Behalf of the Community Unit School District three hundred Board of Education, we would like to thank you for your attendance for tonight's meeting. At this time, we would like to reconvene the meeting of the Community Unit School District three hundred Board of Education for Tuesday, 08/12/2025. Please stand with me for the pledge of allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America, We have one change of the agenda. We will not be needing a second, closed session. So with that amendment, do I have a, motion to approve the agenda?
So moved. Second. Oh, you're right. Hold on one second. Because we convene before 06:30, even though it was just before 06:30, we want to honor anyone who signed up for public comment prior to 06:30. Is there anyone else present who would like to make a public comment? Okay. So, oh, I'm so sorry. God bless you. Yes. Ma'am, secretary I'm sorry. Madam secretary, please take the role. Okay. Burkett. Present. Fiorentino. Present. LaMarca. Present. Linmark. Present. McKendy. Present. Malya? Present. Zeller? Present. Motion or you have seven board members present.
Okay. So, again, since we amended the agenda to remove the second closed session, do I have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Is there a second? Okay. Madam secretary, please take the vote. LaMarca? Aye. Amalia? Aye. Zettler? Aye. Burkett? Aye. Tarantino. Aye. Linmark. Aye. McKenday. Vote. Motion passes. Seven zero. Item six, Doctor. Smith. Members of the Board of Education, community members, staff, and students, we would like to acknowledge the passing of a District three hundred staff member. District three hundred would like to honor Joshua Zividen,
a teacher at Dundee Crown High School who passed away on August 4. Joshua will be forever missed, and district three hundred would like to offer deep condolences to his family and friends. At this time, I respectfully ask all in attendance to observe a moment of silence in honor of mister Joshua Zividen. Thank you. Okay. We'll move to item seven, public hearing on e learning program verification renewal. We are now opening the public hearing for e learning program verification renewal. Is there a motion to open the public hearing for e learning program verification renewal?
Do I have a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Mary, no. And the panel secretary, please take the roll. LaMarca, aye. Linmark? Aye. Nelia? Aye. Zeller? Aye. McKinde? Aye. Barrentino? Aye. Birkin? Aye. Motion passes seven zero. Doctor. Melanie Gravel, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction Good evening, Doctor. Smith, members of the board, and community members. I'm here tonight to present information regarding the renewal of our District 300 e learning program verification. The purpose of this public hearing is to receive public comment on the proposed e
learning program verification renewal. This evening's public hearing will begin with an overview of the e learning program verification renewal process. I will then turn things back over to board president Zettler, who will accept public comment and then close the public hearing. We are seeking to renew the District 300 e learning program verification with the Kane County Regional Office of Education. Our goal is to secure a new three year verification period, which ensures we continue to have the flexibility of the option to implement e learning
days when needed, thereby preventing disruptions to instruction and avoiding the necessity of makeup days. Our current e learning program verification is approved by the Kane County Regional Office of Education and is valid through 10/25/2025. Its primary purpose is to provide district three hundred with the flexibility of the option to utilize e learning days as an alternative to emergency days, such as those caused by severe weather.
This means we can maintain continuity of instruction for our students and avoid the need for required makeup days at the end of the school year. An e learning day means our school buildings are closed, but instruction continues virtually. Our students access their coursework online, primarily through Schoology platform using their district issued Chromebooks. The key benefit is that these days do not require makeup days, which provide significant predictability for our school calendar and for our families. Pursuant to the requirements put forth by the Illinois State Board of Education,
district three hundred has provided notice of its intent to renew our e learning program verification at least ten days prior to this hearing. Specifically, on 07/28/2025, the following notifications occurred. A publication appeared in the Daily Herald. The hearing notice was published on the District three hundred website. An electronic notice was sent to parents and guardians, as well as an electronic notice sent to employees. Following this evening's public hearing, during the August 12 Board of Education meeting,
the board will be asked to adopt a resolution to approve the renewal of the District three hundred e learning program. Pending board approval, the final step would be to submit the approved e learning program verification application to the Kane County Regional Office of Education. At this time, I will turn things back over to board president Zettler. Thank you. I I I do just wanna clarify one thing. I'm sorry. One point that, doctor Gavell made, what is an elearning day, school buildings are closed and students learn virtually.
That is not live teaching. We just wanna make sure that everyone understands that's not live instruction. It is set up to continue work in a virtual learning environment with the option to reach out for help in different ways through Schoology. Thank you. Any questions before I move? Yeah. Please. Go ahead. Does it have to be virtual through Schoology? Like, when we apply for our renewal, do we have to lay out how the virtual day is going to take place? Or is there some flexibility there? We already have that laid out at the district. It's already available on the website and Schoology.
