Hello parents and members of the Elizabeth community. This is Dan Snowberger. Wanted to take some time to share some information with you about our district funding and our budget. Uh there's been some social media chatter lately. Um, and instead of getting embroiled in that, I felt it best to just simply share some accurate
information with our stakeholders about the state of our district, the work that's been underway for the past two and a half years, and our future focus in building our financial health as a district. This is starting my 15th year as a superintendent and 30th year as an educational leader. Um, I take great
pride in my work leading transparently and so I'm always happy to sit down with any parent or member of the community um and answer any questions or provide additional information. So after you have an opportunity to view this, don't hesitate to reach out if you have any
questions. Uh when I came to Elizabeth two and a half years ago, um one of the things that that I learned very quickly is I inherited a district um with a trend of of overspending um its revenue. Um interim superintendent Bills, who I had the
pleasure of working with for for my first year, really worked hard during his year as interim superintendent uh to try to curb uh some of that trend that had happened. Um but we faced a huge challenge. We faced a challenge in the fact that our staff here was
significantly underpaid in comparison to our neighboring districts. We had a revolving door of staff continuing to to leave after uh being able to find jobs in neighboring districts. So we also had an aging infrastructure um that was facing a lot of um significant
challenges. Um and again we were spending a lot more money than we were bringing in. And so the district um while it had a a savings account um was depleting that pretty drastically. I want to explain some basic concepts of school funding first just so that you
can understand how schools are funded. Um schools are funded on a per pupil allocation. This is determined by a school finance formula um in state statute. Um and this process is currently changing. Um, in in my mind,
this funding belongs to the student. Uh, for the 2526 school year, each student brings to the district what I consider a backpack of funding. Um, and for this year, each student is bringing $11,384 to the district. So, every student who
is in the district on the October count date, um, the district earns $11,384. Um, and in my mind, those funds need to be spent as close to our schools as possible where those students go. Um, and that's been my philosophy as a as an
educational leader is is those dollars need to be spent on the students who earn those dollars. Um, that funding is made up from three sources. It's made up from local property taxes, that property tax bill that none of us look forward to
paying. specific ownership taxes that many of us don't realize actually pays for our school districts. Um, a portion of of those taxes, if you look closely at your back of your registration, there's a portion called ownership taxes. Those ownership taxes actually
fund your local school district. Um, and what we call a state share. And that state share is made up of of state income tax, uh state sales tax, and other state revenues that are collected um around the state of Colorado. Now, the district does receive some other
funding through various other sources. Those include voter approved mill levies. Um our district has one small voter approved mill levy that um we collect from local taxpayers. federal funding. Um most of our federal funding
comes from uh funding that's based on the level of poverty in the district. Um we get some state reimbursement based upon investment in transporting students in the district. So each year we trans we run a transportation department. We pick up students, transport them to
school and transport them home. The state looks at how much we spent on that and they actually reimburse us for a portion of that each year. We also get money through grants that we apply for. I'll give you one example. We have a vape prevention grant. We have a vape
prevention coordinator in the district. That person is paid through a grant. So, we also have some money that comes into the district through grants that we apply for. Um, we also uh receive revenue through facility rentals. So,
many of you may see our facilities used after hours by outside groups. We collect rental money for our facilities uh to be used outside of the school district. Um we have outside groups. We have outside schools. We have homeschool enrichment that uses our facility at
Frontier, for example. Um they pay rent uh for the use of that facility and and that money comes into the district um uh into the district funds. Uh we also collect fees for specific programs. Um those might be tech fees. Parents pay tech fees each years. Those fees help
offset the cost of Chromebooks and maintaining our tech infrastructures, things like that. We also have some programs that are more costly, art programs. So, uh, parents may pay an art fee uh, for that program for their child to be in that. And so, those fees also
help offset the costs of district programs. It's important to note, however, that preschool is no longer funded through the K12 funding structure. preschool is now completely funded separately from the K12 funding in the state of
Colorado. Um so so it's important for people to know that our preschool program is completely supported outside of the K12 structure in Colorado. We've also worked hard to ensure that we don't invest money brought in by per
people revenue that backpack funding if you will in non-school programs. Um let me give you a good example of that. uh our Frontier building. Many people um you know worry about how much is Frontier costing us. Uh when I arrived in the district, the district was
attempting to sell that building. Many in our community were up in arms about letting that landmark building be sold. Um and ultimately uh the previous board took that building off the market. It is a costly building to maintain. We've worked with outside entities to try and
find outside resources of funding to revitalize that building. In the meantime, I've committed that not to utilize any funding earned by students in the district within that building. All investment that we've made into that building has come from rental income.
