You have three minutes to address the board. All right, well, address you. I just want to speak very quickly and use myself. I'm both. Taylor. I'm running for school board, and I'd be nice for you to be able to put a face to a name with the current board and let you know who I am. I work for the city of Detroit. I'm the executive director, CEO of the Public Lighting Authority. We fix all the streetlights. Before that, I was in the mayor's office in Detroit and experienced the bankruptcy all the way through. I highly suggest we don't do that here
and now. I have an undergraduate degree in finance from Michigan State, MBA from NYU. I've financed hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds and managed operations of this size. So I understand a balance sheet, income statements, and how all the finances come into play. And I look forward to listening tonight. So I understand we're talking about the budget and glad we're not talking about curriculum, because that's something that I need to brush up on, but I look forward to doing that. I think I'm under my three minutes. Yes. You're good.
All right. Good, good. Yeah. Let's get busy. Because that's probably more important than anything I have to talk about. So. Oh, by the way, I hope everybody is out trying to get the millage passed. I don't know if everybody here is in support of that, but I am, and it's what I'm going to talk about and tell that correct to that date. And then after that I'll talk about my candidacy, because I don't want to take away time from what's most important, which is passing that knowledge. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Kids in the district, one on one side. Seventh grade ravaging Larson Elementary School.
You will be seventh grade in the fall if you pass this courses. So. Yeah. All right. We have business services. Mr. Trudel, it's your show. We have eight. Item seven have an item. Media, culture. Jumping from all the way up there. Okay. First item that. Looks.
So in your communique, I did kind of break out the logic behind this purchase. So it's it's twofold. So obviously every year we're refreshing student devices. In this case we have iPads on the docket. And then we do have staff devices. So those are once every five years. So those back book errors that they're using across the entire district those aren't a five year cycle. So this upcoming year is that fifth year or we just completed the fifth year, I should say. So first, looking at the student side of it. So you'll see that there's 2400 iPads
being purchased across grades two, four and ten. So these are replacing seventh gen iPads. So we have a lot of seventh gen iPads. We had almost over 6000 of them. So we replaced a couple thousand last earlier in this year for seventh grade and fourth grade I think. And then we're not fourth grade third grade. And then we're looking at two for and 10th grade right now for these 2400. So these are just very old. They lack storage capacity. It makes it very challenging for those students. So we're trying to expedite replacement of those devices.
And then we also have ninth gen iPads as well. So those are the older devices that have a physical home button. They use a different charging port. So we're trying to get everything streamlined to essentially the same type of device across the entire district. So we're also looking to shift to a cart model for third grade for the upcoming year. So currently we're at kindergarten through second grade will be kindergarten through third grade. So it's a cart model, meaning 1 to 1 devices available to all kindergarten through grade grade students. But they stay at the school building every day. They don't have to take them home.
They're just put into the cart in their homeroom, and they charge overnight. That way, the students aren't having to take them back and forth, and also an effort to try to reduce, I think, the reliance on some of those devices. We're also going to have the recommendation of our technology committee. We're going to pilot fourth grade for that as well this year. So the thought was, if we could get to kindergarten through fourth grade as a 1 to 1 card model, the devices are there, they're available for students, but they're not reliant on them taking them all day. And then from fifth grade on, it would still be a 1 to 1. That was the feedback we received from the elementary folks was that fifth grade
uses them quite a bit relative to the other grades, and it does prepare them as they go into middle school. So we'll pilot that and then bring forth the recommendation, probably next spring for fourth grade to see if we do want to continue down that path. So like now we are buying back and forth and 10th grade three grades worth. Yep. And we are using the second grade machines to third graders and then the ninth grade. So I don't understand. So the 410th grade machines, we are giving it to kindergarten. You have to fill out the cards that we have.
So there are some. Yep. And those those ninth gen's are going to replace some older seventh gens that we have. So we're trying to just push them down and push any used ones we have into the cart, since they're just used less frequently. So gardeners will have a mix mismatch of some of them are nine. But we try to be consistent by building. So that way an entire building has the same generation of iPad. Okay. Yeah. Has there been any talk? I mean, I know K through second has gone to the cart. Has there been any talk about going away from the 1 to 1
at those at those lower levels? And this is kind of like how you and yeah, that was discussed at the committee. We've got a little bit of pushback. I think we might have to survey the wider community about retreating back, I think, further than a CART model, because I brought that up to our committee of, you know, you're seeing more and more countries banned social media if you're under 16. And other districts in the state of Michigan are starting to retreat even from 1 to 1 devices in general, and for older kids to I mean, I know we have, you know, a potential book talk and I'll talk about that under under other but
especially, you know, especially at those lower grades like the cave through second grade, you know, and I understand that this money doesn't come out of our general fund, but a lot of it is also coming out of the bond fund, which is nice to be able to use that money for building improvements and infrastructure. So, you know, and maybe that's part of as we go through strategic planning and talk about the topic of technology. Also, you know, this might be something that gets pared down.
I want to understand the Bush back, though. What was the pushback. But the pushback was that there is a need for the devices as part of the curriculum. So it's a larger change. I think you're going to have to change how you like. We're so reliant on school, Reggie. You know, uploading assignments through Schoology and everything is interconnected into power school. So I think it would warrant a much larger discussion that would have to have teaching and learning involvement to to determine a delivery model. The key to second level, the kids are, well, I'm just across the whole district,
like middle school in particular. They're uploading everything. Middleton that's you know I'm talking. Yes. Right now, for example, we're purchasing one 800 iPads for second graders, assuming it's 2400. So is that necessary? Can we like makes a match and they use them. It makes testing a lot easier. So when you have a 1 to 1 model they may not be using them but once a week in the classroom. But for testing purposes it's uniform across the district. Having 1 to 1 allows for better flexibility for testing as well. So I get that.