So I want to, would now be the time to make my comments on it, Nancy? Okay. Typically, I would like, when when I was coming here today, I didn't really have any thoughts on this one way or another. Both my kids have done e learning through COVID. Although, you know, each one learned differently, and one had a great experience, one not so much. But the email that came in today really had me thinking, are we doing what's best? For me personally, those days are just kind of, keep keep you busy with a worksheet day. So I can see this parent's point,
especially for her diverse learner. So I guess I'm at a crossroads in what's best for our students. I also know that at the end of the year, the teachers are done, the kids are done. In the last week or two, not much is being taught anyway. So if we continue the, school year, that could screw up people's vacations, but that shouldn't be the reason we're not doing that. So I guess I'm just not sure at this time. I I think if if it was more of a live teaching via Zoom, that might work better.
That's my comment, I guess. Yeah. And we've worked, very closely with our union leadership, and we have a very good progress, procedure in place that we use, that we partner on. Understanding that, you know, every day is a hit or a miss. Every every day is not everyone's best day. What e learning does for us as a district with our size, one thing that is critical now that I've been through it solo for a year, when it is time for us to make a weather decision or pipes break at a school, or power is down, and we don't know what the restore time is,
to be able to make something available for kids and keep a regular school year going is huge for us with the size of our district. So I just want to make sure I speak to the scope of all of this, knowing that there are very there are many individual cases, throughout each school year for different reasons. So And outside of COVID, how many days have we had, since COVID? And this is not the same type of instruction that was used during COVID. This is a much more, planned, reviewed in partnership with all three of our unions,
specifically, where we work very closely with mister Williamson on making sure we can give staff the time that they need and the training that they need to be able to get these things up online for kids, as well as a way for us to provide individual support for kids with one on ones and how that all looks with our DESSA union as well. And so, it is very different than what we did in COVID. Really wasn't I wasn't comparing Oh, yes. The type. What I wanted to know was, I mean, have we had any elearning days since we've been back?
Yeah. We had, two last year. Okay. We had a couple of last year. And it was cold days and, in January Okay. If my mind is serving me right. Kinda blacked out a little bit because those are very stressful times. And then the year prior, we had them as well, cold and snow days. Okay. But just a couple each year? No. We have not, in my time, being engaged with e learning in the last three years, we have not used more than three in one school year. And I just, real quick, Christine, and then obviously you can have your say I I understand, Lisa,
what and what, you know, any of the parents in the situation with alternative learning children. I definitely understand that. It is difficult though to be able to you know, I don't know. That's something we can revisit sometime. But It is. And I do just wanna reiterate, I really do wanna honor, you know, staffs needing that break in the summer as well, knowing that we have a day here and there. And like I said, every day is not our best day. Every day is not the first day of school when it's the happiest day on Earth. Everything just goes all the way right, and you get the best pictures ever.
That's that's that's just the way it it kinda rolls. But there are many things that are considered, with us having the opportunity to have these days available. And just so everybody, we've been before COVID, we were piloting this program before COVID, which actually, even though it had to be adjusted, was actually a benefit to us because we were able to roll into it for COVID, you know, better than a lot of other districts because it that hadn't piloted the program. So it's got its good things and its bad things. Just like anything else, like but like you said, we're a very diverse district. We have all kinds of kids that we're working with in this district,
and, you know, it's a struggle all the time. And acknowledging we can keep making it better. Right. Exactly. So but thank you for that. It was a good question. Christine? Yeah. Well, I just wanted to say too. I mean, I'm assuming that if we should have, like, a prolonged, like, say, cold weather event where now we're on day five of being remote learn like, we could look we have the chance to to call that a snow day still. Right? That's still an option for us. Yes. Coming soon, we will have our winter weather update about what is available to me when making a weather decision. Right. And this is one of our options because we would want as many options with
a district this size. We would want as many options available to make sure we're considering students, families, staff, all of the above, and we would want as many options as possible in front of us, or I should say I, to make that decision. Absolutely. And, Doctor. Smith, as she just mentioned, this going through this process, it gives the ability to exercise the option. Without moving forward, we wouldn't have that option when faced with these decisions. It doesn't guarantee that it would be utilized, but it does guarantee that we have that as an option. Yeah.
Anybody else? Good really good discussion. Thanks, guys. Okay. So we'll be voting on the approval of the e learning program verification renewal later in the meeting under roll call items. Do we have anyone signed up to speak regarding the e learning program verification renewal? I believe we do not. Correct? Okay. Is there anybody in the audience who would like to speak to this right now? No? Okay. Given that there is no one else who wants us to speak, at this time, we are closing the public hearing. Is there a motion to close the public hearing for e learning program verification renewal?
