Speaker 1: Absolute peace. I think so. Do I hit the button? Anything? Yeah, hit the thing That starts money. Money. Okay. Speaker 2: Alright. Welcome to the Garfield Re two Board of Education meeting for Wednesday, May 28th. I would like to call this meeting to order at five 30. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Speaker 1: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God and invisible with liberty
and justice for all. Speaker 2: Please remain standing for a moment of silence. Thank you. Onto the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? There are none. There are none. May I get a motion to approve the agenda? Agenda as presented? Speaker 1: Make a motion to approve May 20, 20, 25. Agenda second. Aye on? Speaker 2: I believe so. Speaker 1: Aye. Thank you. Hello. Speaker 2: Ask aye. Speaker 1: Jenkins. Aye. Jensen. Oh, your mic. Sorry guys. Speaker 2: All right. On to public audience.
First we have Marley S Garrett, scurry, Ari and she here Speaker 1: On Zoom, I think. Is she online team? Is Speaker 2: She on Zoom? It said in person or on Zoom. Zoom. It does say Zoom. Speaker 1: I'm on here. Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm not used to the form. All right, we'll go on to the next page. Hadley, We have three minutes. There's a timer over here. Oh, I have to do a few welcoming notes. I'm sorry. That's fine. My first board meeting.
So I'm learning this board meeting time is dedicated to the strategic mission and top priority focus areas public participation in, in an opportunity to present brief comments or pose questions to the board for consideration and follow up. Each person is asked to focus comments to three minutes. The boundaries are designed to keep the meeting focused and in no way should limit conversations beyond the boardroom. Please be aware that any individual student or personnel matters are considered confidential
under Colorado law. It is out of respect for the individual student and staffed and staff that we ask those conversations to be held in executive session. Insight, insights in are needed and welcome and the board encourages you to meet with the most up, most appropriate person among the district's. Many leaders you may have the floor and three minutes is on the timer. Speaker 3: Thank you. So thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. Tonight's discussion concerning special education is something
near and dear to my heart. Not all cases present the same. The tests I paid for out of pocket determined my youngest son to be a two E or twice except student. He has learning challenges such as dyslexia and dysgraphia, while also testing as gifted. His journey started in second grade when a letter home said that he was lazy and consistently tried to get out of work. This led to meetings with the superintendent of the district at the time, along with a number of other school faculty members.
And while I certainly appreciated the meetings, the end result was determined that there were no resources to assist my son. And I was told I would need to be prepared as a parent to provide my own resources. That has led to thousands of dollars in testing, evaluations and private schooling. While I'm sure there are a number of students have who have been successfully helped, I would encourage the district to remember children like my son, the educational resources that we should be provided, or I'm sorry, the educational resources that we should provide that should be
provided by an educational institution, should be considered and expanded to allow students the education that they are capable of receiving and should not be limited by the resources of the family. Thank you so much for considering my story, my son's story, and to Garfield re two for all that they have done. I would just encourage you to consider that there's, that there's a number of special needs in our district. Thank you so much. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank Speaker 1: You. Speaker 2: Should I try that zoom one again? Is she on there yet? Theresa Marley.
All right. We will move along onto the approval of the last board meeting minutes approval of the May 14th, 2025 draft board minutes. Speaker 1: I move to approve to Speaker 4: The May 14th draft of the minutes of that meeting. Speaker 1: Second Speaker 2: And roll call please. Speaker 1: Aye. Aye. Speaker 2: Aye. Speaker 1: Aye. Speaker 2: All right. Consent agenda. Are there any changes to this consent agenda? Speaker 5: We do have one amendment
and all of you have a hard copy of that on your desk. And it would be to add the approval of an overnight field trip for the Mountain Bike Club, which includes 14 students from May 31st to June 2nd, Speaker 2: Moab. Nice. Speaker 1: Nice. Speaker 2: Okay. I just wanted to highlight, I am really excited about the BOCES pilot training courses for high school students. Is that like, like literally pilots like pilot training at the airport? Yes. Simulation
Speaker 1: And, Speaker 2: Yeah, it Speaker 5: Is. And knows a little bit about that. Yeah. Speaker 1: Later. Speaker 2: Yeah. This is so awesome. Okay, I'll wait until you guys get up here. Can I go and enroll in that class or do they need a chaperone? No. All right. Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended? Speaker 1: Make a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended. Second. Okay. Aye. Aye. As Speaker 2: Aye. Speaker 1: Jenkins. Aye. Speaker 2: Okay. All right. Moving right along. We will go into
the government's discussion items. And first up is, I have to get it there so I say it correctly. Oh, right here. Speaker 1: Oh Speaker 2: Wait, it's like going the way down Bo CS and SPED coordination. Here we go. Sorry guys, I'm on the right screen. So BOCES and RE two sped, please. Come on up. Speaker 1: We'll Speaker 2: Stand. Yes. You guys are welcome to pull up chairs if you would like. Speaker 1: Are you, do you wanna come back too, Sierra? She's our coordinator as well. Okay.
Okay. I'll sit lunch Speaker 6: Over here. I'm not gonna use the mask. Thank Speaker 1: You. Yep. Thank you. There's a whole bunch of you. Good. Awesome. Speaker 6: You got slides? Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you all for being here. Are having us Speaker 6: Theresa's gonna find our slides maybe sort of. Okay. All right. While she's doing that, I'm gonna have everybody, everybody introduce themselves. Okay. We'll start down there. Speaker 1: My name's Julie Gold. I'm the director of special education for Colorado River Boce. I'm Sierra Shilling. I'm the SPED coordinator for Colorado River boces. I'm Nicolette Petro and I'm the program evaluator for Colorado River oce.
I'm Erin Bodett, I'm the assistant director for special education for Garfield RE two. And I'm Amanda Bingman. I'm the Garfield R two special education director, Speaker 6: Ken Absol. One week left is a Sierra BOCES executive director. Not to rub that in Heather. Speaker 1: Yeah, I got 20 days on you. Yeah. Speaker 6: All good. As we get the slides up, we'll get going. So to answer your first question, yes, it is a pilot program. Yes. We did buy a simulator that is mobile and we will be hauling it around. And because Aspen Flight School is utilizing that at the Lemon Springs airport, they're gonna give kids free airtime to fly airplanes.
Speaker 1: Oh, awesome. Epic Speaker 6: Is epic. Speaker 1: Yeah. Awesome. Speaker 6: All right. We ready to go here? And you have to be a Speaker 1: Student. You have to be a student? Or is there like, like a Speaker 6: Parent? I'm sure we can Speaker 1: Work. No, I think board, I have a little board work session. Speaker 6: Do we need to start slides in a different spot? Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you mind going down to the Tell me where to start. Slide deck you're, yep. Keep going. There you go. You're good. I was just, I just went where it took me in the link. Speaker 6: Okay. Speaker 1: So and then one more sign. Yep. Perfect. Speaker 6: All right. So Colorado boces,
we are your boces And what is O boces? Board of Cooperative Education Services? Scott sets on our board, which is the board part of that. We are, we have five members, debe, Garfield 16, re two Roaring Fork and Aspen School Districts. Those are all members of the BO Cs. The administrative unit is a little different. So the administrative unit is actually went, oversees special ed programs for both CS districts. Now, I'm gonna back up a little bit. Long time ago, every school district in the state, almost a thousand of them had their own school districts.
They also had all their own special ed administrative units. So all thousand school districts in the state had their own special ed director, had their own special education staff. And in the sixties and seventies, they figured out really quickly that it was very tough to hire a deaf and hard of hearing teacher in one district. And then five miles down the road hire another deaf and harder hearing teacher because there just aren't that many of those folks running around. So in the sixties, seventies, they started talking about consolidating that work into BO Cs configurations that then became the administrative unit.
So initially, BO Cs were the organization that oversaw special education programming for multiple districts. So through the years, a couple things have happened. Bigger systems have kind of gone on their own. Grand Junction is their own administrative unit. Big systems over a certain amount of kids can be their own administrative unit at a certain size level. The state likes to keep districts together. Now we are the administrative unit over two districts. Garfield 16 and RE two. About five years ago, roaring Fork was part of that Roaring Fork pulled out of that. That was a, a whole bunch of rigmarole
as Heather primary remembers. But when that happened, that essentially moved the, the resources kinda limited some of the resources, but just overlaid the BOCES administrative unit over these two districts. Now what does the administrative unit do? The administrative unit is in charge of compliance. We collect the funds from the state and the feds and we use those to purchase services. So SC SSPs like speech language folks, psych psychiatrists, psychologists, OTs, PTs, any of those folks, that's part of where that money goes. So it goes to the au
and what you really think of the AU is essentially one big special ed district. So Garfield 16 kids and your special ed kids are all overseen by this huge conglomeration of of resources. We don't hire special ed teachers. We don't typically, you already have your own special ed director, so you do a lot of work in your system to provide professional development. Julie actually oversees Garfield 16 as their special ed director too. So she does a lot of the day-to-day work down there, which she doesn't do as much up here. So kind of a brief overview of, of those two things.
Trying to think what else is important out of an AU to get out of an au, which you would have to, 'cause this question has come up for R two a couple times. Like what if we wanted to become our own au But a couple things have to happen. One, you would have to show that you would, you could do it on your own like you without two districts. You could do it with no more resources than you currently have. And And by do it, I mean you can afford it and Garfield 16 can't afford it. And you still provide all those continuum of services. C continuous services are everything that a kid has on an IEP. Every kid you have on an IEP, you have
to be able to meet all those services. You don't get to say we don't have the resources, we don't have the people. You would have to do that to become your own administrative unit. The likelihood of that happening is probably not high just because there are X amount of people in this state that do this kind of work and the minute you start di dividing up those au even more, there's just not enough of 'em to go over. So that's why I don't ever envision this au being broken up. In fact, I would see, and this is speaking way ahead, but there is some talk about having other districts like the Beck, maybe Plateau Valley actually join this AU
because they're currently part of Mesa Counties and probably aren't served as well as they would be by a smaller, more focused group of folks. So what about like meer? Meer is a, an AU with Rangeland. So they are two member AU and boces Real blanc. Real blanc. Sorry, Rio blank. Yes. Now, so a little other component of this is Bo O Cs can do other things than just administrative unit. Like our BOCES runs Epic. We do alternative licensure, we have the Carbon Empowered Learning Program. So we do all the CDLS courses. We do a lot of other things. There are some O Cs that all they do is special ed.
That's their main focus. There are two O OCS in the state. All they do is insurance. So they provide insurance for multiple districts. They don't do anything else but insurance, which is kind of a different way, but it's really around collaboration and saving money. So that's why they do that. There's a school district in the Denver Metro area Expeditionary Learning School, which is a conglomeration of all the big districts and their kids. There is a magnet school and there are Bo Cs. So there's 21 Bo Cs in the state. All of 'em do different things, but about 15 of us are fairly similar. But it's always, it's always tailored around the needs
of the its member district. It is. Exactly. So let's say you guys wanted to start a program, you wanted to do, you already have an outdoor program, but all, I'll use that as an example. You decide you wanted to do some sort of outdoor program. 16 wants to do the same thing. We could help support that and and, and apply for resources, try to get grants to help defer some of those costs and make it a little bit more efficient if if in fact it does. Now that's the other thing too, is when somebody comes to us, we sit there and go, is it cheaper for the BOCES to do it or is it cheaper for you to just call 16 and figure out how to do that? Sometimes it is, sometimes we have the resources to make
that like alternative licensure. You wouldn't wanna stand up your own alternative licensure program. We have 120 people in our program. We have 10 people that run that thing. You wouldn't want to do that all on your own. That's why we do that for you and for other districts. So the, the transition program, we're talking about transition program right together and I'll let you talk. Yeah, so I dunno if you wanna go to the next slide and that, so a little bit of the background of this. So last spring, I'm thinking Heather, Lisa around there. Yeah. We sat down at lunch Monday and I said, Hey, what I would really like to do is sit down
and really look at everything that's going on in the administrative unit around special ed for Garfield 16, for Garfield DER two and for half Mountain High School. And see if we are meeting the needs of the districts, if the districts are providing what they need to for kids and are we doing that in an efficient way and efficient and effective and what might be some outcomes of kind of doing a survey, doing some research, really looking at that. So they said, yes, let's do that. Which was awesome. And so for the entire, this last year,
our teams have worked together to collect data from parents, from your staff, from community members, from these folks, from leadership to really get information about what's working, what isn't working with the idea that as you transition into a, a new leadership and new folks, that there's some outcomes that we can create an action plan to move forward to make this work better for kids. And not just here at Yampa and at Garfield 16 as well. But we're here tonight to talk to you all. So that's what we've been doing
and Nicolette is the master of all data. So she will probably walk you through some of this and so will Julie and, and invite anybody else to chime in and and get chance. You can ask questions whenever you want. You don't have to wait till the end even though I, I'm writing them down. I know. Okay. You took, you took a lesson from Cassie. That's great. So yeah, so, but if you do have a question, just throw it out. Alright. Speaker 7: So yeah, thanks. Speaker 6: Go Speaker 7: Ahead. All right, thanks Ken. It's almost like you've had some practice doing this. Speaker 6: I've done this once, Speaker 7: Once or, or twice. Yeah.
