Mike. Hello everyone. Welcome to the May 27th, 2025 joint health and ed and budget committee meeting. I will call us to order and uh I will
now defer to chairman P who will call his committee to order as well. Then we'll talk about some game rules. At this time the uh budget finance and investment committee is also open. Thank you commit chairman. You're welcome.
Please call the role for health and dad. Carl Boyd. Commissioner Davidson here. Commissioner Gu here. Commissioner McMurray here. Commissioner Oliver present. Commissioner Wilson here. Commissioner Dodd present. Commissioner Phillips.
If you would call the role for budget members. Commissioner Gu here. Commissioner Harris here. Commissioner Irvin here. Commissioner Johnson here. Mr. Piery here. Commissioner Serero here.
Commissioner P here. Thank you, Teresa. Um, we have no public comments signed up for tonight for either committee. Is that correct, Chairman P? Uh, that's what I've been told. No public comments. Excellent. Uh, the first order of business for Health and Ed, Vice Chair Wilson, is uh, if you
would consider the minutes of our last meeting. Thank you, Chairman. I have reviewed the minutes from our previous meeting. I find them to be in order. Without objection, I move for the approval. Second. So moved and second. All in favor say I. Any opposed? Thank you, vice
chair. The next item of business that we want to knock out. Well, first I want to I I do want to recognize uh the board of education. I see Miss Rosales, Miss Sharp, Miss Maxwell, Mr. Tidwell, uh the board members from the and Mr. Vaughn.
So, thank you all for being here. I see some bus drivers. Trey Lee, Jeff Reid, Dr. Martin, Brian. Thank you all for being here. We will now um proceed, please uh Dr. Sullivan with two budget amendments
that we will hear and and as you're coming, so uh budget committees, the health and ed committee is going to hear these amendments. The health and ed committee will consider them, ask questions, and vote. And then Mike's
going to talk about our rule of order tonight. So, a couple things I want to make, a couple of announcements for uh clerical stuff. So, tonight we have a PowerPoint that will have the budget amendments on it. Everything that's there is also on your iPads. So, that's in front of you can follow along in the PowerPoint on your iPads. Also, in front
of you for the budget committee members, you have the paper copies that to put in your book. And then for any of the health and ed committee members, we passed out papers. If you didn't get one, please let me know. So, you should have three ways to look at it, but they should all be in order of how Dr. Sullivan's going to present tonight. Um,
but he'll have the detailed PowerPoint for the budget amendments. That's the only difference from your iPads is those are going to be broke out separate on your iPads. But did everybody get a paper copy if they wanted one for tonight? Mike, if you would talk about voting, clarify to everyone how we're the two
parties are going to vote. So tonight, if it's okay with the both committees, we'll we'll do it the same as we did last year. Um whereas health and ed will hear both committees will hear the item, health and ed will take up any action first. Um if they wish to send it on to budget or approve it and send it to
budget, the budget committee will then have that option to vote on it. Um defer it or take no action. There's no requirement of budget tonight. However, um they can take take action um after health and ed votes just like the normal process as we did last year. At that
point, after health and ed votes, Chairman P would take over for any vote that would happen for budget committee. All that makes sense and questions can be asked from from either committee committee. If it's if it's def if there is a motion to defer
something from budget it would go to Thursday night which is two days from now to take up then if there is a motion for that. Um and I think that so what we'll hear first is two budget amendments that we typically hear at
health and ed and then there's a lag time and then it shows up at budget. We're going to do those two. Robert, will I will you immediately entertain those after we vote or If I don't hear an objection from the budget committee, I would prefer to look at these two
amendments tonight. That way, we've got them behind us. If for some reason the budget committee feels like we need to wait, that's that's not a problem, but I would prefer to go ahead and get those behind us. We're going to have a lot to to do on the 29th.
Dr. S, proceed, please. Thank you commissioners and thank you board members for being here and some members of our leadership team um as well. So first we have a budget amendment. The first one is for a charter school budget amendment. This amendment is to move the
current charter school payment transfers of 3,367,842 from 991590 transfers to other funds to 72310312 board of education contracts with private agencies per the Tennessee controllers office. Also, this amendment
adds $500,000 to the 72310312 expenditure to cover the additional cost to the original budget for the charter school transfer. This increased cost will be funded from additional TISA direct funding RCS receives from the state. And we are, and Mr. Smith can correct this if I'm wrong,
we are the largest um county school system that is audited from the state department. And so there were a lot of questions about where funding needed to move regarding charter school allocations. And so this directly is from their request of where they wanted
funds to which accounts to go from. And we have the next budget amendment listed on the agenda as well. If if y'all want to take them up together, that works for me. Health and Ed, you'all good if we look at both these together? They're both 141 and they're
cleanups. Proceed, Dr. Sen. Thank you. The second one is a summer school summer camp grant. Sorry. This is totally funded from the state department of education. This amendment is to increase fund 141 budgeted revenues and expenditures in the amount of
5,556,938 to recognize the awarded summer camp grant for the fiscal year 2425. On January 22nd, 2021, the Tennessee General Assembly enacted the Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act to address the learning loss of students due to CO 19 related school closures. Through this
law, all Tennessee school districts are required to offer learning loss remediation summer programs for students in rising grades K through 8 starting in the summer of 2029 or 2021. Provisions of this law were set to expire in the summer of 2023, including summer learning camps for rising grades 1
through three and after school learning mini camps, stream camps. However, in the 2023 legislative session, the Tennessee General Assembly amended the act to continue summer programming and the learning loss bridge camps for rising grades K9 annually. These funds will be used for summer work for
principles, teachers, educational assistant, secretaries, and transportation. There is no local match required for this grant. Thank you, Dr. Sullivan. Yeah. And we do not receive this until May. So that is why you don't get it until May. The second that we get it, our board has it
before them and then we start this next Wednesday. Health and dead committee. And I'll entertain any discussion or questions of Dr. Mr. Sullivan or Mr. Renan. Hearing no conversation, I will entertain a motion. Motion to approve both amendments as presented.
Second. Motion to second. Any further discussion? Question. Uh, Commissioner Oliver on the summer camp grant. You're saying this is to
address learning loss due to COVID. Is that what you're saying? That was the original intent. Now most of it is addressing um early literacy, but it still does have a middle school required component. So, we utilize most of our funds to address the K through three early literacy, but also the
requirements for third, fourth, and fifth grade students who haven't mastered proficiency yet. Does this um include students that are retained due to the law with the reading? Yes. Yep. And so, they finish this program successfully, they are able to be
promoted depending on what they score depends on which pathway they have to take. So if they s score at a certain pathway, yes, they can be promoted for just summer. If they have a different proficiency rating, then they have to also include
tutoring during the school year as well. But this provides that option for them to to continue promotion. And then did I hear chairman Dodge say this is a cleanup? This portion will because this is adding funding to allow us to operate the
summer school programming and no required match. Correct. Great. Okay. Thank you. And the the cleanup component I mentioned was uh properly putting the charter school in the correct fund per the
audit. So, thank you for clarifying that and okay, so I was looking at the other one. So relative to the charter school one, these are funds that we have that you want to transfer to
cover expenditures related to the charter school. Is that what you're saying? They were already in our budget. We had them in a transfers out. Um the controller's office wants them in a different line and so that's where we're moving those two. And the difference of the 500,000 and
the 3.367 where is that difference? The 3.3 is already in another account. The 500,000 or additional students that you're increasing just by the 500. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Any further questions?
Yes, Commissioner Irvin. Okay. I just want to make sure it's okay to ask question or is it chairman P? I'm sorry. Question now. Uh just it's a real quick one. It's a quick question. The the 500,000 that's coming in is that coming out of is there going to be another TISA payment for this year or is this coming
out of future Tissa payments? No, it's for our funding that we've already received. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, it's only coming out. Okay. That's Thank you. It's a question I had.
Seeing no further questions, call the roll, please. Commissioner Boyd, yes. Commissioner Davidson, yes. Mr. Gu, yes. Mr. McMurray, yes. Commissioner Oliver, I. Commissioner Wilson, yes. Commissioner
Dodd, yes. At this time, I'm going to ask our budget committee to entertain these two motions. Do I hear any objections? We can defer this to the 29th. If not, uh I'm open for discussion at this time for these two amendments.
So move, Mr. Chair, you have a motion to approve the both amendments. Second. And a second. Any discussion? Hear none. Call RO. Commissioner Piery, yes. Commissioner Serero, Commissioner G, yes. Commissioner Harris, yes. Commissioner
Irvin, yes. Commissioner Johnson. Yes. Commissioner P. Yes. Motion carries. Thank you, committee. Thank you, chairman. Uh, next item of business. We move into the presentation. You going to go ahead and tab 13 for the
budget members central cafeteria. Is that first general update first? Yes. Yes, sir. We normally have with health and education a general update. Our main update is we graduated 4,500 seniors uh over I guess a week week and a half ago at MTSU
Eagleville and LifePoint and at Tucker Theater. So that was a a great time for our school system. We are still in school. We finished school on Friday to the dismay of many of our staff members and many of our parents. Uh it has a lot
of social media traction right now. So, just so that everyone is aware of why we are still in school after Memorial Day, we have a state requirement for students to go 180 school days and 180 school days when you do not start until August and you get a week for fall break, a
week for spring break, two weeks roughly around Christmas break, and then a full week at Thanksgiving. You literally count the days and the 180 gets us to Friday. Uh, next year will be exactly the same when you have an early Memorial Day. Next year, Memorial Day is on May
25th, and so it will be a a week long after Memorial Day. Again, it literally is just how the calendar falls. Um, you are not allowed to use inclement weather days and ask the commissioner of education if you can just call it early and go home. We're not allowed to do that. Uh, so we we have to continue. So,
it is it is tough this last week of school for everybody involved. So, just want you to have that update. Ready to go in the budget? Yes, sir. All right. Budget. uh just to kind of give you a overview of where we are and it's on the screen. So this is my Brian and I's
third year creating but kind of fourth year I guess presenting portions of it and so proud to be up here presenting our budget for you all. I'm thankful and proud of this budget due to collaboration and really the support we have with county commissioners with our
school board with our central office staff our principles and then school level staff. And I want to take just a minute and go over how this process works. And so if you've you all have heard me talk about it, but I think it's important for the general public to know how this works as well. We start in the
third week or second week of December. And we start by sending a request to all principles and they have a statutory requirement to give us input on what they need around technology, instructional technology, software,
staffing, building maintenance. They are then required to go and meet with their leadership team to get input. They submit that towards the end of January depending if we have snow days or anything. We're a little bit flexible on those days. We take that information, our department heads and assistant
superintendents get that information. They then have a couple more weeks to submit their requests. We compile all of that and start we do a big huge training with all of our principles and our central office staff that lasts several hours. We go over revenue. We go over
expenditures from the previous year. We go over our account codes of where all of our money has to fit. We go over what the budget looks like just with in general. And then we start by preparing a budget for our school board. We meet with our school board. We have a two-day
budget retreat to where we go over priorities for the school board. Look at what our principles, our departments are requesting. And then we really start to analyze what does the governor's budget include because that is our biggest source of revenue is the state department's revenue. And we see what
increase he has to the TISA base. And we start putting all of that together and cutting and cutting and cutting from requests because people make lots of requests and trying to figure out what is realistic along with what's the board of education's priorities, what is our
instruction department's priorities and what is our operational priorities until we get to presenting our budget for our school board to approve. And that has to be done of course by May 15th and then we get to you all today. So, it truly is a six-month process and we keep our
principles, our school board, our central office staff aware. It is truly a I know you said you needed three educational assistants in alternative instruction. You needed one teacher. Which one do you need the most? And explain to me why you need that. Um, our chief academic officer, Dr. Kelly
Chastain, we are opening a new school this year, uh, Plain View or not Plane View, sorry, Popular Hill Elementary School. And we'll get to a little bit more of this in a little while, but we transferred just about every position we possibly could to lower the cost to the
taxpayers of opening a new school because normally opening a school has a huge budgetary cost to it. I mean, we transferred over 40 teaching positions from other places in the county. And so that is something that we try to be very fiscally conservative and responsible with our budget, but we are a growing
school system that does have needs. And so that's just kind of an overview of our our budgetary process. We have a couple guiding principles. These have not changed because I feel like it's important for us to to be consistent. We want to always increase our knowledge and understanding. I'm hoping by this point four years in or three and a half
years in that our our principles and our central office staff have a very good understanding of how our budget process works, where revenue comes from, how expenditures work. We want to be transparent. We always focus on people first. We believe people are more important than programs every day of the week. and we want to be fiscally
responsible. This does have a request for increased of 2.9 million and that is truly to open our new elementary school. Um we have been talking about opening a new elementary school for a little bit over a year since it was approved and we tried to lower that cost as much as
possible. Um but it does anytime you're opening a school it does have an increased cost. Um and we'll get to that a little bit more. We did have some funding priorities this year as we do every year. The first one this year was transportation. Um staffing continually
is the biggest part of our budget and it matches our priority of people first. So we're always looking at our staffing models, our buildings. We're always making sure we're maintaining our buildings to the the best possible the funding available and then funding charter school which is a continuing
evolving process for us. Uh we've already talked a little bit about our budget calendar and then we'll get into our budget overview and then talk a little bit more just about our revenues and expenditures kind of in each different one. We talked about our budget calendar, but I did want you to see it is truly outlined for our
principles and our central office staff and our school board. We follow our budget calendar as close as possible to be able to see truly where we are and it does start in December and it goes all the way up until when you guys finish and we try to match it as quickly as possible. Uh that is one of my biggest
jobs and operating a $580 something million dollar budget proposal this year. This this is something that I take serious. It is something as a director of schools that's why I'm so involved with it because it is a huge aspect of the job is to make sure that we are we are utilizing taxpayer funding uh to
still get the results we do as a county school. So let's look at our budget overview and then we'll go into each one a little bit more. So you're going to see three different ones. We are going to go over 143 first here in just a minute and 143 our general
cafeteria fund. Actually, we can just go ahead and skip to that. May I ask a question before you move forward? Yeah. What are the board priorities? You spoke about board having priorities. What are those? Priority this year, transportation was overall number one. And that's something we we were looking
at was our transportation budget. And then we always have staffing and then buildings. We've tried to maintain our buildings and continually address our older buildings. So, what you have listed here is funding priorities are the board priorities. We discussed that at our retreat. And if there's anything else the board members want to address
at our retreat, you'll see that in our five-year plan that we're going to discuss in June as well for our board. Our board has not adopted a new five-year plan, but we've we've made a lot of progress thanks to the county commission's um support. And we've we need to start looking at some of our older buildings to truly put them on the
five-year plan now. All right. So, we are going to go to fund 143, our central cafeteria fund revenue. And I believe you said that was on tab, what did you say that was commission? So, tab
13. So, this has a revenue of 26,844,250,000. The revenue for this is largely USDA and then payments from students and teachers and parents. It then has an expenditure of $33,53,92. That is a $6.6 million
deficit. Uh that when you see it originally can be very alarming. Uh that does not need to be alarming. We have to have a plan to spend down our fund balance. Um it is a requirement to have a plan. Every year we have had a plan and we have not necessarily spent down
our fund balance uh as as needed uh because it is a healthy fund balance but we always have to have a plan in place to spend that down. Uh we are looking to do a couple things. Our plan to spend it down is to actually invest in new equipment uh and then make sure that we
are doing some renovations. We've already started at Roy Waldron Leverne High School. We're doing some renovations of our cafeterias at some of our schools that were budgeted the last couple years, but we're not actually taken uh to completion. And so those are some schools that we are looking to to
spend down this plan. And I know that's not a lot around 143, but does not necessarily have a tax rate to it. Uh it is self- sustaining and it is it's in really good shape right now. All of ours have a 2.5% cola increase to the table.
