
that bad guy but I'm open to having a direct conversation with anybody who has a concern about the decisions I make why I make them and what my vision is as it relates to what I have been informed from the community that I love listened
to and been here born and raised and have a right uh to speak to that and make decisions on that behalf thank you all right Trusty Dale no comments thank you Madam President thank you Trusty Doyle up next we have
Trusty Rocket Martin and thank you to Trusty Gavin as well trusty Rocket Martin yes i'm hoping that Dr buds will re be re seeing his um his his resignation letter also uh I
see our district moving forward i see the positivity in our district i see the gains that we're making and um the disruption at this point in time would
just be so crucial uh to put our district back it would it take us backwards i think we are in a good place we're moving forward we may not be leaping but we're moving we're not standing still we're not going backwards
and so with that being said I I strongly hope that Dr was will send his resignation letter and that the true voice of the community will be heard all right up thank you Trusty Rocket
Martin up next we have Treasure Bradley uh good evening everybody i'm going to be uh very succinct um thank you everybody for coming out um when we say we are we care for the children then why do we make decisions as a board against our students don't say this is nothing
personal because at this point that's what it is we say that we love Ben Harbor area schools then our actions need to line up with what we say i heard heard it said earlier that we are a forward thinking board i beg to differ
if we keep on doing the same thing the way it's always been then that's going that's called insanity you can't keep on doing the same thing over and over again some of us um have ran up to the state to get things done for this district and you know I have nothing against that but
we can't keep sitting at this table and making decisions that's going to put us right back at square one or put push us back even further um we have to make wise decisions so the question is if we don't fight for ourselves and continue to tear
down what we are what folks have built up then why should folks fight for us have a good evening thank you up next we have Secretary Tripoland again Madame President thank you i know we got a very long night i
got a very early morning to get on the road for me what's understood don't ever have to be explained as far as I'm concerned it's okay it's okay not to agree okay but you have to respect
everybody cuz I don't always agree with everybody here and so for me I I've lived long enough for it not to be personal for me i've never wavered it doesn't mean just because I
feel the way I feel that I'm right but I'm going to stand in my resolve i'm going to stand on what I feel is best for our district i'm going to stand on behalf of the people who voted for me to represent their voices
because there this this this thing is is very serious you know there are still don't ever think that they are gone that they are not trying to destroy this district that they are not trying to close this
district i'm not your buddy and you're not mine we don't even socialize like that with one another once we leave this table but I have respect for everybody here i I I I I I
heard a prominent minister say you know a lot of times Ben Ben Harvard gets emotional and you know we we um We we'll be all right ben Har's good ben Harvard area schools is going
to be good and uh again I I think that we have a great board of education here i I I have enjoyed uh Dr buck and um I want to tell you thank you Dr but for what you've done for us we
appreciate you my brother and so it's not personal some people just got you know don't give a it's not personal okay i don't have any feelings one way or the other i respect what people do and people we just have to respect
our differences so again I'm excited about the direction that the district is moving and looking forward to us uh let's go Tigers thank you all right up thank you Secretary Triplet up next Vice President Bowens your account yes
well good evening thank you um I guess you have to stay persistent and asking the questions and keep on asking and sending the emails to get the answers but stay persistent you know I thank Dr butch for his service
last week I was called at my job by people i was sent a DC text message by a board member basically I was stronger armed and in democracy you don't have to agree with everybody but you can respect
it you can respect what everyone says what they bring to the table and we also have to embrace change you know I didn't agree with America when they voted for Donald Trump but he is our president and we have to suffer the consequences i don't agree with some of
the things that the board members say and what we do but we have to respect what we bring to the table when I made my decision I stand on my convictions i stand on what the people and when I talk to people when the staff and the taxpayers come to me or when I'm in the
grocery store I think about my nieces and nephews that have to struggle and deal with this it's not personal it's business to be threatened by a fellow elected official that I will be recalled and the pastors are organizing recalls i
say deal me in i like a good fight i leave with this sir Jo says "I'm not afraid to stand alone to speak my truth and to fight for what's right again I'm not afraid to stand alone and
stand by my convictions." Thank you thank you Vice President Bowens [Music] um I don't have a comment this evening other than thanking the board for their
time today and um our staff for their hard work including Dr buds for the public that uh stayed with us we appreciate you i have no further comments at this time um so with board member announcements and comments done
we actually can um be bid farewell to our directors we will not have a need for you for the remainder of this evening thank you Angela so much for that too so I hope you all have an amazing night miss Singer I know you'd like to go i see you sad but we do need you for
recordeping purposes and then um we have our MASB board training CBA 310 i I want to check in with the board do we need just a five minute yeah we Okay just a five minute break i see people walking away so we'll recess for five minutes i
promise um Julie we're we're going to come back in five minutes and we'll be ready for you we do have you in overnight right okay so we're going to just take a quick recess for 5 minutes we should be back by 9:32 i would say no later than
9:35 recess as of 9:28 all right so we're returning from recess as of 9:43 p.m i would like to notate that we do have a couple of our trustees that are still returning from recess recess however they are present
um we do have a full board for the record um we have Miss Julie Pierce here from MASB and she's going to be doing our training for us cba 310 concerning budget anatomy and shortfalls um as a
reminder we did do CBA 103 as a board um the virtual training and so she's just going to do a a super quick refresher of that um as suggested by Miss Chapman our MDE liaison for the partnership agreement and then we'll go into CBA 310
so thank you so much again for your patience for being willing to travel and do this training for us i pass the floor over to you and we are in your hands thank you President Robinson i'll try to be good about standing in front of the microphone but I have a tendency to
wander so just remind me where my spots at you can pick that up as well I would like to ask that the public give the board grace we've been here for quite a bit of time so we will be eating our dinner and lunch during our training um please grant us grace
well thank you as President Robinson introduced me I am Julie Pearson from MASB i have been with MASB since uh November of 2020 prior to that I was uh chief financial officer for 25 years uh
so I spent a lot of time dealing with school finance and uh COVID funds hit the districts and I decided you know what I'm eligible to retire so I'm going to go uh but uh it was it was a wonderful time
where I could make some impact on kids in an indirect way and since I didn't have the gift to teach that was how I could give out to the public school system and um I've enjoyed my time at MASB and being able to come off boards like this so uh and also for the record
uh I am a board member for Gra Isel RD so not only am I uh retired school business official but I'm also a current board member and uh really quick my financial history with school districts i spent about 15 years with Rashid's
fellow RSD so I'm familiar with special ed funding and funding that flows through ISDS and then I was with three other local districts and I retired from um when I retired I was working for Bullet Creek Schools uh district just inside Midland County so just so you
have an idea of what my background is as we go through these trainings so I had touch base with President Robinson and asked what kind of focus that um the board may want and she did mention doing a quick review of CBA 103 which is your your basic school
finance so I kind of hit what I thought was going to be the highlights as I go through this entire presentation not just the the initial review but as I go through the entire presentation please raise your hand answer questions when we're right there on the topic i don't
view those as an interruption at all i would rather address your questions right there when we're in the in the middle of the topic uh than to hold we'll do questions until break and that sort of thing and as far as the breaks I'm going to roll right through those um we're going to do this as as efficiently
as possible okay so here are the ground rules that one's been in your packet i'm sure you have reviewed all of those um and ultimately why are we here the purpose of this is to explain the budgeting
process the developing of it the monitoring of it um and to begin with we're going to do just a little bit of that review of basic school finance from CVA 103 so we are going to review uh key elements of CVA 103 basic school finance we're going to look at key variables of
budgeting and we're going to look at your responsibilities regarding the budgeting oversight i thought one of the the most important things out of CBA 103 the basic school financing is looking at your your six key funds and uh everybody is really familiar with these because
you are adopting budgets on the majority of these um but I just wanted to review the six key funds those being your general fund and that is your big fund that is where all of the operations and uh expenses and revenues of the school
districts that's your main fund that's where it all runs through and it's required by law and uh you have to have a budget for this particular fund this is the only fund that is actually required in a school district um most have multiple funds but this is the only
one that is actually required by state law you have your special revenue funds again this the biggest one of this is your food service fund um some districts have a community service fund not or an athletic fund they may still keep track of athletics outside and what they consider a special
revenue fund but in their financial statements and how it's presented to the outside world athletics are rolled into general fund they're not a separate fund anymore some districts still wanted to keep it out i It's you know I don't know if there's very many of them that still do that but uh your biggest special
revenue fund is going to be your food service your capital projects and your debt service funds they kind of go hand in hand when you pass a bond issue um you have the money come in from the sale of those bonds and that money goes into a capital projects fund that money is
kept separate from your general fund it does not mingle with your general fund in any way shape or form and I think when you had mentioned possibly going out to the voters for a bond proposal and that sort of thing I think it's important to stress to the public that
what we put together in a bond proposal and in that ballot language that is the only thing that we can spend that money on we cannot spend that money on anything else and it has so it has to fall within that that proposal that you ultimately take to the Department of
Treasury and they go through it with a fine tooth comb and say yes yes yes no no no yes yes yes now you have a very clear plan of what you are going to go to the voters to ask money for and then that is what is listed in that that bond
um proposal that ballot language that's why you have your attorneys put together that ballot language and then when that bond is passed that proposal passes and you sell those bonds and you get that money it goes into a separate bank account a very separate
fund all the interest that that that money earns goes into that fund they are those monies are never mingled with any other fund whether it be your special revenue food service fund your general fund your syncing fund you're you're blessed to have a syncing fund in this district your capital projects money
that you have even though it's very related to those types of funds that you have in your scing fund they don't get mingled if for some reason some funds do get deposited someplace else and you have to move them back technically you're even supposed to calculate the