So like the background, this is kind of when I came into the equation here and started working with Julie and it was kind of just like, okay, how can we better support the work that Garfield RE two is currently doing? And the best way to do that is we couldn't really move forward without that whole partnership that Ken was alluding to. And then that's when I, you know, got to start working with Amanda. And most recently Erin and Larry got, you know, was part of that process. So yeah, very quickly we realized we could not move forward without
our teams working together. And if you don't mind going to the next slide please. And here, so the process, the key evaluation areas, Ken had identified different areas that we would definitely focus this on based off of the work that has been done in the past. And this is where we especially, let's see that third one up there. Parent and community as well as the second one. Staff training and competence and then resource allocation and collaboration. So those pieces, when you look at the strategic plan,
the RE two strategic plan for 25, 26, those are directly related to the special education initiatives that you have all been planning. So that was, you know, not a coincidence. There was a direct correlation there. And then that helped us figure out, you know, how, what data do we wanna collect? We already had the AU determination and Julie's gonna be going a little bit more into that, that as well as that strategic plan. But you know, what else could we data can we collect to tell more of the story?
And that's where the surveys came in and having a better understanding of the needs of the staff. And that included, you know, special providers as well as the teachers. And then of course the families. You know, what, what, what's going on? Can we better understand what the family's needs and how can we better understand where they're coming from? So through this data collection, which started in August, went through May, most of it was done probably mid-December through May. We were able to gather staff 32
responses, which we worked with Amanda through that data design. So even just the survey, making sure that we're using the language that they're used to using, you know, it's coming different from me. And then, you know, we were able to make sure we're using the same language that's being used in the buildings to make sure that we're getting the most reliable data to report back and then, you know, actually do something with it. So 69% of the staff was elementary and then 50% of the that 32 were teachers, just
to give you a better idea of who responded. And then family engagement. And this is kind of going back to we tried doing some things with some collaboration and that's where we only got the 27 responses from family. But it's a starting point and it's somewhere that we can go moving forward of how can we do better, more collaboration and we'll be able to have, you know, that's something for next year. But 37% of that was that elementary families.
Not surprising. But again, just to give you an idea of where that's coming from. Amanda, feel free. Anything else? You were a big part of that, getting us that great response rate. Speaker 8: I think the big thing about surveys is our staff has to know what it, what's happening with that survey data. And special ed is an interesting group of staff members because we're hodgepodged across the district, we're big enough to be our own school. Kind of how we talked about early childhood being its own school. We do, we have a huge group, but when we survey them, especially when we do district surveys, the questions about my supervisor or my principal, that's always confusing for our staff
because they have multiple supervisors or multiple people in charge of them, whether it be a principal in the building they work in, if they're, if they're a speech language pathologist, they're going to, they could be in three buildings. So who are they responding about? So we, we tried to tailor the survey that Nicolette and Boce sent out a little bit more closely to just general special education things and not the district level things because we're still trying to figure out how do we best capture that data for our staff when we do the surveys at the district level. Is there a different way we can allocate that? Is there a different way we can word things so that we,
we do get a good representation of what we've got. Speaker 9: And I think sometimes too, the miscommunication of who it's coming from when they get something from BO Cs, you know, they may not respond to the same level as if it came from an Garfield already two email. Perfect. So I think that could have impacted parents' involvement as well as the staff. So, Speaker 5: And we did talk about moving forward of possibly using, using the Aspen business group survey to potentially, since it's al already a survey that's in place and our staff and families are pretty familiar with that.
Is that then how can we ask maybe some specific questions so that we can get some of that anonymity that's important to people too. Speaker 8: Well and I think just like you guys have questions about what a BOCES is versus what the gar the district does, parents have the same questions and so it's just thinking through those touch points ahead of time to say how do we make this clear about who's asking for it and what we're doing with it for staff, parents and the community. Speaker 10: Yeah, it's, it is confusing. Speaker 9: Yeah. Speaker 10: Very regular for regular people. Like regular folk. Yeah, regular folk average Joe,
I guess you explained it the best just now though, Ken. The whole year and a half I've been on the board is it's an educational co-op. Yeah. If that's when people hear B Cs. Yeah. You know, they're like, what? What? Yeah. You know. Now again, acronyms are everywhere in education. I know that. But just say it that way. An educational co-op, I mean people understand what that is. Yeah. And we live in a rural community. I mean that's, people get that they get a co-op. Yeah, you're right. They get that,
that that, that idea, right? It's to your tier survey. We've always been had a hard time getting family engagement. So the 27 coming from bo's, I'm surprised it's that high. Yeah. Speaker 9: And Speaker 7: They were quality. Like there's like, like the testimonials and that's why we needed to create the, this flyer that's in the packet too. 'cause we, the whole purpose was to elevate their voice, right. And yeah, like we were had our internal meeting, we were like, we don't wanna say just 27, but we need to acknowledge it because it's 27 families that found the time to go
and share their feedback with us. And Speaker 10: A hundred percent And that's where like we saw that with Theresa, this last Aspen business group survey sending out individual mailers with a individual QR code to every family. Yeah, Speaker 9: It's hard. Speaker 10: Yeah, it takes a lot of work to get their buy-in, right? Yeah. And sometimes it's frustrating but like you said, it's every person that responds is worthy of noticing Speaker 9: Of, we'll talk about a parent involvement in a survey later on talking about the indicators and the administrative unit state performance plan. And one of the indicators is parent involvement
and they have to respond to a survey and we received a lot better response. But I had the teachers and the case managers and myself contact parents and say, you know, this is why we need it. Good or bad, we do need you to respond to share with the state how we are doing. And so we'll talk about that as well. Speaker 7: All right. So moving on the findings here, it's again the, these two slides, this one as well as the next one. It's all the same data points that are on the one sheeter that is in the board packet. And that first point there that 96%
of families feel their concerns and suggestions are listened to by the schools. That's definitely an area to celebrate and kind of when you're the one doing the data collection, that's not, things like that don't always emerge. So that's something to definitely celebrate in this room. And then going from there, the 69% of surveyed staff are fully licensed or certified and we'll get to, you know, what is the action plan that can come from this by working together. And 77% of families would like more frequent updates on their child's progress.
Right. Which is interesting 'cause they feel listened to, but they would like more updates and I can't just talk about it. I need to be about it. And on the one sheeter, you know, just a phone call or someone communicating is what one family member expressed. So just some things to think about and yes, thank you. So 69% of SPED staff identify training and professional development as a significant area for improvement. And again, with those open-ended questions, we were able to gather that one staff member said cater training
and specific enrich issues to staff based on experience level or area of concern. So that gave us a little bit more insight of it's not, they just don't necessarily just want more pd but a higher quality of pd. And we're, we're working on that and making some progress. So, and that collaboration piece, that last highlight up there on the right, we'll get to how that combines with the strategic plan and moving forward. Thank you. So sorry, that's so tiny.
That was, yep. I don't even think of that. That thanks for trying over there. That white, the white ink is not working. All right, so that first one that you cannot see very well, the yellow, the family engagement. This is taking just those findings to action, right? As someone who does a lot of research, it's always the idea of maybe it'll get analyzed, maybe it'll get reported, but very rarely does all this data that you collect and the surveys lead to an actual action plan. And that's why I think we're all very excited up here to,
you know, share that we are moving forward with this and there are target dates and we start with that part where we're celebrating with the family engagement and I kind of got some even extra ideas today while we're planning the PD for August is, you know, how can we celebrate that data point, that statistic that came outta this, that families do actually feel heard and make sure that we keep that trajectory going forward. You know, I don't know if it's something as having a, if there was a few family members that said hey, like I would be up for an interview, maybe we could contact them and have them explain what that feels like
or what that looks like to them going forward so we can make sure that yeah it's just an idea. But then staff learning that, what that says, staff licensing, sorry, staff licensing and family updates. Again, I'll let, when we get to the strategic plan, those are all that are in progress. But that staff training and staff collaboration, those are two areas, two recommendations that emerge from the study that we're actually have made progress towards that staff training. It's really neat to see this, the surveys
that the staff completed to be able to be applied and put into practice while shaping the pd. And I consider myself lucky enough to be invited to these meetings and listen in and you know, just give some insights and make sure that we are continuing to advocate for the staff as well as the families. And then staff collaboration that we already have a survey drafted to have a better understanding when they say what they wanna collaborate with their colleagues, what does that mean? How does that look? What time of the day? Is it virtual? Is it in person? So there's opportunities there
for a deeper dive and yeah feel it's for sure anything else. Speaker 8: Yeah. And, and I think these are just good touch points for us to say where do we go deeper with this and how does it fit into what we had seen at the district level and at the BOCES level. And it lines up pretty well with some of the things that we were working on and had focused on and eventually put into our strategic plan section as well. Speaker 7: Thank you. Yep. And that's just making it a little bit bigger and just that direct correlation between action and target date. And this is kind of where this part of the story,
we'll transition more to the work that Julie put together and the data that she has to share. But it was, you know, I think it's, it's very telling that we had the opportunity to not just show the the AU determination but also make sure that we're giving some life and human humanizing I guess you know, what is actually happening with the families and the staff. And then this is where once we do have that discussion time, I'm curious like, you know, I'm a big,
like let's elevate the student voice. Is that somewhere that, do we want to maybe do some interviews with students or you know, see if we can collect some data with students moving forward. So just the start of the conversation and now we're gonna go backwards I think all the way at the top I think. Yeah, all the way at the top. Thanks Therese. Back to the data pages. Yeah, back to the data. Okay. Speaker 9: So to give you a little background, just so you know what with Garfield R two, these are the numbers we're talking about. And this is the increase in numbers that have happened over time to where we are now at 658,
which was the last reported number we received of students with IEPs. That is three years old until 21. And so if you were to go down a little bit, so the administrative unit has certain determination data that has to be submitted in different reporting periods. And this is sort of like our report card of how are we doing as administrative unit between our two districts rebound or Yampa Mountain High School, the rebound program that we participate in as Garfield IE two. And so these are the different indicators that I submit reports for. So like early childhood, we were just talking about that,
that is one of the indicators. Six, they have to talk about what results matter, what is the growth within a year's time for these students. And that's one of the indicators we report to the state. So it starts its graduation rate, students with disabilities, what is their graduation rate? Is it increasing and is where does it compare to the state dropout by disability state assessment participation. Because a lot of our students opt out or parents opt out, but making sure that their participating and that they are growing academically, suspension and expulsion rates for students with disabilities,
educational environments. And we'll talk about that. That's the least restrictive environment. How much time they are in with the general education, early childhood preschool outcomes. That's something else that we look at. Like I spoke of parent involvement, that's a survey. So it was a indicator eight. We had to send out the state gives us a sample of 50 families that we have to send out surveys to. And the best process is to have people who they're familiar with contact them and say, you know, the state has selected your name or your your child's name, can you respond to the survey? We send them a link or we do it at their IEP
meetings when they're in person. So currently we have 37 out of 50 families that have participated, the 50 that were selected and 37 responses. It can be but bad. But again that's where we're graded on it. Disproportionate representation in special education as far as identification, that has to do with students', ethnicity, gender, ages, disabilities. So that's how that's documented. Disproportionate representation in specific disability categories. And then indicator 1111 is really the compliance indicator.
Are we doing our evaluations in a timely matter manner based on the timeline and the timeframe. And then indicator 12 is part C to B transition that zero to three years old is part C. And that happens through individualized family service plans through Mountain Valley developmental. And then they transition to the school district three years old to 2021. So that's that indicator. And the second one or 13 is secondary transition. And then 14 is post-school outcomes, which we're working on right now.
We contact all the graduates that were selected the names to see what they're doing, are they doing what they had planned to do when they graduated from school. Speaker 6: So to help you with this just a little bit, yeah. As the AU we're responsible for all those things. Yet if you think of like a big ship, and unfortunately sometimes I use the word Titanic and I shouldn't, it's a bad metaphor. A big ship that we're trying to steer across the ocean. But actually every one of these are controlled by the school districts that we support. Yeah. So we actually have no control over whether these get done or not. So what we really rely on is this work and this cooperation
and collaboration between the local districts and our folks because some of those require a hundred percent compliance. We don't like the the timely on evaluations. You don't get to have one rock or you're outta compliance. So there's some of these that really require a lot of collaboration because they don't, then what we end up getting is we get a letter that says essentially we're out of compliance and the end result of that is they can take away dollars from the administrative unit, not from your district, from the administrative unit. So it goes to all, but that definitely impacts you all
because then we can't hire a psychologist or something else that, or professional development. So these seem very nebulous. They, because they're kind of, they isn't, they aren't something you're gonna see a lot of, we do at the BOCES level, the AU level. But when we start saying, okay, we need to do something different with parent involvement as an example, we really need to have that corroboration collaboration to make that happen. Just 'cause I, I know this part's like I've given this to boards before and they're like, who cares? Like what, what does that mean to us? Well it doesn't really mean all heck of a lot to you other than when something goes wrong
and then we have to come back to you and say it's not working, we need to fix it. So Speaker 9: Unfortunately, yeah, we seem like the nags a lot of times 'cause I'm calling and I'm saying, or I'm emailing, saying, can you please get this out And I'll get on the phone and make phone calls or we're late on this evaluation. We have two levels of special education compliance secretaries, one at the district level and one at the administrative unit or BOCES level. And we are constantly checking on timelines to ensure that we are meeting our guidelines for the timelines. 'cause that's a hundred percent. And right now unfortunately we're outta compliance so we have to have an action plan
and at some point the state can come in and take over and really enforce certain things or look at our systems or they can take away dollars. So that is how we are graded a report card with some serious consequences. Speaker 10: So with no way of changing the Speaker 9: Report card. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. So ours, yeah. Speaker 10: Back to that Titanic. Better Speaker 4: Question. How do you, how do you get the C kids with Mountain Valley and how do you get all the reports through them? Us? So you, Speaker 9: I'm working on that. I'm working with Mountain Valley right now because a lot of times it, so it has to be
by their third year birthday, they've completed the evaluation to transition into the school system. A lot of times we don't get the names, we don't get the information until they're two years old and 11 months, which gives us one month to do a complete evaluation, complete a a plan, an IEP if necessary, meet with the families and set up the system. So we're working right now and I'm trying to set a system in place where it's two years, nine months that that is, we draw the line, that's when we need the information. Otherwise we're the ones being penalized. They are not. So it is a hard system.
