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Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=l4W1EhLNf4k

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everybody who is on the call. We have uh Miss Branch, a a board member. >> Good morning. >> Uh Mr. Parks, committee member. Mr. Major, committee member.

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Uh Miss Brown um is chair and Miss Sizzle uh is vice chair. And we're we also have a representative from uh the legal department, Miss Morales. and then Laura Pow Paulo um

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assistant from uh from my department. And she was excited that she didn't have to set up the board meeting today. She didn't board room today. So she she didn't know what to do for this meeting. All right. Uh so we can get started with the agenda. We just have um we have some

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action items from the last meeting because we lost we had a quorum and then lost the quorum before we could vote on the minutes. So, we have those two items and then I wanted to walk through and discuss the draft report to the board. Um, so with that, I can pass it over to

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to Miss Brown. Let me see. I'm not able to hear you and you're not on mute. All right. Well, we'll all get started when you're because when you're as you're working through those technical difficulties. Uh we don't have any uh public comment. Oh, and uh Mr. Rossi

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just joined as well. Uh u for the discussion items. Um no additional uh discussion items other than u the action items. Um so the one uh discussion item would be related to the report to the

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board. Uh I did prepare a draft uh based on the information that's been presented to the committee um throughout the u the past several meetings um and you based on u previous reports that have been provided uh by the

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committee. That is the one responsibility of the committee is to provide a a report to the board as to whether they uh support um or whether they do not support the recommendation from the superintendent for the FY uh 27

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uh budget. Uh so I wanted to open it up to the committee to provide um any feedback on the report, any information they would uh like to see added, um any information that's uh in the draft that

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they would not agree with. So I can open it up um to the committee for um any comments. It was also included, it's attached to the agenda and it's also included in the email as an attachment um to the email that I sent out to the committee members as a a reminder for

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for the meeting. >> Heather, >> yeah. Oh, yeah. We can hear you now. >> I have a new laptop and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and I don't change settings so I don't know why but okay. Thank you though. No, I

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have this I have the same problem that sometimes it's like the speakers or or they they switch and especially depending on whether you use teams or Google meet that also problems too, >> right? Um so I did provide the the

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report the draft report um as part of the u it's on the agenda. It was emailed out to the committee members as well. Um, so wanted to get some u feedback um from the committee as to items they'd like to see added,

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anything they'd like changed. Um, and ultimately whether the committee does support uh the recommendation of the superintendent for this the FY27 budget that will be submitted to the board on for tenative adoption for July 29th.

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And then for anybody who uh wasn't at the last meeting, um I do also have the the last presentation. So if there's any additional questions that you had as a followup from from our last meeting, um I could also bring up to the committee

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uh that there's been a lot of talk um uh at the state level about what's going to happen with property taxes. Uh the initial proposal was that school districts would be included. they were not going to be exempt. Um,

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okay. All right. Thanks, Mr. Parks. He's having some technical difficulties. Um, oh, so there were concerns that, you know, initially uh schools uh were not uh exempt from the property tax um homestead, the increase in the homestead

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exemptions. Uh the last uh what was actually agreed to at the legislative level. um school districts uh are now exempt uh from the additional increase in the exemption from the one to the 150 and the 250.

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Uh but there is still a concern uh because the you know the can county municipalities um you know the special districts like the children's services council uh healthc care district they provide additional they provide services to the

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schools and supports for the schools. Um so any impact that we see on um the the counties and municipalities could end up potentially having um an impact on our school sites. So I just wanted to make sure to mention

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that to the committee because initially schools were were not exempt. Now we are but still could potentially have an impact um based on um the impact of the county and the municipalities. I know the county in particular, Miss Brown, if

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you wanted to mention it, I'm sure it's going to have a pretty dramatic impact on your budget. >> Yeah, our property appraiser um just based on existing values today in the first year, it could impact us about $130 million and over the two-year

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period um about $230 million based on, you know, existing is what the property appraiser um is estimating for us. So it's it's significant significant for us and you're right if we lose that much money we would be looking back and

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saying these are the things we do and now the schools would need to take it on or it's not going to happen you know so and for a lot of other reasons so other >> and with the final the final bill that was presented to the governor it also

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does not exempt um public safety is that >> it does not it does not so you know we have a um separate district for our fire rescue. So they will definitely be impacted also and they don't always have because cities participate in it and