amount of interest that was sitting in that other account that portion of that interest needs to be moved over into that bond that's how technical it is another element that is I think is important that voters don't realize when your capital projects are virtually done
and you get from your architects um a significant certificate of completion meaning that your project is pretty much done at that point you have to have those funds audited you have the a firm come in and they do a separate audit on those capital projects and to make sure
that you adhere to that proposal that the community said you could spend that money on and then that audit has to then be turned over to the state so it is it is closely scrutinized so if there's ever any question as to what the money can and can't be spent on and what it
was spent on it's followed very closely and you have to report all of that and the funds are even audited at another level okay and that is outside of your regular audit that you have every year this is a special one that you have to bring in good news is you can use those
capital project funds to pay for that audit that is an allowable expense yes is that always the bond the bond that's all you have to do with it yes if you go through and you do a proposal and you get it approved and then you go to the voters to ask to levy mills in order to
pay that off which leads us right into the debt service fund so once you um all your projects are completed and now you have to start collecting the mills that you asked for the ability to levy in that capital projects um proposal when
you start um collecting those that money goes into its own bank account in its own fund and is kept track of separately so now you have the money to pay for those principal and interest payments on those bonds that you sold to have all of that capital project fee that all has to
go in its own fund and be kept separate and be maintained separately um in order to have the money there to pay the interest and um principal payments as they come due over the next 15 20 30 years however long your your uh debt services
for any questions on those two things i I wanted to hit that a little bit harder just because I know there's um that might be a possibility that you're you have rolling around in the back of your minds of going out to the public for a bond proposal so those are some key
elements to remember that you can stress as you uh prepare the community for that trust funds uh the rules around trust and a agency and fidiciary funds um have
recently changed a little bit uh trust funds you may have um had these referred to as student activity accounts club accounts that sort of thing those student activity funds um they're those fidiciary funds and trust funds they're
they're they've been um the definition of them have been changed a little bit but with trust funds basically uh these are examples include like endowments and any gifts and requests and foundations uh you have a fidiciary fund and you found the CD tonight that relates to
that fidiciary fund um it's oh I'm horrible with names I remember more of you said it was 190,000 I'm going to remember the number before I remember the name Hulk Hulk or that one yes so that is that's a fidiciary fund that's a trust fund that money was given to the
district for a very specific purpose it is kept separate and uh you know the dos and the don'ts with those particular funds okay fidiciary funds they used to be called agency funds and this is uh those student activity accounts like your
national honor society your student counts your uh uh maybe if your any of your sporting um your sport groups like your football or your basketball or something maybe they they have their own little um accounts where they fund raise money and then they spend that on something
outside of your sports boosters outside of your PTO's outside of your band boosters these are student groups that um might have some money set aside in a in an account and it's the students that really decide where that money goes but
it's directed by maybe a member of the of the district a teacher that oversees that group and that sort of thing that's those are what we used to call your u student activity accounts that's what would fall into these slides yes so where would like your booster club money
fall into that's a good question now I'm going to ask this is your booster club a separate entity outside of the school district or is it made up of um teachers and staff and stuff that are are part of the boosters or is it a
community group that does that if it's a community group then they are truly a separate entity and they're they're not attached to the school district i'm hoping I my fingers crossed that they're not because if they are that separate they should be their own nonprofit
entity they should have their own nonprofit status their own tax identification number that sort of thing really the only thing that they should be sharing with you is a portion of the district's name within their band booster sports boosters that sort of
thing your PTO's should be the same they should be separate entities um so PTO's and band boosters sports boosters that sort of thing they should be separate entities from the school so we haven't really established what our our booster
club is kind of aligned with the athletic department and it's it is fine for them to be in communicative in communications with and that sort of thing but they should have their own bank account and their own tax
status and their own tax identification number it's the easiest it and it's the safest thing for the school district to have them at that level because if there's and I'm not saying it would be but there's always the the chance for it if there's any misappropriation of funds
or anything like that it is under their own umbrella and it is not associated with school but it go through our account that booster account that that booster account the money that are collected from games and what have you is collected by the athletic
director that's different that's part of your athletic fund if you're talking about your gate receipts and uh and if your concession stands is operated by the school district then all of that that's different that's all in your athletic department yes your gate
receipts for your football and basketball and you charge for baseball and softball that sort of thing that does go right into the general fund and it's classified under athletics that's different i was I'm referring to a separate group that wants to raise money in general for your sports programs or
for your band programs that way you've got a separate entity that wants to raise money for bands that are outrageously expensive hundreds of thousands of dollars and um or raise money for um improvements to a softball field or baseball field or something
those outside groups okay that's what I'm talking about gate receipts and that sort of thing that is 100% district okay uh months the other item that I wanted to touch on out of your uh the CDA 103 is just your foundation allowance i just want to make
sure that everybody understands um that you have a foundation allowance and that's made up of two pieces it's made up of property tax revenue that you collect at a local district and then based on how much property taxes you collect on a local basis the state then
puts in the amount necessary to get you up to that $9,68 per student okay so your foundation allowance is made up of two parts the state kicks in a portion and then you have a portion that is generated from your property tax revenue
that's collected directly from the state okay and you all know that annually that is set by the board and it or excuse me by the state and in good years we know this amount before June 30th and I can tell you in my 25 years as a school business official three times I knew
what the state foundation allowance was going to be before I had to put together a budget to take to a board three times out of 25 years so when your business official brings the budget to
you it's very important that you have a list of what the budget assumptions are and part of that budget assumption is going to be what the foundation allowances estimated what that's going to be along with what your student count
is going to be now you have to have and I'm I'm gonna I'm getting ahead of myself with some things but it all ties to this foundation allowance so so just know the more time I spend on this I'm actually covering information that's further into the the presentation but now is a good point to go over it so
with your foundation allowance uh we have to have a we have to have a budget in place by July 1st if we don't pass a budget by July 1st you don't spend any money because the board tells the district how ultimately it's approved to spend the money we don't
have your approval as a as a financial person I'm not allowing a dime to go outside of the district i can't legally we can't spend anything that includes even salary benefits keeping the lights on nothing so but July 1 we have to have a budget in place and you have to approve it we don't know what our
foundation allowance is going to be we don't know what our student count is going to be and that is well over half of the revenue that comes into the district is your foundation allowance right there so well over half of your budget is a guess it's a best estimate that we possibly can we look at what the
house is saying what the senate is saying the governor is saying where you think it's going to be this or it's going to be a combination of of something in there your student count we're not sure what our student count is going to be your first count isn't until October that's 90% of your
count and then your second one isn't until February that's 10% of your count and all of that count information changes on a month-to-month basis because as students move in and out of your district your student count number goes up and down because
now is it 23J section 23 i forgot the number there's a section of the state aid now where and it's been there probably close to 15 years actually when a student moves from district to district the foundation allowance moves with that dis with that student so um
you only have that portion of the foundation allowance of that student for the time frame that they're there and that doesn't stop happening until April that's about the last time that the state will make an adjustment if a student moves to another district so you don't even know what your student count
is going to be that you have your well over half of your revenues based on until April june 30th is year end these are the moving targets that your business official and your superintendent are continuously working
at and so it is and you're not going to know what your foundation I see you're you're not going to know your foundation allowance if you're lucky until probably the end of November maybe and then I want to address title funds and federal money
also keep in mind the state budget runs from October to September okay and so you may have to submit your title application your title one title two title four title five how many titles you have you have to submit that and have that approved but you don't know
what your allocation is yet you've got an estimated allocation you're not going to know your true allocation probably until January and then you have to amend that and then you have to go through the approval and so just as I was hearing some of the questions that were coming through the board of wanting to know
certain pieces of information I'm telling you your financial person and your superintendent your whole administrative team wants to give you that information we don't know we don't know what that information is quite often until months later we have a
plan and we can tell you what the plan is and the and the plan that your finan or your federal dollars are based on especially your title is based on your school improvement plan you know what's in your school improvement plan and that has to be tied right back to the application that you get you submit for
your title funds and it's approved if it's not in your school improvement plan it can't be in your title money and so as a board you're already approving that school improvement plan so you're already approving what's in those federal dollars just not line by line
which in all honesty is not the level that the board needs to be concerned with that is where your administrative team is concerned with that line by line you're concerned with the overall idea that title one money is going to cover a trip to Washington DC and this possible
and that's what it you're going to be able to see what's what's outlined and just know that when we have the details we're going to bring them to you and as as much information as we possibly can to get that ultimate approval to go out the door with with those sorts of
expenses but please know it's not that we don't want to give the information we don't have yet because we're waiting on the rules and the regulations and everything to trickle down to us yes my question um I heard you say that the