Speaker 11: We've had our child fund coordinator work with Mountain Valley as well as the pediatricians to try and get involved more quickly. And I know Emily Meyer and her team also are partnered with that to just, you know, everybody's as many ears as we can so we can get ahead of it. So because we really do get a ton of those that are like your birthday's next week Speaker 10: We need you to do evaluation. Speaker 9: Okay, what's going on? So during summer we're hiring certain teams to come in and do evaluations because when we get the names we need to evaluate as soon as possible sometimes. So any other questions? So
Speaker 10: Is that process the same as across the sped like spec, like the spectrum of like the sped different different things we serve in sped, like the kids with five oh fours or the severe needs. Speaker 9: So there's a 5 0 4 falls under the Americans with Disabilities Act and that is not necessarily special education, but it does fall under accommodations that are provided. Whereas an IEP, they have a student has qualified under the 13 disability categories in the state of Colorado and the United States. They have qualified under one of those categories. So that's a little different.
But a student on the IEP can be someone with a little stuttering issue and it's not little but a, a fluency issue or it could be something as significant as a medically fragile student who's in a wheelchair completely nonverbal on an oxygen. I mean there's, we have a huge spectrum of services. Plus we have some students that are placed outta district because we can't meet their needs within Garfield I two. So it doesn't matter, we still have to report on them. And that falls into the educational environments. We have some students, and we'll talk about it in the next slide that are in 40% or less in the general education.
So they're sort of self-contained and a significant support needs program in some settings all the way up to a child who may just have someone push into the general ed to support 'em. So those are the different educational environments that we're sort of graded on. Speaker 10: So if I'm hearing you correctly, just verify, so five kids with 5 0 4 not necessarily are not under the SPED umbrella. Speaker 9: We don't receive dollars for them and they are general education as far as a 5 0 4 plan that is co that is covered. And I think Garfield already too covers, and I know Simone and I just talked about this, those are covered under,
there's a 5 0 4 coordinator within the school, but it's not covered through special education because the dollars aren't provided through that. We don't oversee those 5 0 4 plans currently. Speaker 11: Five oh fours are accommodations only Special ed are accommodations and services. Speaker 9: Yeah, it's a higher level of support and services Speaker 8: And the qualifications are totally different. If you're on a 5 0 4 you may have a disability and it may impact your life and how you function on a daily basis. But when we talk about kids on IEPs, that disability is now making an impact on their academic progress.
So you could, the best way to say it is to say a child could be in a wheelchair, but that doesn't mean they're on an IEP, but they may be on a 5 0 4 to make sure we have the right desk to make sure they have the right schedule to make sure they have the right tools to be successful so that it's the role the disability plays in that child's Speaker 9: Life to access their education. Got Speaker 2: It. So BOCES across like any CS, wouldn't necessarily oversee a 5 0 4? No, it's individuals school. There's, Speaker 6: There's a couple BOCES that the districts have have grouped together to have to ask them to coordinate their 5 0 4.
It's pretty rare and they don't combine it with their special ed services. So there are some places in the state where there are some Bo Cs that oversee five oh fours just because imagine the school, you know, like five school districts and the biggest ones a hundred kids, well they just don't have the personnel to support that. So they, they get a, somebody who's 5 0 4 trained to essentially be the person who oversees that for those districts. And Speaker 9: The four districts that I've been a SPED director, none of them have overlapped, but we've also been in bigger districts. So Garfield 16, who's the smallest? We did not, we don't oversee 5 0 4 still.
Speaker 6: You really want to try to keep 'em separate. Yeah, they are separate. 'cause legally you run in, like when people start thinking they're the same thing, people bring lawyers to the table thinking you're gonna be doing something that you're not because of a 5 0 4 compliance services. Yeah. Is not services. You're just making, you know, adaptations accommodations Speaker 2: To the classroom. Speaker 6: Right? Yeah. Speaker 8: Accommodations. Accommodations. Speaker 10: Yeah. Okay. So dumb question. Yeah. And kids, I still don't, Speaker 2: We're trying to understand Speaker 10: Kids with an IEP. Can they or kids with the 5 0 4, can they, do they ever transition to an IEP? Speaker 9: They can. They can if it starts to impact their education,
their disability. But a child with an I or an IEP doesn't get a 5 0 4 plan because it's a higher level and I think of it as like a concentric concentric circle where IEP is the highest level students with 5 0 4 sort of are around and that has to do with accommodations and access to the environment. Whereas special education requires it to access their education. And then you have the general education which is on top. Speaker 6: The kids with 5 0 4 can sometimes need Speaker 9: Move into a 5 0 4 transition. Yeah. And 5 0 4 is are valid in college.
Whereas an IEP ends, once you get a diploma, so 5 0 4 as a student with an IEP could say I'm graduating, can I get a 5 0 4 plan put in place for after graduation so that they can take 'em to the student services department in the university or college to receive those accommodations. It continues through life. Speaker 11: Yeah. I have a kiddo with a 5 0 4, so Speaker 9: Right. So they can take it into a workplace even and say, yeah, I need this because I am a diabetic and I need a, a place to go and and check my insulin or whatever it might be.
And by, if they're receiving state or federal dollars, they have to abide by the 5 0 4 rules and and accommodations. So Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 6: You're gonna be an expert on sped. Speaker 9: Yeah, I'll have these Speaker 11: Questions. Speaker 6: Alright, next slide. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 9: Ready? Or it's a little farther down I think. Oh no, this is the same side. So this really just looks at two different aspects of special education. One is least restricted environment and that's one of the educational environments that we get graded on. Bless you. And looking at who's in 80% or more, that's pretty much mild, moderate
or resource students. Students who have specific learning disabilities. Whereas when you go 40 to 79, we're getting into students with more significant needs or more needs. And then less than 40% means they're less than 40% of their time in school is in the general education with general like typical peers, typical neurotypical peers. So self-contained settings would fit into less than 40%. And then the other numbers are just looking at early childhood education, how many students we have,
like she was speaking of that have IEPs and then school age, which is six to 14. And then we have transition, which is 14 plus, Speaker 6: What is it? A hundred and something for numbers. Speaker 9: What number? Speaker 6: 66. Speaker 9: Yeah. So I, I am not sure where we are with that. We'll have to verify that. Yeah, I'm gonna have to verify that. So again, what are Speaker 11: We talking about the, the early childhood numbers are different from what preschool presented. So we need to double check our math. Speaker 9: So the math, Speaker 6: The good news is we're all in the same room and we can do that later. Speaker 9: So we do, I pulled this from the state
and the enriched system. So again, yes. And then we have student kids, certain kids that are on individual service plans, which are students that are placed in private schools or private settings. And we still have a proportionate share that we have to give to them. Or we have students that are placed at CSDB, which is the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind. We have one student from Garfield R two that gets transported there. Weekly two. Yeah. Two. Two, sorry. Two. And then we have a student who's in a day treatment program in Grand Junction.
Higher level of social emotional needs. And then we, I'm trying to think, we don't have any kids in residential currently, so Yeah, Speaker 6: What's residential? Speaker 9: Residential is the highest level of setting where they have to live in a program because they're unable to, Speaker 6: It's residential. Speaker 9: It's residential, they live there, they get schooling. It's, it's sort of like it. It's institution. Yeah. It's a facility. Facility. So we Speaker 6: Run a program in Glenwood called Rebound. It's for high school kids, but it is a day treatment. Like so kids go there who just really struggle
in regular settings. So they, they're going up there. That's a pretty pricey program. 4,500, I think we talked 4,500 a month, right around there per kid. It's pricey. But the next step up is residential, which to a district is anywhere from 175 to $250,000 a year is what it'd cost you. And that's, but that being said, that the least restricting environment is not rightful high school. Right. That's the problem is they just can't, that's just not place. Speaker 9: Right. We can't the needs no matter what. Yeah, I gotcha. They need work outside of our system. Yeah, makes sense. And currently there aren't any kids in, in residential here at this school district
And then Yes, exactly. And then this looks at the SPED initiatives through the strategic plan and, and what we're looking to do, what Garfield RE two has identified as the special education initiatives. And then what we would do collaboratively is a little different professional development. I know that Nicolette and myself provided a draft of professional development that we could do collaboratively at the different tiers of levels and and needs of our staff leadership working together, which we've started doing this year more. So getting together and talking about the students, the higher level cases,
retaining strong SPED teachers and teams. We continue to do that and share staff. In fact, I'm gonna talk to you about sharing someone soon, but really looking at how do we best support one another across the districts that are in the D. And then the last thing I think is parent, Speaker 6: I think it's go down a little bit. Speaker 9: Yeah. Oh, it's the customer service partnerships with students, parents and community and really looking at, we have a special education parent group right now and I know that myself and some of the teachers have gone to it and really just tried to be of service to the parents
that have some concerns and have decided to meet, which I think is wonderful. And then we're starting the ciac, which is Special Education Accountability Council that I'm starting across the BO Cs to get the involvement to get parents to come talk and also to provide training. So there any questions? Speaker 8: I think in the next flyer are all the same information Speaker 9: Just in Spanish. I Speaker 10: Wanna highlight one thing. Can you go back up to there one more? Right there? In Spanish? Yeah. In Spanish. Well it is the same number. Okay. Doesn't matter. Yep. Highlight the almost 50% rise
in IEP over the last five years. Speaker 8: Isn't that crazy? And even just looking at this year's numbers. Yeah, from 603, which is where we started to 6 58, that even allows for, there's about 20, 25 kids that actually exited out of special education. So that's not a clear increase of 55 kids. That is, that is an increase of almost 70 kids across our system this year alone. It's insane. Speaker 9: And that's, that's statewide though. We used to get 10% state, used to be 10%. There's a lot of factors.