But that's not a not a great use of money. And I think that's that's kind of where we want to look at the upcoming school year, to have a deeper conversation about, you know, what might be a couple things converging all at the same time. And it's seems like there's going to be okay. Yeah. I mean, we could use the repurposed ones for testing at the time of testing when everybody needs it. But anyway, that thought for a future. Yeah, I was just more interested to see if those discussions were at all. Being a couple of months ago we met and that was we broached that topic of like,
do we really need full on tech 1 to 1 to deliver a good education? So I question you mentioned that fourth grade is going to cart model. So you're taking them away because those kids have come up with 1 to 1 of their own. So they'll be taking them away in the fall. So they would still have them. It would just we're going to select a few classrooms across all elementaries and just say, okay, who wants to try just having 1 to 1 access, but you're going to keep them in your cart for that. Yeah. You're just won't
see that being a communication saying that the important to make sure we're clear that doesn't appear like they're taking this correct. Yes. Yeah. They would still have access to it within the classroom every day. So that's the student side. Staff side is a thousand new M5 MacBook air. So it's a similar model. It's just a newer version of it. So same size, same specs, all of that. Just your processors better battery life. And then we are also purchasing without. So right now staff have a MacBook and an iPad. So we've had a conversation with our union leadership
and other teachers across the district. And not everyone uses both all the time. So rather than just blanketing and just buying them and giving it to everyone, we've kind of factored in that some are just not going to take them, and then those ones will be used to also replace the older seventh gen student iPads throughout the district. So anything excess after what we offer those teachers, you know, you might give out a couple hundred of them, a few hundred maybe, rather than a thousand. Whatever remains out of that allocation will just be put into getting rid of those seven gen devices, which Apple doesn't update anymore.
Storage is 32GB, so it's a very small number of storage. Students are constantly running out of space, so we figured the overflow of what we ordered for staff would then just be shifted over. And those are devices that the currently the MacBooks, the MacBooks, and that they're just finishing five years this school year. Yeah. So you can see some of the the resale values on them. So we have our $2.4 million out of the bond funds for student and staff devices. And then you can see the estimated recovery for those devices.
So seventh Gen 910. So the values are still fairly high. So that's all just a straight offset towards the total cost. So what we receive we just deposit back into the bond fund and it just offsets the total expenditure. So the net of everything should come in somewhere between 1.8 and $2 million. When it's all said and done. And where do you resolve those? There's a company total. Exactly. Okay. It's a company we work with. So basically what they do is we sell them these old devices, and then they also set
up all the new devices. So that's the net cost that we receive. And then they actually go through with our profiling information and set up every device. So all 4000 iPads. And so as opposed to having our staff handle that, it's quite a few a while ago we've talked about getting the Big Mac. I don't know if it's MacBook airs, but for the folks who do like what is it called that yearbook as well as the CAD guys, the ones who do the they have MacBook parts now in those labs.
Yeah. So can any of these be used or these are two old and the those are MacBook pros I believe. So they're a little bit more advanced processing power for those purposes. So those replace the actual max that they had the desktop versions. Okay. Yeah. So that's completely different. We are piloting at the high school level for 11th and 12th grade students. MacBook Neil just came out instead of five heads. So basically it's a MacBook that uses an iPhone processor. So it's a 500 and actually a student pricing education
pricing is $500 as opposed to like 1100. So we had I think we ordered six of them are trialing at each high school in the IA just to see if that's something. So we got some good feedback. Some in the US, they want to get rid of the Chromebooks and instead use this district provider device. So we'll let them continue into the fall see if that makes sense. And then we could look at potentially going down that road 10 or 11 pairs. So any other questions on this one.
We'll have more conversation though in the upcoming year. Is printers. The next one is to be. So this is just part of our regular refresh cycle. So we're looking to replace 15 new busses. So these are we obviously ordered the four EV busses still waiting on to get the transformer updated. Once that's fully updated with the proper service. And then we can install the chargers that we ordered. And then those busses are ready to be received. They're here are not yet there because there needs to be a charger for them.
We have them stored at the manufacturer's lot right now, but as soon as we get our chargers installed, Dty is very slow at times. So these are gas busses though, so 15 of them. So we had them broken out in summarized here. So there's individual quotes attached. But this is through the MSP bus purchasing consortium. So it's all pre bid pricing. Districts can go in and they can select the specific model they want. Then any features they're looking for. And it's all pretty big conveniently for districts just like we do with furniture. So you can see here that these take typically about 12 months to make.
So pricing is set to go up July 1st. So our goal was to get it approved at the next June meeting and then get those ordered and ready to go for the upcoming school year. So even though we outsource our drivers for student, the district owns all of the busses, and that's something that we are required to purchase. So I just noticed that the larger ones of 84 passengers put the model of 2027 model year versus others are 2028. So those are brand new ones that are just sitting there. So it was like ten grand cheaper per bus or something like that.
If it met all of our requirements than it did. So we elected to just say we'll take those for as opposed to ordering the 2028 model year, that much change. So is there a reason that, like the bigger busses don't have the air and the smaller busses down here, it might just list it that way? I would assume they all do. Yeah, my guess is maybe it's just the way that was listed and all these what felt like rationale behind the 236 and 348.