Um, as well I do have a question. Um, when you talk about spending it down, can you elaborate on that? Yeah. So, you say you're required to spend it down. Yes, we are supposed to have between a three and six month operating budget and because there's a lot of USDA federal
funds and we are currently sitting we were do you know the revenue the 20 million still that we have in fund balance and so it is it is way too high and so we are required by the federal government and the state government to have a plan to spend it down. It's not a
requirement you actually spend it down but it's a requirement of a plan to spend it down. So every year we have a plan that you all approved and you'll you'll see the last couple years we've been at four million in the deficit but we haven't necessarily gone to the deficit. So we just again have to have
that plan to spend it down. Can you um could that plan or could elimination of that cost include um elimination of cost for children to eat at school? Unfortunately it can't. Is that a particular guideline that says
you cannot offer You want to address that? I mean, it's federal for the students. I can't hear you. Federal guideline. Yes. We're not allowed to do it with our USDA reimbursement. It's frustrating when you have the the additional needs, but not allowed to use
it for that. I would like to see that information if I could get that. Yep. Dr. Sullivan, what are some examples of how you might use those funds? Equipment. uh we have older schools and we need to address equipment because I you don't want to use funds to spend down on reoccurring costs and so we
don't want to address some of our our buildings and add staff with this. We want to uh our we have an interim nutrition manager and Trey Lee actually oversees this as well. Trey oversees a lot of areas and so we have a meals per labor hour that we track and we have
schools we want them somewhere between 15 and 18 of how many meals per actual employees they have per labor hour. So we track all of this like we're running our because we are we're running our own 49 or 48 different restaurants out there that we want to make sure that they're
sustainable and operational. I don't think people realize how big of a operation Rutherford County is. It's it's a it's a beast. I know you all do, but the general public, it's 143 is a beast in and of itself. And I'm happy to answer any
other questions about 143. It is again, it's self sustaining. Um, and you have uh the the budget in front of you for 143. And we will before we move on, we will consider 143 if that's okay with the committee if health and
dad's good with it. Mr. Chairman, could I Yes. I'll make sure it's appropriate to ask questions. Yes, indeed. Thank you. Okay. Um Okay. So, what's the amount of bad meal debt on for this current school year? And is that number going up or down in this account? Going
up. Okay. Nine roughly 900,000. And so it'll end close to a million. about a million now. Yep. It'll be close to a million and we address that every way that we possibly can outside of taking parents to litigation. Um because then you are Knox has tried to take parents
litigation and then you don't end up recouping your costs. um you do. And so we try to encourage parents to to fill out the forms they need to fill out and we work with our cafeteria managers managers to reduce that cost as
much as possible and it's a it's definitely one of our concerns that we continually try. Okay. So it's about 900,000 this year and it's increasing. It is it's increasing by There was a study a while back I've heard about but I haven't seen Yeah. You've probably
seen it. Yeah. And so and what I'm hearing is you're go you've gone through the study and you're basically implementing everything short of the one imple one one scenario maybe it was more than one that involved going to general sessions court
and going through that drill that I think someone I've been told it's it was sort of worked out that you could go that route but is that a decision the school board made or how kind of think help us think through that because that's a fair amount of
And from what I've heard, the scenario was going to be they could send a letter and amazingly folks would typically respond. Yeah, we um we of course send our we have our own notification process in place that goes through and it's
you're looking at a couple situations that usually or locations that usually have the large brunt of your um trying to think of the right word losses at your schools. I guess that would have uh that's a continued
conversation that we would first need to have with our school board to see if that's an avenue that they would want to go down. We would then need to talk to our school board attorney and then we would need to talk to our court system here again. Um a lot of things have changed since those conversations occurred. It's been five years where two
school boards passed that and different judges in place. So not saying that's not an avenue that we'll never try, but the definitely the parameters are different since then. Okay. And as I understood, Commissioner Oliver had asked you about spending the
money on um basically students, if I heard it right, students who do not receive free or reduced meals. Um and that's not an option. Is that what you're Is that a is
that a federal requirement or is that a to the best of my knowledge federal? I'll go back with our school nutrition manager and check, but that has always been my understanding is you could not go back and pay for your students who had bad meal debt. Um, from No, no, I'm not I'm not talking about bad meal done at this point. I'm saying we've got
you're you've got a sign significant amount of money you got to spend down. Okay. You've got a significant amount you got to spend down. And the question is, can that money be spent down for students who may
not be on the program? And can and it's I mean, I'm just trying to it it seems like we could help parents out a fair amount if that was available. And you know, and it would help us out in terms of spending it down. My concern would be that would create a system that we would
then that would be the expectation and we're not eligible for to be able to do that long term. um you have to be part of the community eligibility program which is the C and not all of our schools or district qualify. And so I worry if we do it in some places that we wouldn't be able to be able to do it in
all places like everywhere like some other counties do. Um we have looked at it previously but it's not something our district has decided to go down in the past. Just a followup to what he just said. I mean isn't that similar to Title One?
All schools don't benefit from title one. So, couldn't you look at the schools that would benefit from being able to cover meals for families that are challenged? We can look at it. You know, 143 is a little bit different. Um because you have USDA, our title one
schools aren't working with USDA funds. Um but I I can ask our federal programs. And Dr. Svin, I think Mr. Smith might have a comment on that matter. So there there's a couple of requirements here. One, just so everybody's clear, USDA is a reimbursement based grant. Um, so they
don't just send us money and we So what you do is you you submit a the amount of meals you provided per pupil and you submit that and they send you money back. But what you can't do is charge a bunch of different prices because you also have to have reasonable price increases or you're not eligible for that grant.
So while yes, you could potentially reduce prices, you're going to be raising them again soon. I'll put it that way. But you couldn't necessarily say, "Hey, this school I'm going to let eat for free and this one not based on the USDA won't let you do that." They were going to say, "Hey, you're
discriminating against one school for charging them." So they typically when those rates are sent in, they're they're level across the board, right? And so what that spendown plan is meant for is for to replace things like ovens, kitchen equipment, and stuff. They want
a capital kind of one-time capital spendown plan. And so what they're used for is ovens. You may go in and replace um sinks, serving lines, and things like that that that are old. Um if you did reduce the if you
did start letting people eat for free, that would run out pretty quick, and you'd had to raise them again probably midyear, I think, is is that's probably the layman's term. I don't want to speak for Dr. Sullivan, but if not before, but that that's the issue with setting them for different schools. you'd kind of if you let everybody eat for free, then you
couldn't submit the USDA reimbursement, which would cut out the revenue is what I'm getting at. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Uh, Mr. Gu, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, what line
items is actually food? I'm looking at 421 food preparation supplies. Is that actually food? and expenditures. It's going to be your food supply. The uh 4
422 line item. All right. 422. Uh what other supplies is that just other supplies, not food? Say you're talking about the food preparation supplies. Well, food preparation supplies. No, sir.
Um well food preparation supplies does not include any food. Yeah it's just your supplies like what what you're using to prep the food with. Okay. And 422 is the actual is the actual food itself. Okay. On 469
commodities. So what that is is USDA commodities. That's that's basically an in-n-out. So it has the same amount of revenue as expenditure. It's budgeted that way. Um, and that number is actually given to us at the end of the year and we we book it as a revenue and
an expenditure in those line items. But is it it's where they give us free free stuff we don't pay for, but we have to recognize that somebody gave it to us. So the USDA may give us some type of commodity. Let's say apples for example. They don't bill us for it. And then then at the end of the year, the state gives
us a revenue and expense number. We book artificially. We don't actually have any money that comes in and out for those USDA commodities. is food. Yes. Yep. Are there any other line items? Um, it's just food. I don't think I see
anything, but just want to be sure. Usually in your your 422 is mainly your main food. And then of course, like as Michael said, the 469 USDA commodities would be food potentially, but it's not anything that we pay for as the district.
Okay. And then the um the commodities could be like you said apples, fresh fruits and vegetables. Correct. Cheese or something. Correct. And that number varies every year. It's not the same. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gu. Question, Miss Oliver. What is
transportation other than students? Right. So, we do not have kitchens at all of our schools. And so, we have some of our schools that um like campus school for example, McFaten has the food for campus school and Trey may have to help me. Campus school, Daniel McKe
Holloway, those three. So, we have to pay to transport the food. We have our own vans. We pay to transport the food. Smyrna West, is that correct? With David Yuri. That's that's a test right there. So, not every school has a kitchen. And and and they're not required to have a
kitchen. These schools aren't. As long as we're providing the hot meals and we have our own warmers and moving over. Yep. Okay. Yep. Thank you committees for those questions. Um having heard the proposal and had a round of questions, do I I
will entertain a motion at health and ed for fund 143. I move to approve fund 143 as presented. Second. The second was Mr. McMurray, I believe. Is that correct?