Speaker 8: There's a lot of factors. There's a lot of reasons. You know what the main, the main one is, and this is my opinion, prior to COVID, we had a measuring stick of what we expected to be typical and what we expected students to be able to do. Our measuring stick after COVID hasn't changed yet. So what is typical for this age group of kids, our school age kids is, is being compared to pre COVID levels and pre COVID education, pre COVID conditions. We have a totally different group of kids, different needs, different learners. And our kid, it's showing up in our disability numbers. Speaker 9: I think you could Speaker 10: Wouldn't, wouldn't it go be
to get 'em back to pre COVID? Speaker 8: Yes. Oh absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. But we also have to say there are some things that play part in the system, especially if you were in kindergarten or first grade during the COVID pandemic that are going to impact your education long term. And it's not as simple as saying this is a learning disability. We need to start to say is this a universal system system? Is it a problem with how what we're teaching, is it showing up in multiple places to see if we can, if we, it can be handled on a wider spread than
just in special education. Speaker 9: And I think if you look at the data and we can present more data, share more data with you, we're seeing a higher number of behavioral issues beyond what we've ever seen. Social emotional issues, kids coming to us with significant social emotional issues that impact their ability to even learn to be present and engaged and that we're seeing across the state. I mean we, that's the numbers I've seen. My opinion Speaker 10: Probably talking, I mean seriously that that's, I think it has something to do with it. We talk about all the time how somebody
feels, how you feel about stuff. I dunno, I just want Yeah. Feel. Speaker 8: Yeah, I'd say our numbers match what's happening across the nation. We're not, we're, it's not unique to Garfield R two. Our increases and stuff are pretty on trend with the nation. Speaker 7: Would you say you're identifying your ability to identify has gotten maybe better in a way? Yeah. Speaker 9: Okay. I think people are starting to, I think families as well. We're hearing from pediatricians, we're hearing from Clint private clinicians. So we're getting referrals in that manner, which we didn't get as many prior to this. Plus we have private clinicians that are,
are popping up across the district that are being more knowledge, they are more knowledgeable informing parents of what their rights are and and how they can access supports. Speaker 10: I think over the last 10 years there's been a a definitely concentration on mental health for sure. So I mean it's normal to see a rise in things once it becomes more accepted, I guess Speaker 9: The stigma's gone. I think Speaker 6: To your point, when you pass bullying policies, you get a lot more bullies because now you're focused on bullying. It's not that you'd have more or less, Speaker 10: That's what I'm getting at there. There's, I think there's a fine medium there,
but that just alarms me to no end. To just see those, those numbers. Speaker 9: If you saw that the behavior and discipline numbers, it would blow your mind. So I mean it's, it's really astonishing. Speaker 10: The question for you guys would be, from a numbers point of view, an IEP, like a kiddo with an IEP, what is the yearly cost in educating them? Speaker 6: I knew you were gonna ask that Speaker 9: Question. It's different per level. Speaker 6: It, it is different for every level. The between the state and the feds, they're picking up about 40% of the cost. Okay. The other 60% comes outta your general fund to pay
for those kids on IEPs, they're typically running on an average of about 16 ish thousand dollars a year in cost. Speaker 10: That's total. Or so that's, Speaker 6: That's what it cost. Educated. An average kid on an IP is about 16,000 in the state. Your guys' PPR this year's 12, 11. A little less. Speaker 10: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 6: Thanks. I know you, I know those two guys. I was gonna say Speaker 10: There's, Speaker 6: They better know. So you're, the delta is around five grand on average is what you're lacking. There will be some new monies coming out of the state, new state formula that will come directly to the district that don't come to the au Tricky part about
that is we still will be re required to meet all those indicators. You're gonna get the money. So that's where that collaboration piece needs to be like what are we do? What are we using the dollars for? So I think that's an important component of that. Speaker 10: Sure. Speaker 6: So I, I mean I I guess the bottom line is, is that the feds in the state have promised a lot of support around special ed. They have not provided that. So really it is, it is incumbent upon a district and a BOCES to work together to make sure that the kids are getting their needs met because the resources just aren't there. Speaker 10: Yeah. Because that, that, I guess that's what worries me the most is seeing those, those numbers trend up,
but then knowing that oh yeah, we're gonna help you and it never, never materializes. Speaker 6: Well, and the second half of that conversation is you can't go like if, if if this, there's a legal challenge towards what you're providing a student or a child. And if it goes to court, the answer can never be, we don't have the money. Right. They don't care. Like you still would provide it. And like to Julie's point, you could have a kid in a wheelchair who's intubated that needs to be in a classroom and it might cost the district $200,000 a year to have the kid in the classroom. You don't get to say no. So that's why we really to be proactive and make sure you get all the kids
identified and then get 'em off IEPs frankly help them get off that because they, they can is really the best result that you can hope for. Speaker 10: Do you guys have any numbers on kids coming off IEPs? Speaker 8: We can get that. Speaker 9: I think we had 22 within Garfield R two. Now I can get you exactly when it happened because we have to report that. Speaker 10: That'd be interesting enough. Yeah, Speaker 8: It's interesting. And I think too, when we think about IEPs, we think about, when we think about disability, the most significant come to mind and 85% of our kids are not. When you saw those numbers, about 74 kids in early childhood
on special education plans, most of those are actually speech only kids who struggled with communicating, whether it's production or just knowing how to communicate. Most of our kids in EL in elementary and early childhood are speech only kids. So they work with a speech language pathologist to get those foundational skills. And that's where a lot of our kids do move off of IEP. Yeah, Speaker 9: I would say the majority. Speaker 8: 'cause they're so specialized in the beginning. And that early intervention comes in by the time they hit first grade, they're in the general ed environment, they're back to typical levels with their peers and they're moving forward. Speaker 9: And there's a big conversation behind that.
'cause I think a lot of it has to do with early childhood. Are they in social environments? Are they being spoken to? Do they have two parents that are at the workforce and being taken care of by daycare or a babysitter? Are there other, you know, opportunities for that socialization? So there are a lot of factors involved, but again, the best process is early childhood and Speaker 10: Getting, I had a colleague that his daughter came and speaking right around the pandemic, and she was delayed two years from talking. Everybody always had Speaker 9: Access for access. Right. Speaker 10: So she never got, you know, seeing people's mouths moved.
Speaker 8: Yep. Speaker 9: That's Speaker 6: Why. What other the great questions do you have for us? I knew you would, Speaker 8: Do you wanna keep going or Speaker 9: Might Speaker 12: I have a question? Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 12: Sorry. Thank you for allowing me to participate by Zoom. I appreciate everybody begin there in that beginning little piece there. You know, something popped up to me. You said RE two is not in compliance. I was just curious of how and why. Speaker 9: So a lot of times their factors, Speaker 6: It's a, it's the aau it's not Speaker 9: Right too. So yeah, it is, it is the administrative unit. But when we look at across the district, we have timelines
that we have to have evaluations completed by, and then we have to have IEPs developed by a certain date as well. There's certain timelines, 30 days, 45, 60 days. Those are the three timelines that we have to meet in order for us to get a hundred percent compliance. Right Now, there are times where we have students who leave during the holidays and don't come back for three weeks and they're in the middle of an evaluation process. The child's nowhere to be found to evaluate and therefore it's delayed and we're outta compliance in that case.
Or we have cases where, you know, we get a child from Mountain Valley Developmental at two years and 11 months and we cannot get the team together. We cannot produce an opportunity to, to evaluate in time to complete the initial evaluation. Or, there's a lot of things. I mean, paperwork, it's, it's quite difficult and challenging to complete the Speaker 12: Paperwork. So partly it is, it's the, it's the things like we would have to do to turn into you is is kind of where you're saying Speaker 9: Yeah. A lot of it is that, yeah. And we, we work together.
We have checklists, we have compliance, the compliance secretaries are involved. Yeah. So those are all things that we have processes in place, but we're continuing to build an action plan to address those issues because we are gonna have to have it in place anyways for the state. Speaker 11: That's part of the staff survey responses about like, tailoring the PD to be really specific to different levels of experience that Julie, Nicolette and I are working on for the fall. It's like our SPED teachers who've been in a classroom for one to four years need something totally different than
the five to 10 than the veterans who could probably tell me how to do my job. Right. So we're really trying to work on, on what does that look like and how can that be more of a coaching mentoring model than a a one and done beginning of the year. Yeah. Speaker 12: I, I have one more question that kind of came from a little half. I could still go ahead. And you said we've seen a large increase in a discipline and behavior that puts kids on the IEPs. What is the result of that? If a kid is on an IEP
and he becomes a danger to other special education students in the classroom, how is that being handled? Speaker 9: So a lot of times the education has to be provided in different settings or with more adult supervision. We had a couple students that have been expelled and we still are responsible for educating them or if they're suspended for longer periods, we still responsible. So it goes home bound or they're meeting they're educators at the libraries, we're paying tutors, those types of things. Or online educational systems, whether there's someone in a Zoom, a teacher in a Zoom
or you know, those type of opportunities. CDLS. So in order to access and help them to access their education in a safe environment away from other students. So, Speaker 12: So I, I guess my question kind of would revolve around if we have a student, let's say, that has, you know, discipline issues or last is out, is there a process in place to say if that happens, what's the next step? Is that student removes them from the rest of the students until some type of evaluation is done?
Is that student just put into time out or some sort of like that and then he is reintroduced? How many times would a student be able to physically touch another student before they're completely removed from the general describe the, the classroom. Speaker 9: Yeah. So there's certain protections a student with a disability have by law. One of them has to do with, you cannot remove a student from their necessary or needed services. If they have been removed for in-school suspension or outta school suspension for up to 10 days, they have a right to a manifestation determination review meeting.
What that means is that they come in with a team, we review the instances that have caused them to be removed for disciplinary reasons, to see if they relate to one another and if it was manifested by their disability or caused by their disability. And if so, we need to ensure that we are meeting those needs and addressing the needs within the disability. Otherwise we have no right to remove 'em. And so a lot of times we'll have students who are on IEPs and we see 27 incidents over the last four years of their education
and we say, wow, there there might be a problem here that we haven't identified. So then we move into a special evaluation and look at is there a social emotional thing going on? Is there trauma? Is there other things that are factors that are affecting the child's involvement in general education or, or in their educational settings. Speaker 11: Part of the manifestation review process also includes looking at the current supports and saying, does something need to change? And often the answer is yes. And so there are additional evaluations that we would provide to then change services and supports
and maybe as Julie said earlier, increase adult supervision or decrease time in the general ed environment as needed. Speaker 8: And it's important to know that IEPs, Bri IEPs flex, they're not set in stone Right. As that, as the children's needs change. So does that document, and that's what a manifestation allows us to do, is to really hone in on what those changes are and say, this is what we're doing to meet this need. Speaker 12: Yeah. I just wanna be sure you know, that it's a safe environment not only for other students, but you know, we, we've talked about adults being in those classrooms also. And definitely there's reports of, you know,
know adults dealing with physical confrontation with students and I know that those students have a protected right. And, but I still feel how do we protect everyone Right. In that situation. So I appreciate you giving me that information, you know, and I, I just, I I just really want to be sure it's a safe environment for everyone involved. Speaker 9: Yeah, we agree. Speaker 13: Absolutely. And when you do that manifestation and if you're moving into that special eval process, it gives an opportunity to have a new set of eyes, perhaps enter the room and do some data collection and observation on like what do they see
that's working and what's not. I speak from that, from a personal standpoint, as a behavior analyst myself, I get offered to go into a room, check out what's going on from both the staff and the student standpoint and really see what works and what doesn't and what opportunities can we include in this child's IEP moving forward to increase that safety, but also also like offer that access to education as well. Speaker 12: One more part to that, I'll, I'll stop for a minute. What supports are then available for our parents? You know, the parents, you know, as we, as we guys progress
and you're seeing these needs and maybe the student needs more supports from home. What, what, what, what programs are available to parents, families? Speaker 9: So we work quite closely, obviously with the family resource center one door in order to get referrals and get supports for outside private clinicians. Also, we have, I mean I personally, we have a great relationship with the Department of Health and Human Services currently. And I mean, I'd say great is maybe pushing it. But again, I can call, we have a relationship. We have a relationship, a working relationship. But I can call and say,
I'm really concerned about this family, a situation they're in. And they get involved. Also, we do report obviously with child abuse on the hotline, but there are resources we're limited here in our rural area, but we do have resources available to us. Speaker 8: Well, and it's also important too, that the family is involved in the IEP process the whole way. There's nothing hidden from them about what's in that document or what we're doing. So the most important thing that we do with families is we show them what we're doing at school that's working and we make sure that it's common and that if they need help on how that looks at home
or how they can be supported, that we, we can be the people that can help with that. Or we can connect to community agencies to help us do that. Because sometimes it's simple as, I didn't get the guidebook when this child was born. I don't, I don't know this right. I just need another person to say, this is what I, this is where I can start. So there's a lot of advocating with listening to parents. Speaker 12: Well we, how often are you meeting with parents and students with IEPs? Like is there a timeline those things are happening or just when things need to change? Speaker 8: An IEP is only good for 364 days. So we are, we've reviewed them every single year.
That's, that's one of those timelines that we have to do. They're only good for one day, short of a year. So we are meeting on every kid at least once a year. So take that into account. That's 658 meetings at least. Yep. And that's, if there is one, one meeting, usually there's at least two. Speaker 9: And then they're, they're communicated with the same rate at which a general education there. They receive progress reports with data, how they're doing on their goals at the same rate in which a normal, a typical child or student is. Speaker 2: So this kind of is a three part question, maybe
as far as BOC in the school district in offering these services as administrative unit, you said we support Garfield 16 and then Garfield re two, but then we have Yampa. So I'm trying to figure out That's re one. Speaker 6: They're actually, they are a BO C school. They're, they're actually, there are three s in the state of Colorado that actually run schools. We are one of 'em and it's Yapa. Speaker 2: Okay. So I was trying to figure out, like, Speaker 6: I was actually a board member of Yapa Mountain High School. Speaker 2: Okay. So I was trying to figure out the connection there. I'm like, wait, that's an re one.
Speaker 9: So we oversee the services, the special education services as an administrative unit as well within Yampa Mountain High School and our member districts for our, it's very confusing. You almost have to have a diagram Yeah. To explain. I have Speaker 6: A visual. Have a visual. Speaker 2: Okay. So in that, do we have to have, have services provided to, or BO Cs provide other services to other kids in the district? Like in Garfield County? So, or is it specific to just Yampa re two school district in Garfield 16?
Or do you guys do more like to the, I mean Speaker 9: Aspen and Speaker 6: T So we, we provide, Speaker 2: Well no, I'm just saying like homeschool students or private school online students. Speaker 6: There, there's some legal requirements that we are still responsible for those kids with, that have IEPs that live in the confines of the school district. So Yes, we do. It's, what's it called? Speaker 9: It's called proportionate share that we have to give to students that are parentally placed in private schools. Now a parentally placed private school. The private school has to be a traditional school
with curriculum that's following the state standards. And there has to be licensed teachers through Colorado Department of Education. And it has to be a nonprofit status for us to have to provide the proportionate share. So I think right now it's like 15 thou $1,500. Yeah. Per student, per child that's placed in a private school that has special education needs Speaker 6: Homeschool kids. Most of the parents. Yeah, they don't, don't, they don't, they, they deny an IEP. So they take their kids off of them. Yeah. I actually had a couple in Parachute that we still had on IEPs a long time ago,
and they were mostly ot. Like they need occupational therapy type work and we provided it. Yeah. Speaker 2: And then my other part to this question is, 'cause we were looking at funding obviously, and a lot of our students go up to Tampa, but then we lose funding or lose some of the funding. There was like a hundred students that we were talking about. Speaker 6: So essentially the kids that go to yapa, your, you pay your PPR, that's for those kids pays for those kids at YAPA plus. No, that's your PPPR. Speaker 14: And we get charged $500 more per student.