It just depends on the route needs. So some of them are your special education busses. So in this district we all of our special ed busses are 100% more special ed. Some districts split the cost. So if a special Ed bus might pick up a general student route, ours all pick up 100% special ed, and then that allows us then to report that to the state as a pure special ed classroom. So depending on the bus size, that's why you see 36 or 48 might be for a different type of route. But but the first four items, the ones that say conventional,
I assume those are all just regular conventional means diesel. Oh yeah. It doesn't mean it's not for special ed. It doesn't mean yeah. Some like depending on. So you have different tiers of special needs. So like the bottom fork and then probably have harness straps and wheelchair lifts things like that. But the other ones may serve a smaller group like we are just GSP. Transportation might have a smaller population on those busses as well. So so these are all special interests or just know just the bottom four probably have a wheelchair lift and all of that.
And then the top ones are probably a general population. You just may have smaller routes that need a 36 passenger spending where they're going to get down to certain. But but isn't it inefficient to get a bus based on the route because our routes can change? Our number of students can change over time. It seems pretty consistent from year to year. So you have different ones that might accommodate a field trip. Or GSP is typically smaller because you have three and four year olds on those busses, so it just varies based on the need. But
out of this, I mean, we have 75 busses, so a few smaller ones publicly warranted. And these are like one for one. So you're getting rid of a six passenger there by the comment that these already exist in our. Once printers. So the district right now has two leases on printers, all printers in the district. We have one lease coming to this September at least is about $40,000 annually. And then we have another lease that comes through next
August of 27, and that one is about 160,000 annually. So those are general funded costs. So with the bond program that we have, we are hoping to purchase printers for those leases that are going to be turned in. And then we take that operating cost out of the general fund. And then now we're acquiring the printers through bond funds. So this one has a few different things included. So New Smith obviously needs printers because what is that old Smith right now will remain civil. And we'll use those and Larson will use those as well.
And then we have some older devices throughout the district sprinkled throughout. And then all the elementary school devices are on this first round of leases that are coming to. And then we're rolling in cut. So that's the software that we use. So when you walk up to any printer you can type in your ID number. Then it pulls up the print job that you had. We're also adding card readers. So as we go through access controls, as you walk up to a printer, you can just simply tap your badge. It'll pull up your prints, and then you can print it from any printer in the district. We're also embedding warranty into these.
So right now we pay six and a half cents per colored print. We're going to pay for and a half cents per colored print on these devices going forward because we're rolling in warranty into the bond purchase, which is an allowable expenditure of bond funds. So when we pay for the device, we're rolling in the print warranty for the six year period that we anticipate these devices or 60 month warranty rather. So that'll cover all the warranty costs. So again, that's going to reduce our operational costs a little bit to buy the cost of that warranty. And then all the maintenance and all that for paper cut, which is the software is included as well.
So you can see for this purchase just over $700,000. And then we've had all the devices listed on the second page here. So which location, which one's being replaced, which I had to just give a breakdown of that. And I'm curious. We have taken this approach. If it weren't for the way we are constrained in terms of what money we can use for one. So if we didn't have a bond, we would be leasing again. But if if we yeah, I guess
my question if we didn't have to take leasing out of the general, but we could have taken out of out of the capital fund without buying the equipment, would we have still continuing to so leases can't be charged to a bond fund? Yeah, I understand the tone of my question is, I mean, this is very clever. So I support what you're doing here. But we're being clever because of the constraints on which pot of money. Correct. If we didn't have the constraints on which product,
we would have continued to leave. Yeah. I guess another way of asking if this leasing more cost effective for us than actually purchasing and still keep the maintenance, it would cost you more than doing it this route. Okay, so it's still more cost effective to do this independent. So it's positive both ways. Yeah. Well what's the life of the printer that you're using typically five years. So over five years including the per paper for printing cost.
It's still cheaper to do it purchasing this way instead of leasing it out. Yeah. You can see like the the cost of the warranty here is going cent typically you're almost one and a half $0.02 per print. Typically when you're paying what the district didn't have a bond when we assign these leases. So like most districts, you're just paying operationally to pay for the devices because you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase them. So it's just more to distribute the amount. Is that what you're saying? Because if it was more cost effective, we could still purchase it
from our general funds. Nothing stops us, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. But then we would do it all up front. But that's the difference. So this one would have distributed. Yeah. Do we know how this like. Hits our use every tracking that. Yeah. They applied innovation has meters on all of our. That's where they get like the 2 million prints. So that's their estimate over a six month period okay. Yeah. Printing count reduced over time. I haven't checked historical, but we could have a role that they do have that data
because the whole world is going from printing. So I was wondering papercut is something that a lot of districts add to try to reduce that. Because what happens is if you print something and it just goes to the printer, it prints and then you walk by, you're like, I didn't do that. Throw it in the recycle bin, and then you print it again versus when you do it, this model, you actually have to walk to the printer and then actually have to engage with the printer to actually print it. So you do see a reduction in the job goes to the printer, but then you actually go to the printer and say print my job. And then it specifically tells you this is yep. So when you in this case when you tap your batch card, it's
going to pull up your friend jobs that you send to a printer. And then you can print it from any printer in the district and only the staff can print. Yeah, we do have the ability for students to print too. So paper type typically has like like a student reader in the media center that they could get from whoever's in charge, and then they could go on to if they wanted to be limit. Yeah. Yeah. You can put restrictions on all that. Yeah. And then special ed cases, if you're printing an IEP or something, you're not just sending it blindly to a printer. You're going to have to actually walk up to it, print it and then take control of it.