Any further discussion? Call the role, please. I do have one more question, please. Yes. When you say that the fund is self- sustaining, correct? Correct. So that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to zero out, I guess, is my question because you you say self-
sustaining, but then you have a deficit. So I'm just We have a def we have a deficit on purpose. Okay. So we have a deficit to spend down that um fund balance. Gotcha. We could budget it general at a zero balance if it wasn't
for that plan. Okay. Thanks. And to address that, we had budgeted it at 4.4 million or 4 million roughly the last two years and it wasn't getting the deficit down. So that's why we increased it. Having heard questions, I will if no further call the role please to help and
add Commissioner Boyd. Yes. Commissioner Davidson. Yes. Commissioner Gu. Yes. Commissioner McMurray. Yes. Commissioner Oliver. I. Commissioner Wilson. Yes. Commissioner Dodd. Yes. At this time, I'm going to ask the, uh,
budget finance committee if, uh, you have any questions, comments. If not, uh, I would prefer that we vote on this tonight. I'm seeing no one objectioning to that. Having said that, not hearing
any comments, I'll entertain a motion for the cafeteria fund. Motion to approve, Mr. Chairman. I have a motion to approve the cafeteria fund and second, Commissioner Sereno. Any further discussion on the school's cafeteria fund 143.
Mr. Chairman, I got a question. You're recognized. All right. Uh I line item 422 food supplies. As of April, we spent 2,460,000. You budgeted 4 million. You're coming down to 13 million. How
much is it going to cost for the school for the rest for the entire month of May? We budget we go ahead and do our POS up front um so that we can go ahead and have all of those things before the school year end. So you're going to see
those type of lines. We go ahead and do it in April. Uh so that you don't go over in May. Um so great question, but we we won't go over those. That's a great question. We do a lot of those type of things, especially
with food and food supplies. We go ahead and order them um a month ahead because by the time our trucks and everything get here, the school year would be over. So, you anticipate a1 million dollar decrease from last
year's? Yes. Okay. Any other discussion or questions from the committee? You're recognized, vice chairman. Thank you, uh, Mr. Chair. Um, it looks like the projected fund balance is 11.3 million.
How many months is that? It mentioned that not allowed to be over six months be between it be about four. Okay. Has the And I noticed that six
that'd be six. Yep. Okay. And so we started out this past year with 18 million uh surplus and end up with 11.3. Has there ever been a time that we've had a surplus?
I mean, don't we have to have a surplus to for the It see it seemed like every year there's a So, actually several years ago, 141 actually had to give this was probably about four or five years ago. 141 actually had to give money to
uh 143 uh to make to make payroll and cash flow it. Um, but keep in mind that assumes the 18 million that you're seeing as a as at the start if you're talking about the 18 million77,000. Yes. So that just assumes they're going to end in the deficit which they won't
this year. And so technically they they just have to have a spin down plan. If they just budgeted their operating, they probably would have a surplus this year. Um, but but they're going to end higher than that 11.3. They're they're not actually going to end there. That that's where we have to budget them until we close the end of
the year out. But but several years ago, we did actually they did need money moved from 141 to cash flow that fund. I believe it was back during co Yeah. Um so we do need to keep some money in there. Otherwise, you'll have to come to 141. If 141 doesn't have it, then
they're coming over here to the county general fund. And I believe that 3 million still in there that helped build that back up. So if everything is equal, if we do end up with say $11 million, which is six months starting this the next year, then
we're not looking at a spend down. Yeah. In the USDA, you just have to have a plan. They just want to see that you're looking at your capital, your long-term plan. That that's the goal of that. It's not necessarily to get you to a certain penny dollar. They want to see that you're looking out two to five years in advance and and have some sort of
strategic vision. Any other questions from the budget committee on the 143 cafeteria fund? Hearing none, call roll, please. Commissioner Piery, Commissioner Sereno, Commissioner Gu, yes. Commissioner
Harris, yes. Commissioner Irvin, yes. Commissioner Johnson, Commissioner P, yes. Motion carries. Thank you, Chairman P. Dr. Sullivan. Next on the agenda is fund 177, capital education capital projects fund tab 14.
All right, let's move on to 177. All right, so moving into fund 177. And this revenue uh is again set by um county finance. And so this is something we we work with our county finance office and Michael and his office very
well to to kind of look through and talk through needs. And so in in looking at this, let me get to where I need to be real quick. This has a estimated revenue and expenditures of 19,344,516. There are a couple things I
wanted to to highlight here as we are looking at 177. So, a couple things with fund 177 that I think is good for all of us to to be reminded of of where we've been is that going back several years
ago, we moved several pennies into 177 to be able to address some of our capital projects. Uh we have made progress there, but just like with the county's capital projects, the cost of
labor and the cost of supplies has definitely increased. And so as we make progress, we're kind of like at a status quo. So we've made progress and that list just kind of stays where it is. And we can we'll get to that list um in just a little while. The other parts I want
to talk about is that we it is a a continued area that we focus and have an emphasis on. Um, last year we did move an additional, I believe, 1.4 pennies into Yep, I believe that's correct. Um,
we moved one 1.4 pennies from 141 into 177. And it connects back to what we're going to talk about with maintenance of effort in just a little while. We knew uh in talking with this committee and the full commission that we were going to need additional local revenue to open
the new elementary school. So we moved or this commission approved the movement of 1.4 pennies from 141 into 177. Uh that moved us to 11.4 in cap in this
fund 177 which somewhat offsets what we're going to look at with maintenance of effort in 141. So, I know that's a a connection that I just wanted to highlight because I'm sure we'll have we'll have some discussion over why why is it so essential for the county school system to have an increase in maintenance of effort. This was
something we looked at last year in in moving funds from 141 into 177 was to offset some of that growth. Um, we do have our project list. This is just an estimation of projects. We can just
estimate projects because we do not know what revenue is going to be provided. We are extremely thankful for the revenue that we receive and just like county general projects, it is uh never enough because that list just ever grows with the cost of HVAC ex HVAC exceptionally.
The big things we have been working on are HVAC paving uh and really for us this last year is LED. And so we put we will have all of our LED projects finished at our high school athletic fields by the end of the summer and then
we will start into a three to fouryear transition into all of our inschool lights. Uh we have received almost half a million dollars already in TVA grants uh by putting those in and that helped
us be able to reduce our deficit this year. And so the LED project, without even looking at electricity savings yet, is starting to generate funding that we're able to do to offset our deficit. And so we're excited about that project. And we're also, for commissioners who
have been here, we talked about going to bond and taking a bond out to get funding for it. We talked about going and doing a lease, talked about different kinds of things. And instead, we're using a portion of 177 each year to be able to start doing that ourselves. And it's about a five-year
project. Um, and we've we've done one gear. The other part about 177, we present this, but again, it's just an estimate. We follow all of the procurement and bid process that are required. And so, just because you see
it on here doesn't mean that that is a guarantee that that is what is going to happen because different priorities uh may change over the next year. And so big examples being if we have a chiller or an HVAC system that goes
completely out. Uh we very well may have to go and take care of that chiller or HVAC system to where we were hoping to take care of I'm just throwing two schools completely out. We want to take care of Smyrna Primary but Wilson Elementary completely goes down. Those
are things that we have to go and look to see. We have different priorities and then something goes down we have to go address. Uh but again, we are making progress on where we were 3 years ago. It's just slow incremental progress uh just like everyone else in government
is. And so that's just a little bit of kind of where we are on 177. A couple other questions. I know they've been brought up at budget over the last couple months is we had questions about projects from previous years uh specifically around Oakland
High School, Riverdale High School, Simrna High School, and HVAC. and it was around what happened to funding from previous years that was roughly around $40 million. Um, I want to just state unequivocally that there was no
money that was actually lost. Uh, the numbers that are on this spreadsheet is hypothetical funding that this is what we need to take care of all projects today in year one. We all know that there is no way the county commission can grant $160 million
today to take care of all the the lists that are on this project. So, the things that are highlighted on here, the ones that we are saying are the are the biggest need right now. So, those are the ones that we will address. Um, it's on the very back page. Sorry, the the 177. It should be the list. You guys
should have in a different tab, I believe. You guys have a different tab that has the 177 project list. I don't know that that's in their tab. I can make copies if I need to. It's critical. Does budget have you're
on budget, aren't you? Does budget when when we made the books, I don't think we had that. We we don't have it in not in my copy anyway. I think is a critical component of tonight's conversation. Can we get that? Yep. Uh, no. No one has it.
Very true. I do not know. I don't know if Cody would want us to. Probably not. Yeah, he's gonna go print them real quick and then bring Please use your microphone. I got other stuff that we can keep talking about, too. So, um, he's going to go
print the 177 list. You all are used to seeing the 177 list, and you'll have a copy for you in just a second that shows the highlighted list of here's what we believe are the priorities as of right now. The largest majority of them are going to be HVAC projects, uh, LED, and
then I believe, um, Troy's Air Playground on there again this year. Are we back to playgrounds again? Yeah, we're back to a playground again. We are very specific on Fund 177. Fund 177 does not involve shared pennies. And so, we cannot do painting and general
maintenance out of fund 177. And so it's conversations we have with our principles non-stop about I know that there are things you may want to have to improve your campus, but if it's not a capital project, we cannot do it out of fund 177. And so those are things that
we are constantly looking at. Um, but I did once you get the the sheet here in just a minute, I want to make sure that we're all on the same page. Just because it shows a number in a specific project does not mean that project is funded for this year. The only ones that we are saying is a priority right now are the
ones that are highlighted. If it is not highlighted, it's going to roll to the next year and it'll need to be funded the next year. Most of them are not funded the next year. It rolls to the next one and it just continues to build and we try to take our big projects and
break them apart over multiple years. Um, so that's that's kind of our just general fund 177 of where we are. happy to answer general questions. Um, while we're getting that sheet here, while we're waiting, I do have a question. What is trustees commission?