money following student speaking the mic yes yeah the foundation allowance the that money that $9,68 per student that you're getting from the state at this point will follow the students so if you have a student come in and they're included in your
account in October but then they leave in December and let's say they go to I'm grabbing a name Ann uh when Ann Arbor then is going to put them on their in their student population and that's going to get reported to the state and
now that foundation allowance is coming away from you and going to Benton Harbor for the remainder of the year you got the section from the time frame that they were with you and that moving around continues and doesn't stop until
about okay cuz I was under the impression if a student is at one school on account day all that money goes to that school even if that student leaves that changed that changed
and well I've been out five years and it was probably in place at least 10 before that I mean it's been there for a while oh okay thank you it used to be excuse my term but in seat meant the money with was with the district but now it doesn't
mean that it means but in seat for the time frame that it's in the seat when it moves into a new district the money goes with it that's a good thing so you're it is a good thing except the gray hair that the finance
person gets and trying to pinpoint how much money we're going to actually have okay that's it it gets it so those people who those districts who once the count date is over and then they send
those kids back to Ben Harbor and Ben Harour should get a portion of that money absolutely and it's the responsibility of our finance director to make sure that we get it or whoever does your pupil count register okay yeah sometimes that falls on the finance person's desk but you know it's
registered yes you gave a certain date if they send the student back in April does do those dollars follow the student or they stay with the state recognizes that at a certain point you
got to stop and I think that's around in that that April time frame okay if the student gets kicked out in April and they come back to our district we're servicing the student but we're not
receiving the remainder of those dollars that if you have a student move in in end of April to finish up the year in May and June the state aid isn't going to follow them back but you have them for six to eight weeks right instead of having them you know for the entire year
and not getting anything so yes have you ever known them to the foundational gradually increase the known to increase it oh yeah yeah in
2011 12 they took $470 back from us in about April when we had already spent the money yeah i don't care to relive that that was a that was a bad year i have a chart actually that shows all that but we'll get to that but yeah they have they have taken they've actually taken money back from us yes yeah i got
one more question yes about um I'm trying to remember the question um throw something at me again okay okay thank you all right one other thing that I want to I want to talk about is your district's ability to pass and maintain the 18 mills on your
non Homestead property tax okay so remember how I told you that you're collecting some personal you're you're collecting some property taxes and the amount that you collect in property taxes goes into the pot to to reach that $9,68 per student that is your 18 mills
that you go out to voters every so often and ask for them ask the ability to continue to levy these 18 mills for the majority of your taxpayers it doesn't impact them because the 18 mills is on the nonhomestead so on the home that you
have um identified as your home you don't pay that 18 mills on because that's that's your homestead this is on nonhomestead so if you if there's happens to be a second piece of property um or farm ground that sort of thing businesses that's who pays that 18 mills
but it's important for you to pass that every year um or when you go out for renewal because if you don't the state's going to assume you do and they're not going to make up make up they're going to calculate a full 18 mills on your property tax basis say
you're collecting them and I'll show you this is an actual property tax bill and I like to give this as an example whoops how did I let go nope other way wow come
on there we go uh because this kind of gives you an idea of how your uh property taxes are collected at the local level this particular property tax bill if you look where it's listed um over kind of in the
middle on the right hand side you see all of those different villages this particular district the Grand Ledge Public Schools has several different uh villages um a special ed mill a couple of debts um so you can see the 18 mills
and it says exempt this particular piece of property doesn't pay that but you can see how all of the different millages that you could possibly have and how it's listed on a property tax statement and so that 18 mills is exempt on this one but the state is going to assume
that if you have a piece of property in your uh school district that we have to collect that on you're collecting the full 18 mills and typically this has a ton of because we go into this in a lot of detail
um here's an example of a state aid status report now you can go out to the state website and you can look at one of these for any district in the state of Michigan and if you look right there this is an old one i didn't take the time to update it because there's lots of transitions
in this slide but currently the foundation allowance is the $9,68 here's your actual count and the blends between your fall and your spring count and so I think currently your state aid membership is like 1,247 point something or other and that
is a blend between your October and your um February counts and then you also have a blend with your special ed uh numbers too you have two counts you have a general ed and a special ed and then an overall pretty so there is there you can see what your count is and what you are
actually paying getting paid for now mind you this is a number that changes on a month-to-month basis if you were to look at this every month um from July until June it's going to be probably April May and June are going to be the only three months that are going to stay the same so the amount of money that
you're getting on a monthly basis changes so that's your blended count here's where I'm talking about the state is going to assume that you're collecting this much because you've got this much property tax taxes um values that you're going to charge that 18 mills and then
six commercial property taxes so they're going to say you're collecting in this example it's $3.7 million locally and so that works out to be per general ed or per membership $2,900 some odd dollars i'm going to call it 3,000 so the state's going to assume you're
collecting $3,000 over here so they're only going to take $6,98 out of the school aid fund to make your $9,68 that make sense okay so we have to
vote do do I know about the 18 mil so when you say we up when it comes up again how often does it come up is it a valid item it is a valid item and uh it depends on how long you want in your
ballot language can say for the next 5 years excuse me for the next 10 years so for the next 15 years or 20 years you can go out you can put that number of years in the ballot language uh now you kind of I don't know of many
districts that go more than 10 most are going five and I'll tell you why because you have what's called a headley roll back so uh which means property tax values can't go up um faster than the rate of inflation and if it they do that
means property taxes are going to go up higher than the rate of inflation and Headley roll back the Headley law doesn't allow that to happen so what they do is they roll back your millage to the point where it lowers that 18 mills to the point where when they
calculate it out people's property taxes haven't went up more than the rate of inflation that's why it's called a heavily roll back and they're going to take that 18 mills and roll it back to 17.6 17.2 something like that so if you have
a if times are where you've got high inflation and property tax values are fluctuating too a combination of things you don't want to hold um you don't want to have to uh too long on that to go back to the voters to get back up to the
18 mills because the state assumes you are collecting 18 you might only be collecting 17 and a half they don't care they're going to assume it's a full 18 and they're only going to kick in the remaining amount so then that means you're not getting your full foundation
allowance per student okay so how do we know if we are collecting the 18 mill our director of financial every year you are given an L4029 and on that is a property tax form and it lists out any of the millages that you are um you you
are going to be levying over the next year that's part of your whole budget hearing your truth and taxation that is what is meant by that it's required by law that you have a budget hearing and that's where you talk about what you're going to tax and how you're going to tax it and that sort of information all that
rolls onto that L4029 and your treasurer signs that and then that goes to the county and all to the um to the townships and that's how they know what they need to levy on these property tax bills that you just saw that's how the
entities know is from that L4029 so as a board that's how you know and your finance person is going to be able to tell you that it's 18 mills or we had a heavy roll back that sort of thing okay uh really quick on the the top few
lines is your foundation allowance funding somehow you could you you combine that information there um and you'll come up with your foundation allowance funding below that are your categoricals and one of your biggest categorical goals is your 31A which is
your at risk but those categorical funds change and they can change from year to year based on basically what the state is looking at focusing money on and it could be uh I apologize I could be early literacy
it could be math it could be science whatever the the focus in is at the time the categorical funding will kind of follow all right any questions on the basics good all right so the primary responsibility does the board of education in the superintendent
roles when it comes to budget so with Ipologize that is too small on my own screen to be able to so you can see that it's the superintendent's responsibility to work with the school administrators to pull together the
information of what the foundation is going to look like the student count what programs need this uh where they want to make some changes if they need to add staff takeaway staff that sort of thing it's the superintendent's responsibility to reach out to the administrative team and pull all that
information together and then it's the board's responsibility to review that budget um that's submitted by the superintendent and make sure that it aligns with your funding policies and what your district goals are
so that's the board's responsibility is to look at it at the overall and trust in the superintendent and the administrative team to give you what the budget assumptions are and how those tie back and make sure that you're following your funding policies and um your
district goals and a budget is simply put it's it's a translation of what you prioritized in your district and what then you have put it into a financial plan and it's can be a very political item it's an instrument to allocate
those public resources among what your social and economic needs are of your school district and it's a management administrative tool that has specific ways and means of providing those public services we've already went over these a budget
is what you prioritize in your district it's the financial plan of your goals and objectives that you've identified as important it's the financial plan to reach those yes so your fun your types of funds we went
over those in the beginning that are that require a budget your general capital projects debt service and your special revenue funds your food service those are all if you have those types of monies you are required to have a budget for those particular funds here you're required to have a budget for your
general fund and your special revenue fund um which is your food service and uh you have um your syncing fund that you have a budget for also so when you're looking at major expenditure items it is required by law that your budget is at that function
level and so when we look at an expense of a district we look at it in two different elements we look at it a function which is by department so basically what is the function what department is this related to and then we also then break it down further into
a category called object what are we buying what are we paying for so what department is this and what are we buying what function is this and what object are we buying so we use both ways in order to provide that that picture um and the use of the district's revenue
sources this is really tiny this is just an example i would I had this in front of my board um every board meeting they had that in front of them so they understood what was meant by special services instructional basic basic