That way it's not just sitting there for anyone to see. So yes, when you look at different parts of money, you you have to know how to play the game of how do you take the most value out of the dollars you're getting. And this is one of the ways that you have to do it. If you're fortunate enough to have a bond and allotted cost that your general fund. Again, because I had misunderstood what you said that to the tells the tale probably answered, asked my question better and it was kind of.
Regardless, it's cheaper to do this if we didn't have constraints, but this is the right thing to do. Obviously, because it takes it out of the. Yeah, we could have put up 733,000 of our fund, balance the general fund to pay for it, and got a better value out of it. But now you can do that front. Right. Yeah. Could we have made it such that each building gets it in a different year and so we distribute it. Yeah. We try to do that with like the I think it's the colored devices
one year and then the black and white is the bigger lease coming due next year. So we try to stagger them a little bit. So so they have more. This is only half. Yeah. Then we got the black and whites. It'll be a little bit bigger next year. It'd be like 1.2 million next year for the rest of the 700. Yeah. But then we're planning for another five years from now with more bond funds to try to start doing a replacement again. Food service contract. Thank you. So I'm going to invite Charles and. You guys go here
everybody. Our food service here. And then our. Our director of food service and then Debbie Charles. Debbie is our area manager newer to this contract. So last night I even last summer's in the fall. Started with us. So so my name is Nicole. I'm director. Thank you for having us here. So we're excited just today to kind of share our path forward
to increasing our meal participation for next year. So that introduce us again. Nicole, we have our service liaison, Deborah Ellerman, the area director. So just to kind of give a glimpse of what what we're going to explain tonight, our plan focuses on five key lovers to drive participation. One, we're looking to strengthen the secondary meal programs to expanding elementary engagement through nutrition gain on three continuing to enhance food quality and training for the staff.
Number four investing in equipment and cafe environments. Five increasing communications and awareness with the community so all of these can work together to create a more engaging, high quality student experience. Okay, so this year we're very proud to say we have served about 55% of our enrollment for lunch participation. So we're averaging at around 6600 lunches a day, and then 2600 with breakfast, about 22% for breakfast participation. Overall, year to date, we've had about 1.4 million meals served to all students and then has been pretty successful along with catering.
While we are at $200,000 for elixir, our goal is to find ways to turn them into reimbursable meals for next year so we can maybe lower all of our and increase the meal sales. Now I'm going to turn it over to Gail so she can go over our equipment updates. As you all know, we are a grant. The food service department is a grant. And so we get reimbursement for every meal that we sell or give away. And fortunately, we've been on free meals for a couple of years now. So we've had a very good problem to have because we've had excess money.
The government only allows us to have three months operating money in our fund at the end of the year. So anything over and above that we have to spend on equipment, salaries, improving the operation, food, food prices and so on. So we have been very lucky to have extra money. And so we've been buying equipment like crazy and replacing things. So I just wanted to give you a quick update, as you saw in Troy High here with me, a complete change in the serving area.
We're working on the marketplace in the cafeteria that's under construction and will be completed. They're going to be installed, start installing Wednesday and should be done and ready to go by September. So we're hoping we're going to have you all for dinner and our September board meeting so that you can see the end result. We're creating a wall in there so that it separates the venomous. That's no longer going to be just vending machines. It's going to be opportunities to provide a meal. And so that's also going to help increase our participation.
So the wall will separate it. It'll look nicer. It won't be so commercial. And then it's locked down at night. And we can secure everything that we have in there. So it'll be very nice just to let you know we have touched we've touched every school practically with new equipment of some sort. We did some new serving lines and updating the necessary equipment at Baker, Bolen, Larson, Barnard, Bemis, Hamilton, Hill, Leonard, Troy, Union and wash. That's all been done this year, whether it be a serving
iron or new oven or new refrigerators or something. They've been touched. And then we're. And thank you. You've approved our new vehicle. So we're spending a little bit of money on a new truck. So we need that. And then moving forward next year, you know, as you know with the bond issue that's going to be under construction. So we're redoing under the hood in bowling. That will be completely replaced. We're trying to put pizza ovens in every school like a conveyor belt
pizza oven. It gives you a different a better quality pizza than just throwing a frozen pizza in the oven. So we've done it here at Troy High. We have it at Baker currently and it's a piece of equipment. So we're going to be doing that at Larson and Bowling next year. Costello, Martel, Schroeder and wattles were touching base there just to try and update them. They have some old equipment in there and so they need to be updated. They're about to expire and we're looking seriously
at renovating Morris Kitchen entirely. That has been a very, very difficult school to work with because it's such a small footprint, and we need to knock out a few walls and make it bigger. So that's what we're working on. And then our Athens High School kitchen, you know we done that because we know that's going to be caught up in the bond issue. So we're not anticipating any future expenses there. Our Aya Academy and our Troy Early Childhood Center are all relatively new
and good conditions, so we don't need to work on that. So again, it's a good thing to have to have extra money to spend. Okay. So everyone so a couple of things that we handed out to I'm just going to backtrack. So there's a yearbook. So that's just for you to take and look off look over afterwards. It's everything we've done this year touches on a little bit of the things we've done this year. And then the other piece I handed out to you is a nutrition game on board. And that's what I'm going to talk about for just a few minutes.
So at the elementary level, we're excited to launch our Nutrition Game on program. It's a year long adventure with theme missions and interactive activities that have a cast of engaging characters that are meant to make learning about nutrition fun and to help encourage healthy eating habits with our students every day. So as you'll see, the students getting engaged with themed characters and content, they discover and learn about food and food, origins, cooking and wellness and activity.