Speaker 6: No, you don't. Speaker 14: We did last year. Speaker 6: No, you didn't. You you had, you got charged for your ELL funds, but it's per kid by what those kids would normally get. Speaker 14: I, I would, I would just question that to, to look at it again because it was told to us that we were paying $500 per kid. That goes to Yampa extra. Speaker 6: No. Okay. Speaker 14: Let's, let's check that in the budget Speaker 6: Then. Yeah, I, yeah, there's no, you don't because you, you, you pay a both C'S membership fee and an Epic fee. The only two fees you pay. That Speaker 14: Was for this year's budget. But the year before that, Speaker 6: No, we didn't charge it last year.
The budgets are exactly the same. We didn't change it. Speaker 14: I'll check the, I'll check the budget. Yep. Speaker 2: Okay. And then what is C-C-D-L-S terrify Speaker 6: Colorado Digital Learning Solutions. So it's an online supplemental program? Online. Speaker 2: Oh, it's an online Speaker 6: Program. Yeah. The BOCES oversees that program. How do you guys, Speaker 12: Our cell phones allow that yapa Speaker 9: Yes. Speaker 6: Yes. Speaker 9: Unfortunately, Speaker 6: Yes. Unfortunately, Scott into that. Why, you know what? It's, it's something that hasn't been brought up, up there as an issue. So, Speaker 12: And it's topic, it's, it's an issue for every That's the saying that why,
why would we put high risk students up there and give them the cell phones? Speaker 6: Well, I, I know some teachers have been to trainings to actually use, utilize the cell phones as tools Speaker 9: Yeah. For surveys Speaker 6: And Yeah. So they're actually using those as an instructional pro product for the classrooms. Speaker 12: I would, I would, I I don't agree with that. Speaker 6: Okay. I Speaker 10: Think that's it. They might be a little iffy. It's like akin to putting your kid with an iPad while, because he won't sit still in a restaurant. Speaker 6: Not if you're using it to do research. 'cause they don't all have computers, so it's not all high risk. So Yeah. Speaker 13: Yeah. Re rebound is separate from Yampa and they, that's the highest. They lock their phones up in the principal's
Speaker 9: Office. Those are the students. Different schools. Yeah. Effective needs or higher level social emotional behavioral needs. And they are not allowed to have, they, they lock up their don their personal Yeah. Their phones. As soon as they walk in, they have to lock it up or the parent has to come get it. Yeah. And there's a whole nother, Speaker 10: The system is convoluted. Speaker 9: Sorry, Speaker 6: It's a lot of spinning plates. It's, it's why there's gonna be a new executive director in exactly 30 days. Speaker 10: Don't say that Holy Speaker 6: Mo because I'm tired of spinning plates. It's all good. A lot of moving parts. Does that help answer your question ca? Speaker 9: Yes. Speaker 10: All three parts. What is structural collaboration? I saw it on one of your
Speaker 6: Slides. Speaker 10: That Speaker 9: Was one. Structural collaboration, I believe is the way we work together with professional development, figuring out what I have available to me, which they have available to them. And really figuring out what the needs are and trying to work together and collaborate. That's what we're trying to do right now. And work on that moving forward. Speaker 8: It's also the systems and the procedures and the standard operating things that allow the system to meet the deadlines and 'cause SPED is very predictable and very specific. And so structural collaboration is also what are those systems and procedures that we can put in place now that regardless
of who's sitting at this table with Ken leaving us soon, that the system stands. We haven't had that in a while. And so it's going back to that detail work to say this is how Garfield A two and BOCES work together. This is how we hold our compliance in the a hundred percent. This is how we train our staff. This is how we bring in the parented teacher pipeline people that it's all down to that, those details and that good foundation so that our SPED system stands. So right now it's a little bit, it's a little bit straight shaky. Speaker 10: Okay. Make me, tell me something that makes me feel good about SPED for next year.
Speaker 6: I, I think you have a team here that's gonna sit down and put together one really good plan around professional development and how to work with families and kids. I think you have the data to make move that forward. And I think with your support and asking these guys to come back. Yep. I won't be here. Somebody will come back. But I, I'm serious to come back and talk to you because this can't be a one time a year conversation. No, I need special ed is probably the one of the things that districts either get themselves in trouble with the Speaker 9: Most, Speaker 6: The teachers or they are the most recognized for it. Speaker 10: I think we need to have an update every semester. I agree.
Speaker 5: According well and because Amanda and the re two piece. But it's that collaborative effort for sure. These guys have, have been a partner for a long time. They're, she, we have a specific initiative that you guys will hear about for 25, 26 inside the strategic plan. We added special education just because of the high need and truly the challenges that I think that we are facing for our future. And so you'll see it, which means that she just like is Simone and Jacob and Theresa and everybody, if you continue on that trajectory
to hear about the strategic plan, she's locked in. Right? She and the team are locked in. Yeah. Speaker 8: Yeah. And I think the other positive thing is, compared to last year, we are, we are way better in terms of our open positions and who we have in our district this year we had a lot of people where we had to have contract employees come in, especially in our speech team, mental health team, and even our SPED teachers. And this year our mental health team is all in district people. We are full, as of right now, our speech team, there's only one open speech position
and one assistant speech position open. Last year at this time we had four. And our OT team is where we are looking for another person. But we have candidates and we have people that are trying to come back to re two to work with us. And that is, that's very promising that we're, we Speaker 9: Also have a pipeline going on that we Speaker 8: Have a pipeline and we also have people that have started as paras that love special education because it is such a specific type of work and it's a specific kind of person that those people we're being able to grow our own and invest in our own people and bring them up through our system.
Speaker 6: And, and I was gonna say, and thank you for that because I would say the biggest thing is hampering special ed in the state of, well any state is the staffing an example, speech language paths. There's two universities in the state of Colorado that offer the program. They limit their class sizes to 15. And most of those people when they graduate, go to work for hospitals because they get paid twice as much and have to go to work three days a week. So there is, and that's kind of part of the next gig, is figuring out how we can push some of those mechanisms at the state level to get more candidates. Because you, you can't find special ed people. You can't find SSPs. It's very difficult.
You're paying online providers in a lot of circumstances. Online providers will cost you double what your salary schedule is and you don't have a choice. And there Speaker 9: Aren't candidates, teacher candidates in the system, CMC closed their special education endorsement program because they don't have any candidates that are interested in pursuing that education. It's sad Speaker 6: Mean it's frozen. Right. So the growing your own concept is it's the only Speaker 9: Way to go. It's the only way. It's Speaker 6: The only way. Getting people paras then helping them get a bachelor's and move into those roles is about the only way that I foresee the future of being able to staff special ed.
Yep. Speaker 8: Terrifying. Speaker 6: That, I mean, that's even worse. It it Speaker 9: Is terrible. Sorry, that was supposed to be the, sorry. I Speaker 6: Know it was supposed to handle the Speaker 9: Good things it started, but the positive Speaker 6: Is Amanda, Amanda said you have, you have good scenarios for next year, which is great because I can tell you in talking to a lot of folks around the state, that is not true everywhere else. Yeah. Well I'm, yeah. Good. So good for you. Yeah. Speaker 8: There any other, Speaker 9: Get a Speaker 12: Chance to, and I'm excited to see, to see the opportunity for a new, a fresh start. Yeah. Bringing in, you know, new superintendent for,
he's a new superintendent and Garfield learning too. We have to have collaboration between the two organizations have to work to gather. And I, I think that's what gives us a, a great jumping point for next year. And I love the idea that you guys put as part of the strategic plan and I think we really missed the vote there. We should have it in years one and two, but I'm thankful that you've identified it. It's gonna be part of year three of the strategic plan. Really good job there. And Speaker 8: You, it's included, the strategic plan areas are included in the, on the second page of Julie's flyers
where she laid out all the kids by grade level. That those four areas are our strategic plan areas of focus, Speaker 5: The SPED initiative, Speaker 8: Especially the SPED initiative page. Speaker 5: And you guys will hear about that when we do do that. We'll talk about it. Big presentation for each one of the initiatives in June. So all of you, oh, okay. Speaker 11: Chance you wanted to hear something super positive. Go find the pictures that Theresa took about ENC day that happened in May. Speaker 5: Yep. Yeah. That Speaker 11: Was amazing. The field day. That was amazing. I, I got to have three students that I helped work with their families who have been in our district for many years
who have never had an opportunity to go when we got to get 'em there and they had a blast. And that's a super cooperative thing that we do. Also, just today I had two different pairs tell me that they've met with advisors at CMC to start enrolling. Oh wow. Speaker 5: Wow. That's great. Speaker 10: I think, I mean, systems change, right? Systems change to to, to service their clientele. So I know that's, it's always gonna change. It's always going to be in flux. It's just trying to stay on top of that. And at the end of the day, it's about the kids. And like Bri said, said it the best is make sure everybody is safe.
That includes staffs and all students. And that's, with that being said, special education to me sometimes seems like a conundrum. Like it's you damned if you do and damned if you don't. I mean there's a, every time I've had to have a briefing from Heather or Lisa on something, it's like, well what do you do? You know? And so what you guys do is, is amazing. 'cause you, you do find those areas where you can, you do have some latitude. So I so thank you for that and I just encourage you to keep pushing forward, grow the collaboration. Let's make it better and just keep getting better. Speaker 5: Yeah. Thank you. Scott, do you have any questions?
I'm good Bri. Any other questions? Speaker 10: Alright. Oh, now he's quiet. Speaker 5: I'm good. Thanks for the presentation. You bet. Thank you guys. I appreciate, have a wonderful evening. You Thank you. And if I'm wrong, you tell me if I'm wrong and I'll freaken out. We know where to find you for another, another, what, five days did you say? Hey, I could do that too. Probably should be doing all right. You guys good? Or do you need a, can we just do I skipped Go back. Yes. Because yeah, dates aren't working. I cry. They like my eyes, eyes are burning.
Speaker 10: You know what? I can look at you. I could look at you. I'll be Speaker 5: Better Speaker 10: In a few minutes. Speaker 5: Fast. Speaker 10: I was close. Speaker 5: Bri I, Speaker 2: If you can hear me while we're waiting and just finishing this up. It looks like you are the board report thing to have to Theresa by Friday at noon. Board update. Okay. All right. Moving on to the 25, 26 preliminary budget. Speaker 15: Woo hoo. Thanks for having us. We were almost late. Big traffic jam on railroad of all the people stopping and admiring the ground fierce
Speaker 5: Building. Stop memorializing, you know, it's just too soon Speaker 15: And I can see that at least two board members saw budget on the agenda and figured a way to get out of the room. Yeah, we've got a presentation for you tonight to show you kind of where we're gonna end up on the year where we're projected end up. And then basically in the budget for next year, they'll Speaker 16: Be the preliminary budgets. I'll those out and those will have to approved out. So with that, I'm let Jeff take over. Speaker 15: Yeah. Although I, I will say with you two,
Speaker 5: So close Speaker 15: To retirement Heather and Lisa, there'll be a seat Speaker 5: For our presentations. Anytime you wanna stop, I'm gonna come into yours. Right on Speaker 2: With popcorn. Speaker 15: Love to have. Well let's kick it off. Next slide please. Speaker 5: Yep. I don't know what just happened. Speaker 15: We're presenting the agenda. I could do that. That might be easy. Speaker 5: It's already been approved. Speaker 15: So tonight we'll start with some budget projections. Mostly just updated for May payroll.
The accounting entries for other expenditures aren't in there but the may payroll is the biggest chunk. So, we'll, we'll move through those pretty quickly. That second bullet, I got budget happy. It should say fiscal year 25, 26. Preliminary proposed general fund budget adjustments and then the preliminary proposed budgets. But they're the same slides so at least it doesn't make the presentation any longer. I just should have changed that last word in the second bullet. From there we'll show you the fund balance projections, which are roughly the same as what we showed you last month.
Small changes. And then we'll walk you through the preliminary district wide budget. So all funds will cover the general fund, which is about 95% of what we will receive in revenue and spend this year. But then we'll have the food service, the grants or custodial funds. The activity funds and the capital will give you the overview there and our rationale. But in our June and we try to trace the changes or adjustments to each line with a little explanation. So the, the June meeting, the
PowerPoint might be a little longer but we'll try to keep it to the same presentation time not hurt Speaker 2: Anymore. Are you doing that? Are we doing that the first part of June or the second? Speaker 15: It will be the second part of June because we are hoping to get the June payroll in there so that if there are any budget adjustments, which we'll explain why we don't think there are any more or if there are changes to next year's budget. June will give us a little more information to to do that. But this right on, that's not available till the 15th. So we'll do it. The last meeting in June, Speaker 2: I was looking back there and I can't see
Speaker 15: It. That Jason will walk you through the revenue and we'll come up today, we'll start, we'll try to do without my notes revenue. And I'm gonna explain this, this form, this format. 'cause I told Jeff when I saw it. I like this format. This is nice. So what you have here is your approved budget where we're actually added the year at this point in time. What's left, this column C would be what we think is gonna happen in the last month. Okay. Where we'll end up and then whether we were over or under budget. When we get to the budget adjustments,
there's two additional columns. It's this exact same table, but the column show the projection for next year's budget and the change piece for each of those. The reason that you want to see it this way first is next year's budget, a projection from this year's final expenditure. We don't just start from scratch, we know roughly what we spent last year. We know what the state's projecting to make those. So we're gonna talk about where we are revenue wise. This is the money that we have received. This is the good stuff. Jeff always lets me get this presentation.