instruction uh what was included in athletics what was included in central services quickly at the top is at the very tip top of that it says the account number structure we're required by law to keep track of expenses at an account level by
account but this account level um level and It's your fund your function and your object and then your building code those are the most important elements so we have to break everything down by building code then we have to break it first we break it down by function what
are we paying for is it basic instruction is it instructional support is it general administration whatever then by object and then by building and it's all required by law that we report it at that detail and the numbers that are highlighted there next to each one of those
functions um you can go to any district in the state of Michigan and function 111 is going to be elementary 112 is going to be middle school 113 is going to be high school 261 is going to be operations and maintenance 271 is going to be
transportation that is the same from district to district it is that way so when we pull all of that approval at the state level and we start comparing district to district we're comparing as best apples to apples as we possibly can because we are truly if we're comparing transportation costs across the state of
Michigan that is because we have pulled function 271 out of every district in the state of Michigan and we're lining them all up side by side here is a statewide general fund revenue so this is every district in the state of Michigan and this is a pie
chart of the 20 billion dollars um in 2324 that uh was spent in school districts across the state of Michigan you can see the largest portion of the revenues that came in is your foundation grant your 18 mills which was 14% and
then the uh foundation grant of 43% that orange and the and the darker blue those two pieces together that's your foundation allowance do you see that is the large majority of the uh funding for school districts
the other 25% that gray area of that says state that's your categoricals that's your literacy grant your your um special your 31A those categoricals that we saw listed on that state aid status report that's what's in that gray area your federal funds is the gold area
that's going to be your title that's going to be your ESRE funds that sort of thing any federal dollars that's going to include your USDA which is your food service money that's going to be in there too uh no I apologize it's not in there it's startup fund money so that is in a separate fund and then
local and other it's a small amount it might be some specialized money that might flow down from your ISC or something like that it's it's a small percentage of of the overall revenues but you can see by far your foundation allowance is your bread and butter let me ask you a question when you said like
our title um 31A all of those fall into the category from the state your the state portion that 25% that 5 billion is going to include your categoricals which is going to be like your early literacy your uh at risk your title money that's
federal that's going to be in the gold section so your the that 25% that's state and the 10% that's federal those are your grant dollars some of them might be state some of them might be federal but that's where those
specialized dollars are going to be so if if we were looking at the budget and and what what things do we have in our budget that is that comes from the state that is state funded so that we won't have to worry about that per se
that comes that's going to be your gray your orange and that darker blue that's going to be those three big chunks right there say so when you talk about title when you say federal like give me another example other than title um your funds those are going to be in there
uh actually in your financial statements you have what's called a schedule um a sea it's a schedule of expenditures and federal awards and that is going to list my phone i actually still have it i think that's going to give a list of all of your federal audits
so we need because those are all audited separate every year so right now we where the where the where the dilemma comes in at or where we are right now with the hanging in the air with this administration is the federal
fund that's that's where the uncertainty so especially that three million that of sitting out there of ES correct is what you're referring to yes i mean so like I'm just saying like in the future when you're planning so we look at our when we look at our budget the federal
fund how many how many different pieces how many spaces in our budget according to our budget is actually funded by from a federal perspective and then we know Yeah okay so can you give Yep um one thing that I would recommend I don't know what other training that you have
planned but we do offer a CBA on understanding your audit and I would highly recommend that one um and because we do go over a little bit of this in more detail but on your sea your schedule of um expenditures and federal
awards you have your US Department of Agriculture now this is this is your special this is your special revenue of your food service but it's listed on there you can schedule all your federal funds so that's a huge amount you have um title one title two title three title
four that's a huge amount of federal funds that you get there you also have your COVID which is your um the CO 19 um teacher and support staff payments and then your SR 2 SR 3 and uh rescue
plan and homeless too then you also have uh some MIC LSC subgrantees i'm not sure what that is that's grant it's a what literacy it's a literacy grant that's right yes so I remember that one so there's some literacy dollars you also have some urban teacher residency
program money you have um from the US Department of Health and Human Services you have a little bit more you have you have a TAG grant but that's kind of under title one but it's kind of under another um office and then you also have some
pass through federal funds that come from the um bar and resoft of title one vocational and t Perkins money and Medicaid outreach so you have quite a few um different types of federal funds
so one of the most important things that I would say with any grant dollars and I mean either either categorical grants or your federal grants your grants should never have an impact on your bottom line right right your expenses equal your
revenues so nothing ever comes nothing ever hits your fund balance you never decrease your fund balance or increase your fund balance because of grant dollars that includes at risk that includes title that includes literacy that includes any um retirement mipers
money that you get um on the state your categoricals includes anything that we just talked about that included in your federal listing now does that mean that you're going to spend all that money every year that you're going to spend all of your title money no you might have some title carryover but what that
does mean is in your actual uh numbers that hit your financial statements if you spend a if you collected $100,000 in title money you spend $100,000 in title money then that result is zero you have no impact on your fund balance because if you
recognize $100,000 but you only spent 50 that means your $50,000 to the good that will roll into your fund balance uh-uh no because you didn't you spend the money and be reimbursed grant dollars are always a zero impact on your
financials question i'm not sure if I'm asking this right i don't have the language go right ahead um in Michigan are school districts supposed to have like a certain
percentage of dollars in like in order for your fund balance to be considered okay or not in trouble like what is that formula what what is it that we have to have in order to be not on their radar we're going to get into fund balance in a little bit
more detail but I'll address it a little bit right now uh in order to keep the Department of Treasury off from your doorstep and when I say I want to say Department of Treasury it's not the warm fuzzy people from the Department of Ed it's the it's the people in suits that
show up from the Department of Treasury at your door if you have a fund balance that is less than 5% of your revenues and they have a certain calculation that they go through because it's not your total revenues because some of those revenues are restricted we just talked about that with your federal grants
those are restricted revenues because they the state recognizes your revenues and expenses for grants should equal each other so there's a bot there's no impact there so we got to remove those from the calculation so they have they have certain um elements that are
removed certain functions that are removed we're going to go right back to that account number and all of those functions um those numbers they will they will tell you which ones need to be removed i think 312 is titled remove any function 312 they move that take that out then they take a look at that that
adjusted revenue number and then they take a look at your fund balance and if your fund balance is 5% or more they'll say okay you're doing all right if you're at that 5% they're going to come in and they're like h what are you doing and what is your plan to move forward
you got you you guys good they're gonna they're going to do a they're going to do a temperature check of the district you get below 5% % they're knocking at your door saying "Um what are you doing we're going to be monitoring you on a monthly basis we want you we want you reporting to us on the changes that you're making and that sort of thing."
You don't want that and if it's bad enough they'll actually come in and sit down and say "No yes no yes i don't care if you got a collective bargaining agreement no you can't afford it." They I mean it can it gets pretty serious how do we know what that number is your uh
finance person can calculate that number and you can ask what that number is i will tell you that as a finance person I'm not sure what the reasoning was with the with the state of Michigan looking at revenues i look at it as a percent of of expenses um because that's really I
want to make sure that I have enough in our savings account in our fund balance in order to cover so many months worth of expenses um because the more I have in there to cover those expenses then the less or maybe I won't even have to borrow at all but I do see that you do state aid
borrowing every year and that is because you don't have enough money in your fund balance in your savings account to get you through those lean times when the state doesn't give you state aid because the state doesn't give you state aid one month out of the year you only get 11 state aid so you have to go almost two
months without having that income coming in do you have enough in your savings account your personal savings account to bloat yourself for two months before a paycheck comes in it's the same concept for the school district that's why we have to borrow state aid and then pay it
back when we start getting our payments what's the question that we need to be asking our um what is what is our what is our fund balance what is our percentage of our fund balance in accordance with state regulations with um revenues what is our percentage of
fun right so when you but on an operating basis I would suggest looking at it as a percentage of your expenditures and when I did that we're still on um you're about at when I look at your fund balance in comparison to your
overall expenses you're at about six and a half% so we're higher than the you're higher than the red flag but I'm looking at expenses i'm not looking at revenue which revenue is what the state looks at i did a very very rough because I don't have access to your function levels and
that sort of thing but if I look at your revenue and I take off your your all of your federal money and then I compare that to your foundation you're at 7.75% but that please don't take that to the bank because that is just me looking
at your financial statements and what your total federal sources are i just removed all of those there's some state money that they remove out of that revenue too like you're at risk and that sort of thing your financial statements um online don't give me that kind of so
I can't but I would ask what that number is if you are anywhere near that 5% the state you you would be hearing from the state but it's an important number for you to be looking for okay yes great i know that's state funding
federal money come into that state yes even if that happens even if it's come like your title money comes into the state first because you don't you don't ask you don't reach out to Washington DC and ask to be reimbured your title money you reach out to the department of ed state of Michigan
that's in the yellow ultimately if it is federal money even though it flows from the feds to the state and then to here it's still classified as federal okay we talked about this we talked about the function you guys have an idea of what falls under each one of these
categories this is the bare minimum that your budget needs to be listed at so when you're given your vision your excuse me when you're given your budget we got you tired starts at four o'clock in the morning so yeah um uh so