So, money that we've made from renting the gym in that building, from renting space in that building, all of that money has been reinvested into that building. So money earned by students who attend Running Creek or attend Elizabeth High School, we've invested none of that money into the frontier
frontier building because I believe very strongly that money earned by our students need to be invested into programs that impact our students. So let's look at a history of spending within the district. Since 2020, our district under prior leadership has been
engaged in excessive spending, spending far more than the district was earning. I'll look at the chart here shows that the district was engaged in deficit spending for four consecutive years. That's the four years that the state has
charted right now. Um they track um four consecutive years and that's the data you have up in front of you. Um, in fact, this was flagged by the state of Colorado and the district has had to respond each of each of those years to the legislative audit committee of the
legislature um about the pattern of spending and bleeding those reserves. When I became superintendent in March of 2023, Dr. Dallas had already begun rep prioritizing expenses and refocusing spending on the classroom. working
together on building the 2023 24 budget, we knew we had to increase teacher salaries. So even knowing that we were experiencing some deficit spending, we had to stop the bleeding of teachers in our district. And so that year, the
board um and Dr. Dallas and I invested $3,000 in every teacher. We increased teacher salaries by $3,000 initially um and we cut other expenses. So that year, which was a year that I was involved in the budget, um we did still spend some
deficit spending. We still had some savings left. Uh but we felt like we had to um invest in our teachers. We had to try to uh increase salaries because at that point in time, we were $10,000 below our neighboring district. Um and
we just could not continue to see that deficit between what our teachers were making and what our neighbors were making. Um, but we knew that going into the following year, we'd have to look seriously at how we were spending money. Also want to point out another important
piece of the chart that you're looking at. Um, that would be the third and fourth rows outlining the difference in spending between Elizabeth and the state average state spending uh per student. Our district is drastically underfunded
compared to districts around the state of Colorado. primarily because of a lack of voter approved mill levy. Here in Elizabeth, we have one mill levy approved by voters that will always be $1.5 million. As our budget grows, as
our district grows, if we have 4,000 students, it will still be $1.5 million. As our community grows, the cost to each taxpayer will decrease because it will never increase from $ 1.5 million. Um,
right now that $ 1.5 million is about 4% of our budget. In neighboring districts like Douglas County and Cherry Creek, voters have approved mill levies up to 25% of their total district program. Hence why those districts um in the state are
funded at greater rates per student. Hence why those districts are able to pay their teachers 7 to10,000 more um per year. And so that's part of our challenges um uh in in our district um
is is the fact that we do not have voter approved mill levy. We do not have more money that we're asking our taxpayers to pay. Um and and here hence why we we are are funded less per student. This accounts for our challenges in teacher
pay, facility improvement, and other comparable aspects. Despite that, over the past two years, we have increased teacher pay. The following year, we added another $3,000 to teacher pay, and we raised support staff salaries by
almost 10%. This wasn't easy, but it required a rep prioritization of spending to ensure that we maximize spending on the most important asset in the district, and that's the people who serve our children each and every day. I'm not one to always cry for more
money. I believe school districts need to make wise use of the funds that it has. Our taxpayers have faced ridiculous inflation over the past four years in a very challenging economy. While I would love to ask our taxpayers to help us close the gap, I am sensitive to the
fact that there is a right time to do so. We will continue to watch every penny we spend and make sure that each dollar is used with the priority always on our student programs. Finally, there has been some chatter on a program that several districts in the
state use from the Colorado State Treasurer called the Nointer Interest Revolving Loan Program. Each district is funded from those three sources of funding. Again, state share, local property taxes, um, and, uh, specific ownership tax. And
the portion of each is determined by a complex formula considering the local property valuation. For some districts like ours, a large portion, in our case, 51% of that funding comes from local
property taxes. Keeping in mind that our local property taxes are collected after the first of the year and most of it actually comes in in April through June to the Elbert County tax collector. That provides a major challenge to districts
like ours which must operate throughout the entire school year while waiting to receive those funds. Again, our school year for this year functions on taxes that are collected next April, May, and
June. So, we have to fund our district with dollars that are paid next April, May, and June. The state share that 49% that we are funded through state money,
we actually begin getting in July. Two years ago, the state increased the ability of a district like ours to get more of that money earlier in the year. But again, for a district like ours, it gets 51% of its money from local