So moved. Second. Is there a second? Thank you. Secretary, please take the role. Lynn Mark. Aye. Melia. Aye. Zettler. Aye. McKinde. Aye. DiArtino. Aye. LaMarca, aye. Birkett. Aye. Motion passes, seven zero. Thank you. So on item eight, we have nobody signed up for public participation. And we did have keep it open till 06:30 to make sure that, you know, you know, we came back a little early. So we're gonna go on to, item nine, superintendent's report. Doctor Smith. I would like to have, deputy superintendent, mister Mark Wessel,
and, chief of communications, mister Anthony McGinn, will give us an update for our Hanover Research cell phone project. Good evening, doctor Smith, members of the Board of Education, and community members. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics and other studies indicate that 91% of US teens own a smartphone, with students spending about one hour per school day on their devices and checking them more than a dozen times during class. Over half of school leaders report negative impacts on academics, seventy three percent cite reduced attention spans,
seventy two percent note negative effects on mental health often connected to social media and cyberbullying, 77% of schools nationwide are restricting phone use during class, and several states are moving towards full day bans. Given this data, it is timely that we've engaged with Hanover Research to conduct a study to review stakeholder perceptions of cell phones. To begin tonight's presentation, we'd like to review some of the project's key milestones. First, we partnered with Hanover Research to conduct a research study and identified the scope of
our project. To gather comprehensive feedback on cell phone usage patterns in District 300 as well as stakeholder perceptions of current policies and through two primary act, and attitudes towards potential policy and procedure changes. My apologies. This would be accomplished through two primary activities, surveys and focus groups, both open to students, staff, parents, and community members. Next, we administered surveys. One was designed for parents, staff, community members, and students in grades six through 12 and the other,
with simplified language, was created for students in grades four through five. Each survey consisted of roughly 20 questions and could be completed in ten to fifteen minutes. Survey administration took place between January 17 and February 7 and nearly 1,200 individuals participated. We then conducted a series of virtual focus groups between March 4 and April 29. These focus groups were open to students, staff, parents, and community members. A total of 134 people participated in focus groups.
On June 10, the district provided updates on the project to the Board of Education. During the presentation, we explained that one of our next steps would be reviewing Hanover's data and analysis. Tonight, we will share key findings from the study with the community. Cell phone use among students varies by grade level, with younger students in grades four to five primarily using cell phones for personal communication and a majority not using them during school hours. Starting in middle school, cell phone use in school begins to increase and continues to increase as students progress
through high school. There is consistency throughout our system with opinions on the benefits and concerns of cell phone use. When asked to select the top two benefits of cell phone use, the top response across all grade levels was for emergency preparedness, with the second highest response for enhancing communication. When asked to provide the top two concerns of cell phone use, the top concern across all grade levels was that cell phones distract from learning with the second highest concern for cheating and academic dishonesty.
Now I'll turn it over to mister McGinn. Good evening. The survey revealed that stakeholders have mixed opinions on the overall impact of cell phone usage. The graph on the left includes responses from students in grades six-twelve, staff, parents, and community members. Sixty one percent of respondents indicate that cell phones distract from class, 44% feel that they are used appropriately, and 39% believe that they enhance learning. The graph on the right includes responses from staff, parents, and community members. When asked about access to social media via cell phones,
concerns are high. 73% of respondents are extremely or very concerned about excess use. 67% expressed concerns about long term impact on development and 63% expressed concerns about cyberbullying Hanover Research also asked respondents about their support for potential policy implications. Broadly, across all stakeholder groups, there is support for allowing cell phone use before and after school. However, opinions diverge on classroom use for educational purposes. Stakeholders were asked to share their input on potential policy for elementary,
middle, and high school student cell phone use and the table displays those results. The percentages on the left for elementary are based on responses from staff, parents and community members, and students in grades four and five. The percentages for middle school and high school are based on responses from students in grades six through 12 along with staff, parents, and community members. When asked about elementary schools, 53% of respondents support cell phone use in designated areas at designated times, compared with 59% for middle school and 57% for high school.