My favorite one. It is a commission collected by the trustes office downstairs on revenue that flows through their office. Every fund has one, including the county general fund. What that does is that funds the operation of the trustes office. It is a different
percentage based on which revenue it's collected. So sometimes it's 1%, sometimes it's 2% and then certain revenues have they can't collect a commission. That's set by state law, not by the trustes office. So he just follows state law there. Any money that's not spent on his office for
salaries goes back into the county general fund. So you're saying that's how the trustees office runs based on that is correct. Come out of each budget has a percentage. That's what you're saying. Think about sales tax. When we pay sales tax in, let's say we go down to the gas
station and we buy Coke, we pay 9.75%. That money gets sent to the state by that vendor. Once it goes to the state, the t the state takes off their 6%, whatever the state's portion is, but they also take a percentage of our local
portion as a commission for processing that. Once they then do that, they send it two months later. The the person has a month to turn it over to the state. State has a month to turn it over to us. Once they turn it over to us, the trustee takes out his 1% or whatever it
is to run that office to process it. Anything he doesn't use to run his office strictly as part of his budget, any excess goes back to the county general fund. I believe there was close to $8 million put in the general fund from excess trustees commissions last year. Um, but it's required by state
statute and they they set those percentages. So for an example on the re on the expense side, we're paying the trustee 450,000, but it looks like we're going to get back about
63,000 out of Mr. M. Did you have did you need an answer tray? Was that uh Mr. Harris? Yeah. Michael, on school facilities tax, that's a pretty conservative number. That number should be higher. So my question is on this
additional revenue that comes in, will that money stay in 177 or is the schools have the opportunity to spread that? So right now is it is it is there it'll go to the schools. So anything they get any actual will go there. Um right now
the way that's passed 50% goes to 177 another 50% goes to 151. So there would have to be a motion to change that, but they would get extra. Um, as of today, I believe in the book, it's got about we've got a little over 2 million as of today. I believe the book has through
April, but we've collected a little bit in May. So it is conservative, but but yes, any extra over the 1.5, they would get in going 177. So that number is going to fluctuate because it's back in loaded on
collecting, correct? Yes. So it could be a lot higher, it could be lower. It it definitely could. Okay. Thank you. And and and the other thing is I'll add we can address that two ways. One, we could address that this year going in or two
since this will be the first year we've, you know, we had a lot of people pause on paying and they went ahead and paid up front on the old structure. And so you could address it this year or you could wait next year and see how it comes in and address it then and and move it around. I mean, this body uh has ultimate flexibility on where that goes
really um as far as how this body wants to allocate that. Mr. Chairman, can I ask Mr. uh just Commissioner Harris, uh we did hear in public works that that that we've sort of caught up with that
coming in a rears. It's kind of leveled itself. Does that make sense? So, yeah, it's going to be in a rears. But chairman, what he's talking about though is is we did have that one big pause, but now nobody pays on the front and now they pay on the complete back end. So we have caught up to where it's now trickling back in like normal, but I
still think it'll be probably next year before we see that full full effect. Great. Thank you, Craig. Yes, Commissioner Urban. Okay. Just kind of general questions. Is so thank you for clarifying um that this is basically just a list. Does that mean the
calendar? What am I missing? Why Why do we have years up on top in the header? That is for our purposes. That is what we are projecting. So that we have a five-year plan. We have a five-year building plan. This is for us of what we're saying that our projects that if everything is funded right now, this is
what we need for our own planning purposes. Okay. And then the um the kind of the following question is is this intended to be more emergency or just whatever hits the priority list or how is it I'm trying to get a sense for are
there any kind of studies y that would support this and this one's a higher priority than the other because I I get I get I completely understand things like you know ADA and security and roofing. I'm I'm a little less clear on,
you know, things like football expansion and track and playground and things along those lines. Yeah. How how are those items how are they included in the PR? Not to say if they're not shouldn't be, but I'm just saying I get the emergency ones that you got to fund. I'm
not as clear on the other stuff that doesn't quite to be seem to be as how do you prioritize it? Yeah, it goes with a replacement cycle for us of how so our tracks are the big one. Um, so that we have a replacement cycle for when we resurface our tracks because we are looking at a safety concern for our
students at that point so that they can still compete or then we would have to move them off and with our I guess nine high school tracks. Do we have nine Trey? Is that correct? Are nine high school tracks providing the same opportunity for each students um at each one of those playgrounds. We have two
playgrounds and correct me if I'm wrong. at two playgrounds at each elementary school. And so we have a replacement schedule for them so that we have two at each school. Some schools may have more than two and their PTO provides that if they have more than two. Once a school gets to over 1,200, uh we sometimes
we've had two of those where we look to add a third, but we have a a cycle for replacement. So it's the there's a structure for how we're replacing playgrounds. I mean, I know that may seem crazy to to look at for HVAC, but it's if it was provided with the school
and we built the school, then we're maintaining that instead of letting like the track or the playground get into disrepair because that can happen very quickly if we're not maintaining them. And it's uh the the part of the priorities truly goes with we have HVAC
is the easy one. We have HVAC techs and we have testing on our HVAC systems and the age of our systems um truly goes through which ones are in the worst shape of the worst and trying to maintain them as long as possible to keep them working. So HVAC is where you see the biggest one. And we've been able
to to tackle some of that, but it's it's nowhere near where it needs to be. And that's really this was Trey started doing this. How many years ago has it been now? Five years ago. so that the commission would have an idea and a plan of what we are looking at so that nobody
was ever caught off guard of why your facilities in the shape they're in. We're all aware that this is where we are and we're we're trying to fund them the best that we possibly can and everyone's working together to do it knowing that the county's facilities have the same type of issues. It's it's not just unique to the school system.
And the question similar on gym floors and they run you cycle cycle through them. Yes. Yep. every two years for a wax for a screen. Um, but only doing the all the way down to the floor every 25. Yep. Every 25 all the way down. So,
we we have systems for that. The part about revenue, Commissioner Harris, I believe if it goes above that amount, we would have to come back and ask to take it out of fund balance. It would require a board of education amendment and then a full health and ed budget full commission once that extra revenue
that's not on here goes for us to do a project out of fund balance though. So that extra funding would require commission approval. Quick question on your HVAC priorities? Yes. Was not the Oakland Annex HVAC included in the
funding for it? It was not. And that was something that Commissioner Irvin brought up on the floor for those and something we've talked about extensively. He brought that up in March, April or May of whatever of 2023 whenever we discussed that uh for HVAC for Oakland and
Riverdale and Smyrna to go ahead and include all of these projects. Um didn't have a whole lot of discussion around it because we were trying to hit I think the commission was trying to hit an overall dollar figure. So it was not included in that. So, it's built, but there's no HVAC. This is No, these are
the current annex because we already have a current annex. Oh, the current one, not the new one. Not the new one. That's what I was getting some clarity on. Thank you. Yeah, great question. And those annexes were built 90. Yeah. Yeah. 2008, the last part. Yeah.
And you'll see where it says approved. This is just where we're saying it's approved. Like this is where so principles can see this list. This is what they've all talked about and we're saying this is all we can afford to fund this year. So Lever High is a good example. They need a $5 million HVAC.
We're going to do about 500,000 of it so we can start piecing together that entire one. And we do that across the board. Um OS annex 3 million. It's 1 million. We need at RHS three and and 500,000. So we're piecing together based on what type of shape they're in.
resulting in a $19 million estimates for for line item and any if there's fluctuations to 177 what we will do is it'll it'll come off of these projects so there's a that way people can see like it's truly comes off one of these is there
another question Mr. Chairman. Yes, ma'am. Um, and you're still anticipating these um purchases of portables, movement of portables. So, we have to move them to new sites and I am happy to 30 at
56,500 I guess each. Is that what you're saying there? Or is that I'm just looking at a line item. It says portables 30 at uh 6,500. Is that new portables or is that HVAC for
portables? What? I was just trying to get some clarity on that. Trying to find where it is. At the bottom of of HVAC in the middle of page one. Yeah, that's H. Yes, that is your HVAC for your portables. That's HVAC. Okay. Thank you. And I am happy to report thanks to this commission support and the board's um
vision and our staff um we will be able to get rid of portables, some of them for the first time. And I don't I don't know if that's happened. Um, but we will be removing some portables. Um, some we will be moving, but some I'm not
sure we'll be in the shape to move when we start to move them. And so I don't know if we'll have a bonfire or what at that point, but uh we are excited that when we can give you a list of portables that we're able to actually get rid of. That's that's a big celebration because I know some of you have been on the commission for a long time and never
been able to see that number reduce. I'll address health and ed. We've heard uh 19 million some odd dollars for fund 177. Had some discussion. I'll entertain a motion for or against or revise.
Just to clarify, you said it'll be portable movement as opposed to portable replacement. That's just the HVAC portion. I'm turning right here on this second page. Trey is coming up here.
It's hard for me to see, too. It's tiny. Tiny. Oh, this is roofing. This is roofing. 20 $10,000. Yeah, that's roofing at our portables. That's just portable. It's so tiny. And none of those Thank you. Yep. And that's not approved, so it's not going to be funded this year. All right. Thank you. Yeah.
So, I will entertain a motion here. I'll move to uh approve fund 171 new 177 as presented. Thank you. Second by Mr. McMurray. Any further discussion?
question is the motion for the 19.3 or the 19.9 is it the we're looking at the budget that the mayor recommended. Is that what it is? It's the 19.34 344 516. Thank you.
Call the roll, please. Commissioner Boyd. Yes. Commissioner Davidson, yes. Commissioner Guch? Yes. Commissioner McMurray? Yes. Commissioner Oliver? I. Commissioner Wilson? Yes. Commissioner Dodd? Yes. At this time, I'm going to ask the
budget committee if you would like to address uh this tonight or will we move it to the 29th? Uh let me see a show of hands of budget people that would prefer to move this to the
29th. I see one. And I assume that the rest of you would just assume address it tonight. Uh therefore I'm opening up to discussion on 141 excuse me 177 the capital project.
I'll say that um if the one member in uh asks questions and feel comfortable about it uh tonight we can do it tonight. If not if he needs more time I would suggest that out of courtesy we wait until the 29th.
Thank you commissioner. Uh, Commissioner Irving, uh, you're the gentleman that raised your hand. Are there specific questions you'd like to look at tonight or you just need more time to go over this? I know that some of this is new information to us. Yeah, some of it, which I just received, for
example, Friday, and so I would like additional time. I may or may not have additional questions, but until I actually go through and do the analysis, it's kind of hard to say. I've heard from our vice chairman that uh he would allow this to go to the
29th. Uh do I hear a motion to move this 177 to the 29th? So moved. I have a motion to move it to the 29th. Do I hear a second? Chonto second it. So I have a motion to second. Any
discussion? Call roll, please. Commissioner Piery, yes. Commissioner Serero. Commissioner Gu, yes. Commissioner Harris, yes. Commissioner Irvin, Commissioner Johnson, Commissioner P. Yes. So, we'll address
177 fund on the 29th. I think this is what we've done the last three years as well. Is it expectation to do the same presentation or just to address questions? How would what would you guys like? No, I would I would not anticipate having to do the same presentation. Just want to make
sure. Y Yeah. Uh he had to step up for a moment. If you would continue with 141. All right, let's roll through to 141. So 141 first. Um, I know that overall this part probably doesn't
necessarily matter to the commission, but I believe in transparency. So, it's something I think is important. Anytime that your budget number just keeps getting larger, I like to address it. And so, this budget number, if you look at it from the last three years, yes, it's increasing because we're a growing
district. TISA has also increased funding, but there are two state grants very similar to grants that the county commission receives or the county government receives that makes your budget look like it is getting much larger than it truly is. Uh you will see
as we talk the education freedom act that the governor passed last year that has a $2,000 bonus for each teacher that taught for us this year is included in this. Um, so that's over a $9.3 million increase in revenue and expenditures.
That is a one-time bonus that makes your budget almost go up 1.8% because of just one increase. The second one is still innovative schools model grant that started last year, actually two years ago at this point. That was over $17
million that we received. And so those two together are over $25 million that is running through our county school system, but does not have a necessarily a reoccurring cost to it once the grant is used or is funded by local tax base.
So that that number will start to to lessen. But when you look at that number and you go how to go from 518 to 581 in just a couple years, you've got 25 million of it that is increased due to state grants, which we are glad to have that increased funding. Um, but when that number starts to go large, it just
it it's something I always think is good to bring up. That's just me going over it. Just that's just me talking. Uh, just when you see go and you look like four years back and you go, how'd you go from 518 to 581? What happened? Quick quick question. Is that a one time? It is. It's a one time. Okay. onetime bonus for
the teachers basically. It's not something that's going to keep recurring. So we as of right now, yes. Okay. It would be the governor's allocation in his budget. Yes. And I'll go over a little bit more of that in just a minute, too. Yes. All right. So, let's talk about fund 141 and then we'll get really into the specifics with fund
141. So, I'll just talk in generalities first. Overall revenue is 573,385,825 and then it has expenditures of $581,343,45. It is a deficit of 7.9 7,957,222. I do want to compare that a little bit to where we were last year.
I'm trying to find where I was. And so this is just the last two lines because anytime you see a deficit, I think it's good to just just compare. Last year the county school system was an 11.3 million deficit um for due to charter school
upfront funding. This year we're at a $7.9 million deficit and similar type situations of funding um but also for other budgetary requirements. So the deficit is less than it was last year. Uh, so I do think that is something that
we always want to try to highlight is we're we're working to try to always utilize revenue as best as possible. What was the deficit the year before your zero? Do you remember? Zero. What what deficit did you inherit your first 28
million 3 years ago then zero then 11.3 then 7.9. So an 11 point it would have been zero last year if not for upfront projected enrollment cost. And so we we've talked about this year for
three years being the year that with this body this was the year that we knew with opening a new school would be the year that we wouldn't be able to maintain that. So just wanted to kind of highlight that a little bit. And so now we'll move a little bit further into
141. So, uh, the biggest part of our budget, and I I'm gonna hit staffing first because staffing is the biggest part of our budget, is around our staff. And so with staffing, I think it's important to
talk about growth positions. And so growth positions, we fund with reoccurring funds. We don't fund growth positions with what we had with ESSER funds as much as possible. And if we do, we have to roll those in and take that into account. Even though BP does not
exist, that is still the basis for how we grant positions. We in our central office really have a separation of powers for granting positions. Um, and it keeps us to make sure we are very conservative and responsible with our
positions. Our chief academic officer, Dr. Chastain, is the one that grants positions. Dr. Anthony and HR post the positions and then I have to sign off on the positions. And so without the three of us, a new position or a transferred position cannot be granted. And I know
that may seem crazy for a district our size, but that is how we track positions down to the individual person's name. And for a district over 6,400 employees strong, uh we truly track each individual. As I mentioned in opening Popular Hill Elementary School, we
transferred teachers from Stewart's Creek Elementary School, from Browns Chapel Elementary School with our resoning for the high schools. We transferred teachers all over the place instead of granting new growth positions. And you're going to see that here when we go over our growth positions in a little while. And it
takes again all three of us to sign off on that to be able to approve. Uh I think that's just a good separation. our example. So in K6 really it's in K3 we go to 1 to 20 is how we fund a
position and when we grant a position in 3 through six it goes to 1 to 25 7 to 8 we go to 1 to 30 but this is just kind of our an example and then 9 to 12 we go to 1 to 22.7 because you have to include CTE a little bit more is it 25 7 to 8 I
have 1 to 25 because CTE can't has to stay 1 to 25 in some of your courses. You have some waiverss you can go 1 to 30. I have the smallest example on there though because some do still have to stay at 25, but your state requirement for 7th through 9th grade or 7th and eighth grade is still 1 to 30 and our
schools roll right up into that limit and we don't give you another position until you get to that which can be very frustrating for some of our principles and I understand that. Um, but that is each teaching position you're looking at when you're looking at salaries, benefits, you're in 70 75,000 with benefits. And so each position is
something we look at constantly. The next part we kind of wanted to highlight is what we look to do with our staffing this year. And it's important to highlight back to how we are looking at our increases. We are under the deadline for next year. We
have to be at the beginning teacher salary of 50,000. We are in good shape, but we're not as in good a shape as our neighbors. Most of our neighbors are already at 50,000 for their beginning teacher salary, but we're pretty close and we will get even closer this year.