property tax, it doesn't really help us a whole lot. And so, we must use that no interest revolving loan fund to help us bridge the gap until our local property taxes come in. So that no interest loan program is
important, but let's talk a little more about the changes that have happened over time here in Elizabeth. The ratio of how much money we've earned from state share versus local local property taxes has also changed. The chart you're
seeing now in 2022 23 56% of our funding came from state chair meaning 56% of it was paid beginning in July of the school year and spread throughout the year and only 44% of it came in local taxes. Now,
it still was a challenge because 444% of our funding came in those last 3 months of the year and we still had to use that no interest loan, but our no interest loan was smaller. As the property valuation here in
Elizabeth has increased uh and the state formula has changed in the school finance act, we have increased our local property taxes towards our school funding. And now 51% of our funding
comes from local property taxes, which means less of our funding is being paid July through June. Um and we have to wait for more money now April through June. And so when the district shifted
that large portion of funding also to salaries as we increase salaries that also created a greater challenge because we don't tell our teachers we're paying you more money but please wait for that until April, May, and June. We pay our teachers in 12 equal payments uh
beginning in August and pay them through July. And so we have to pay them their salary. And so again, we use that no interest revolving loan fund to make sure that we pay out our staff so that um they receive their checks um on a
regular basis. And so again, because the ratio of funding is has increased from local property taxes, the amount of our revolving loan has increased over the last few years. um that has also had an increase as we've shifted more money into salary uh which again has been paid
out throughout the school year as opposed to items that we used to be able to schedule. So we used to be able to say when our salaries were lower, we used to be able to say let's save the purchasing of Chromebooks, let's save the purchasing of curriculum, let's save all of that for June when we received
our local property taxes. We can't do that when it's salary. Salary has to be paid out throughout the year. And so that has increased our need to utilize more of the local uh more of the revolving loan account. Want to point out the state treasur requires a
detailed budget analysis before any district is permitted to participate in the revolving loan program and they won't loan a district money if it cannot pay it back. Each year the district has participated in the program. The loan has been paid back in full before the end of June as required by law. To
address the financial challenges the district has experienced in the past, the school board with my support passed a policy in 2023 setting an expectation that in addition to addressing all of these financial challenges that we also build a fund
balance, a savings account if you will, equal to 10% of our district revenues by the end of the 2627 school year. By doing so, we will lessen our need for the revolving loan program. It won't mean we won't need it. It just we'll be
able to borrow less and we'll be able to manage future financial challenges experienced by the district. Heaven forbid we have a boiler go out. Heaven forbid we have a system go down, we'll actually have a savings account to address those needs. At the end of last
school year, which was the first school year, we've been able to actually put substantial money back into the bank into that savings account, we were able to build our fund balance to 7 and 12 to 8%. Um, so we are well on track to being
able to meet that goal by the end of 2627. So we're in a good place to achieve that objective while continuing to invest in the important initiatives in the district. It's important to note this year we began our dyslexia program which took a a big investment. We began
training initiatives for our staff and direct explicit instruction and we dealt with some significant capital expenses um on our aging infrastructure. Managing a budget in the school district is not easy, but it requires discipline and prioritization to make sure that we
are good stewards of the taxpayer dollars while making sure that every possible dollar is invested in our students. In the last two and a half years, this board and I have increased teacher salaries by $6,000, increased support salaries by nearly 10%, addressed a number of critical
infrastructure needs, including the purchase of 10 school buses, purchased new curriculum in a number of areas, invested in critical training for our amazing staff, and began work towards building a fund balance in the district so that we have an emergency fund to
address unexpected needs and to support cash flow. in the future. All of this was accomplished without asking our taxpayers for one additional dollar. We're proud of what we've been able to accomplish together. It's taken a strong partnership with our teachers, with our
support staff, with our administrators, and with our community. Again, please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or if you need any additional information or desire more documentation. If you'd like more information about where you can find all
of this information or where you can find more data on our school funding, please reach out to me and let me know. I'm always happy to sit down with you. But hopefully this provides you a better look at what is going on in the district with regard to our funding, with regard
to our budget, and the work that we have been doing to try to make sure that Elizabeth School District has a strong financial future um and is a district in good financial help. Thank you so much. Hopefully this was helpful. Would love
to hear from you.