It makes nutrition fun and relevant and memorable for the students. It's a bold and exciting nutrition education experience that's designed just for our elementary students, so we really put some thought into into our little kiddos here. And it isn't your average A lesson. It's a high energy adventure where healthy eating becomes a monthly mission. So each month, best friends Danny and Leo lead students through challenges that combine movement and storytelling,
hands on fun, and by turning nutrition education into an interactive adventure. The program keeps kids excited about lunch and about learning and engaged all year long. So the program comes with it's more than just the food, it goes beyond the food, so it incorporates signage and lessons for the students, will have food tastings and displays. It incorporates the environment of the cafeteria. We're goal is to create a full dining experience
for the student, and it's just not a meal that they're coming to us for. So we have signage that goes that goes with the program, some visual updates, there's character displays and some nutrition lessons along the way. So, you know, our goal is with the nutrition camera. And it's going to transform the school meals into an opportunity for the students to eat well, learn more, and level up their day. And we're going to continue with all of our core programs and continue our focus on that.
So the key programs that all the grade levels that help can drive student engagement and bring them into eat with us from our Student Choice program, that gives the students a voice where they can vote on menu items, and then see those items on the menu to our Global Eats program that connects students through food and one another by sharing cuisines from all around the world. So all these programs bring variety to our programs and excitement to the school meals program.
And that all helps drive participation and as key as we as we build for the future. So now I'm going to turn it over to Nicole, and she's going to talk a little bit about the secondary level and what we're going to focus on at the secondary level. Thank you. So our corporate marketing and culinary team have put together a fantastic lineup of seasonal, limited time offers for the next school year. We're creating variety and excitement throughout the year. We'll kick start this full year with our new Pizza Days program
in the fall, and in the winter, we'll need it to wrap and roll spring we'll do let's do brunch in the summer and the sweet heat. And the whole purpose of this is just add variety. You know, students are constantly evolving their taste, constantly evolving their interest. So this will just keep things a little, a little bit more hyped up throughout the school year. It's just designed to keep things fresh, build anticipation, and then hope to drive repeat participation. Okay, as I mentioned, we with the fall we're going to kick start with pizza Days. It's our new limited time offering. So this features homemade specialty pizzas, new stromboli,
specialty flatbreads and expanded and Italian inspired menu items at elevates quality and gives students a product that competes with outside options. We're really proud to say that we are introducing a brand new pizza dough for the next school year, which will require a little bit more scratch based cooking. So as opposed to using pre-made frozen pizzas, we are going to buy every separate item. So it's gonna be separate recipe items. And then they're going to assemble the pieces on site. And as you mentioned, it would be really nice to get the pizza a conveyor ovens just to give a more fresh persevere taste.
So like I said, with this dough we can assemble all pizzas in house and it'll give us more freedom to offer a wider variety of pizza choices. So we're not just limited to the handful of specialty pizzas that we've been offering. We have a lot of vegetarian students too, so be a really great way to get creative with like, roasted vegetable pesto, Margherita, what have you. Okay. And then we have another program called Power Up and this will be launched in the fall. So let's focus on the student lifestyles from academic to athletic focused students. So we're actually going to teach the students
about eating healthy fuels their bodies and minds. So we will feature feeling options like protein bowls these energy items. We're aligning food with how students live in perform. So to implement this program we will bring more pop up stations, action stations, samplings to educate the students. And then additionally we're going to offer hydration stations in all the secondary just to encourage more water intake, but not just with plain water. We're going to help to infuse this with men's and herbs and fruit and stuff like that. So we have
piloted the power of Wednesdays with these new protein goals for our secondary students because are raving over them. It features protein bowls across all secondary locations, and these are customizable bowls that offer students a high protein meal with different vegetables. Topped with our homemade sources, we have meat processing and then also plant based protein for our vegetarians and vegans. So beans, tofu. We currently are offering a Greek Bowl, Asian Bowl, Southwest and Barbecue. These are available at all secondary locations.
And then we will also offer it in the elementary schools just to pilot and see how they get. I know the younger kids might well, we'll see what they feel about it. All right. And then all of this is supported by continued focus on equality and communication. So I did mention trainings earlier. We're really going to put an emphasis on team and our professional development. So summer training and beyond nature is consistency quality and a strong customer service. So our well-trained teams directly impact our our participation.
So our welcome back orientation is required for all associates, which include a refresher on USDA guidelines, kitchen safety and sanitation and then allergen protocols. Our managers meeting will focus on menu development and product ordering. Our new Kitchen Skills Quality Assurance program is offered to all grade levels. This is a new training that we are offering our staff. We're going to divide the training into three separate days and elementary and middle and high school. And there's going to be a little bit more hands on, focused training to give refreshers on knife and food prep skills, batch cooking, serving line standards, quality control.
And then we really want to put an effort on a customer service as well. And then finally, we have a new culinary master class that is being offered to our staff next week. I'm really excited about it. I'm actually going to pass it over to W so she can dive into that a little bit. Yeah, we're very excited to have our regional executive chef chef here in Mason to come here to Troy for two days next week to host a two day culinary. It's called Culinary Masterclass. And the programs designed to develop
the fundamental skill set of the team and give them the confidence to help build these new menus and scratch items. So as we work towards that, it's hands on. It's a it's a combination of both classroom and hands on. And the instructor led approach really engages the associates to collaborate and work together in the kitchen setting, and really will be the foundation as we move forward
to enhance our menus and move towards less processed foods within the district. So very excited for that class to happen next week. You know, and as we continue to focus on the scratch and batch cooking, it improves taste and food quality as we do that. So it's ensuring that we're using fresh preparation of all of our ingredients and better food helps drive participation. So this is how we plan to elevate the student experience
and help drive participation. We're going to continue to strengthen our teams through the hands on training, building their confidence in the kitchen and building those culinary skills across every kitchen throughout the district. And as the staff continues to grow, I think we'll see better execution, consistency and pride in the meals that they serve and invest in in our people is key to sustaining the high quality meal programs that we that we went here for all of the students.