Though it's the second highest level of support, fewer than half of respondents support cell phone use under direct teacher supervision. The options that received the lowest level of support were for a total ban on cell phones and for use of clear backpacks. After reviewing the data and analysis provided by Hanover Research, the District will be taking the following next actions. First, we will work to draft options for a refined cell phone policy during the fall. We will then work with targeted stakeholder groups to gather input on potential policy refinements. We will then look to provide an update to the Board during a Winter Board
meeting. Pending Board support of a proposed refined policy, we would begin communicating to stakeholders shortly after any decision was made and would continue messaging through the 2026. And the culmination of this project would be to implement an updated cell phone policy for the twenty six-twenty seven school year. Questions? Two questions. Okay. And to clarify, we understand that it is a proposal of a policy to the board as the board makes policy decisions. K. Yeah. So when you look at, you know, possible policy draft drafts of policies like you mentioned,
Will obviously, you'll pull in what other districts are doing. And are there any other large districts in Illinois currently implementing I don't know how to say it. I'll just say it. Let me call you. Districts in Kane County that have, implemented some procedural changes and some with some policy changes. And we work closely with them, and we'll include what we learn through that as well. Okay. Thank you. Anything else? No. Okay. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Oh, Steve. Oh, Steve. I'm sorry. I would just because you all you know,
we we received this on Thursday and looked at it a couple times, but you've had it now and really worked with it. We got the report from them and the full report, towards the June. Okay. So were there any ahas from your perspective that you wanna add to that? I mean, thank you for the summary, but there was there's obviously a lot in this, 20 page document. And, you know, I appreciate you doing it. It cost us some time and money, and we learned a lot. But are we surprised by anything? I personally am not surprised by anything. This has been an issue that's,
you know, throughout the nation, people are struggling with this issue, and it's because I feel like if I put 10 people in a room and ask them each the same question, I get 10 different versions of the answer. So this really pretty much, is where I thought we would land with the data. Yeah. Can I ask just a couple clarifying, on the first few? So 90% of the database of about 10,000 were either students or parents. Is that correct? Are you talking about the initial slide? It's it's the second data point. So it says n equals 9,200. He's looking at the data sheet that they received.
I just wanna make sure I have my numbers correctly. Like, who are we talking to? Okay. So can you which data point are you talking about, please? Not these slides. So it's actually the report that you sent out. Which of the following best describe your relationship with the, District three hundred? And it says student, 68% parent. That's everyone. You're looking at the top line datasheet that was uploaded with this. Yeah. Yeah. I just wanna make sure that I'm pulling the right things out of here because, obviously, a a different perspective changes what the data says. So it is correct that about 90 plus percent of who we polled were students
and and and students and and parents. Not who we polled, who responded. Right. We polled everybody. Data. Right. Yeah. Eight like, 80, you know, 89% and another 10% of staff. And then of the, of the staff, 90% were it looks like in classroom staff people. That sound right? Yes. Okay. You know, one of the common things is we talk to people I think, outside of this study is that most staff have pretty bold responses to what we should be doing and how aggressively we should be doing
it. I really haven't heard a lot of variation from from the educators. And not not just our district, but districts, that we talk to. So, interesting information. That'd be part of the process. Thank you for doing it, and appreciate your summary. Yeah. Well, I just wanted to say I appreciate that we're gonna move to the next phase of really getting stakeholder, like, dialogue because I took this survey, and sometimes your answer is how you're reading the question, your response on that day. And even some of it, I didn't know, like, what the clear backpack even really meant or the pouch. Now I do. But at the time when I took the survey,
some of these options that were before me as a parent didn't even really make sense. So if I were to take that survey again today or actually have a conversation, I think that's where we might even get a more of a a gelling together of what people really think about this. You know, you're you're you're rating multiple things. You're putting them in order. Maybe I didn't even like any some of the other options, but I had to, you know, give a response to them and rate them. And so I think these conversations are gonna be very illuminating, hopefully, to helping us, get even a better sense of of what people think the path forward is for this.
So I appreciate that we're doing that stuff. Thank you. So when you say we're gonna reach out to other stakeholders, are you saying we're gonna give this survey to other stakeholders, or are there other things that you're gonna do? No. We're not giving the same survey again. We actually did it this way because sometimes, you know, in all the things out there, it's better to have a third party gather data than us just always collecting the same data and disseminating it and then, you know, who's really doing what, who's saying what. It's and so I think that this gives us a great starting point that is transparent. So now we can actually have
very clear, probably complex conversations, kinda knowing and understanding, as I have had conversations with a few people myself, knowing we'll wanna work closely with, our lead leadership as well, to make sure we are supporting staff and what needs to move forward as well as kids and families. Okay. That's what I was hoping. Thank you. Anybody else? Nope? Okay. Thanks, guys. A lot of good work. Doctor Frank Williams, chief financial officer with a twenty twenty six ten tentative budget update. Okay. Good evening.
Oh, okay. Let's see. I think this will stay. There we go. Okay. Good evening, members of the board, doctor Smith, administrators, community stakeholders that will be talking about the FY '26 tentative budget. As we go through the presentation, we'll review the FY '25 budgets, gonna look at where we started, where we anticipate ending, and then we're gonna look at the FY '26 budget, walking away with the understanding of the why we're asking for, a particular, dollar amount from spending authority. So here is the FY '25 budget.