And so you will see it started in May 2023. You have to have a 50,000 minimum salary. We have talked about this for the last three years. Uh it's what we've been trying to get to. This year we have a 2.5% COLA increase. So we'll get to 49,56481. Part of TISA funding has a
required um aspect that has to be allocated to teacher salary increases. And I think that's very good for everyone to know. And so we get questions about what are you doing with your TISA funding? Last year, for example, six million of our t additional TISA funding was set out from
the commissioner of education that said has to go to teacher salary increases to be able to generate towards um to get to that 50,000 number. Then the classified staff, the 2.5% coal increase for classified staff
as well. They will go from657 to 1699 uh for the lowest salary grade level for employees and that's your custodians and that al that does include a 1.6% step every single year and so if somebody is
at an R101 and they go to R102 there is a 1.6% increase every single year. That is kind of how our salary schedule works and we set that in place a couple years ago. So that's that's where our expenditures with staffing. The next
thing I want to talk about and you all have a copy of this is our growth positions and our growth positions for opening a school are are minimum. And there's a couple places I just you don't have anywhere to transfer from. So
you'll see PH3 that is an accounting code. This is Popler Hill. And you have four regular instruction teachers. That is a music teacher, an art teacher, and two PE teachers. And those are our growth positions. We have two instructional coaches at each school, an
academic interventionist at each school, a behavior interventionist. We then have our vacant positions out beside it, special education EA in the different account codes beside it. School nurse is an area that we are probably with our first amendment. Um and actually
probably in July with our school board going to have to add more positions for. Uh that is one an unfunded kind of mandate that we have from the state department is to hit a certain target with school nurses and we are under that. They passed it last year once our
budget was already finished. Uh we need to add between three and six additional nursing positions. Again, we'll do this through an amendment. And the way we will get the funding for this is we have done exceptionally well with some of our testing and we are going to be able to
freeze. When I say freeze, it's freeze for a good reason, not because we're in a budgetary issue. We're going to be able to freeze hiring um some of our teachers in um English as a second language because we've we've exited students who have tested English
language proficient. Not for any reason other than student. It's not because students are moving. Let me clarify this. It's not because students are moving out. Not because students aren't supposed to be have no clue of that. It's because we have done very well preliminarily on our results of the
number of students who have shown English language profic proficiency. And if you have one to you have to have one teacher per 35 students or Yes. And so we have quite a few teaching positions over the next couple years in ESL if we
continue to perform well that we'll be able to to move into the next uh middle school as well. So there there's some good news there. But you'll see that over the next and our board you guys are sitting here. We'll have to make some modifications for nursing positions as as we kind of move forward with some of
that funding. But we have one three school nurse nurse positions, two school counselors, social worker, um a speech pathologist, a media specialist for the new school, nine library EAS. The big request from our high school media specialist was to have an EA to help
with laptops. And so we have our media specialist librarians at the high schools. They have two media specialists. Our middle schools have one media specialist and an educational assistant. Our high schools have requested an educational assistant
because they're charged with the inventory of every one of our computers and the libraries. And so this was the highlighted position that we highlighted as a need for our district, especially with what all we've done with technology. You have a science social
studies specialist. This is a central office position that currently exists. It is in federal right now. Um it is the one position we have still in federal. There have been discussions about having federal funds cut in this line that she's in. Instead of having to worry
about that, we went ahead and put it in 141 um as a very valuable aspect of our um team and I wanted to make sure that we weren't sitting here in October having to come back and amend a position in. The next ones are a little bit weird. You see a half a records clerk is
for our legal department. But then you'll see a principal, a half, a bookkeeper, a full one, an assistant principal, 0.25, a secretary, a 0.5. That is for our next new school. So Popular Hill Middle School. That school will not open until August of 26, but we
go ahead and start that principal's position in February of 26, so they can start hiring their staff. Secretary and the principal start in February. The assistant principal starts in May. And so that's why those positions are not full-time um positions. You've got your
attendance secretary, an accounting tech, a part-time admin assistant, custodians, a sped busy aa a aid, transportation admin assistant, and then voluntary prek, it's 38.25. Um, and if you go back and look
at where we have been over the last couple years, that number is decreasing year over year over year for growth positions because we are trying to transfer positions that we have instead of adding positions. Uh, and that's that's kind of where we are growth
positionwise. Next, I wanted to go over year-over-year changes, something that um, Commissioner Phillips uh, we always talk about. So, these are just our big accounts and then we can go individually um if there's some that we want to look at, but there are some big accounts codes that I want to talk
about. And these are we're going to look at our account codes first. We're going to look at regular instructions 71100. And I'm just looking at the page that shows the fiscal year amount 25 278 million and then fiscal year 26 amount 297 million shows a $19 million
difference. and then 6.9%. And if you look at this initially, you're like, "This isn't sustainable." And I would agree completely. But this has the $9.3 million for stipens that I talked about earlier. So, this has the $2,000 teacher bonus that was part of
the governor's education saving freedom account or savings account. That is a one-time bonus for teachers that is included in this. and then it has your 2.5% raise included as part of the
regular instruction line. The other part of that difference, again I mentioned last year when we got it from the commissioner of education, over $6 million had to go to teacher line increases for salary. That is where this goes to. Uh the part that I'm worried
about is not sustainable is not your teacher salary line items. It's the part that we have cut for our deficit to lower the deficit. We don't have funding in here for textbooks. We don't have funding in here for computers. Two, three years down the road, we're going to come to this again to where we're
going to have to have a healthy fund balance or we're going to have to increase maintenance of effort to be able to fund textbooks and computers. And so, this last year, we were able to do that at a fund balance. In a couple years, we're going to have a social studies adoption, and it's going to be time for new high school computers
again. And so we've been able to do that at a fund balance. That's not necessarily going to be an option. So we're always looking at those, but it's something we're we're just always we had our leadership meeting today and we started talking about next year's budget already. Dr. Svin, I think mayor wanted
to jump in on that two years from now. Thank you for Dr. Sullivan for that. So you're telling us in two to three years, you can ex you're we can expect you to come back and say, "Hey, we need laptops. We need textbooks. It's coming. Do you have a way of knowing what you
know today about where we're going to be two year two or three years from now quant quantifiably what that number might look like? 20 million for textbooks and computers which is unbelievable to think that's how much textbooks cost. 20 million for textbooks and computers and computers. Yep. Thank you. And we should be able to to knock
that number down. Like any extra funding we get, we go towards computers. We go towards textbooks. But total and this depends on this says the state department follows their guideline but 20 million roughly for when you say knock that number down give me million
here two million here if we where's that million here two million there come from that you're able to knock that down typically where where would you find that extra revenue that the state we had er funding then if the state gives you extra revenue funding in different places that is what we the last couple
years we have taken amendments to to our school board and then to the commission to start addressing 3,000 computers here, 2,000 computers here to be able to knock that down as much as we can. Thank you. But it's it's just being transparent of where we are. We have we have lowered it to be able to the last couple years to
get to it. We did an amendment last month, Mayor, I think 6.9 million for science books that they pulled out of fund balance. Yeah, Mr. Chairman, if I could ask briefly the other than textbooks and computers, is there anything else like that on the horizon
that we could be anticipating now as opposed to, you know, kind of a last minute? Yeah. You know, and that could be any and we we can set a threshold, you know, three or four million dollars if you want to. But is there anything else out there that we could be
anticipating now like that? Just with us the last couple years holding to maintenance of effort. Um we have been absorbing all of the increased electricity cost any extra cost we've been absorbing while still growing. And
so there's we're out of ability to be able to absorb extra costs. Um so all of our funding and the commission has done an amazing job because y'all have funded our building program. We have been extremely aggressive in funding buildings and uh and that's what we
needed and as we continue to move forward hopefully that will start to slow some. We've I've compiled a little bit of a five-year plan um to present to the board just looking at a next steps and I and it's just initially looks
pretty substantially less than what ours did a couple years ago. And so I'm hopefully some of that funding will be able to shift into 141. But could it be like Mr. Irvin, could it be the the new high school coming on board? Could could be something that we don't have necessarily. a new high school coming on
board is well it would be it would be great to have a a more sol little more solid at this point fivey year four year three year whatever capital projects type thing I was being looking more at the personal property side you know like a a book a tech you know something along
those lines so that we're not surprised by a $6 million at the end of the year textbook request anything along those lines is what sorry to interrupt Mr. Sure. And we've been discussing that one um for
Yes. And textbooks is all dependent on when the state department of education changes their cycle. Um so if they change their cycle, then we are at their whim of whenever they change their cycle to. Right now it's supposed to be in two years. They could push it to three or four or whenever they want to, which is
very frustrating. But I know at health and ed, Mr. Irvin, we have uh been prepared for for instance textbooks and computers both. Two years ago, two two two and a half years ago, we were anticipating the 6.9 whether it came
from whatever source because they acknowledged it on their budget two years ago that they cut it and so we when we saw it in fund balance, they were able to pull it. So, but to to Commissioner Irvin's point,
are there any other you have uh recurring textbooks on some yearly rotation that's somewhat arbitrary, but you can anticipate it? Uh computers you continue to use to to do a a a rotation of sorts that you anticipate and have shared with health and ed. Are there any
other items on that you know are coming that are on a three or four year basis and are they in your line of thinking out three or four years potentially what our school board decides with um we have two charter schools so projected enrollment for charter schools anytime they grow is something we look at uh
next ones are anytime we open a new school as you open a middle school and a high school those costs are larger than opening an elementary school and so those are your next big thank you and thank you commissioner Irvin did did I weigh to Miss Oliver.
Relative to textbooks, has there ever been any discussion about online or virtual textbooks since you're getting laptops or computers anyway? Same price. They're the same price. They include the digital with the textbook and charge you the exact same price. So, Mr. Von, the board brings that up every time. And
it's it's astounding the price. And it's all through the Tennessee textbook um company is their name. And it's $150 or $160 a piece per kid. and we are statutoily required to have access for every kid. And when you're our size, it
is a fortune. Commissioner Wilson. Thank you, Chairman. Since we're having this conversation, we're talking about expenses that may come up on us next year. Um, we're currently under contract. Is that right? Doing due diligence on a Lee Road property. Is that right? So, the purchase for that
and the estimated price, is that something where is that money going to be asked to come from? Because if we're talking about $6.9 million for textbooks, we may be looking at a land purchase we're going to be asked for in a few months. That's more than that. And that would be coming up. That's been what, two months now? About a month.