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those cities are at the 10 mil cap doesn't give you any room to move the millage rate either. So >> yeah, it's it's going to be a significant uh challenge for the municipalities across the state. They

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estimate some cities may not have any property taxes because they're so heavily um homesteaded and so it could be devastating for cities. >> They were saying that also some of the smaller cities too just won't be able to

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survive and would have to then you know consolidate or you know merge into other larger cities. So it will be interesting. So that is going to be put on the ballot in November. Um at the same time that the

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one mill um is the renewal of of this is also going to the voters in in November as well. Um it is so important uh that we continue to receive the the the support of the voters. Um it provides

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you know u uh additional supplements uh for teachers you know for over 12,000 teachers funds over nine h 900 teacher positions in elementary art music and PE. I mean the the committee knows you know all all the good that these

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additional funds go for. Um and we've been careful to use it for you know supplemental purposes. We're not using it to comply with state statute. Uh, for example, with the um uh the security requirements, a portion of this of the

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funds um funds the the police officers, you know, funding for that per um uh and with when you're looking at the the funding for security, we made sure that it was only going to fund supplemental officers, um not the one officer per

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school. um that's mandated by state statute. You know, from a budget perspective, you know, if if we were to lose over 360 million with 40 million of that being passed through uh to charter schools, it would be devastating for us

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to lose that 1 mil. Um so, um that is going to the voters in November. Um and uh you know, will definitely be something that's brought back to the budget advisory committee um future meetings. Yep. >> I'm sorry. Do you know if that's come to the county yet?

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>> Yes, it did. It went to the county in February. We went early. Yeah. So, we went early for for that. >> I just didn't remember. Yep. >> Yep. Um I think we went earlier than we did in in previous years. >> Okay. >> And that was even before um they started

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all the discussions on on the property taxes. >> Okay. So that would potentially for you know upcoming budget years I mean that would have a significant impact if that was something that was not uh not approved by the voters. Um it would be

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devastating. Like I said it would be over $300 million. You know teacher supplements that equate to an increase in teacher pay on average of $8,000 and over 900 teacher positions. Um it it

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it definitely would be uh would be devastating. It's not something that I've included in the draft report to the board from the budget advisory committee. U just focused on really looking through, you know, what

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happened with our decline in enrollment. So we had, you know, what why we're in the position we're in with the shortfall we realized. uh we had a decline of 7,000 students uh in uh FY26, a projected additional decline of 3,000

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going into 27. You know, that equates to nearly a hundred million shortfall in revenue. Looking at, you know, the we're we're fiscally responsible and that we always realign our staffing based on enrollment

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um at the school sites and and even realigning. we only saw a a total savings of of $20 million. So that's why we we a after that count process uh we immediately went to work on what we needed to do to recalibrate that

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staffing formula so it would realign with our our new uh enrollment realities. um uh with the additional uh increase uh in the recurring raise of the 3.5% we had to go back then for a

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second round of reductions and you know had the support of the uh of the of the committee and as well as the board uh to to make sure that we aligned our budget going into FY27 so we didn't start with

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a a deficit in FY27 uh before looking at funing at the state level. Um we didn't want to start with the deficit that was carrying forward from FY26. So we went back worked collaboratively with the principles uh the principal

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group um as well as the departments to cut an additional $28 million out of the budget. And so by going in so starting with FY27, we are looking at a at least a balanced budget. You know, even though uh we're

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only getting an additional $400,000 uh because of the additional decline of of an additional 3,000 students in FY27. Uh we're only looking at an additional $400,000 in additional funding. But of that, we have to set aside $9.8 8

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million for the teacher uh salary increase allocation that's mandated at the state level that then you know looks like it puts us at a $9.4 million deficit but once we realign our our um staffing based on

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that decline in enrollment we are the budget will be flat for next year. There's no increase that's built in for additional salary increases. And what we do is we we're recommending that we wait and see what happens with enrollment. If enrollment comes in

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better than what's anticipated, uh then any additional funds would be set aside u for potential salary increases. So that's what I made sure to put in the uh in the conclusion part of

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it is that the the committee would support and require that any additional funding that that comes in as a result of uh enrollment coming in better than anticipated that that would be set aside

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for a salary reserve. >> Is enrollment allowed up to the day school begins? Well, our enrollment uh we are uh we're funded and with school dis school districts in in the state of Florida.