I love revenue on the local property taxes. You can see that we are projecting to come in right on point. Those are set by the bills that you put out in December. We have collected roughly 12 of the 17 million. And so we, we know this piece has to come in on the final tax collection bill. So we're expecting that to come in, you know, dead on specific ownership. We're actually a little north where we were projecting.
That's good. That means a lot of people have bought cars, which we can't explain boats too. And boats. Yeah. So I wouldn't buy a car right now. Lots of people are state equalization. Again, this is the amount that we knew we would get from the state. This is the amount they projected. We had to alter that just a little bit in January 'cause they changed those numbers a little. But you can see that revenue as you roll down the entire columns we're projected to come in very, very close. About $300,000 within the 68 million. I think that's, wow. Knock wood. Half a percent.
Yeah, that's, I think that's half a percent. Can you do better here though? Well you'll have to talk to Jim. We'll do our best. Lot of small mistakes on putting in his basket over. No, this is, this is pretty good. Projections for revenue. Revenue's easier to project than expenses. But this is, this is where do it the leftover. Yeah, we're we're actually slightly short. Slightly short. Yeah. Well and this is less than what we're gonna spend. So that's where it goes. Yeah, it disappears as soon as the slide changes. Oh yeah.
Not much to this. This just explains what we just went over. But that's, you've been seeing those numbers now at least three or four times this semester and, and everything's coming in roughly on track. So now we'll go to expansions and I will keep this brief too. Just a couple of assumptions. We did use the May payroll. Sometimes we look at an average for year, but May and April kind of grew, not by a lot, but may is a little higher than our annual average.
So we went ahead and used that 'cause we, most of the people working here in May are likely to stay into June. So that's, that's our basis for the salaries. Both support and instruction. Kathy and the entire district seem to be doing an awesome job of controlling our supplies and personal services. Which are these two lines. This is instruction and support. And those are coming in lower than budget by actually quite a bit.
We'd expect 11 twelfths of, of those items to be spent. And we're in much better shape than that. June can run a little higher and unpredictably in payroll. Sorry, I wanted to mention that 'cause we do have payouts for retirements, things like that. These numbers here, which are positive variance should more than cover that. So we shouldn't need adjustments. And if you could scroll down just a touch more so we can see the bottom numbers that Madam Vice president is where the excess goes. The other lines are fairly small.
They're not a big part of our budget, but they're pretty much on track as near as we can tell too. May has some expenses for graduation. We'll talk about the activity funds a little bit in a, in a few minutes. So we may see these go up a bit by that, but they're, they're looking really good right now and should not change significantly. So we think we're on track for our budgets and why don't we get to how we think that pans out for next year's budget. Okay. And I, I mentioned these just so you know,
but if you have any questions, we'll stop there. So the next, the next slide shows what we are putting in the budget on the revenue side. So these columns, this, this A through E and the, and the percent piece, those are identical to what we just showed. So the, the only change on this slide is over here in f and g. So you can see what are we projecting an increase or a decrease in some of the revenues. You can see that the local property taxes as a slight increase, as you might recall, every year we have to change the mills by one to bring in more on the local side than
we get on the state side. And so you've got your adjustments here. Specific ownership taxes. I think we kind of picked like how many people are gonna buy cars. We missed that one by a little to the good this year. So that's a fairly conservative number compared to this year. But probably a good estimate. Well, and we've seen, yeah, we've seen it do this before where this 1.6 has been real close to what we've seen over the last four or five years probably. So I didn't, I didn't think bumping it up to 2 million or 1.9, I thought that'd be a little aggressive.
So that's kind of how we settled on the 1.7. It wasn't real scientific. But as we've discussed, I try to underestimate rather than overestimate budget when, when I'm guessing. So when you look at the state equalization, these are the numbers produced by the state and then on other state sources. I wanted to point out since the BOCES was here that the 1.3 million we think is coming in the next month. Some of that is from the BOCES millions refund. Yeah. That we were expecting for services that we paid for front,
but we took care of in-house. And then I think the rest was a pre-K piece preschool. Yeah. The state forgot to pay us our, some of our pre-K revenue. Simone found that, tracked it down as I was calculating like how much we get paid per students. She was like, that's not right. And I was like, well I'm just doing math. And so we all got on the horn with the state and I think I was there just to look mean, but turned out Simone was the real, was the real bulldog and, and got him to pitch in about 300,000 that they had not paid us.
So good job. You have to watch the state and thanks to Simone for that. Finally the, the mineral lease comes in about what we get every year. We'll know more about that, most of that in about a month. I think I go pick up that check in person for some reason. And then federal sources and other, other local, other local. More than half of that is, is our interest rate. Yeah. Is probably worth mentioning that. I do think, I think we both think that there's gonna be an interest rate cut in the near future that would affect our revenue and you've got millions of dollars in the bank
that you're storing and spending and moving around those interest rate cuts could affect us. The good news is both of our banks recently gave us a much better interest rate. So that actually I think we finalized the final paperwork today on the second one. So yeah, we should be getting that in the future. But that's our total budgeted revenue piece right there. You can see from last year to step up earlier in the state, we thought it would be more and then the, the formulas came in and affected us and we got a little less than we thought we were gonna get. But that, that's the growth right there. So any revenue questions here?
You want get to the good stuff? The expenses. Yeah, the fun part. So starting with salaries and benefits, again we're basing our projection for next year on how we think we're going to end this year. So if we do see those, these numbers change a bit, we'll we'll adjust them for that. But then we applied the 2% for salary increases and the 8% you were good enough to suggest. I think that's, we might even want to be a little more aggressive like you said, but the eight percent's quite a bit more than we
budgeted in prior years. So that's how we settled on those numbers. Don't look at these percentages too much beyond the salaries and benefits. 'cause the swings you're seeing in say personal services and supplies, really we're doing more rebalancing for what, where we think we're gonna spend those dollars rather than ouch rather in than increasing those amounts. These percentages are more a function of how much it is of the previous budget rather than
actual increases. We've got a small increase, I think it's three or 500,000 across the nons salary lines. So the rest of the expenditure lines. But a lot of it is just rebalancing. Again, Ms. Rosselli did a really good job going across the district and putting these numbers together and they're right in line with what we were hoping. So that's, that's how we got to the supplies and materials is that's really the planning that district staff do with Kathy each year to,
to give estimates on what they think they're gonna spend in the upcoming year. The other big thing, the property and that is not the other big thing. The property and the other expenditures are about the same. We do think we're gonna see a bit of an increase in property down here. Not huge, sorry, it's at 1 77 but, but we do think we'll see a bit of an increase there. And same goes for other expenditures and it's more in tracking with kind of our expenditure lines. And there may be maybe one or two things in there that we're planning on fixing
something or, or a project we know about. The other big thing I wanted to mention is the payment to JCI this year it's about $700,000 total between principal and interest than it was last year. So that's why you're seeing these go down. The other expenditures includes, well other stuff than the interest. So that's why it's not just, it's not going down like the, the principal, which is in its own line basically. But we are, we're paying about 700,000 less and 600 of that is sitting there.
The principal actually works out to be a little bit more than the interest. But those are really the, the two biggest changes you're seeing in these lines is the, the reduction in that cost or payment. It starts going up a little bit year over year. I think either as part of the presentation in June or in the near future if you'd like to see it, we can get you the, the payment schedule for JCI or any payment schedule you'd like to see. But that might help help you visualize some of these numbers
or maybe make me make more sense if that would be possible. But we are, we are expecting, we are budgeting a, a deficit based on it's mostly the salary increases but but not alone. I don't think those would get us out of the hole. But this is kind of where we think we'll be next year. And as Jason mentioned, that's that's based on what we did this year with certain assumptions we knew and others we we got from the people actually spending the money. Any questions about that might point out we may be the only
district celebrating that were only 600,000 in the hole when the plan was to be almost 2.2 million in the hole. So I'm celebrating good year of, of managing to that raise a lot of, lot of hard work. Totally. That's not us. That's the folks spending the money. So, Speaker 10: So Speaker 15: Your projected budget of next Speaker 10: Year at this time, next year we're gonna be $1.8 million deficit spending. Speaker 15: Yes sir. Which we will come back to that in the very next section.
If we could go to the next slide. I'll just make sure I didn't miss any of my, my notes. No, I think we're good there. So we'll move on to the fund balance projections, which I guess I'll open with it since Yeah, this is what you just asked. Chance mentioned it. You know, we talked about this last month and, and I think we're, you know, in abstract on the same page. It's how do we, how do we want to deal with it? And the good news is we have a little time, we have a year or two to figure it out, but it just keeps getting worse if the revenue stays the
same, which it, you know, we got a little bit more from the state but not enough to even cover our projected budget. So we're kind of in the same place we were when we talked last time as we mentioned, these numbers changed a little bit just 'cause may, may expenditures are in there. But the, the two things we want to keep in mind is this is what gets us through the year in a cash sense. You know, as, as we talked last month, we start spending that as soon as July one rolls over and we need it in March
and April to get us to the end of the year. So when this goes down like this, we're gonna have trouble, more trouble going getting through the end of the year. 'cause our expenditures are going up at the same time. So we're not asking for any decisions right now 'cause I don't have, you may, but I don't have any good ideas. So we need to think about that. But we, we do also have the balance to come up with a plan and the time to implement it if we do it in the next say 12 to 18 months, or at least we get, get it put together in the next 12 to
Speaker 10: 18. I, I, I don't know, I'll turn around. I I don't know if managing to the raise is the answer every year. Speaker 15: That's I I'm, I'm with you there. Speaker 10: Does that make sense? Makes sense. Yeah. At a certain point you're gonna squeeze all the juice you got and it's gonna start affecting students. I think as long as we're honest to our honest with ourselves about that we can look at these objectively and with these guys' expertise, come up with an idea.
But I, I'm gonna be real surprised, Kathy did a great job this year. I'm gonna be real interested to see what those numbers are a year from today. Yeah, because I mean how much more can you squeeze? Right? It takes what it takes. We all know that Speaker 15: Kathy only works 22 hours a day. So Speaker 10: Could Speaker 15: You squeeze a couple more? Speaker 10: So you're right. I mean there's two, there's two hours a day. Does she work Christmas? Speaker 15: She does. Speaker 10: All right. And St Patrick's Day Speaker 15: Finance loves Christmas break and spring break. You bet. It's, she's running a tight ship
Speaker 10: Chance. I know. She, she's amazing. I mean coming in 84% over, you know, projections, 84%, you know, of projections That's awesome On expenditures. I'm just not sure she can keep that up for two years. Speaker 15: There will probably be other things we need to talk about and consider. Yes. And I didn't mean to cut you off there, but, and that's you asked. Oh I don't know. Take it away man. Take it away. Everything Jeff. Speaker 10: Yeah's Speaker 15: I mean you, again, this is something you see, we, we try to put it in front of you every month and and part of that is, you know, we obsess over this stuff.
I'm, I'm, you've told me you do it too. You know, just some days you, you, you pick something whether it's salaries or revenue and you go in and you make sure it looks about like it did last time you looked at it. 'cause you know, I lose sleep about this stuff over, over time. So it's, Speaker 10: It's alarm. I mean it's, it's, it's not alarming but the way you present it with a projected total fund balance, you know, people look at those big numbers and think, my goodness got an account just sitting there.
But I mean you can't say it enough. That's, that's the float to get us through the year. I mean there's times, even with our fund balance the way it is, how close have you come to, I mean there's still times where you get nervous. Speaker 15: So last year we got down to about more than four. I made four, 4 million caps, got our fingers up this year we would've gotten probably below that. But for, for whatever reason we caught a, a decent sized check of our local fund early. Our local taxes early. Yeah. Local revenue came in a lot more in April than we've usually
seen like four or $5 million I think last year. Don't quote me, I'll use round numbers, but last year we had about 3 million in the bank at the end of April this year we were pushing 7 million. So it was three $4 million worth of difference. So money came in early, which was just a big relief. That's good. In fact, I think I ran around and told everyone in the office and they all don't know what I'm talking about so they didn't care. But I was like, money's Yeah, no, it was a good thing. Yeah. That was a and a total surprise. And we have no explanation. I don't at least for why this year not last year. No, other than, I mean you did mention when we were talking,
people might have decided to pay the half and half, which ones due? I don't know, February, March. Yeah. And then the others do. So it could have been something like that. Yeah, it's hard to say. Alright, well if there are no questions, we'll move on from this slide and we were able to get through this. Oh, so how do you like this? You don't like it? We don't, Speaker 2: We don't like seeing it go down. Kind of cool to see it grow, Speaker 15: But we're working on some that'll show you revenues and expenditures. But I'm, I'm not good enough in Excel charts to get that done yet. I was hoping to overlay them, but
because they're more than the fund balance, they just show up up top. I want to put 'em through the bars but I was trying to get too jiggy but they might have to be two Speaker 10: Slides. Speaker 15: So anyway, this is a picture of the fund balance for since FY 22. Just to give you a sense, I mean that 16 million, let's just take that off the table right now. That's, that's so far in the future we can't see it over. Overall the fund balance has been pretty stable. Our first goal is to keep it that way and then see if we can't keep it at the 22 million,
which gives us the cash flow to get through the end of the year. Yeah, the 27 year, that's a lot of just like you have to straight line projections. So we're growing expenses at four, we're bringing in revenue at two and anytime you do that, you're gonna get a diver. Just especially with two legislative sessions in between. Yeah. And I I'm c I'm certain you didn't drink Celsius and read the, the financial transparency reports. I put in the board report this weekend 'cause there's a hundred and something pages, but a lot of districts are in a lot worse shape.