Yes. So we're are we just we're just three or four months away from actually if it tests out correctly purchasing that. So that is something you're planning on asking us for. So there is something coming that we're not talking about. Just make sure you knew that. That probably is more than the textbooks. Got that at the end to
discuss. So exactly right. I just I haven't we haven't talked about that very much, but it seems very relevant to our conversation right now. And I think that there may be a more an appropriate we definitely come back to that, but I don't know if we we may be kind of off of this table. Dr. Sulliv, do you
want to Yeah, I'll keep going. The opportunity to to to drill into to that. We'll go towards the end is when I plan to bring it up. Okay. Thanks for bringing it up, Commissioner Wilson. We will come back to that. You have a huge increase it looks like for 71150 alternative instruction. It's
a million-doll increase, but this truly deals with coding. So, we have opened Simon Springs Community School and the EAS and teachers that were previously spread throughout the county at our behavior intervention
classrooms were coded as special education teachers. They are now in alternative school which is how Simon Springs is coded. And so those have to be reclassified into an alternative school setting. And so that is a coding
change when you are moving from special education to alternative instruction. And so it truly has to do with how the school is coded and how the teachers have to be coded in moving those employees from one setting into the
next. Special education instruction you see is a huge other port portion of our budget. Uh that again follows with our 2.5 kind of percent increase and staffing. Attendance has a 5% increase.
It is only $94,000 of an increase. We hope to be able to have an a change in student information systems over the next year. We anticipated having a change from Skyward, which is our current vendor, to either stay with Skyward's new platform, or go go to a
new vendor. The state changed their RFP and re-released their RFP. And so it got pushed back an additional year. And so this helps pay for part finishing skyward for this year. and then the transition period for
the next year for a new vendor. Health services is looking at three additional nurse positions and again this will be one that we probably have to come back and amend. And then contracted services we are requesting a lightning detection system. Um
Murphy'sboro Parks and Wreck had it has it. It is uh most of our counterparts have it. is coming from our coordinated school health and our athletics department requesting this to be able to track athletics and lightning so that if we have lightning like you see with
colleges and professional if you have lightning within seven miles everybody automatically knows you have to stop. Um I don't necessarily love a cost increased and it is not a million dollars whatsoever but when you are I think it's was 100 you remember is it
100,000 a little bit under and but when you have multiple facilities across the county and coaches and umpires making that call I want to reduce the liability on us and say that no there was a lightning strike within 8 miles you are stopping right now. um that just
decreases our liability and make sure that we are doing exactly and having a data point. Other student support you'll see additional growth positions for Popular Hill for school counselors and social workers. It says increase to SRO's for
school security. So we pay overtime for our SRO's if they're doing school events and we pay this out of our central office accounts down to the schools. We require them to have a certain number of SRO's at our athletic events. Uh we
dictate that and normally our schools have to pay for that out of their basketball, football, soccer accounts. Um but when we are dictating how many they have to have, we do give each school a $10,000 at our high schools and a smaller amount for middle schools that helps offset some of the cost. um with
some of your your rivals and you've we've had incidents not necessarily in our county, but in other counties and across the nation or other states across the nation to where you've had large incidents without the number of traffic control and police presence that you needed at athletic events. We just
worked with our sheriff's department and said, "How many do we need to have at each each school?" And so that's what we do. So we help cover the cost of that. Instructional support is our a lot of our um contracted stuff that we do with
our central office and our employees at our central office. You'll see special education is a decrease because we moved four positions to federal. Going down, you see board of education. Um I want to spend some time here because if you look at this and go, what is the board of education doing for 66.8% increase? Uh
this is connected to the amendment you all approved earlier. So this is truly moving the money that we talked about earlier today in that first budget amendment where you had to move from one line to the next. This is that same
exact thing of we are changing. And if you look at the very bottom of trying to find that actual account 99100 at the bottom you'll see in fiscal year 25 we budgeted 11 million. This was
charter schools and then this year we are removing that and it shows a minus 100. 5 million of that went up into this account for charter school payments. This is just where the auditor wants it to be. But it makes it look like the
board of education's line just blew up to pieces. Um and it did not. Office of Superintendent, we are adding a records clerk. Uh we have a records um our we have two general counsels. One general counsel deals with basically discipline
and school requests all day. And then we have a special ed attorney and then all schoolboard items are handled by Mr. Reid, our schoolboard attorney, but kind of our in-house. Our records person is the new person would handle all of the open
records requests that we get and all of our video requests that we get from buses, parents want to see video, discipline requests. We get to see videos quite a bit of that. You'll see office of the principal. Uh I had a comment earlier from someone said, "Is
the additional principal, the AP and the secretary getting $ 1.9 million increase?" Uh no, they are not. This is the entire line is a $ 1.9 million increase, which includes all of your principles, your secretaries, your assistant principles, your bookkeepers.
They are all with their 2.5% COLA increase and their three uh new positions with that fiscal services and human resources. This was just a trade-off between these two. We moved benefits from human resources to
underneath Mr. Renan. And then operation of the plant, maintenance of the plant, we reduced that to be able to cut our budget. Transportation you see is a 22% increase. That is our bus contractor 17% increase plus $4,000 stipened and then
one additional transportation growth position. And then you kind of see down loan paid that we had two that fell off. And that gets us um if you'll see flip over to the next page. This is just our revenue. You'll see a lot of our revenue
that was changed. Wh I thought I had I don't have include that one on there. Um, but you have the additional revenue sheet that shows the additional revenue from coming from local option sales tax and that 2.9 million is is really essential to us over maintenance of
effort for generating to open the new school and it does offset what we talked about with needing that for really the last two years. Uh, we have decreased it. I want you all to know that we started with Brian. How big was our
deficit when we started? 17 million. So it was over 17 million when we started um cutting and that was before the transportation uh portion of 6 point something increase. So it increased to about 23 or 24 million and
so we have gone through and tried to to remove every little thing. We have removed a lot of vacant positions. So where we used to have I hate to say just areas that may have been inflated to show that oh maybe there's 20 extra teaching positions here those type of
extra teaching positions aren't there. So we are truly as lean as you possibly can be in what is presented for you. So where we have been able to build fund balance the only extra place to build fund balance is going to be if revenue comes in higher. It's not going to necessarily come from expenditures. Uh
when Michael and I were talking about like where do you feel safe? I said I feel I'm at about a three% of what I have that I don't expect to spend if you spend these lines. And at that big of a budget, you're still looking you're still looking at a couple million dollars, but
that.3 is a scary area to look at at a $581 million budget. I mean, I know it's it may seem strange. Many of you all of course doing this together know me very well for the director of schools to present all of this. Uh I trust Brian but it is something that is important to
me and our staff knows this. Uh I'm involved dayto-day with our budget because it's so big and I feel like it's essential and so that is it's not my lack of confidence for Brian why I present it. I want you all to know this is how invested I am in day-to-day into our budget and I'm happy to answer any
questions around kind of where we are or anything about this. Mr. Chairman, this on the account variances is that where we'll and then but if you you Okay, Mr. Irvin, please. Thank you. Um,
what was the average daily membership for this past fiscal year? have adm second talking about the funding level or how many basically the ADM for he's asking your ADM I think you submit to the state. Yeah. Give me just a second.
Yeah. Number of kids the actual number. Yep. I'm pulling up the latest that was sent. 51608. And then how much growth was there this year compared to end of last year?
So last year we ended the year. Let me get you that real quick. Tell you how we what we are funded on last year. And that 51608 is an a March preliminary number or an April preliminary number. So it's still going to fluctuate a
little bit, but it's it's where we are right roughly a month ago from the state department. And then let me tell you what we got funded on last year. Second, it's easier. I have more internet service on this. 50,751.
50,751. Okay. And please explain for the public that your accurate. So, I'm looking at average daily membership, which is how many kids that we have enrolled. So last year was 50,751 was our final number and then right now is
51,68.59. Um that number will still go up some because this is not including we normally grow still in March, April and May. Okay. And and that's fair. So, so what's your annual ADM growth projections for the next three
years? Um, based on three years growth and current changes, things like charter schools and vouchers coming online and yeah, all of that. I'm trying to the kind of what I'm trying to get at is the projections as well as um have you
factored in these thing in these items um that could decrease enrollment have an impact on it uh in your in as part of your request for growth this year and going forward? I don't I know there's
been some conversation about uh about vouchers impacting our school system. I don't anticipate that. I've talked with our um local private schools and so we've there has to be open seats and there's not necessarily open seats right
now at at ours. Um so some of them are growing but you still have to be able to have open seats and that's not necessarily the the availability. Uh you will see on our five-year plan we are not going to be requesting necessarily new elementary school in the next 5 years because that's where our charter
schools are. um our growth at the high school this last year was over 3% and unfortunately there's not a lot of of charter authorizers at the middle and high school level. Um there's not a lot of it it costs a lot of money to educate high school students and so it's just
it's it's hard to replicate that and so you'll see our model start to reflect that as well. uh our growth uh to project it out part of it really depends on what we see this summer with English as a second language. I just don't know
um what that I think that's a fair question. I don't know and that is also why we've started to really decrease some of ours. Um but I've I've also heard that argument of you're going to lose students um because of of the education savings account. You are still held true by the number of kids that you
have. and we still grew even with charter school students this last year. I don't have any reason to believe that won't still happen um these next couple years as we are starting and we talked about this with health and ed uh and with our board. What we are seeing is a
lower growth at the elementary level because of the cost of housing and so we are noticing a larger increase of middle and high school students because it costs more. you also have a lower birth rate and so there have been less um babies born and so we're having more kids move into the middle and high
school level and that's why you have your high school editions or five-year plan is going to include high schools and so that's that's where we're seeing the growth now to where 5 10 years ago was the elementaryaries did you use did
you use a number something close to 52,000 for next year is that yes yeah and we include prek as well so the numbers I gave of you were just kindergarten through 12th. When we're including prek, we're closer to 53,000. So about 527 528.
That's that's this coming year. Yes. Y because I gave you we are funded strictly on our kindergarten through 12th grade students. We do receive federal funding and some other funding for prek students that we serve and we serve about 900 uh to a,000 prek
students as well for special education in some other areas. So they're three and four year olds and some 5-y olds, but they are not included in funding from the state in that 51,600 number. Okay. 528 and then you're going any projections beyond that about one and a
half to where we've been doing two three um about one and a half unless something changes 1500 is are you saying percentage? I would hope 750 750 kids. Okay. which is different than what we
have been at. Uh we have been between just 3 years ago we were at 2200. Uh then we've been we've roughly been 1,000 to,500 forever. And so I'm I am hopeful if at 750 and I hope I'm not wrong. And I've seen it or Commissioner Irvin I've
seen we've probably used a two and a half% average over or to three over the last 25 years before my even before my time. I hope I'm not wrong. This 15 is a is lower than I've ever seen. And I very well could be wrong because that's the lowest that I I know it. Did you Mayor
Carr, did you want to comment on this EDM top? I'm sorry. Did you want to comment on this EDM topic? Well, I I wanted to follow if I could, uh, Mr. Chairman, with Commissioner Irvin's remark about what you're seeing is the growth trend because I'm interested in
what the budget looks like 2, three, four years from now. And if I heard you right, you were saying that the growth for K through three is slowing down rather dramatically. And indeed kindergarten and maybe first grade,
you're actually seeing negative enrollment year-over-year. Just recently, you attributed to that, if I understood you correctly, to the demographics of people are not having kids, right? Some degree. Yes. My question is if if that's the case
then in 8 6 8 10 years from now these kindergarters and first graders are not going to require the same potentially resources that we may be having feel like we need to build for now would that be true
if it stays slow. So what we notice is our kindergarten has decreased 8 to 10 kids the last 5 years. Um, and for a district our size 8 to 10 is not a not a whole lot of kids, but we have gone from about 3,000 kids down to like 2940. And
it's it's just slowly declining. But by the time you get to fifth grade, you're back over 32 or 3,300 kids again. So, we're picking kids up somewhere during that one through five level, but the number of kindergarteners are dropping. And so, it is a it's a unique it's
unique. Um, but you you also said, I'm not trying to I'm trying to understand your remarks. I'm trying to graph this out in my mind. If three years ago the school population was growing 2,000 plus students a year and we were in a significant challenge about where we're
going to put these kids, but now you're projecting a growth total growth rate of about 750 kids. Is that correct? Next year. Yes. Yeah. So, do you see that trend line continuing to go in a southernly direction? I will know more
in October when I get our new So, we contract with uh um RSP who is runs all of our numbers for us as well and gets all of it from the um census bureau and all of our planning committees to get all of the information and so they they
track it for us as well. Perfect. Do do they provide to uh tools so that you can predict what the in potential enrollment will be five and 10 years from now based on that historical and national and regional
data. Do they provide those numbers for you? I can send you the report. That would be great. Thank you. And I've seen those that information show in the five-year plan too, Mr. Mayor. and that the school board will adjust their five-year plan based on those enrollment numbers, too.