when this is the minimum level that it needs to be at you need to see instruction what your budget is operations and maintenance that sort of thing that this is the important level um required by law now underneath here you could get into more detail if that is what is in your board policy this
just happens to be the minimum that it has to be at would you like to pay no I sit all day long so I'm good i'm good plus if I do this then I can tell my trainer I don't have to work out tomorrow because I stood up for three hours three and I'm not telling them I hate
I'm not telling her I had three cookies object so we got our function now our object is we got our department now what are we buying salaries benefits purchase services supplies materials that section of your account number if it starts with a one it's in the thousands it's salary if it's 2,000 it's
a benefit purchase services are three and four and so forth again same thing across the state of Michigan going to pull all that information together so now we're comparing apples to apples when we compare expenses across different districts here is statewide expendit um expenditures by function so this is
statewide all districts you can see 56% of the money that comes in is instruction instruction means student is in front of that individual getting some sort of instruction so well over half the money that's where it goes people support instructional services that sort
of thing you can see how it goes um it goes through unfortunately when you want to look at cuts in order to make any sort of impact on your budget it impacts instruction whether it be instruction pupil support
instructional support that sort of thing you can cut operations and maintenance as much as you want but you're not going to have an impact when it's only 9% of your budget 9% of your expenses were people i know this is for
the if instruction is at 56% of the budget why are people so underpaid how is that how is that and this and this is just I know it's a nationwide issue but this chart you can
you can see that the importance is reflected in construction and construction so that much of the budget is delegated for that wide because education overall is grossly under
and then all that becomes keep in mind for every dollar of salary that you have for a teacher you have 7.65% 65% FIFA cost you have 26% minimum 26% for retirement so you have
um 26 cents on every dollar that goes into retirement and then health benefits health dental vision life disability all those insurance costs so which leads right into the next slide of what are we
buying what object are we buying salary and benefits are across the state is 76% of all expenses spent in education 76% is uh salary and benefits out on your transparency um
transparency reporting on the district website you know that pretty Michigan with the rainbow colors on it you click on that a whole bunch of stuff pops up there's a a one flag that says personnel expenses you click on that and you're going to get a pretty chart that shows personnel expenses and taking a look at
that seemed if I did my calculation right it looked like you guys were like around 69% so you're you're considerably lower um when I look at salary and benefit costs compared to total expenses within the district statewide at 76 you
seem a little low at 69 but um I didn't have a chance to look at any of your collective bargaining agreements to see where your salary schedules were and that sort of thing would that would that have anything to do with um the amount of certified teachers versus the ones that are not certified would that
make a difference all we're looking at this 76% statewide on salary and benefits that is everybody from the teachers aid to custodians to bus drivers to teachers to administrators everything is total salary and benefits just not interest if I did my calculation right it looked
about 69% but again I didn't have a lot of detail there I was just going based on and actually that information was a couple years old um I think that might have been 2223 and not 23 24 which you should probably make sure that that's updated because
technically the state could withhold state aid because your information is not up to date you're with that on the it's on the transparency yeah all your major items were there that one and maybe I just missed it but I only I thought I only saw one year listed there but
that's that's just something so if we don't get that updated we could move state aid or be suspended it was going to take more than that but technically yes if you don't have your transparency reporting updated you can have state aid with help and I've
actually worked with districts that have had their state aid withheld because they didn't get their their most recent audit up there you guys got that information you've got all that was the only piece that I didn't see out there and again I may have just overlooked it but yes you can have um because that's
how important transparency reporting is to the state of Michigan and with the information that's out there every state in the m every district in the state is required to do that so then you can go out there and you can compare and so if the information isn't out there in the most updated then you know the public
can't compare that information and transparency isn't there so who's responsible for this getting this information out Dr this is a comfort for this problem typically post what we can do is make sure
that we get the board on board what you mean with finance yes and they pull whenever we whenever we put our information in i can't
remember what system their name is newric not that but they also pull from is it Nexus or Denmark i can't remember they also pull one of those too that our
so it's one of the ones they are yeah that's the I'm I'm looking at it and that's that's the only piece that I see that isn't there it's an easy one to get it's an easy one to upload what's the personality
so you know when I say I always tell them you have to look at all your actual salary,000 but when you get ready for the benefit package it's like 90,000
and and I have a chart that kind of goes through that a little bit absolutely yeah when you look at um that is other payment you think the average teacher in the state of Michigan I think that cost us around $69,000 slide um 45,000 of that is
salary the rest of it you know so yes all right so moving along here strategic planning and prioritizing your services as you move forward what are some of the elements that you need to start thinking about as you're developing your budget you want to look at your vision which describes the
future where you want to go And if you have a clear vision and you share that vision you have better buy in um in a group in your community and your uh administrative team everybody mission that's your statement of purpose what are your values and belief statement
your action steps what are you putting into into place to accomplish what your vision and you achieve your mission and then how are you going to manage that business so how are you going to allocate those resources monitor them and adjust the plan over three to five years i heard you guys talking about strategic planning these are the
elements that I'm sure you're focusing on and all of that strategic planning then you can tie to your budget plan too so as you go through and you set your your district goals and you identify what those goals are and you have those
goal statements identified and how you're going to measure them then the next step is how would these goals impact our budget development student achievement if we want to have you know uh a reduction in staff or uh reduction class sizes how much is that going to
cost us if we want to increase the number of pairs in district how much is that going to cost us all of those sorts of things if you're in the middle of collective collective bargaining and you're anticipating a a percentage increase for the teachers um and then you've got step increases in there too
uh how is that going to impact your budget so every time you come up with a district goal as you work through and you develop that goal then you have to determine what the financial impact is going to be so in making those budget budget decisions you're going to need to have
some some numbers in front of you some statistics to go by um you clearly have to identify the people that your your district serves and what resources are there in order to support your education what resources are out there in your community your staff and your facilities
that makes the schooling possible you guys have talked a lot about your facilities and um doing that facility study and determining what you need and when you meet it and that sort of thing that's huge and then what your district levels of operations are today what how
many buildings do you have what are your student counts in each building that sort of thing so history tells us a lot um and with those statistics where those where those statistics are coming in and it helps us to estimate where you're going to be so and this is just you know in
your everyday life um if you've got an a regular expense like you you got a Diet Coke budget and this is how much you generally consume and you go to the store and the price goes up do you find money to cover that increase or do you cut back on the amount of Diet Coke it's
a simple example unfortunately throw it into the school system and add some zeros and a couple of commas uh it's the same concept you make those adjustments as those changes come in and you gather more information and you have those statistics in front of
you so also within your budget decisions what's your total population who are you serving what are the characteristics by age group ethnic racial backgrounds the types of families single family um or uh multiple parents in the by income your
number of students with disabilities i can tell you you could have one family move into your district that can totally blow your special education budget out of the water and by law you are providing services to that special needs student before you're doing anything else across
the district can you can you clarify that is it because of the amount of additional resources that that particular student may need exactly okay right because um let's say you have a deaf and heart of hearing student move into the district that needs an
interpreter so that now that person that an interpreter is very expensive and then do you have the program in order to op you know would can that can that student be fully immersed into just a general ed programs with the deaf and heart of hearing interpreter or do they
also have to have special um education services along with it it can be very a visually impaired student that sort of thing i mean you you could you could be looking at one student that's going to cost the district a couple hundred thousand
dollars so what is your population trends trend within your district is increasing decreasing why is it or businesses moving in business is moving out that sort of thing uh what is your school population current and projected uh have you done an enrollment
projection you can pay an entity to come in and take a look at birth rates in the county and the state and the lo in and the surrounding areas and kind of give you an idea of where they think your student count's going to go by grade level because we all know I think looking at your numbers in October
of 24 you were at like 1,297 and now you're down to 1,247 you lost 50 kids from October to April well it you didn't lose kids all in one spot to make it easy you didn't lose them all in fifth grade or sixth grade or all ninth graders no you lost a
few here you lost a few here here all across the grade levels and all across the subject levels so it doesn't mean 50 kids you think that's about one and a half teachers okay or two teachers i I can't just eliminate two teachers because it's spread out across the
district but I had the financial impact of the cost of two teachers by losing 50 kids but how do I make that how do I make that cut so when you are looking at needing a budget reduction and as your finance person
brings to you like they have done of we have $3 million that we know we need to cut from the budget that's the equivalent of this talking to the administrators this is where they think overall they could make cuts now did
they give you what grade level did they tell you exactly what teachers but no don't know that kind of level yet until we know because we can't tell you that yes it means that we can eliminate a section of first grade over here and fifth grade over here we don't know
those numbers yet we just know that we need to cut 3 million and the administrators told us they could take hits in their budget in these areas and they need to come to you with that information sooner than later so you
have time as a board member to be prepared now what sort of information gets released to the the public that is something that you need you as a board determines and when it gets released but as when your administrative team and your superintendent is bringing that information to you they need to do it
sooner than later so you are prepared to know that the budget needs to be reduced by this amount does that make sense okay and then you need to know what your financial resources are in the district and we talked about that we talked about