In September, you guys approved a $402,000,000 in revenue and 398,000,000 in expenses with an expected fund balance increase of roughly 4,000,000. As we went through, the data for today, this, the numbers you're gonna see from an FY '25 perspective are all unaudited actuals. In fact, those columns should say unaudited actuals, because we're still going through the audit. The audit will be presented to everybody here in December. Here, we can see the revenues came in 13,500,000.0
higher than budget, primarily due to an increase in interest earnings and the timing of tax deposits from tax year '23. So, for example, Cook County is kind of known for being an unknown as to when those tax receipts are gonna come in. However, King, DuPage, and DeKalb, they're pretty steady. So we get those usually in June. We'll get a deposit, and then we start really getting deposits come that July time frame. So that then flips into the next fiscal year. Expenditures are estimated to come in 11.7 under budgets, but, again, it's a budget. Right? So we're setting that dollar amount.
We're kind of doing a a good our our best educated guess as to what one year is going to look like. So coming in, under 11.7 is is acceptable. We do see that the O and M was over budget. However, this amount this amount is within that understood 10% acceptable ban. The overage is primarily due to overtime hours and the continued efforts of maintaining our schools and buildings through repairs and maintenance. So we looked at the budgets. We looked at our unaudited actuals, and this tells us what we anticipate our ending fund balance to be.
We anticipate the funding end funding balance to be about 223.7, which is an increase of about 29,300,000.0. The balance is placed places the district at 43.83% fund balance to expense ratio, which is greater than the Board's policy. This so the Board has a policy of 30% fund balance to expense ratio. This this particular fund balance keeps us above that plus six months cash on hand. The fund balance is strategic in that it prepares the District for any emergencies and prepares for the capital projects associated with the Master Facility Plan.
As has been discussed at previous Board meetings, the District is embarking on that Master Facility Plan. This plan will require the district to access its fund balances. So the fund balances we see here will have to touch those in order to execute building improvement, which we have been strategically accumulating over the last five years. So we've been strategically accumulating those cash balances in order to prepare for this master facility plan and for any type of emergency or rainy day type funds. So with that, we talk about the f y twenty six budget, but I think it's important to make sure we understand what the purpose of the
budget is. Budget dollars are meant to support the mission and the vision which is set by the board. Our job as administrators then is to come up with our execution plan. How do we execute your mission? And the mission is what do we wanna do today? The vision is where do we wanna be in the future? So our job is to come up with those plans to execute that, but we also need the dollars to help support that, so that's what our budget is for. As we start with the FY twenty six budget, we have to start with things that are known and things that are unknown. The knowns that we have are the consumer price index. That's the CPI that comes in at the 2.9%.
So when we talk about taxes here as we progress towards the month of December, we're gonna understand that the most, amount of new revenue we can receive, regardless of the in increase in the price of housing, is 2.9%. That's that's the the PTEL, CPI limit there. We know that as a fact, so we have to take that into consideration as new money because that counts for new money next year. Right? Then we have our evidence based funding, our allotment that we did receive from the state, that moves us to tier two. We're gonna talk about that a little bit. We also have the known variable of our salary increases.
We know that we have our collective bargaining payment, agreements in place. Kudos to the board, the administration, and lead on settling their, contract this past year. We do have an extension with our DESPA as we move forward with that for one more year, and then our, DESA has two more years left on their particular contract. As far as our unknowns, it's our grant allocation as part of our one of our bigger unknowns. Typically, we receive in that 20 to $24,000,000 range for grant allocations. Right now, we've only got confirmation of 16,000,000. So that's a pretty big difference between our 24 and our 16,000,000,
but that's an unknown. We're still waiting on the federal government to come through on whether it's title two or title three or to increase the other title one or our IDEA. We're still waiting on some of those confirmations, but we do have actual allocations for some of those. The impact of tariffs and inflation on discretionary spending is a big one. We heard today CPI was up again, particularly in the goods portions that we need to buy to operate on a daily basis. So that's an unknown at this point as to what price increases will those continue. So we have to budget wisely as to how much is the supply is gonna
cost us over the next year, how much our goods gonna cost us over the next year. But it's unknown because we just have to make sure that we're moving forward with we believe inflation and those impacts of those tariffs will have. And, of course, our new property impacting tax year, we don't know what that's gonna be at this time. We typically won't know that until spring of next year, but we start having those tax conversations. But those also have a big a big impact particularly on our revenue side. Those are some of the known knowns and unknowns that we deal with as we start to prepare and and finesse our f y twenty six budget.
And so here it is. We anticipate revenues of 405,700,000.0 and expenses of 418 for a planned deficit of 12.2. So, it's a planned deficit, meaning that it's it's not structural, meaning structural would mean that it's ongoing permanent. This is planned, meaning we have some control over this. Right? Particularly as we dive into the expense side, we have some control on the capital maintenance projects. But those things, sometimes as we go through the year, we go, oh, look. Our parking lots are doing okay. Maybe we don't need to do the parking lots this year.