And Mr. Irvin, were you through you were on the EDM topic and talking about the growth rate of 1.5. Did you finish that thought? Oh, yes. I another question. Um, a couple more questions. the um um I want to go to vocational
education and specifically 71300 uh line 730 the the actual is like 1.5 and give me just a second to get there 71300.
Yeah, it's vocation 1.5 is the actual and then if you go over the mayor board recommendation 625 and I'm sure there's an explanation. I just wanted to understand why that's been cut or maybe there's another explanation
I'm just missing. All right, I'm on 71300. Which exact count are you in? Uh 730 line 730. Oh, vocational instruction equipment. Yeah, this is part of your innovative schools model grant and so they have to
be able to utilize all of their funds by September of 26 with an extension and we're applying for some extensions, but that is why you see that amount originally in 2024 was 1.4 and then we amended the budget, the original budget and so you're going to see that number start to decrease. Uh but we may go back
and you have an amendment if there's still funds they decide to spend out of here. But it's part of that $17 million innovative schools model from the governor did in 2023 and and we will continue to be able to provide CT equipment etc. Absolutely. Okay. I just
want to make sure CT is actually and I know this seems crazy but CT is where we put a lot of focus because it generates a lot of money and so we run that part like a business. Um we fund teachers in that to high areas that generate a lot of funding.
Thank you. Um and I had a question. I I the current bus contract is already in here. Yes. Okay. Um as of this date, how many bus contracts do you have executed? And started today and so I will have a I can have an update for you
on Thursday. Okay. Yeah. Because and where where I'm headed with it, you know what is there a drop dead date basically. Yeah. Where you have to make a decision. Yeah. And then if you have to make whichever direction the decision goes either to continue or not. Yep. Then you that has budgetary
implications. So so we can talk about that on Thursday. We can um and really the budgetary aspect would have to come from that transportation line. It would move from other contracted or contracts with private vehicle owners to move to other lines without. So I'm hoping that
we're we'll have most if not everybody in line by Thursday night. Okay. So yeah. All right. I look forward to an update. Thank you. Nobody else wants to believe Chairman P would like to ask a question as well. And I I hope I don't
throw too much of a curveball that this is um kind of a horse of a different color, but in your line item for growth positions uh 72130 under counselors and also social
workers. I I wanted to ask some questions. Our schools are so large now. Um, and this is directly where I'm headed with this. I push to get SRO's in all our schools because I'm worried about the safety of our students. I
think that's paramount. You cannot educate if you don't have a safe system. Uh, I've been doing some research and some reading on school shootings and there's a man that's done
interviewing and he's interviewed all the live school shooters and asked them what could have prevented them from doing what they did. Could anybody have? And they said 100% of them said any one person
could have stopped me by talking to me. And there's instances where people were stopped because somebody said, "Hey, let's go over here and eat lunch together." And most of the times, this guy that's I've been reading
with, he said that almost always the students could tell you this person was a problem. And some of the teachers also could have, but there's a problem with communication and getting this information to where it should be
to prevent this. And the reason I'm bringing up these two positions, I know your counselors when I was in school, basically they were saying, "Hey, what vocation are you going to? Are you going to go to higher education? What's your what's your plan?" But I noticed the social workers
that you've got there. And what I'm wondering is what kind of contact are we able to make with these large campuses with these few people? And how many, for instance, counselors at our major high schools? How many counselors and social workers do we have? Are they able to
interview what percent of the percent of these kids or do they have an open form for the whole campus? Uh can you give me a little background on that? Because it's something that I mean I we spend a lot of money on safety for our schools.
I mean, if you look at Oakland and Riverdale, part of the reason we're doing that is for safety, and it's possible that we can help ourselves if we had more people that could intervene if there are problems. Hopefully, I made myself good. Yeah. So, these two school
counselors are just for the new school. Um, our schools always ask for additional school counselors. Um unfortunately in this highly politicized environment the school council or mental health aspect
has sometimes taken a political front of you don't need to talk to students because that is the not the school system standpoint and fundamentally we would agree that's not something we want to do but ultimately if a kid doesn't come to school ready to learn and can't
learn is disrupting other kids and we've got to do something if it's disrupting the safety. So that is that is a narrative that we've as a school director I don't necessarily like to battle but it's something that we've had to battle um to say that if a kid comes
to us in crisis we still have to pro provide support um with parental involvement of course um so I know that's not kind of what you asked but that that just gives you some context that it is a a highly politicized environment with Well I'm certainly not advocating no yes I know you're not but
I'm just saying that is that's something that we have to be aware of. Um the second aspect of that is we're in better shape than we were a couple years ago, but nowhere near. We added a additional school counselor at all of our comprehensive high schools three two
years ago. Our school board approved that and then the county commissioner approved our budget. So all of our comprehensive high schools um now have five. And our middle schools have most of them. We've tried to get to them to three. And our elementary schools, we've
tried to get them to two. Our ratio is still at the high school level close to 1 to 450 students at Yeah. 1 to 150. 1 to 450. 1 to 450. Yeah. Nowhere near enough. Um at the middle school level, you're a little bit over 1 to 500 at
most of them, unless they have a third. Your elementary can be, if it's a big school, your elementary schools can be even higher than that. So, we try to keep them one to five below one to 500 if at all possible. Um, but it's just like everything else. It's a it's it's
definitely a challenge, but uh I agree with you. So, one person would have to see at least two a day just to get through the number of students that they're Yep. assigned. And the ratio was one to about 600 two years ago. So, we're lowering it, but
it's all right. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Any other questions regarding fund 141 from either committee? Commissioner Oliver, I have some questions. Um, I noticed on several of the line items we have things that are not itemized that
just are listed as others and they're pretty large line items like other salaries and wages, um, other contracted services. I mean can you give us some information on what those are paying for? It would depend on each one. So
first it is start at 71150 other con um that one has a list of other contracting services for example. So what would that other 71150? So first we have to go with whatever the account codes that are
available from the state department. So that is the account codes that are available from the state department that we have to use. And so anything that is in one of those accounts qualifies for other charges or there's nowhere else for it to go. So
let's you may have to pull up access. Y'all need to pull up a spreadsheet. Uh we've been two hours. I'm seeing a little fidgeting. Uh would anyone care to take a two or three minute recess? Five minute recess. Chairman,
grab by me. Just uh show hands. Five minute recess. I'm not seeing raise hands. Carry on. Take your individual breaks if anybody needs to go. They're going to be a moment. I don't have Wi-Fi access, so I'd have to pull up our individual accounts and chart of accounts because
this is requiring us to go into our accounting payroll and pull up individual requirements and accounts. Give me what what account you need. Okay. So 712000 189 other salaries and wages
400,552. I mean other is not itemized. What does that cover? And it's proposed 411,000. Um I just noticed several things on here that are not um again
itemized. Um private contracts $2 million. Um other contracted services, other salaries and wages, uh 1 million 9570. So I'm just curious if you lump things
into other what what is that? So for your contracted services, that could be anything from any vendor that we contract with for let's just say um off the top of my head instruction uh that could be um that the SIS system the
system that connects with the state department. It could be in structure which is a benchmark assessment. It's any vendor that we have that we h we sign a contract with over a year or a
multi-year uh contract. So, it's not broken down because there is probably hundred or more vendors that could be involved in that process. So, that's the reason why we don't break it down and tell you, oh, this vendor is $10,000, this vendor is $100,000, this
vendor is $50,000. So, it's that's what your other contracted services are. That's where we put pretty much any of our vendors. It used to be in a software line, but once I guess Dr. Dr. Felin didn't like it when I did it, but um
because they are contracted services, we don't own the programs. We contract with them to use them. We ended up moving it from the software line into contracted services, but it would have been anything that was software related. A lot of it software related. And then you
know a lot of our security contracts and things like that are are also in other contracted service. Um other salaries and wages. So other salaries and wages could be anything that is not a teacher.
Um it's not a so if you look in 72410 which is your uh principal line item, it will show you a secretaries um bookkeepers. Uh sometimes bookkeepers could also be in a 189 line uh the other salaries and wages because that account
does not have a bookkeeper for a line for it. So we are go what we do is we go off the chart of accounts that the comprollers's office for the state of Tennessee gives us. So some of these line items are not available. So, if you had a specific, let's just say again,
let's go back to bookkeeper, and it's in a different account than our normal secretary or our principal line, we would have to end up putting it in other salaries and wages because the chart of accounts does not have a bookkeeper
line, which is 119, I believe. They don't have that line item available in that specific account. So, we have to enter it in 189. It looks like it's it's other salaries and wages, but it doesn't say it's an exact bookkeeper, but you may have multiple types of people like that in that line. That's the reason why
we don't break it out. Brian, we we're not finished with this, but I think Michael will make he's able to pull up some line items. I have a question. Commissioner Oliver, you ask about 71200, which is special education instruction. That is one of them. Yes, sir. So, just as an example, I'm going to run down
through there real quick. So, you got teachers. That's going to be your sped teachers like normal. That's self-explanatory. Then you're going to have EAS, educational assistants. That's pretty self-explanatory. Speech pathologist. Your other salaries and wages are going to be people like central office special education staff. There's not a line for
them. So they don't get to pick these. We get a list of chart of accounts from the state. So anything that doesn't fit in one of the descriptive line items as far as teachers, EAS, or speech pathologist, they're going to get lumped in other. And so in this case, it's highly I' I'd have to go look at the
names, but it's probably some central office special education staff or let's say somebody that just doesn't fit in a in a in a certain box. The other thing about contract services is for example, you know, we to cut it to county general, you know, they have Crimson Security downstairs that mans the
security desk for the courthouse. They're on our other contracts services line item. So it's it's just any line item they'll tell us to put it there that doesn't have a descriptive. And so for them, it's pretty much going to be central office staff. Um it could be like every once in a while they'll have
a position that maybe touches four or five schools. It could be that. Um but it's required that we use that if they don't fit in another box. If I can add is does does this item others services
etc get scrutinized? Does the school board see the line item depth that Michael sees? I know that we don't often ask for to get that deep into it, but is somebody accountable to observing? Well, keep it keep in mind they're also
audited to when the auditors pull stuff, they're going to make sure they would give us a finding or put in the audit report if we didn't use it's a state law that we use the chart of accounts correctly. And so, just like they wanted us to move that um charter school stuff at the budget amendment you approved tonight, they're going to look through
there and say, "Hey, that doesn't belong there. You need to move it." or if we say no, we're not moving it, they're going to put an audit report and, you know, tell everybody about it. So, um, that's common. You're going to see it across county general as well, across our across our budget. So, so even under
regular instruction, other salaries, I mean, we're looking at 4.5 million. Yeah. And a lot of times that could be some type of a lot of times that central office style staff where somebody that doesn't because 7-Eleven, is that what you asked for? Is teachers or that's the teacher regular instruction category.