your federal aid your foundation allowance your overall um the amount of what your property taxes are um what are your property tax values are they increase or decreases inherited that's going to have an impact on your budget it's also going to have an impact if you've got property tax values that are going up and you're going to go for a
bond proposal that's great that's more money that you're going to generate quicker to pay off that debt when it comes time or property tax values are going down might be harder to pass a bond or you're going to have to take that debt out for a longer period of
time in order to pay it back so your property tax values have a huge impact on how you go about um a bond issue just a quick question you talked about the financial resources from your experiences do some districts have
um foundations that help supplement their income yes uh some districts are fortunate enough to have community foundations or other entities that can that can help contribute to certain certain programs and that sort of thing
uh if you do have that it's included in your local revenue sources um and that that's where that would be reported it could be your own foundation it doesn't have to be a separate entity or does it have to be a separate If it's your own if it's your own foundation like um then
it's going to be what it's going to be most likely it's going to be outside of the general fund the money is just going to be transferred into the general fund but that has to be kept track of separately and you show where the money went in and what it was spent on um generally it's an outside entity that
will give money as a as a grant sort of thing that comes into the general fund and you show we got $10,000 here we spend $10,000 here again any money that flows in from an outside entity like that like a foundation should have zero impact on your fund balance revenues
equals expenses no impact you're not building or taking away from your fund balance based on those that money that comes in from foundations uh take a looking at staffing how old is your staff how young is your staff are your salaries and been are your salaries topheavy because
you've got an old or you have um a more experienced staff so they're higher up on those not only on the on steps but also on tiers maybe you have more that have a master's or a master's plus 30 or a doctorate so they're on that lane
they're higher up and they're they've been with the district for so many years so you're you're heavier in your your salaries or do you have a more a less experienced and uh cheaper salary um you have to take a look at that where are
you going with that um same way with your administrative and supervisor staff uh and your support staff and you guys have been talking a lot about your number of school buildings and the age and the physical conditions and doing a study there
all of those go into that budget decisions where are your district levels of operation today uh you can kind of look at um expenditures at a per student basis and you and that is something that you can do out there on your
transparency area you can go out and you can ask for all of that information and it will calculate what operating expenses per student your capital outlay per student all that information is already out there on your transparency page but all of this sort of information is helpful when you were looking at
developing your budget no break we're going um so of course that's impact your budget we've talked a lot about this all of those rules and regulations and restrictions from general school laws compiled laws in Michigan to attorney
general's opinions and then we get in there all of the federal rules and regulations to you have um what's your organizational structure of your district each district is different and this impacts your budget keep in mind if you have a school structure where you have early elementary and you have that
in in a building versus at all elementary in one building middle school versus high school block scheduling trimesters all of those sorts of things that you put into place um to deliver that instruction has an impact on your budget istds versus local districts
versus charters istds and local districts and charters all have different types of expenses and they also have different types of revenues that come in again rural versus ser um suburban and city schools and how heavy is extracurricular
activities i happen to I live in Ithaca and I don't Ithaca was five time state champ football champs in a row five years in a row huge football program from the time you know all the way through lots of um lots of attention
going on those extracurricular types of activities in that particular district does a lot of funding follow that no because the funding isn't there to do it but that doesn't mean that that's not a focus that doesn't mean that it's not important that's part of the culture you need to take that in consideration when
you're looking at any aspect of the district even the budget some major forces that impact the budget um as far as economic conditions inflation deflation we've been dealing with inflation tax increases or decreases um
and you know you're all the time searching for those efficiencies and um changing your different service levels um even efficiencies uh even your transportation your buses do we go do we continue to go with diesel do we switch
to gas do we go with electric uh what's the cost savings in between all of that what are the efficiencies there there's a huge price range difference um in each of those different types of buses if that's something that you're looking at needing to make it uh
large you're looking at needing to purchase um some new buses for your bus fleet those are sorts of things that you're going to have to take into consideration and then demographic characteristics of your district your free and reduced lunch count because those deal right into your poverty
indicators which have a direct impact on the amount of federal funds that you receive um English as a second language this seems to be an increasing population um for lots of school districts and then your community wealth and assoc um associated expectations
within your district all of these things need to be taken into consideration when you're looking at your budget and we talked a little bit about this too your historical financial data where's revenue been where's your student account been uh what about staffing costs and special programming
costs what's your fund balance district all of that needs to go into um your budget creation and so after taking all of these different ideas and forces affecting your budget process when you after you've given them some the proper
consideration can you really even start to create your budget and this is where your superintendent and the administrative team they do all of this for you they put all of this together they're the ones that are in the trenches they know and then they come to
you with a budget and here's a list of our major budget assumptions and this is the district goals and this is where they're located in the budget of how we're addressing the district goals and here's the budget at a function level so your budget process and
timeline so you you have to have a budget in place by July 1 um and so you have to obtain that approval prior to June 30th um what happens at that budget you should be trueing up your current year budget so hopefully you've had a
budget amendment since the first one um generally budget amendments happen in January and February can anybody tell me why it happens in January or February it's the first time you can really adjust your budget remember
you know what title money you know what your federal award's finally going to be and you have a pretty good idea of what your student count's going to be because you have your October one count and hopefully you know what your student your foundation allowance is going to be because state finally passed a budget by
October 1st so by that time things have settled down a little bit now you can come to the board with a budget amendment generally in February that's kind of like the the the typical timeline so come now to your budget process your your final budget
for the year is tred up and then you develop estimates for your major budget drivers you project what your financial position is going to be if you can for a couple of years and then you pull all that together so now you true off your current year budget you have a projected
projection for your next year budget hopefully you've done all of that in a budget workshop then by law you have to hold your budget hearing we talk about that that budget hearing has to be advertised and in there you're having your truth and taxation as part of that and that's where in that uh
advertisement in the newspaper you're saying "Hey this is our truth in taxation which means we're going to be talking about what we're going to be levying as far as taxes and this is how we're going to use it." And then you obtain budget approval prior to that June 30th so as you're talking about what
your major budget assumptions are those budget assumptions are going to include enrollment foundation allowance all of your employment contracts so you're going to be looking at what are your salary costs your steps your longevity what are your health care costs retirement staffing ratios all that sort
of thing what your utilities your fuel um what your capital needs are all of that goes into those are some of your your major budget variables since there are your major budget variables you should probably have in front these are our basic budget assumptions that are
going into the numbers that we're asking you to approve this is just a nice chart you can take or uh yeah chart that you can take a look at at just how much the change of 50 students so district A is no student
growth same enrollment but you get a foundation increase of $22 it's a little over a million dollars of additional revenue district B they get 50 students that's 1.5 million district C they lose 50 kids now your state aid increase for
the year which seemed great because it's over $200 $200 per kid it's only a half a million dollars worth of an increase in your foundation allowance because you lost 50 students so it's important to take a look at where your student enrollment is because
it's all great and wonderful if the state is going to say "We're going to give you $500 increase in your foundation allowance." doesn't mean much if I'm going to lose 100 kids or from the you know so you really need to take a look at what when they say this is the increase in
foundation but what does that mean for our district what sort of increase in our bottom line revenues does that really mean because you can see down at the bottom a new bus that's a diesel bus and I called a transportation director
friend of mine and said hey Mark last time you bid out buses what were they said here's by December of 24 a regular diesel bus is $149,000 that's one bus last time I was at Bullet Creek we bought buses in our
um with part of our bond issue was $86,000 that was five years ago you want an electric bus you're looking at a half a million dollars by the time you put in a charging station and all of that you need it's a half a million dollars
average teacher costs in the state of Michigan is $107,000 now that is salary and benefits so that includes health dental vision retirement that sort of thing a new teacher average is $81,000
so as you're taking a look at staffing ratios and that sort of thing this those and and combining all of that with any possible capital outlay new buses that sort of thing those are the numbers that you're looking at so that's with the 107 and
the 81 yes that's with benefits here's a chart that we kind of um alluded to Steve Martin when we were talking about the foundation increases over the years you see that big that blue that's going the opposite direction
yeah that's the year that I want to relive that's when they came back and they took $470 per student in April when my year end was June 30th i spent the money where do you want me to get it from and I got to send it back to them yeah that was not a good year this year
they didn't no they didn't what would be an example of fun or how uh that time in the 201 um 12 13 year 11
12 year 11 12 year yeah in 2011 12 that's when the economy just tanked they did not have the money to send us and they actually had to take funding back because they didn't have money in the school aid fund to continue to fund
districts at the level because that's when the auto industry tanked that sort of thing really quick prior to I think it was 1993 um with proposal A um school aid funding was based on property taxes but we also have one of the highest
property tax um property taxes um paid in the in the nation u Michigan did so in order to cut property taxes they shifted how funding works for school districts and they shifted it from property taxes to sales tax but what happens with sales tax and
tobacco tax and a couple of other taxes what happens to those when the economy is bad people don't spend money they're not buying things they're not paying sales tax sales tax money doesn't go into the school a fund school a fund doesn't have money to pay the districts so as the economy did poorly and that's what