We have some of those, so it's a planned deficit at this time. From our revenue perspective, there are three legs to the revenue stool. We have our local, our state, and our federal. Local, that's primarily our property taxes, our local. Also, things that make up local would be, like, rental fees or any interest earned on our cash that we have, in the bank. Now we do anticipate the interest that we earn to go down this year. Right? Right now, you're go to your local bank, get maybe a 4% CD. We anticipate that to be decreasing over the next year. So we anticipate our interest earnings to come down over the next over this next
year. From a state perspective, evidence based funding is our largest, our largest revenue from the state, about 81 a little over 81,000,000. The additional 27,000,000 comes from our categoricals. Those are things like our transportation claim, that we do get reimbursement for. And then from a federal perspective, as I mentioned, typically, our grants are our federal dollars, so our titles, the IDEA, grant. Those we usually are at $24,000,000 range. Right now, we're at the 16. I'm budgeting what we know. I am budgeting what we know. I could have budgeted more, but I wanted to make sure that we're not doing that.
I wanna make sure that we're budgeting what we know today from our federal grant perspective. This is a quick historical look at our revenues. You can see, again, our unaudited actuals. We believe we're in that $416,000,000 range, and then next year, anticipation of that $405,000,000 range. Our year over year budget comparison, we do a budget comparison year over year as opposed to unaudited actuals versus budget. Well, one, because of budget, the budget gives us a good view of what we thought we were gonna be last year versus where we think we're gonna be in this upcoming year. And, two, it helps us to truly have a better apples to apples comparison.
So we can see here from a local perspective, we have a difference of 7,800,000.0. That's that difference is primarily in the increase of property values. That's property, from our local property taxes. The state has an increase of 3.3. So even though we're getting, oh, only about 1 and a half million new evidence based funding, from a state perspective, we are budgeting to receive the full transportation claim even though we know that we're most likely not going to receive the full transportation claim. Right now, that transportation claim is prorated at about 81¢, versus a dollar for dollar,
which we should be getting a dollar for dollar, but state's been prorating that particular funding for a long time. They anticipate about 81¢. We anticipate getting about 78 to 79¢ on that, but we are budgeting that full 81¢ with our fingers crossed on that one. From a federal perspective, again, this shows you that our Title II and our Title III are unknown at this time, so we are budgeting what we actually know from our federal perspective. So, for a total year over year budget increase of about 2.9% or a little less than 1%. It is important to point particularly this year from our evidence based funding.
We have been a Tier one school, since the since FY19. So when we first started off in FY eighteen, we were a tier two school. You could see there in that tier percent cutoff, that's the actual change that the state has year over year on that tier one cutoff. So you can see in that tier one cutoff, so you can see how it fluctuates. A couple years ago, it was 73, then it was 77, 78. This year, it's back down to 75. The district does move down to, 70, 70 or does move down to Tier two because we're now 78%, adequately funded.
This is not uncommon amongst many districts. In fact, I think in Kane County, I think there's only one district now that's left as tier one. Primary driver behind this, I believe, is the fact that CPS moved back down to tier one. They were tier two. They moved back down to tier one. They received an additional $57,000,000 When they only funded that 300,000,000, you take away 57, that leaves but that's one sixth or at least 250 that you gotta spread over 851 school districts. So you can see we will receive less than evidence based funding, this year which does have an impact.
So about 2% new money from the State, 2.9% we know we're gonna get from property taxes, so all in all about 4.9% in new revenue for the FY '26 budget. From an expense perspective, I anticipate about a 418,000,000 budget. This is our tentative budget, about 418,000,000. An easy way when we look at expenses is to look at what we are buying. When we look at what we're buying, it's the it's salaries, it's benefits, it's the purchase services. So as usual, with districts,
the employee cost are the largest expense for FY '26. Salaries and benefits make up 60% of the budget, which is in line with historical. The largest expense within the purchased services is our contracts with Durham and Organic Life. Purchase services occur when the work needed is outside the scope of the talent within the district, so think about HVAC and the CNI engagements for PD. Supplies and materials are daily onetime use items. Our capital outlay is our capital maintenance. So you'll hear us throughout as we talk about our master facility plan.
You're gonna hear us use the vernacular capital maintenance versus capital project. So in a little bit, you're gonna see what our with our next summer capital maintenance projects are. There are or capital maintenance are there are a couple capital projects in there, and I'll I'll highlight those as well. Other objects are things like dues and fees, our property, casualty, insurance, and, of course, other objects is where we pay our bonds out of. We don't have to pay our debt. And noncapital larger items that have more than a one time use, think of things like our Chromebooks. That's typically where we would pay for non capital items. Here's a quick historical look at our expenses.