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We're funded based on enrollment. One week in the the month of October and one week uh in the month of February. So there's two revenue adjustments that are performed at the state level. We make our our staffing adjustments after based

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on the 11th day of school just to min minimize disruption to the students throughout the year. So, we only um normally just adjust our staffing based on that 11 uh 11 day count. Uh we

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forecast out through what we think enrollment is going to look like in October and and that's how we make those staffing adjustments. Every other year prior to this current year, enrollment always improved from the 11-day count through that that

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October survey period at the state level, enrollment always went up. This year, enrollment just continued to decline. Um, and so we're looking at this year as to whether it's going to go back to the way that it

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normally that it trended in previous years because this year was really just such an anomaly statewide and what happened with enrollment. So that is what's unique in in Florida is that our revenue is chewed up immediately uh based on the actual

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students sitting in seats for a oneweek period in October and a oneweek period in in February. And then those two benchmarks are then averaged out um to calculate what our our revenue is for the year. And that's why it's so since our revenue

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is is driven by that enrollment, it's it's truly dependent on what enrollment comes in for the the next school year to know what additional funding we're going to have available. So, based on the decline of 3,000 students that's projected, we've we've built the budget

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um uh to to to manage that to manage that loss. Um there was nothing else that was built in for an additional salary increase. Uh we already cut u and and we reduced the budget between schools and

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departments a total of $68 million. Uh and that and it that is after we had $20 million of reductions after counting. So nearly $90 million was cut out of the

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budget. um $20 million in FY26 and then the additional reductions um have been built into the um the budget for FY27 as a result of shoring up that loss from FY26. Um so we will see a spendown of

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fund balance in FY26. Um it's projected to be between uh 40 and and $50 million. Um but we only wanted to do that one year. Um and we made sure to balance it going into FY27.

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>> And then I know I know you mentioned that um this you know obviously this 7,000 student loss was was an anomaly and um how accurate I know we're projecting a loss of 3,000 for fiscal year. How

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accurate have we been with um forecasting how many students historically that that we we we're really thinking the 3,000 is going to be a solid number? >> Historically,

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we've been within 300 to 500 students of our our projection. Um, so we've been very close and the state as well because the way that the projected enrollment uh mis branch you can I was just going to

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say this has never happened. Um, and this is why I was the lone vote. Not that teachers aren't worth a raise, but this is why I did not vote for the raise because it really puts financial constraint on our school district and we really unfortunately are in this

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position now because of the raises. So, I just wanted to kind of put that out there. We've never ever been down like this. So, like go ahead, Miss Frederick. I just wanted to kind of add of why I didn't vote for it because was not fiscally responsible. Thank you.

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>> Yeah. So, the the only other year where this happened was during COVID, you know, another, you know, anomaly. Uh but we were held harmless in terms of funding um with with COVID and that was we lost 6,500 students. So, not not even as many students as we've lost this past

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year. In previous years, we've always been like Miss Branch said, I mean, we've been on target. We have a separate demographics department um that do the forecasting, look at the sack zones, look at new developments, look at the

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birth rate. They've been highly accurate in projecting what the uh the enrollment would be each year. Uh there's also uh and then we look at it within uh the budget department as well as the student uh data management department. So we have three different departments that

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get together uh we look at our ESOL uh also multicultural as well as ESSE to make sure that we're considering those populations as part of the forecast. Uh DOE um performs a forecast as well. uh

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they utilize the office of economic uh and office of demographic research EDR and uh EDR performs a forecast a long range forecast of what enrollment would look like. uh that is what uh Florida

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Department of Ed utilizes uh for their modeling and we're required each year and that's usually in the January in the in the beginning to middle of January. Uh the FDOE opens up what they call

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their modeling. They provide nine different enrollment forecast models for districts to review. We compare compare that to the modeling we do internally. uh the the models from Florida Department of Ed and we selected the

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most conservative of all the models and they Florida Department of Ed still had us based on the information from EDR has projects us to be down less than what we're projecting. Uh so we worked with

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uh the Florida Department of Ed to adjust the decrease uh a little bit higher than what they had projected, which is still a little bit less than what we're projecting internally. Um, so we're hopeful that our modeling is a lot

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more conservative on what the projected loss is going to be, but it's just difficult since last year was such an anomaly in order to know are we going to go back to our previous trends. Um, how is this going to continue going forward?