happened in that particular year money wasn't flowing into the state and by law according to the constitution schools were funded by basically by state by state sales tax they didn't have the money they didn't have money from any place else to to
fund it so they took the money back from the districts this chart is a nice chart to look at as um impact of personnel costs so the key to controlling your budget is to control personnel costs because again 76% of your expenditures is across the state of
Michigan average 76% is people so that's if you're going to have an impact on your budget it's going to impact people and Vice President Bowens I totally understand where you were coming from when you say "I'm laying these people off and we might have to um privatize this and and that sort of thing in order
to save costs i'm going to turn around and say and hey we want to levy this number of bills and have you pay property taxes so we can do all of this." It's an ugly balancing act and I totally understand where you're coming from but unfortunately we're in the people business and so in order to have
any sort of impact on the budget if you have to make cuts it's going to impact you so the best thing you can do is to be as transparent as possible and to say "Yes we're cutting 3 million but we're cutting three million because of this this this and this." And so we're going to have as we're going to try our
hardest to to impact students the least amount possible but bottom line is you only have so many resources in order to co in order to do what you need to do so here is a good example of what those payroll taxes the health insurance and
retirement now this just is health insurance it's not dental and vision it's not disability insurance it's not life insurance those are pretty cheap benefits but it's still additional costs in there and um are you a hardcap district i couldn't you are okay so for
every dis for anybody who has a full family health care package that right there is $21,049 a year is what you're paid in health insurance for somebody to have a full family package now does that mean that your package actually cost 21,000 maybe it's less than that but by law you
can spend up to $21,000 on the chart reaction okay so that that right there really shouldn't be under news that should be 81,000 oh yes i went to change thank you for catching that taco yes it's
81,192 i I attempted to change it from family we've done one person and when I say your your policy might not be that like maybe you have a Blue Cross Blue Shield uh PO program that
only a full family only costs $18,000 well you're only paying $18,000 but the hard cap for a full family according to the state of Michigan means you can spend up to $21,49 for that full family cost but notice that that retirement for
every for every dollar that you're paying um in salary you're paying 26 for retirement that's just retirement and that's a salary is that $45,000 yes for a new teacher average is $45,000
um according to the state do those percentages go up the more you pay like the retirement absolutely yeah the higher the salary the more you're going to be paying in retirement the more you're going to be paying in payroll taxes because those are a
percentage off% off the salary yes yes excuse me except for when you when you talk about the Mason they're paying for more the name than what they get out of it they are
it's very for the name they pay for the name because we get the same benefits on Blue Cross but MSA is underrated by Blue Cross it is yeah and so when you were if you actually take uh a summary of benefits for Bluec Cross Blue Shield plan and then summary benefits for a
Mesa and I'm this I'm really dating myself when I say super fair one because I don't have any but choices it's been a long time since I looked at Mesa but if you were to take a a summary of benefits for a Mesa Pro uh plan and a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan before you get to see
too many differences is when you get into you only get 12 chiropractic visits versus 24 chiropractic visits or 12 mental health sessions versus 24 mental health sessions it's very minimal and the number of people that actually take
advantage of those services that are different and far between few and far between basics make it they are and and and teachers like to be able to just say I just and and and that's what that's what they fought for for so many years when I was
teaching that messa messa mesa it was just like a big thing and I didn't understand what it was about but it was like you could go it's a Mercedes but a Chevy Yeah and I ain't a serious I didn't use hardly any of those
benefits either they have not been able to you know so now you need to take a look at your impact of your salary steps too um because keep in mind when you are looking at how
much salaries are going to be not only do you have an increase um from let's say you're going to give them a 3% increase on the salary schedule all of those numbers are going to increase by 3% so everybody gets 3% plus then some
people are going to get up so you got to take in consideration that you got a 3% but the difference between each one of those is might be 2% so overall they're getting a 5% increase so all of those things have to take um be taken into consideration so just in this example we
go all the way down to the bottom so if you start with across the board pay increase of 2% but then you got steps in there that's 2.1 really teachers are getting a pay increase of 4.1% now if you're at the top of the pay
scale you're the and at as far as steps if your steps go up to 15 and you're at 15 you're only getting the 2% yes but that's because you ran out of steps but typically a step increase and then an overall increase can be anywhere
between that four to five to 6% all of that is going to be taken in consideration in your budget really quick projected mers costs um we all have heard about the unfunded liability that's out there um in the mipers fund in the retirement fund
basically it's within the health insurance the health coverage area um that is projected to be paid off by 2038 and it's leveled off so um but in your notes your financial statements still looks like and I didn't even bother to
look because it's such a such an outrageous number but probably um Ben Harbor area schools probably have close to a 40 $40 million liability to the retirement funds um because that's your happens to be your share of the unfunded
liability that's billions of dollars but it has gotten better really quick impact of staffing ratios let's say you want to decrease class sizes and so you're looking at your elementary middle school and high school and you're currently at this particular
ratio of students to teachers and you want to drop just two students per teacher that's what you want to drop down to and so that means overall at those different levels districtwide you're going to have to hire nine teachers in order to drop that down to
that reduce that class size do you have $730,000 in your budget and that's assuming you can find nine teachers and bring them in at $45,000 a year are you going to find five are you going to find nine new
teachers let's find one so if you let me ask you a question you can attract more teachers and if I was a teacher I'd rather have 15 students in you're going to attract teachers that is a very good point but are you going to attract a $45,000 teacher you might
attract a teacher that has five or six years from another district now you're you're you got the dilemma of I do have a brand new teacher right out of college or I have this one over here that's got five or six years under the belt already which one is
It's going to be better for the students it's going to be better for the budget so when you have when you have like we do edges staff we have a lot of bacon and
so I think we spend a lot of money long terms of all of those different things i How do you weigh that out what would have to happen from a financial perspective say okay this is
what you all are paying in ed staff for substitute teachers or for teachers who are taking on two classes you know it's just like that overload how much you're paying for overload yeah how much are you pay yeah you know like are you saving well
unfortunately you you can you can look at all of that and you can analyze it but it all comes down to the basic fact of we need more teachers if we had more teachers we wouldn't have the vacancies that are being covered by ED staff um long subs that sort of thing if we could
just have more teachers and then if you had an ample amount of teachers to fill your vacancies then you can even look at the cost savings between paying edge staff for subs or maybe as a district you hire one two or three employee subs you've got you got a teacher in every
building and all they do is fill in if the teacher's gone that day you automatically go into that classroom and you sub it there if everybody is there that day then you are working with curriculum director on this or that reflecting data da da da but you can come up with all sorts of plans like
that but they don't mean anything if you don't have the bodies to put in you have to address it's going to be more costly through edge of staff it just is it's gonna be more cost it's more cost what are you gonna do right your hands are tied until
you can actually get somebody and have them deployed by the district right so a floating sub a floating sub is employed by the district yeah could employ a floating sub lots of districts have to find an individual who's willing to do
it yes and it's a cost savings plus they're your person and they're they buy into the district and they're there every day and they get to know the kids and and that sort of thing so it's it it works there's a lot of benefits to to
something like that if you can find the combat i had thought when when I was here I had like eight vacancies in vacancies in court classes and so I was trying to figure out a way where like
you said you have a a floating thumb but you have a certified core teacher that can teach like say for in they can teach algebra and they can teach geometry so that loading sub it would be that teacher might be teaching two
classes but the sub is in there assisting yeah i mean you again you can come up with that's that's a great plan yeah come up with all the plans if you want but find the bodies built that's but at
that time I did have some longterm that were there but you know I was kind of out of balance long term that they can be edgy staff or long-term that were on the salary of the of the district at that time I think that we were I think we were in edge of staff then yeah in in
2016 I think it was edge of staff then but you know I was just trying to figure out ways because you didn't have teachers you definitely need to be creative by all means and so it' be like almost like in a lecture type situation as well each you know each each each hour and balancing your teachers out
like that yeah right all right quickly non-personnel costs we talked about lots of these things um transportation these sorts of decisions that you make in transportation can impact your transportation costs um how quickly how often you replace your bus
fleet what are your types what are your routes are you shorter routes longer routes extracurricular maybe you don't cover um you don't provide transportation for sporting events for away games that sort of thing all of those things can go into um your budget decisions so I have a quick question for
you we outsource that to uh first student so and then this might be more so a question for Dr bus which of these expenses impact us being that we outsource so since we outsource we don't pay the uh salaries the
benefits all the extras only thing we pay them is a flat fee of what they charge and they so with that flat fee comes um their buses maintenance uh maintenance on the buses the the purchases of the buses etc we don't have
to deal with all of that no they sold it two previous superintendent sold the fleet to the company gave it away gave it and that and that that often happens when you outsource stuff the only thing that
the the thing that's different for us is that and I'm pretty sure I'm not mistaken in this the location that the entity utilizes is our property yes so we do receive a revenue that comes in from the lease of that particular yes that offsets the cost
slightly but one more question this is one thing that I think that we need to look at as our as our numbers quote unquote decrease the routes need to There are
kids that's catching buses to this school that live five streets down and we never looked at rerouting to say "Okay this is what we have." There's bus routing southward that is reason
very reasonable and it's worth the the investment because there's no way they should be catching a bus and they live on Columbus Street i'd be taking a I'd be taking a look at your um your busing contract and see if that can't be is may even be part of the services that they're supposed to be providing to you
i don't know it is okay great yep i mean but there's like so other items that impact your budget all of these sorts of things curriculum any of your fixed assets um financial management upkeeping who who's updating your web page that takes