Okay, so communication really is key to keep everybody informed, engaged and excited about the new meals. So in the past we have done annual surveys with the students, typically beginning of the year and the end of the year. We received strong feedback in years past, but it just seems like it's kind of tapering off every year. We're kind of losing feedback, so kids are not really engaging in it. I don't know if it's the cell phone bands that usually have them scan a QR code, so we really just want to start having more one on ones. With this. We have maybe like a youth advisory council group where we can,
you know, meet with students. We can connect with them so they can provide feedback for the program in person on all grade levels. So this is something that we're really passionate about doing next year. We're hoping to collaborate with the principals on the logistics behind it and how getting the kids to participate, but that's just so key to really hearing it directly from them. Additionally, just continuing to, you know, have outreach, social media, posting the menus online, the newsletters will increase just to continue keeping the parents in the loop so they're aware of the new menu items,
but also just making sure that they understand that we can accommodate for allergies. We can provide holes. So just making sure that everybody reaches getting this information. Okay. So just to summarize our strategy is exciting menus and concepts at the secondary level. Early engagement with our elementary students enhance food quality and staff training and making spaces and equipment and stronger communications with our community. So hopefully with these initiatives, it'll help us to grow the participation for the next school year.
What have any questions? Do I want to go around the table now? You want to go first? Do you have any? I just had a question with kind of the fund balance that we keep spending half and I, we've been spending a lot of equipment and I think I asked this question last year, was using some of that fund balance to provide pay increases for our food services staff. And I believe Dan said that we did. This year was the first year going on. Yeah, we actually done it two years. She's done it two years. Yeah, yeah.
So I was just wondering if that would, with the continuing food service balance, could we continue to look at providing our staff with increases because, you know, it's Stephanie or Nicole? Sorry. That's okay. That happens all the time with, you know, like keeping our staff. Like I'm excited that they're getting this opportunity to attend this workshop because, you know, people do want to grow in their job and they do want to learn more, and they do want to take pride in their work. And I think opportunities like that are important.
But then, you know, bottom line is the pay piece is important as well. So I think that that reflects just like our ongoing commitment and also our, I guess, appreciation for the work that they do. So I just like to keep that in mind. Yeah. The access fund balance, even though you can use it for increased pay, obviously you're not going to have that same level of fund balance each year. So we've tried to strategically use the excess fund balance for equipment like $1.4 million here. That's bent down the fall of it.
But operationally, as we look at increased participation, increased money coming in. That's what we're trying to use for offsetting any increases in piano. This last one was a little bit more of a market correction to get us back up to where we should be in terms of the market, which I think has leveled off and helped to stabilize, I think the employment across all the buildings. And then again, I think as you look at increased opportunities for more in-depth trainings that perhaps wouldn't have gotten in a prior year, we're trying to engage them and get them more invested into the districts.
Okay. Thank you. My question is, so for the 45% that don't we don't serve for the lunches, is there a standalone reason why they don't? Or is it kind of just a hodgepodge of a bunch of reasons? Or. I think there's a whole bunch of different reasons. We have a really diverse community. So speaking with parents, I think you're always going to get those families. I just want to control what their kids are eating and send them the food from home, whether it's leftovers or also remember to we have very strict meal guidelines. So USDA, we have that whole grain.
We cannot serve a lot of sodium. We can't serve a lot of fat, a lot of sugar. So I think a lot of families, they have food at home their kids might not want to eat, but required by USDA. And then we were just talking about it earlier, too. I think the lunch times is a huge factor. They only get like 25 minutes. And I was at Larson a couple weeks ago and kids were walking by and we're like, hey, do you want to come and try the new the new bowls? And I said, well, we don't want to wait in line. So right now 55% is in pretty consistent across the board. We really want to get up to about 65% okay.
That's just adding maybe an extra 30 meals at each elementary school and another 100 about 100 meals at the secondaries. But with some of these factors, we just don't have any control over it and we can't really change it. I think the lunchtimes is probably our biggest, biggest problem that we've been hoping to fix. But we just about food. More about what? Justice? I don't think so. That's what I think. Yeah, I'll go last. I have the same. And this was my concern the last three years. So yes.
Okay guys, you want to go next? No, no. So just to be clear, you talked about you have some goals set for participation. The metric for those goals is purely just participation. So you want to see it increase. Yes. Just something to think about might be a metric around like students as faction meals survey or some other way to get other data. Just as a thought. Yes, we complete surveys annually each year with students, and we always take that into effect.
You know, we look at what they're telling us. And I think that Youth Advisory Council just going to take it to the next level. Beyond the surveys that we're doing right now, I think we'd be interested. Yes. About that. Yes. Develops. Yeah. So we do conduct the surveys twice a year. And I think every year we get less and less responses. So I think that's why we really want to have the students come in a group and speak with them along those lines. Is there a particular method that you're going to get elementary feedback? I heard a lot about secondary just as a person.
That's kind of where the people I think about my own kids that are like, you know, this is just me. And so then they're not going to be willing to try. Typically at the elementary level, we'll do an email to the parent, and we'll work with the principal as to how they communicate with their families. And then we ask the parents to sit down with their child. Or sometimes we'll actually do an old paper menu or, or paper survey in the classroom, you know. So there's a couple of different options. I just think you mention anything from the trees.