You can see it's been pretty steady. Again, we anticipate ending about 387,000,000. That is an unaudited number. And right now, I have the tentative budget at 418. Again, our budget is our best educated guess for a full year worth of expenditures. And we're asking for spending authority of 418,000,000. A year over year, look at our expense budget comparison from a salaries perspective. Again, we know what the collective bargaining agreement is. We know what those are, so we're roughly about 5%. When we look at our benefits up 11%, not only do we have to correlate the raises to our our taxes,
our retirement, and the taxes, we also have to take into consideration medical and dental and vision and all the other health benefits that the district provides. Kudos to the district for providing a very well package for that. We can see our purchase services comes down a little bit, and the biggest one, of course, is our capital outlay. That's gonna be our capital maintenance. Right now, about 11.7 when we do a year over year budget comparison. When we look at those projects, you're gonna see the list of 23 of them. As I mentioned before, sometimes we get all of them done. Sometimes we don't. They also cross over fiscal years. So you'll see some of them may be paid out of one fiscal year and
the next are paid out of the next fiscal year. That's just how those projects are done. Right? We got two months to get 23 projects done, so we gotta fit all those in. So right now, we're projecting about $32,000,000 worth of projects, and that's what we see here. So we see our elementary schools, our middles, and our highs, and we have some particularly focused on the district. When we look at the district, we look at that transportation one's a big one as well. We're gonna do some modifications to our buildings over there, but these are our capital maintenance projects. Right? When we look at this and we look at the the park view and we
know it's, classroom additions and interior renovations, that's more of a project. That's more of a larger cost item that we know we have to pay for. We're gonna pay for that with cash. So kudos to the board for building that rainy day cash strategically to say, we're gonna pay for these bigger projects with our cash right now. Right? That's that's a that's a a a kudos to the board for that one. So here are the 23 projects we plan on starting pretty soon. We'll get those plans launched out there, and that way we can get this work ready to go for next summer. In the end, if we got every penny and we expensed every penny that I have planned,
you could see our ending fund balance is about 211,500,000.0, which is about a, $12,000,000 decrease, but, again, it's just the budget at this time. I'm trying to guess where we're gonna be at this point next year. And those capital maintenance projects are the ones that we kinda have some control over. Right? If working with John and doctor Smith and we say, you know what? That that parking lot looks good. We don't have to do it. Okay. And now all of a sudden, we can have those kinda controls. Remember, it's a planned deficit at this point. So our next steps are to display the budget for 30 days. It's gonna be both in print right here at the central office,
and it's gonna be online. We will continue to analyze the revenues expenses expenses. Our work doesn't stop just because we present this tonight. We have to come back again in September, and then we'll recommend the adoption at that point. Then when we're done after you guys hopefully adapt it for us I'm just kidding. You guys will work it for us. We'll go ahead and make sure we file it with the required entities. We have to have a budget by the end of the first quarter. That's the state law, so. Of course, we do all of this to say that we wanna meet our mission and our vision which ultimately leads to our students. So the dollars that we ask for,
the spending authority we ask for, the $418,000,000 is to support our students, to empower and equip them to reach their highest potential in their chosen pathway. With that, I'll take any questions. Any questions? No? Okay, we're good. Thank you so much. Thank you. Completes the superintendent's report. Item 10, board discussion. Are there any updates on the following board committees? Board committee I'm sorry. Board operations committee. The next board operations committee meeting is Tuesday, September 9 at 04:30. We did go over the same presentation about the budget,
so that's why we didn't really probably have any questions. Yeah. As we always mentioned that we go over a lot of the things that we vote on tonight in that meeting, and that meeting is available online if you're not able to attend in person so that you can see some of the discussions we have about these items. Board or superintendent evaluation ad hoc committee? No update at this time. Okay. Board policy committee, also no update at this time. Board member handbook ad hoc committee? No update. Okay. Do any of the board members have anything they'd like to add? Any dis Anything they'd like to discuss at this point? No? Okay.
Item 11. This is items for discussion. I will read each item individually to allow time for any discussion. 11.1, board meeting minutes. Any discussion? I am 11.2, disposal report. Any discussion? 11.3, treasurer's report. Discussion? 11.4, donation report. Any discussion? 11.5, boys and girls club, of the Northwest Suburbs Learning Center agreement. Any discussion? 11.6, extension of copper copier paper bid. Any discussion? 11.7, musical instrument bid.