And so a lot of times that's going to be some catchall that doesn't have a descriptive. It could be like your athletic director at the central office. There's not a there's not a line item for athletic directors. I'm not saying he's he or she's in there. I'm saying that's an example of I know there's not a Oh, he is in there. Oh, okay. I was
close. It would also be um for example 71100 is an instructional account. It would be pretty much any staff that's under Dr. Chastain which is the well this is 72210 um which that's her account too. Got so it's her staff that's under her
that works at the central office the majority of those. Now there are some in 105 if you look in 722 72 110 105 that would be her salary by by itself and some other some other directors in that department. But if you look specifically
at my account, I can tell you what those are in 189 because I budget them there. Um, if you look at 72510, which is fiscal services in 189, what that is is when Dr. Sullivan presented the changes in the expenditures, that's all benefit
specialists that I took on this year. So, they don't have a line item for benefit specialists. So I have to put them in 189 which is just categorized as other salary and wage because they don't have a specific line but they are central off office office employees as
well. So all right and I had one more question I had marked in here. So you're saying these line items would be an individual's salary at the top of it. Say for instance, let's look at
72620. So the director of the maintenance of the plant would is making $720,000. Yep. So that's actually our that that is Trey salary plus some of his superintendent
that he has underneath him. He has he has project managers and underneath him that also is in that salary line. That's multiple person. Usually usually there is not one line item that has just one
singular person in it. Thank you. Trey's making that. I'm going to I may point. I mean, man. Great questions, Commissioner Oliver. Thank you. Commissioner Piery, if I could, Dr. Svin, let's go back and
visit the the transportation situation with the bus. Yes, sir. There's been some talk about 12 new buses being bought. Is that this budget? Is it coming out of the budget that you're operating out of today? It will come out
of It depends on what we find out on Thursday. So, Thursday is our drop dead budget or drop dead deadline for people to sign contracts. Um I am hoping that I don't have to purchase buses. Um, if we do have to purchase buses, then we will have an amendment that will come out of
this budget, out of the contracted vehicle services. So, it's basically not in the budget we're looking at tonight. It's in this budget, but it's in the contracts with private vehicle owners because if we have 12 if we have to purchase 12 buses, it's going to be
because we had enough contra vehicle bus drivers, contractors not choose to sign their contract. So, the savings is going to come from that. Where is the uh cost at for your drivers, your upkeep for your buses, your insurance to own your
buses, your insurance on your children? Where is that in this budget? Insurance actually comes under our county general insurance. And so that's been your insurance is in your board of education line board of education line. And so it's it's not going to be a a large cost
increase, which has been a a huge point of contention. Um the rest of that will be end up being budgeted amendment from our vehicle contracted owners that we have to amend back in that within this line. Your drivers and will your drivers be treated as part-time or full-time
employees with benefit? We're going to try to start part-time, but I don't believe we'll be able to fill them in talking to other uh counties. And then we'll have to do full-time and hopefully be able to be able to use them as um gone blank cafeteria monitors if to
be able to offer full-time depending on what each route is. Some routes may have to be complete full-time routes and do field trips. It's going to depend on each individual one and where that route is. the numbers I've heard through watching
the uh schoolboard meetings and whatnot. Uh I think maybe 35 was your cut off on having to buy these buses. You're talking about buying 12 buses. How does that math work? 12 buses can't run 35
routes. We will have we have priority lists. So, the rest of those routes will go out to our um current bus transportation contractors who have signed for next year to be able to pick up those additional routes. So, you don't think there's contractors out there that'll take them all? I hope they
will. I also heard the comment made on one of the school board meetings. Go ahead and buy the 12 buses. If we don't need them, we'll just let the schools use them for athletic purposes. would be in a big favor of
that. I think we could probably use the $2 million in this budget somewhere a lot a lot better. That's all I've got to say right now. Mr. Harris, Dr. Svin, uh, help me out here on
special education teachers. Yes. How do you come up with the number of teachers and assistants that you need when you are budgeting for a new school? Is this a state study or are you just basing this all past? Yeah, we have it um based
on the needs of the students and so we already have number of students and which students are going to that school and then we have a preliminary if you have 60 students going there. Um and I don't have the ratio in front of me our sped staff and Dr. Chastain again is the one that does all of the staffing
ratios. But if you have certain number of kids with certain number of option codes then and option codes is the I hate to say the severity of the disability the disability that and the number of service hours that they are receiving each week and it depends all
based on their option code of how many students generate an additional position. So there's 60 in a middle school. So you're assuming 60 for high school if they're in eighth grade and then you're is that how you're coming up with like on high school there's going
to be so many sixth to or eighth graders that's going in high school and it would depend on the high school is going to offer different programs too. And what's the teacher ratio? Is it still 3 to one or special education? Yeah, it's different at each level based on each kid. With TISA there's not a required
teacher ratio anymore, but we do have Do we still have some 1:1 ones? Oh, absolutely. Lots of them. Yes. Yes. Well, that's what I'm trying to understand is how you're budgeting that because that's a it's all based on a fluctuating number. It is because it's all IEP based
and whatever that IEP team decides. It's something that we end up having to fund. But we when a student leaves our district and they have a onetoone, then we move that one to one student to the new or that one to1 EA to a new location. And in what in what middle, elementary, or high school is the most
special ed teachers? It's all the way across the district. It's all the same. Yeah, it's Yeah, we try to offer every program at every school. Campus is different. Um campus doesn't necessarily have every program at their school. Um some of your smaller schools don't, but everyone else
traditionally does. Thank you. Yep. Mr. Irving, um when on Thursday, do you have the data? It won't be till the end of the day because they have to the end of the day to sign. But I can give you an estimate on where we are because as Commissioner Piery correctly pointed out, there's a lot to do in a very short
period of time. Great. If there's not enough um bus drivers that sign up, a lot of decisions have to be made very quickly. So, is it like five o'clock? Not to put a too fine a point on it, but the end of business day. So,
it would be 4:30. Okay. Um, and if I could follow up briefly, um, in 71200, I think you only have one. This is to Commissioner Harris's point, 72 or
71200 one line 163. You have one growth special ed EA and you have no special ed bus EAS. Correct. Yes.
And in order to get the deficit down to where it needed to be, we like we mentioned we cut vacant positions. Um so you will see this has 33 still vacant special education EAS. So to open our new elementary school, we will move vacant EA positions over to the new
school and Dr. Chastain handles all the transfers of positions for bus aid pos. We have more than four vacant bus pos and this was pulled back in March. Um but we're not requesting any growth, but we are going with four vacant right now to be able to lower the deficit. And and
are those adequate to chairman Harris and mine point? They're adequate for the students that we know that we have right now. But when you have a changing student demographic all the time, that's why we have to do cleanup amendments throughout the year. Thank you.
Follow up uh to Commissioner Pierce's question. Now, where is this you're planning on having this funding in here for buses and who's going to be driving them? And if you can insure them, why
isn't it that the contractors can get insurance? There it is. So 72710. Right now we have in 315 33.6 million budgeted for next year with contracts with vehicle owners. This current year's budget is
27.1 million. And so if we do not have enough contractors sign contracts, then we will have to do a budget amendment to move from 315 first to be able to purchase vehicles. And some of that,
depending on what our end of the year, because we're in the middle of closing our books as well to see what additional revenue we have, would move towards transportation equipment 70 to 729. And then right now you do not have a driver's line in here because we don't
have drivers. Um but there is an allowed driver's line in 72710. So basically you're padding this in anticipation of not having it is not padded whatsoever. It is it's well it's proposed 33.6
17% increase to the pay table that our board approved for transportation plus $4,000. And so that's what I'm saying. So, you're saying that if they don't sign the if we don't have everyone sign the contracts, then that is where the funding will come. That's where you want
to anticipate moving funds. And again, I hope we don't have to because I don't want to run a different department, a new department. Said that multiple times. I don't want to run another department. But then you'll know for sure when. Did you say Thursday night? You'll know if
the contractors are going to sign the We had quite a few there today. And you mentioned a moment ago 70. Yep. 70 signed today out of
one three something. So 70 out of three something signed today. If if you 70 70 out of 300 signed today. Oh. And if if uh I think you said a moment ago, if there's some routes, if there's some that don't sign, there
could be a bus contractor. Correct. Pick up routes potentially. I I don't know how by buses or whatever. Yeah. We'll send it out to our priority list so then bus drivers, contractors based on what's in our policy can pick up new routes.
Have you ever had Well, I'm getting into route. In addition to contracts being approved, do you ever do you have any open routes every year? Is every route get bid and occupied by private contractor throughout the year? We have
open routes at varying times. Usually they get filled at varying levels, but we do have open routes at different times. Yep. And now my other question, we didn't get to it, I guess, about the insurance piece. Yes. Yep.
Now, you're saying if you have drivers in buses, you'll be able to insure them. They are cuz they're under they're a county employee. They will be as employees, but we can't do insurance for contractors. They're left to get their own insurance. Correct. Is that what you're saying? Correct.
That's not a county school system decision. That's just as what it is. Do you know if um in anticipation and I'm just going down this rabbit hole I guess um that maybe the would there be
the option of hiring some of the current contractors? Absolutely. Yes. As employees had some reach out to us and said that's what they would like to do. Gotcha. Which is a different whole unique perspective in and of itself because then you're competing
with contractors with employees. I mean it's a and then if they do and they already have their own bus that's less of a bus we'd have to purchase. Correct. They would have to sell their bus to us and then we have to work on purchasing and procurement and bids and it's a gotcha. It's a lot. I think
realistically you are looking at a and we've been talking about this for for several months with the demand of the original bus rage. That was not a way to fiscally pay for that. And so we have had to look at multiple options, whether it was purchasing buses,
having bus contractors fill routes that are not um filled by current contractors, and then you add the insurance portion in and some drivers or contractors just said, "I'm not doing it anymore." And that is of course their absolute right. And for some of them, I don't I don't blame them. Um but we are
trying to fill as many routes as we possibly can. Um, but I think it's a, as we talked at the last end meeting, I think it is a very high likelihood that we have some routes not filled to start the school year. Our last step would be that we have to then do an RFP for some big huge giant company to come in fill
other routes. And that's not what we want to do. But if we are sitting here in August and we don't we have students who aren't getting transportation, we won't have an option. Mr. Harris, uh, help me out here. So you are aware
of the bill of the law that Charlie Bomb got passed through on independent contractors. Can you explain how this does not help you with the problem that we're having with bus drivers? I'm not an attorney, so not to Okay. Not
to that legal understanding. Yes. Yep. Health and Ed. You have heard a fund 141 presentation. We've delved into positions, transportation, otherwise. Um, any more discussion or
would anyone consider making a motion? Mr. Mr. Wilson, excuse me. Uh, Chairman, just a few thoughts here. Um, I notice overall in real simple terms, there's a a penny of property tax money coming out of what we've been funding 141 with that
will be used uh in the county budget elsewhere. I notice that that's coming down from uh 0.5727 down to 0.5627 in this proposed budget. So, you know, there's where we're seeing uh some of the property tax come back for other
use. At the same point, the $2.9 million increase they would see ine, we have been talking about it for two years. Um in fact, it's almost we've been talking about $3 million has been our working amount for months. So, I feel like that's something that most of us were
aware was coming and we are going to have another school opening up in a year. So, at this point, I feel like that amount of money is almost equaling exactly what the new operating expense of the new school is in addition to a
penny coming out of property tax for use in the county. So, I'm appreciative of I feel that that's working together. I really do. However, I do think we have a big looming problem in that you will have to make a significant change here in two
days if you don't have enough contracts. So, that is going to really make this a whole different animal. And I think there are some unanswered questions on exactly how you would uh um fund the whole big picture. So the motion I would like to make is I would
like to move this forward to budget out of health and ed. I would like to move it forward to budget for further consideration. I feel comfortable this commissioner does moving it forward because obviously whatever comes out of budget will come back to full commission
for final passage. There will be another opportunity for discussion. I wish we were having this conversation in two days from now because I believe we have to say just to prove it with positive recommendation. This may really look different in just 48 hours, but I'm
comfortable to move it forward uh to budget just to keep it moving along. And I wanted to point out the fact that I do recognize the fact that the revenue you're asking for on my opinion we've been talking about for months and that's going to operating a new school and
there is a penny coming back into general county use and I know that the mayor's had an opportunity to also look at your budget. So my motion is to move it forward to budget for continued conversation and we'll see what the results are u of your transportation
issue. I'll second that. Um I do have a question though as far as transportation is concerned now with the new schools and everything. Do you have buses and routes included in this number that you have on here? Yes, we have a motion and a second to forward
this to budget for further consideration and budget can pass defer. Budget will have an opportunity to have that discussion. So, a motion to second to move fund 141 to the budget committee.
Call the role, please. Commissioner Boyd, yes. Commissioner Davidson, yes. Commissioner G, yes. Commissioner McMurray, yes. Commissioner Oliver, I. Commissioner Wilson, yes. Commissioner Dodd, yes. Well, to try to expedite things, I'm
going to ask for a motion to either consider 141 tonight or to move it to the 29th. And I'll entertain that motion now or discussion from the committee. Mr. Chairman, I move I make a motion to move this till the 29th.
I have a motion in a second. Any discussion on moving this to the 29th? Second. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. We will be
looking at uh 177 and 141 on uh May the 29th at 5:30. At that time, uh we will also be reviewing the rest of our budgets for publication. So we may have a busy
night, but please do your homework between here and there. Chairman, I have nothing else under other business for health and ed. I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn for health and ed. Health and Ed is adjourned. There being no other business for
budget, we're adjourned. Thanks, Robert. Thank you.