Yeah, they're, they're on monitoring plans and things like that. We don't have anything like that going on. So yeah, we like that. No, I, you guys have done great. Alright, well the goal is to stay away from those. Yes, absolutely. Agreed. Okay. Maybe we should change the building to Lanford Lynn. We we'll expect name is much better. Speaker 10: We can't afford a new sign. Yeah, Speaker 15: Exactly. You're right. It's gotta stay. We can't in good conscience spend. Yeah, Speaker 10: Waste that money. You would've to put that up at your house. I'll, Speaker 15: He's absolutely right.
Speaker 10: Oh yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna logo on my van. There you go. Speaker 15: Nice. Well we've made it to the last two slides if you want to go to the next numbers page. So we just covered the general fund. This will be the form we kind of use to summarize your vote. As you can see the most activities in the general fund. We, we covered that. The next one over is nutrition. There aren't big changes there. They're actually coming in a little under budget, both in expenses and or pointed to the wrong one.
But expenses and revenues. There is one change. This, this is a, this is a form we've used. Overall I like it. I like to not change things on you guys. You get used to looking at stuff. But for some reason since I got here, we've been including essentially other state revenue, which was almost nonexistent when I first got here. But it's grown with the, the free meal program to feed everybody the last couple years. So I went ahead and broke out other state for next year's budget with the estimate of
what we think we're gonna get. The numbers themselves are about the same, but this was in both lines for some reason. So I just, I just broke that out for some clarity. Not a big change there. In the same hand, we've been coming in under budget, excuse me, and the expenditures, in fact these salaries and benefits costs are me putting two and 8% on where we think we're gonna finish the year. And then just a little more, just in case Mary's had a lot of open positions through the year.
We used May to project June here as well. But I did go ahead and bump those up a little bit more. And before we present finals, I, I want to check with Mary again and just see if, if she likes better numbers than that. She's pretty close to her staffing what she's got open. But I think you can expect something close to that. Overall though she's, you know, she's right where she told us she'd be this year and actually a little under, so we're in good shape there for grants. Jason and I talked these numbers should be good
for any grants we receive. Our payroll is coming in substantially lower than what we have here. So we're not proposing any changes right now. And that that goes for the revenue and the other expenses. Again, we'll look through June both at the payroll and the other expenses. If there are any changes, we'll highlight those for you. But I think you can expect this to be the budget for grant funds unless something majorly changes. We're not expecting much there. I'll I'll say this too on the grant funds, your,
your expenses have to match your revenue. So you never have a, you never have a fund balance over there. Right. That's why they al that one always balances if we get in more revenue, it's because we spent more grant approved expenses. So those two will always adjust together if something changed through the years. Yeah. And in fact for federal grants, we have to spend the money and then basically send them an invoice or a request for funds so we don't get the money unless we spend it. Yeah. That, that always should equal zero. 'cause expenditures equal revenue.
Speaker 2: We just need some more salaries to fall under that category. Speaker 15: We try, we work on that a lot. There may be a little room for that, but those have also been growing slower than I think any other revenue source. Once you take the stimulus out, obviously the stimulus is the exception to that, but, but when it's just a a normal year, those grant funds stay pretty steady. And since I have been in education finance, and I'm not gonna say how many years that is, it's approaching 150 or so. The, the feds have always threatened to cut title two,
which is, it's essentially teacher credentialing and teacher quality. So they fund professional development for teachers, things like that. Or those are the activities they've threatened to basically eliminate it almost every year. I've, I've been in this, this career what passes as a career anyway and they're doing the same this year. We'll see there's a lot of stuff going on with education right now as I think you guys know. Point is though, it doesn't grow much. So I I think we're, we're, we're safe on our estimates here,
but we'll certainly revisit before we finalize it. And then we can go to the last three. Yeah, we have three more funds. The activity fund, this is student fees. It's very difficult to predict how much student fees are gonna be paid up front. So this is a little bit of growth from no salary benefits. Yeah. Nothing else comes out of that but, you know, football fees and, and library fees and whatever goes in. And then what comes out is usually close. Although they do carry a little fun balance. 'cause sometimes students who put money in as a freshman, it carries until they're a senior. So you do have a little bit of a fun balance down here.
So that, that would be your projected revenue and expense. And this one may change a little bit. I'm not sure we would need to spend this fund balance, but revenues aren't coming in at quite this amount, so I didn't bump it up yet, but we'll look at this and probably, excuse me, at least balance it out. So we're not using fund balance when, when we don't really expect to, but like I say, these both are coming in under what we, what we had in mind. I'm gonna skip debt service, we'll save it for last 'cause we got a point to make.
This is your capital projects. This is the transfer, the 1.2 million that we transfer to John every year for, for those projects. The expenditures. However, he's got about, I think I looked this morning about 1.1 million that's still in flow from project started this year. That's probably, if we trend that out, I think Jeff thought it would be a little bit over 900,000. So we, we've added that as an appropriation. So the 1.2 goes in, but this is the 1.2 and the amount to finish the projects right, that are unfinished from this year.
So you see, you see his, his transfer and then his total expenditures and, and the effect on, on the total balance and the expenditures include the transfer. So like I expected, you know, you said we're at about 1.1 million. I projected another month out. We're thinking the remaining balance from last year's budget is gonna be about 900,000 plus the 1.2. That's how we get to the 2.1 million. Finally, the debt service fund usually the least exciting fund in, in of the six for sure.
Basically it's the payments that service our bonds. The thing that we wanted to point out is what we have talked to, to MR about a couple times is that thing has a fund balance. And this might be when we talked about threading the needle. This might be a way to use this fund balance in the future to reduce our mills on the debt service and possibly ask the community to refill those with a mill levy override, which we could use for more flexible things than we can in this fund. So that's, that's the piece to point out. This would be the amounts to service the debt
for the year would be that budgeted piece right there. And the way we would do that is you reduce your mills so that you end up spending this, you, you assess fewer mills. So you get less money in from that. And you use this to make up the difference. So you're reducing the tax bill for everybody. And at this amount, maybe you do 3 million a year. So you've got three, almost three and a half years of a decrease. If we want to do that though, we'd want to put it in place probably next year because the,
the debt is fully serviced by 2030. And I don't think it's the end of the fiscal year. I think it's closer to the end of the, the calendar year that year. But I'm not positive about that. That's the strategy. And we have some staggered Speaker 4: Retirement over the next three years, Speaker 15: Correct? Yes. And yeah, there, it's in tranches because it was taken out over it's like 2006, eight and 10. Don't, you might know Heather or Lisa, but, but it was back in the s that we, that we issued the debt
and it was over a period of time. So each one retires at a different point. Some sooner than others. Yes. Speaker 4: I think it'd be great to see that Speaker 15: We began gathering the historical board resolutions and things for that this week. Speaker 4: Thank you. So yeah, it'd be good to see a schedule and how much it does come down and how much it would affect anything that we'd be looking for in the next 18 months. Speaker 15: We've got part of that already put together and then we'll see. It's the original debt schedules. That can be a little challenging when they were
almost 20 years ago. But we, we, Kirk already put a, a schedule together that reduces the fund balance over, I think it's a three or four year period and how much it would be each year. And I think he might, he he'll know off the top of his head if he didn't, but he might have even plugged in what the change in mills would be. And if not, we'll get that in there. 'cause that'd be, that'd be useful to know. So we'll work on that. We're, we're part of the way there. Speaker 10: Cool. Thank you. Well,
you guys lied to me. There's a pile of cash Speaker 15: There. There is, but it's limited to debt service and the issue the other, the rule around this that I know for sure there may be some other nuances, but you have to spend this on the debt issue you assessed it for. We couldn't carry it to a new debt debt issue. They're, they're unreasonable like that. Speaker 10: What happens if you service a debt with an, with an ending fund balance and Speaker 15: It's, I assume it has to be refunded. Yeah, I think that's what it would be. I, that's my guess that we don't, so effectively we'd have
to do the same thing we're talking about just all at once. Although I don't know who you'd pay. I tax. That's why we wanna get rid of the taxpayer. Speaker 10: You mean retired early chance because that's who you paid off with cash? We have. Well, but Speaker 15: We wouldn't pay 'em 'cause we don't, depends on the industry because Speaker 10: What we're paying for the bond. No, what I, what I'm saying is let's say if we, we service a debt completely, it's paid off and, and we, we have that remaining by then, you know it might be 13 million. What happens to that $13 million? Speaker 15: We would definitely have to serve, surrender it to the taxing authority.
Yeah. It's gotta go back another And the laws are written now so that we cannot over collect this. So we we hit it on the nose. Yep. And I don't, I don't know how far back this went. Where the over collection that's, that's before us. We've had an $11 million balance. Speaker 10: Okay. So it's gonna stay at about 11 million Speaker 15: Bucks. Yeah. Until we whittle it down. We should definitely, 'cause we're effectively refunding it if we screw the mills down. So that's what we want to do anyway. But yeah, how it got there, my guess is there were just a couple years where the mills maybe were, were over assessed.
They just thought they needed more than they did because as Jason said, they've changed the process now where everything is very prescriptive. Before it was just a freeform spreadsheet where you plugged in your mills and sent it in. So, Speaker 10: So dumb question. Speaker 15: No such thing. Speaker 10: Is that actually cash sitting in an account? Yes Speaker 15: It is. Speaker 10: So on an interest bearing account. Speaker 15: I believe so, Speaker 10: Yes. Is the interest something we can spend and not the principle? Speaker 15: I think that is self-funded. Yeah, it's, it's all a self-funded and it's all self-contained. The interest is a part of the corpus in this case.
If that's your question, that's all we got. Beautiful, beautiful use of the word Speaker 10: Corpus. That was, thank you. Speaker 15: It was reflecting 1994. It's the last time I heard Speaker 17: Corpus. It was great work. Very nice. Well thank you. Any questions you? No thank Speaker 10: You guys. Thanks guys. Speaker 17: You all have a good evening and we look forward to seeing you soon. Speaker 2: Alright, thank you guys. Bri, did you have any questions? Speaker 17: No. Speaker 2: All Speaker 17: Right. Yes ma'am. Speaker 2: We are going to move on to policy focus
and oh wait, we have to do governance action items? Speaker 17: Yes. Speaker 2: We have an approval for Sharon Donahue to be the DEO designated election official for the 2025 election. Speaker 10: I'll make a motion to approve Sharon Donahue to be the DEO designated election official for the 2025 election. Speaker 17: I'll second. Aye let y'all aye Speaker 2: ASCO aye Speaker 17: Agenda. Aye.
Speaker 2: And now we will move on to the third reading of the J-I-C-D-E bullying prevention and education policy. Is there any changes or anything anybody noticed in the last two weeks? Speaker 17: Nothing on lie. Nothing on me? No. Speaker 2: All right. Can I get a motion to approve the J-I-C-D-E bullying prevention and education policy? Speaker 17: I move to approve policy J-I-C-D-E, bullying and prevention and education. Speaker 10: All second. Speaker 17: Aye.
Aye. Al Speaker 2: Aye Judge. Speaker 17: Aye. Speaker 2: Thank you. Now onto policy focus second reading 4G CBC, professional staff supplement three pay. Speaker 17: I did not have anything else on this. Okay. Speaker 2: All right. Second reading. Good. Speaker 17: So practice the third reading just Speaker 2: Now. Yes. With no changes. Next policy is GCL, professional
staff schedules and calendars. Looks like it just was the time change of the day. Seven 30 to 4:30 PM Do you guys, did we need to note like Monday through Thursday with occasional Fridays or something for, do you know? Speaker 10: And I don't remember if our board adopted calendar actually includes strategic planning days. Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. It Speaker 10: Does. It does. And all their personal development. Speaker 2: Okay. So it's good the way it's written. Yep. I'm guessing. I think so. Okay. That was my only question on that was how that
Speaker 10: I think it get, it says each school day, so. Speaker 2: Okay. All right. Any other questions? I'm Speaker 10: Good with that Speaker 2: One. All right, next policy. So that will be coming back for the third reading as is GCMC, parent conferences, staff meetings and school meetings. Oh, this is the one that had the strategic planning days at a different time and then the regular school days noted. Okay. Speaker 10: Nothing on that either, really as it was. Is there a, just a question for me.