Oh yeah. Yes. Do that. Yeah. Because I think that it'd be interesting to see where your participations are by level as well and by building as you know, in terms of that sort of thing. And then you mentioned the new pizza dough. Is it going to be elementary too, or just secondary? We wanted you just secondary. And now the elementary sections are very small. Yeah. I mean I don't know if you have more secretaries kitchen. You see wireless kitchen, the logistics behind it in the assembly. And we're making, you know, let's say one of the schools 250 lunches that day.
We don't have the space. We literally don't have the space. So if a lot of the props are going on like an assembly on tables. So we would like to see it, but for now we're going to go in phases. I'll say, oh parent, that's I think the pizza is the biggest turnoff. Is it. Yeah. And it's where I'm, we're losing kids because I'm supposed to be the best thing. And they're like, it's kind of gross, okay, I don't eat it. So I don't know. Whole grain though. That's that's fair. Actually it has less salt.
So all those same answers. But we gotta find ways to make it go. I just I just think about, like, how much I enjoy that. Tracking my elementary. I know I did it for your participation to rise. And that's really wonderful. And then you mentioned something about trying to convert all the cart revenue to meals. Is that like a thing? Have you? It is usually do that by adding all the components of the meal. So like let's say a student comes up and they just want to give us so they come up will charge a la carte. If they take a milk and a fruit we can charge milk.
And that helps us like the free meal too. Yes. So that'll be free. But getting the kids to take the milk and the fruit is half the battle. So we're going to try to find more fun ways to incorporate the fruit, vegetables. And so the snack bar so we can convert them to meals, which is more reimbursement from the state. Yeah it would be great. Definitely go for that. Yeah okay. Cool. Thanks. Not really. Any questions? I just want to make a comment with my now college grads. I was kind of talking talking to them like, guys, what would make you participate in the program at school? And my kids are very spoiled.
They love homemade food and that means I have to make everything. But my athletes were always talking about how they felt like the portions were kind of small. Yeah, and, you know, having sports right after school either meant that I had to pack a whole bunch of stuff in their backpack or, you know, they grab an extra meal or something at school. So I do love this, that you're trying to use pop up sampling events and things like this is I think that's really, really good. Thank you. No, it is hard with the portion control.
We are very limited with the portions too. And you've got kids that are like going on playing football afterwards and the big growing kids, he literally cannot for more than what the state requires. If they want to get an extra that comes on an additional charge. Yes. Unfortunately. So that that's just my one comment that, you know, our is secondary having some sports right after. So I don't have a chance to go home and try to bite or whatever. But I do like that you said participation. Participation is 55%.
Is that higher than last year because it wasn't last year? 40? No, it's been the same. Really. It's a tiny bit higher last year, but a little bit higher. But we pretty much are consistent with the 55%, you know, fluctuates between 54 and 56. But on average it's 55. Is there why do I remember a number in the 60s I thought it was. No, no, no, I think it was a little higher than this, but I don't remember exactly what number. I know we were pulling. You guys have contracts with other districts. So we're looking at like Rochester and Novi.
Comparable districts, both in size and demographic, to try to get a feel for where perhaps they're at in Rochester was mid to high 50s. Was that 50, Birmingham was that 45 and then Novi was at 65. So that's kind of our goal. So just metric to try to also get an outside perspective of where is it at. You know, is it is it something specific to Troy schools in terms of what we're serving, or is it just a byproduct of some of those dietary guidelines? No. Why should I go to is no why chart. Well yes. Yes okay.
So 2% is you know just but nonetheless a goal to have. And I think we talked about in the fall kind of going through building by building and primarily the elementaries like we have two big renovations. Well three big bowl and a large and then Baker obviously somewhat upgraded equipment there. And then the high schools just did renovation here. But elementaries is the struggle of having the right equipment. Obviously space is a factor, but could we invest some bond flow seeds that we have unallocated into upgrading some of the elementary equipment as well,
making sure it can get pizza ovens because we can rely on food service fund balance for the most part of your basic others, but it's not going to go much beyond that, especially looking at what we're going to continue to see each year. You might get a couple hundred thousand dollars of excess fund balance you can knock out for elementary school basic ovens for that. Right? So looking at what can we do in terms of making a plan of investing some additional bond funds into trying to upgrade these kitchens more kitchen, for instance, is one that we're targeting to use a little bit about funding for too.
So giving better tools, small words I think is an underrated item. If you don't have a proper small words to prepare certain foods, then it's just not possible. So really kind of doing a holistic review of all of the kitchens as well to make sure that not only do you have the right training, but you also have the right tools and equipment to do the preparation as well. So we also get a list from the state of Michigan as to what equipment and things we can buy with that money. Know there are limitations. We can't build a new school, we can't knock down walls and building new.
But we can, like the truck, for example, is isolated to just for food service so we can purchase that. So that's another little wrinkle that we have to deal with. It. I guess. And I know I've communicated this board and I brought it up with the meetings one. So we're kind of looking at a 65% participation rate. You know, that I don't think it's just the logistics of how long lunch I have. I've had elementary school kids approached me this year.
I've had middle school kids approached me this year. Chicken patties frozen in the middle who'd just not cooked, you know, still in a frozen state. At Troy High by lunch. They're not being enough food. And so kids skipping buying a meal because there's not food to be purchased. I mean, nothing that there's no food, right? But it's the they want. It's not the same what they want, you know, and the food they want. Yeah. Lots of kids will grab a Caesar salad, right.