Any discussion? 11.8, snow and ice removal extension bid. Any discussion? 11.9, roof renewal of roofing consulting services contract. Any discussion? 11.1, renewals of techno technology services contracts. Any discussion? Eleven point eleven, family service association. I'm sorry, Renewal of Family Service Association of Greater Elgin Area MOU. Discussion? 11.12, Language Services and Supports Opportunity Review. Any discussion? And 11.13,
freedom of information act report. Any discussion? Okay. And the reason, again, we that we don't have didn't have any discussion is a lot of these things were also discussed in the operations committee meeting and also, we have a lot of these things available to our us in our packet. So we generally have, been able to go through it and everything. So that's part of the reason there's not a lot of discussion on this kind of stuff. Item 12, consent items. The consent items are standard procedure items or items that have been previously reviewed and discussed in the board operations committee meeting.
And need no further discussion, is there a motion to approve the consent items? So moved. Second. Madam secretary, please take the roll. Fiorentina. Aye. Burkett. Aye. Linmark. Aye. Lamarca. Aye. Zettler. Aye. McKendy. Aye. Amelia. Aye. Motion passes seven zero. Thank you. Item 18, roll call action items. Is there a motion for the approval of the e learning program verification renewal? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, madam secretary, please take the role. Nelia?
Aye. Burkett? Aye. Lamarca, aye. McKendy? Aye. Zeller? Aye. Tarantino? Aye. Anne Lindemark. Aye. Motion passes seven zero. Thank you. 13.2, approval to display the twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six tentative budget and publish the public hearing notice. Is there a motion for the approval to display the twenty twenty five-twenty five-six tentative budget and publish the public hearing notice? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, Madam Secretary,
please take the row. Lamarca, aye. Linmark. Aye. Burkett. Aye. Malia. Aye. Zeller. Aye. Fiorentino. Aye. McKendy. Aye. Motion passes, seven zero. Thank you. 13.3, approval of the Boys and Girls Club I'm sorry, renewal of Boys and Girls Club of Northwest Suburbs facility use agreement for twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six. Is there a motion to for the approval of the Boys and Girls Club of Northwest, facility use agreement, twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six? So moved. Is there a second?
Second. Any further discussion? Madam Secretary, please take the role. Lynn Mark? Aye. Emilia. Aye. Fiorentino. Aye. McKenday. Aye. Zeller. Aye. Burkett. Aye. LaMarca. Aye. Motion passes seven zero. Thank you. 13.4. Is there a motion for the approval of the work based learning program MOU? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? May I have secretary, please take the roll? Birkett. Aye. Malia. Aye. Lamarca. Aye. Fiorentino. Aye. McKinde. Aye. Zeller. Aye. Linmer. Aye.
Motion passes seven zero. 13.5. Is there a motion for the approval of the board policy review and revisions? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Hearing none, Madam Secretary, please take the roll. LaMarca, aye. Linmark? Aye. McKinde? Aye. Malia? Aye. Zeller? Aye. Burkett? Aye. Fiorentina? Aye. Motion passes seven zero. I just wanted to say it was a great first day of school today. Alright. Yeah. We only had one downpour. We made it through at arrival for elementary, I think it was.
But it was a great day, the team reported. You know, there's kinks to work out for day two. We acknowledge that. But, overall, staff and kids were in high spirits. And, I was able to get out and see a lot of our students and staff today, and it was great energy in our schools. So appreciate everyone that hit the ground running today for our kids. We have great staff in district three hundred. And thank you to my team, helping me through the year to start. Yeah. Well done. And also, I don't know. I just have a feeling it's gonna be a really good year this year.
So we all plan on working hard yes. And we all plan on working hard to make sure that happens. So thank you for that. Did you see those little kindergartners in those pictures today? Yep. They're they're they're awesome. I just wanna say too, I had the honor of being able to go to a couple of the schools today with the team. And it was just the energy, the enthusiasm, the dedication is just palpable in these buildings. And the buildings themselves, beautiful. I should have said this when John was still here, but they were just just beautiful. All of the oh, you are here. I didn't see you back there, John.
Sorry. Everything looked great. The people looked great. The energy, it was great. So just yeah. Thank you to all of our all of you that make all of this possible and the wonderful staff and all the buildings and just everyone that just, like Doctor. Smith said, it just was we could just feel the energy for a great year to come. And then in a couple of weeks, we're all gonna get to see what everything looks like because John's gonna come back and he's gonna have a, photo presentation on everything that was accomplished over the summer and summer. And if anybody know Anything they know,
that's our favorite day of the summer. It's always our favorite day of the summer to see what's been accomplished and what's been accomplished, a lot of it, by our people in house. So it's really a great thing to great great thing to see happen and knowing that we're saving a bunch of money doing it the way we're doing it. So, again, thank you. Alright. Well, since we don't have any second closed session, then I'm going to ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Ma'am, secretary, please take the roll. Amelia? Aye. Fiorentino? Aye. Birkett? Aye. Lamarca, aye. McKinde?
Aye. Lindmark? Aye. Zettler? Aye. Motion passes. 70. We are adjourned. Thanks, everybody.