Is there a regulation centered around the eight hour workday? Speaker 14: Yes. Theresa, the, the eight hour workday, where is that like there's a certain amount of time we have to put in according to the state. Speaker 17: Oh yes. Not a policy regulation. It's a state law around, are you talking about contact time? Speaker 10: No, it just says schools may adjust future planning day and workday times as long as the adjustment still meets the eight hour timeframe. Speaker 17: Okay. Speaker 14: And the question again, sorry. Speaker 10: So where does that eight hour timeframe, like what, where does that come from? Does it Speaker 14: Norm?
So some schools, like if they have a guest speaker coming in and the speaker has to leave early, they might wanna start at seven 30. So they can adjust it from seven 30 to three 30 instead of the eight to four. But they have to let us know. Speaker 10: But what I'm saying, we can't go over eight hours. Speaker 14: We're not supposed to, no. Speaker 10: What, what tells us when I'm supposed Speaker 2: To, I think that might be a labor law. Labor law. I think, I think that, I mean we can con Speaker 10: It just applies to teachers or what Speaker 2: It's, well it's labor law, like even we can double check with Devin, but I bet you that's in the public labor laws. It's, Speaker 17: It's the trade off in here where we don't give parent teacher conferences.
So planning days are eight hours a day. So that instead of nine, so that then they get that those days back, that time back. So it's, it's not, it's in policy that it's an eight hour day. Speaker 14: We used to have, when we first started here, parent teacher, you everybody had parent teacher conferences at the same time. It was a Wednesday, Thursday and then a half day on Friday and then you had the rest of the time off. But that was a day off for putting in those extra nights and then that was eliminated with the four day week.
'cause it didn't fit in very well. But we needed to have that compensation somewhere on the idea of time back and forth. Most people are putting in way more time than what it says on there. Speaker 17: Yeah. Speaker 2: Good. Good. All right, Speaker 17: Good. Speaker 2: Moving on to the last one, GCO evaluation of licensed personnel. I am assuming Devin looked at all these as well. Speaker 14: This is one that Devin reviewed and Speaker 2: Then was she the one who added the reporting? Okay. Speaker 14: And those were state recommended.
Speaker 17: Okay. Okay. Yep. I'm good. Speaker 2: Good. All right. So all of those will be moving on to the third reading, next meeting. Thank you Sharon. And now future agenda items. Speaker 5: Okay. I'm looking at that date. I want to confirm that date of which we need to turn in the assurances. You You bet. 'cause on the oversight of the evaluation process and I, I think we have until July one, but I'll double check that. October 15th is Speaker 2: Early, Speaker 5: Late
Speaker 2: Or late Way late. Speaker 5: Yeah. You need to have 'EM turned Speaker 17: In. So she's saying the Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. You have to have them by July one. Speaker 5: Yeah. So I just wanna confirm. So sorry I got a little sidetracked. I'll confirm that though. Speaker 2: Is that what you said? Yeah, on this last policy on the gco, just the date. Okay. From October. Speaker 5: I'll check that out. Speaker 2: It's, it's a little bit different. That Speaker 5: Makes sense. We have two board meetings left in this fiscal year. Chance Jenkins. And it looks like Cassie will be out on June 11th. Where the hell do all you guys, you guys have lives or something?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do. And that's why I am leaving the country just for a little bit. There Speaker 5: We go. Alright, so the things that I have on here, strategic plan, I think that our team will be ready if not by June 11th, but we will be meeting next week to see if we can bring together our strategic plan for 25, 26. I did have budget, however Jeff and Jason came forward tonight. And so I think that we have to vote on that final budget.
Is there anything that you would like to hear from them in particular to finance other than what you heard tonight? And then they'll bring forward their final budget for you to vote on on June 25th? Speaker 10: I be testifying. Yeah, I mean what else is there? Yeah, Speaker 5: So really besides the policy focus is our team to bring forward to you the strategic plan initiatives for 25 26. Speaker 2: That sounds good. I think that would be a good way to end out the year. Speaker 5: Yeah. A lot of great questions
that you might have in particular to some of the initiatives review. You know what we did, I think we did last year in June we did kind of a year in review. It was really the outcomes of, you know, of what we actually had. So we presented some of the data and some of the benchmarks that we had for the strategic plan as well as then what we were gonna do for initiatives going into this year. So I think that that will be very similarly. We'll present some data to you as well from what happened this year as well as what we are hoping to accomplish.
25, 26. And that's the only thing I have. Speaker 2: It might be a short meeting again. Damn darn. Speaker 5: I know, I know. You guys are very disappointed in the fact I'm not filling it with lots of things. But yes. Anything else that you have? Speaker 10: Quick question with the strategic plan coming up or the review, should we have Kurt come in since the goal's about next year? I mean he's gonna be the one overseeing that. Is Speaker 5: He online tonight? Speaker 10: You mean come in on that. I think Speaker 5: He's been watching.
I know he has. Yeah. Well Speaker 10: Shouldn't he be here to present with the team that is going to carry that out? Or he could present online? I'm just saying he's gonna be tasked with making sure it's, Speaker 5: Well, Kirk is seeing the drafts and so we've had conversations and he, he can, he can weigh in differently, but he's been a amen to our work so far and thinks, you know, has at least shared that he thinks that we are on the right track. So he had no revisions or suggestions at this point. So no Speaker 10: Doubt. I'm I was just saying since you, since Speaker 5: He, if you'd like him to be in the room and like Theresa said, he is been online for the last several board meetings.
I don't know if he'll be, I don't know what Kirk's plans are. Right. Should invite Good idea. Speaker 10: Yeah, you can just put out the invite if he, if he's busy, he's busy, Speaker 5: It's fine. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 10: But if he's here, be cool. Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 12: Agreed. Speaker 2: And this is for the 11th meeting Speaker 5: For June 11th. You bet. Yep. That's all I have. Speaker 17: Okay. Speaker 2: Did we find out anything from legal about the executive session for Speaker 10: We don't need it. Speaker 2: Huh? We don't need it. Speaker 10: Not we don't, we don't need to. I think
Speaker 5: We should not. Speaker 10: Yeah, she As long, as, long as she's okay with it. Speaker 2: Oh, okay, okay. Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 2: Perfect. Speaker 10: Mutually Speaker 5: I'm going to save you an hour or two. Speaker 10: It's her, it's her opinion that really matters because Yeah, she's the one that gets sue us a breach of contract. Speaker 5: Well, since it's ending, I think we're okay. Speaker 10: Okay. I really just wanted to give you a big purple smiley face on this evaluation. Speaker 5: I'm gonna give you a piece of paper and you with a purple Speaker 10: Pen. You have a purple pen. First time I'll ever write write, Speaker 5: So, okay. Alright. Speaker 2: Anything else you guys are running or meeting on in future agenda items?
No. All right. Meeting debrief. Oh, sorry, Brittany, I forget about you. Speaker 5: No, Speaker 12: His Speaker 10: Face. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. His head longest six feet across behind Speaker 5: You and he's on several screens. Cassie, how could you forget it? Don't do it. I, Speaker 10: Thoughts on that guy. Speaker 5: Funny meeting debrief. How Speaker 12: Are my fours looking? Speaker 5: Brett, Speaker 2: Do you wanna start with the meeting debrief? Speaker 12: Yeah. Yeah. I was really interested to hear from sped. I think definitely we haven't focused on that enough
to be more knowledgeable on our spend program. And so I'd like to see us really put more of an effort into bringing those guys in, you know, more times throughout the year to get more knowledgeable on it. But I'm really excited for the future working with Kirk, the new superintendent that's coming out with boces. I think there's a lot of potential in the people we have on our team in spend. So I'll be excited to kind of give them a fresh start. And I think us supporting them is going give them, you know, more, I guess more strength or, you know, whatever. So I, I really enjoy hearing, hearing from those guys.
And obviously the budget, talking about the budget, soon we did that $2 million deficit. They did a great job pension. IES again, but I'm with you. Chance, you know, at some point we've still gotta provide and save the money isn't gonna get there. So I, I look out at 2027 and it, it is a little startling to think and I know that's a ways way. So hopefully as a group we can really start coming up some plans to think about how we're gonna offset that. So I, I'm glad we're forward thinking on that. And I, I do really, really,
really appreciate our finance team, our secretaries that have managed that money for us. You guys are doing an amazing job and you're keeping our district in a really small spot. So keep up the great work. Thank you. That's about all I have. Was a good meeting. Great job. Cassie. Revenue. Great job. Speaker 17: Thank you. Speaker 4: And I would echo everything on the SPED thing. I think as long as we, you know, if we keep 'em in here and keep hearing them and also keep acknowledging what they do that's, yep. They've got a tough job. Finance was great. I'd love to, you know, over the course
of the next few months, really start looking at what we need to do. That's why I asked for the retirement on the debt and everything else. And what we need to do to look forward to increasing, maybe not increasing the mills but changing the mills over to operational. And then even looking more into the firm that you brought us a 6, 8, 6 months ago to try to community community relations type of thing. And how that could boost everything and get it out in the community and help with that. So at some point in time that'll be something to look at.
Speaker 17: Chance. Speaker 10: Same thing on the sped. They, they have a hard job with all the regulations and, and at the end of the day it's trying to care for the kids the best they can, you know, to what all the kids deserve. It's very difficult. Echoing what Scott and Brit both said, I think we need to hear from them more often. Acknowledge it, ask more questions. I think our oversight needs to be a little better. Just whether it be oversight or offering them, you know, support, whatever it may be.
It need needs to be better in that, in that way. The budget as usual. I just can't thank those guys enough. Kathy, Jeff, Jason. They're do, they're very good at their job. They hit their projections within a half a percent. We do need to be forward thinking on the issues that are coming down the road at us, but I'd also acknowledge they are down the road, which does give us time to start looking into those things. Like Scott says, whether we can transition mills into different accounts, different funds,
but also to whatever we need to do to make sure, you know, deficit spending's one thing, but repeated deficit spending is I, I believe where we're getting an issue, we have to be able to adjust and adapt and that's just the reality of it as far as that. It's great meeting. Good job. Cassie did a great job. Thank you Heather. Lisa, it's your last meeting of a school year. Thank you for all you guys have done. And that's all I got. Speaker 2: Yeah. So being debrief brief for me,
I just wanted to start by the preschool. Shine the light. Yeah, I was a preschool teacher so they kind of have my heart still. But Emily, Camille, Lynn and Christina, they're all doing an amazing job. I know that many kids at Wamsley, oh my goodness, that is a lot of kids. Good job helping with that Simone and pioneering that universal preschool pre-K program. 'cause that's a lot of work. Can't imagine. And I know the licensing with the state is not easy.
It's lots of hoops to jump through. So well done with that. Bo C sped a lot of information. I feel like, you know, like these guys all said yes. Coming more often. I'm looking forward to that. To educating us to bridge that gap of communication. Also building their team of BOCES and our district working together collaboratively. I think them coming before us will help that as well. That relationship. And I'm excited about that. Finance, I mean, yeah, those guys do a great job.
Numbers are scary in 27, but I think it will be okay. I think we're gonna be okay. Speaker 10: We'll be okay 'cause we'll figure it out. Yes, that's our job. Speaker 2: I did wanna do a shout out to all teachers, staff, students. Year end. Congratulations to all the graduates. Congratulations to all the teachers that are retiring. Kind of some of you are staying. Thank you. Congratulations to Lisa and Heather on another great year. Yeah. And I'm just excited for the summer, but also like, it's like a new chapter almost,
right in the book we're all like sitting on or the next series of a book, right? Yes. Like we're all sitting on the, the edge of our seat waiting to go to Barnes and Noble and pick up the next series. Speaker 10: Make sure the author didn't screw it up. You know, that's a good one. Like, Speaker 2: Okay, what is the next series with, you know it, what is it gonna look like? What is it gonna happen? What's the plot in the story kind of thing. And so I'm excited for this season, this chapter, this new series and what's coming ahead. Obviously I won't be here the next meeting, but I might join online.
I don't know. I'll be in the heart of Florence at that time, so Yeah, I may not hop on, but you guys will be good. Speaker 10: One thing I do want to add up for all of our thousands of watchers and listeners out there on the inter web. Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot Speaker 10: To come visit us at the newly anointed Grimley Pierce community building. Speaker 2: Yes. That was my next part. So yeah, I can't miss it. It was, guys, it was a fun time tonight before our meeting that we got to unveil
the new sign at the one door building, which is now the Ley Pierce building, which houses all kinds of stuff. What are all the names under there? I don't have the picture. Technology. Speaker 10: One door technology, Speaker 2: One door education. Sped. Sped. Yeah, it's all there. It's all listed out. Yeah. Outdoor education. It looks great, Bri. I'll make sure to text you a picture after the meeting. Congratulations Speaker 10: You guys. Well deserved. Thank Speaker 2: You Bri. Yeah. Yeah. So it was exciting, exciting night,
my first board meeting and the unveiling of the sign and it was exciting. So thank you for letting me be a part. And I believe this meeting is adjourned at eight o'clock. 8 0 1. Nice. Yay. Isn't it cool when you get the early meeting Speaker 10: It's gonna still be light outside. I know. I, wow. Speaker 2: What a, we don't have to worry about.