money um all of your phone lines all this data warehousing all this student your student information system all of that has an impact on your budget along with your sub costs your teaching supplies your contracted services if you have a pool um if you have to have an auditori torium uh field trips custodial
supplies all of that goes into your budget and I'm right now this is probably all of these things combined in here what's in here you're probably looking at 5 to 9% of your budget so if you want to make So cutting teaching supplies cutting library books um cutting back on postage doesn't do a
whole lot to your bottom line of your budget the only thing that that does is make that really makes people angry and people people spending money that don't have money teachers spending money already working a second job
but you need to at least give them everything that you basically can for them to be successful or you're going to that's how you continue to lose teachers as well capital needs and reoccurring costs you guys have done uh you're in the you're doing it and you're in the middle of it
uh looking at all of those the roofs and your the concrete and things asphalt and you know month a parking lot cost a couple million dollars um but you're you're already looking at all of that um so uh band instruments do you provide the band
instruments is that something that has to be a reoccurring cost every 5 to 10 years that sort of thing um are you a a one to one district uh of a device one to one yep replacement cost on those yeah
maintenance on those all of this rearing and equipment costs so things to keep in mind about your budget so remember the roles of each of your team players we've talked about these a little bit we'll go over them in a little more detail here so your superintendent they present
administers and monitors the budget to ensure that it aligns with the board and district priorities ultimately that is the superintendent's job the superintendent may then delegate to this their business manager CFO and following under the under his or her guidance
superintendent's guidance then that individual prepares the budget using forecast assumptions you know the whole dart board thing yep that looks good because we don't have any more information than that at this point in time the business manager monitor updates the budgets and comes back with
um all right I think we're ready to amend and and let's take this to the board the board reviews the budget ensures it meets the district priorities according to what your policies are and adopts the budget with within the required timelines and you communicate
with uh individuals in your your district and your legislators district staff provide input and data so your district staff goes to the building principles building the principles then reports to the superintendent and the chief and the business manager and then your community you had quite a few from
members of the community here they're going to provide input and feedback on your district priorities and what your p perceived success or not success is on those priorities all of that goes into um you keep in mind for your budget as you're developing
it we talked about this remember the timing of your budget your admin team is developing a new budget before the state has done much of anything so please keep that in mind it's the best guess and they're going to tell you what those budget assumptions are and you should
expect an explanation of what those main assumptions are within that budget so adopt a budget by July 1 um you have to you should adopt a budget um that keeps your fund balance above that 5% if it's below 5% we talked about that
department of Treasury comes in and says "Hey what the heck are you doing here districts cannot adopt a deficit budget which means you spend all the money that you're revenue that you're coming in and you spend all of your fund balance and you say you're going to spend some more." No uh you'll be put on a deficit
list and then you have to start doing that monthly reporting to the state and could be they come in and just you know talk in that office and we're going to hear we're from the government we're here to help spending down your fund balance is okay not saying that you can't dip into your
fund balance but pay attention to how much you're spending and why you're spending it and how if let's say you're you're extremely blessed and you're at 25% fund balance i think you could probably spend a little bit of that down but you're also not
going to be spending it on programs that you can't maintain they're onetime expenses and with all of your grant dollars um that come through that change from year to year especially like your exit funds you don't build programs on that
that's onetime money because unless you are willing to take down fund money to support those later when those funds disappear no that's it we're trying to give them that $3 million we talked about a lot of these your
revenue should equal or um should equal or exceed your expenses so that means that you are breaking even or you're adding to your fund balance and your grand dollar should never have a bottom line impact um take in account if you're negotiating a contract look at some data and benchmarks to support the
assumptions that you have in your budget um and make sure you're taking in infrastructure technology buses equipment that sort of thing um looking at staffing ratios filling all your vacancies um you're all the time looking for partnerships and ways that you can
collaborate with programs and again just continue to communicate communicate communicate be as transparent as possible here is just some websites that you can go to for information um all of these
here is where I pulled information all the charts that you see in here and and and stating foundation charts and that sort of thing either came from bulletin 1014 from my school data all that bid that's where all that information came
from done so I just want to tell you thank you we got one more meeting to go you've done a phenomenal job this evening amazing you can email me that i'll definitely tell them you've done a great job even
your refresher of 103 we went through those basics in the virtual training but you really kind of gave us more of a detailed information you know it's it's easier to schedule a virtual but there's nothing like it
enough it's not so I appreciate you i think that this information was definitely extremely timely and where we are as a district i commend you again for your patience and hanging out with us the time prior said I don't have the I
wanted to become a teacher and I don't have that gift and I'm thankful that my accounting professor told me that so I said I but I want to contribute somehow and so um Now I'm able to do with this and I'm just happy to be able
to provide that service so I do have to put that plug in again for the audit report the CBA understanding your audit report um if you haven't taken that at one of our conferences I highly suggest that or as a board if you have any more required training um that would be a
good one can you send that to me an email yes which particular training you're suggesting as well as any others that you are certified to train with MASB okay there's uh CBA 215 which is
intermediate school finance uh and then there's an advanced school finance and then there's understanding your cont but I can send you all of them okay and then last question do you have a normally when we're in a course we get a survey option do you have a survey
that we can fill out to give you feedback talk to Katie or um Deb think that may be the one and all of this is stuff that you can do not necessarily tonight because I know you need some rest but at a later date
um I will let them know that everybody yes so that's not a problem we had a full board so I will let them know i will find out about the evaluation part uh and then also the other financials that we offer thank you so much you've
been phenomenal i think that's good for you yeah no because you what you did it kind of like it opened up a little bit you know you could see some things it was open it really was good
i'm glad that it was helpful so I would ask if the board could give her a round of applause for her efforts tonight all right so we're going to um move right along as you all are aware we still have a close session um Madam
President I now the thing is I did ask I kind of asked a couple people in recess if it's 11:30 we can either commit to trying to do a quick 30 minute close session and commit to leaving by 12 or if you all have availability for tomorrow we can come back and do a quick
hour madam President I suggest a quick 30 minute okay so we're going to commit to 30 minutes um in in close session so at this particular time um this is under board business i'd ask if there Can somebody walk her out say
wait a minute can you see if Can you walk her out uh the board of education may hold a closed session to consider materials such as written opinions of council which are exempt from discussions by state or federal
statute reference policy 0167.2F 2f we will be reviewing two separate opaign of councelss uh provided by trun um specifically our attorney Gardner so at this particular time I'll ask if
there is a motion to end open session and enter close session i move that we end open session and enter close session is there a second and support the motion has been made by trustee Gavin and supported by Vice
President Bowens any questions comments or concerns hearing none secretary Triplet president Robinson yes vice President Bowen yes secretary Triplet yes treasurer Bradley
yes trusty Rocket Martin yes trusty Gavin yes trusty Doyle yes motion carries all right so we are entering close session as of 11:32 p.m with a commitment to exit no later than
uh 11:59 so that we can adjourn by 12:00 a.m all right so the board has returned from closed session can I have a a motion to end Madame President and return to open session madam President I make a motion
to end close session and return to open session all right the motion has been made by Vice President Bowens and supported by Trusty Doyle that we end close session and return to open session any questions comments or concerns hearing none Secretary Tripley
King please call the vote i don't know on that madam I'm going to say Madame President president Robinson yes vice President Bowens yes secretary
Triplet yes treasurer Bradley yes trust Trusty Rocket Martin yes trusty Gavin yes trusty Doyle yes motion carried madam President the board has
returned to open session as of 12:40 p.m am a.m 12:40 a.m oh Lord just a record all righty so um as stated we've just returned from close session reviewing an
opinion of uh council per policy 0167.2F at this particular time I am scheduling a special meeting with the board of education for Thursday April the 17th at
6:00 [Music] p.m uh for the public's knowledge the the topic at this particular time for the board of education to review will be the superintendent search process um things to be expected to be finalized
per vote is the superintendent search profile as well as the posting of the superintendent search as well as um whether or not the board is going to select a particular consultant or superintendent search firm we anticipate
making a formal decision on that as well as um a potential timeline for finalizing the superintendent search process one of the things that is extremely important for the board of education is transparency through this process and so after we make this formal
update we will have those uh that timeline and those things available per our website for the public so if there's anyone that is tuned in that would like to weigh in on that particular topic we do invite the public to attend to give
us their thoughts on what you would like the superintendent search process to look like moving forward additionally um given our board policy on committees I am board president am creating and establishing a superintendent search
committee that will be composed of three board members and so I will be marinating on identifying those particular board members and we'll share that with the board as well as notate who those key individuals will be at our
special meeting as noted so we do want to ensure that the public is aware of that um there is some additional homework and research and clarifications that the board of education would desire to have at this particular time and given the hour of 12:43 a.m it is in our
best interest that we do um adjourn our meeting at this time so as stated we will reconvene on next Thursday which is April the 17th at 6:00 p.m to finalize our timeline etc for
superintendent search process moving forward so at this particular time I would ask is there a motion to adjurnn so move support the motion has been made by trustee Gavin and supported by VP of
treasurer that wasn't Trent was it treasure Bradley any questions comments or concerns hearing none secretary Triplet Gavin and then Bradley yes yes
yes president Robinson yes vice President Bowen yes secretary Triplet yes treasure Bradley yes trusty Rocket
Martin yes trusty Gavin yes trustee Doyle yes motion carried okay uh we are adjourned as of 12:44