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Uh so we tried to be since the majority we were already seeing declines in terms of um declining birth rate, people moving out, families moving out because of cost of living but we were seeing such a growth uh within our um ESOL

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population that that was really outpacing what we were losing um in other demographics. Um this year's what what happened was we went from an average growth each year of you know 4,000 when you looked at our you know start of school data um to this year we

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had a decline of almost 2,000. So we've had a significant swing in that population of students on top of the the ones that we were already losing. We don't anticipate to have that same drop that we had we experienced this year. Uh

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so we are cautiously optimistic uh that that enrollment will come in better than what we've anticipated but we're just not certain um just because of what happened this past year. I mean it was it was statewide was 45,000 students

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less than what was projected statewide. Um and so it it was it was pretty dramatic. um counties that had seen consistent growth uh and you know where you know they're moving out of Palm Beach County but they're moving into

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uh more affordable counties throughout the state. Even those districts saw you know their growth their anticipated growth just stop. Uh but we're all looking for you know going back to the way it was previously. We're not going to continue to see that growth but we're

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not going to see that additional hit that we had this current year. So, it is a a collaborative effort when we're forecasting the enrollment with district with district staff as well as information um at the state level. And

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what was interesting during the legislative session is that, you know, they were you putting some of the blame on districts that districts should have known that this was going to happen. Well, the state nobody knew. The state didn't know. You know, they do a forecast as well. Uh and this just had

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has never happened. It has never happened before as Miss Miss Branch has has said, >> Miss Branch, >> we're also very lucky um to have Miss Frederick and Mike Burke who are fiscally responsible and we have reserves because Broward, Dade, Orange,

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Hillsboro, Lee are all having to close schools. So, this is another reason why, you know, being fiscally responsible and not voting for a raise when we don't have money was was important. Um, so we're actually lucky that we have fiscally respon responsible, you know,

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CFO and superintendent. So we're not right now, you know, in in a place where I think Brower's closing six and maybe nine and date, etc., all the other ones. So, but it's important to be fiscally responsible and not vote for raises when you are in this kind of position. So,

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thank you. >> Great. Thank you. And it was it was important to be able to go back and do that second round of reductions to make sure that we weren't going to start next year with a $30 million shortfall. So, it has been difficult for the

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schools. We're going through all of those adjustments now, you know, second round of adjustments in in the month of of June um so that they can be ready um uh for the start of school. Are there any other uh questions from

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the the committee members? >> Heather, this is Sher. I I don't have any comments either on the report. I'm good with it at this point. >> Okay. Is is there somebody from the committee uh that would be able to present uh to the board at the July 29th

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tenative adoption? I'm pulling up my calendar now. So, hold on. >> July 29th. >> Yeah, July 29th. And it's it's >> at five, right? >> Yep. That's the one that's definitely time time certain. We have to stop. We

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have to stop for a tenative budget. >> Okay. I I'm available. Okay. >> So, I don't know if this is appropriate, but I I think the report is fine. And if so, I would like to move that we approve it.

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>> Yes, it is an action item. So, >> can somebody second it for us? >> Second, John Major. >> All those in favor? Anyone opposed? See that it passes unanimously.

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>> Okay. And then the only other two items we have on the agenda would be the minutes for March 31st. And uh we did do minutes from May 28th because we did have a quorum for part of the meeting. >> Can I get a motion to approve?

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>> So moved. >> Can I get a second? >> Second. >> All those in favor? I >> see that it passes unanimously. All right. Well, those are all the items

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on on the agenda. Great. >> Well, thank you. If there's no other business, we can adjourn. >> Well, I just I just wanted to say uh I echo what the other uh person said. Uh Miss Frederick's does a great job and we

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appreciate what you do for uh the school district. Thank you. >> I agree. Thank you very much. It's a it's a team effort and and I have to say that my team has worked really hard this year. They've gone through two rounds of of

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budget reductions. Um the schools, everybody has worked together uh because they understood u and they wanted to make sure that we stayed fiscally responsible and that we have a balanced budget. Um so as as difficult all as the

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the changes have been uh everybody within the district has been very supportive um in going through uh the reductions to make sure that that we're we're continuing to be fiscally responsible. So, thank you for the committee. Uh, and you know, as soon as

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we start getting more information, you know, we we'll know more after we go through the 11day count what enrollment is is looking like, >> right? Well, thank you all. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Have a great day.

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>> Thanks.