And by the time they get to see lunch, there's no Caesar salads to be grabbed. And so they just don't buy a meal. So that means that's a meal that we did not weren't able to want a kids not eating. And two, they're not we're not getting anywhere. So so I think there is an issue of quality I've had I don't have a school kids, I've had a couple of kids approached me this year. And so, you know, our food just doesn't taste good. We don't eat it because it doesn't taste good, not because I only have 25 minutes to eat it. So I think that's a.
I think those are very fair things for us to say out loud. Right. Because we had budgeted an extra million dollars in food sales, a shared that we did not realize in a lot of the feedback lots of us get from our own kids, from from community members, is that the food is just not. And I know, you know, I know there's been some changes in equipment in Troy High and there's there's probably a little bit more excitement about some of the food there. But man, I would wager to guess if the, you know, if the middle school chicken patties were just cooked all the way through, the kids might actually grab them and eat up.
So so I think there's I think there might be some low hanging fruit there too, is what I'm trying to say. Just making sure that the food that we are preparing and that we do have is being prepared properly so that the kids might make it making for that. And I'm sorry to hear that. I've heard that. I've heard that from multiple kids. So that's not a like a, you know, one one off comment. I've heard that from lots of students. Okay. And that the employee training, starting with our master class next week
that all of our kitchen leads. So all of our kitchen, all of our leads, each kitchen has their own kitchen lead. So their their own manager responsible for them and their team. So they are the ones that are going through that two day training next week. And then we're going to expand also with all of our other associates when we come back to school, so we can address some of those issues and make those corrections moving forward, because that's not what we want and they're not isolated incidents. So I think, you know, I'm always a big proponent of grabbing that low hanging
fruit first and that might that might help you get out of the way to and then, you know, I, I appreciate the, you know, the elementary program. Maybe it's not my nature. I would you know, my instinct is not signage. It's make sure the food is good because you can have all the signage you want. It can be as colorful or as happy or as whatever. But if the kids are not getting flavorful food, all of that is not so. So I think from our perspective, it's,
you know, only 55% of our kids are participating, and some kids might have somebody who can provide a meal from home for them, other kids might not, and then they still might not be. The food that they're getting might not be edible because it's frozen. So it's an equity issue too, because lots of kids might have somebody at home can afford and has the time to make them a meal other kids might not. So we kind of have a duty to those kids, I think, especially who don't have that option if the food was serving is is
is up to. Thank you for that. Definitely. But I do look forward to to to seeing maybe doing like maybe like do we have like a timeline like three months in or something where we'll be able to what is what's that first instance where we can kind of see where we are going into next year. And I don't know what that for participation. Yeah. Yeah. I would say for the first semester, typically September is low. Just the little ones have their new lunchboxes.
They're coming back to school. So typically overall we see participation low in September. And then usually by October it starts the participation starts coming back up. So I would say after end of October or the quarter. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we measure it every month. So we're tracking it. We actually tracking by week. So we're we're always looking I don't need to know about it. We talked about adding like the monthly and then start putting something in there as well. And then if you guys want them to come back,
you know December January to kind of know they don't come back. I think even maybe next November we can just have a, you know, a line item says, this is this is where we are. And to see if we're moving in the right direction or not. If we're not, then to figure out, you know what, that I have a bunch of comments. I think when we really signed the contract, it was a three year contract. Now, two years into it, right, it's a five year contract, two years into it when we use it every year, two years and three renewals or something.
Two years. And what, three renewal each year, two years and then three renewals? Okay. When we signed, that was one of the things that we talked about is also participation because we got free money and yet we were getting such low participation. And honestly, you don't need many surveys for food. What they take speaks for itself, right? I mean, they wouldn't take it if they don't like it. And that itself is a result of the survey. I would say so. And food is very personal for people
and it's and it's really depends on your palate. And I think I brought this up last time I said, well, is that is not flavorful for some people versus others can be different. And you mentioned that we are very ethnically diverse, and I don't know if we are doing enough justice to have the food variety that we need for the for the community that we have. I talked to a lot of payments and like she also, my answer always is they don't have time.
They work. They yet make time to pack food because food at school is gross. That's the word they use. I'm sorry. And so we need to do something better than what we are doing. I thought we were going to make some progress in seeing the participation increase year over year, but actually we are not seeing any progress and that's not a good thing. Personally, these are all good guys. You know, I'm speaking from years of experience here and we need to hear from you. I wish we could isolate.
And I know you said there's no it is an isolated. But I'd like to know what school. There's frozen chicken patties, you know, so that we can deal with that when it happens. And maybe that's not something we just. It shouldn't happen at all. And so there should not ever be a frozen chicken patty. And, you know, we put stress a great deal of stress. We being put a great deal of stress on tarballs to have all muscle chicken products. We get the best Cologne products that we can get. We do a lot of vegan and we try to accommodate every dietary
need, but there's still no reason for that having good quality. So I agree with you and we'll work on that and using alternative ways to flavor them. I understand sodium needs to be less, but you could use I don't know what they called. You mean if you can't put sugar, put some money or whatever. I know they cost more, I get it. But we can be creative to to make them flavorful. A lot of people do it. So yeah, we've actually at the secondary levels have flavor stations now. So that way the students can but they have different stuff.
Notice that. But I saw them at one lunch and nobody everybody went past it and nobody picked up anything. So I don't know if that helps. Yeah. And again I think our capturing our market share in elementary, you don't want to turn them off because the food is bland and you know basically. So if you try to grade some of that to the, you know, and maybe a parent tasting isn't a bad thought for elementary to get some parents to be willing to be like, you know what? The pizza is not as bad as you say, hot lunch or whatever, so that you're also getting that that way.
We lose three means this year. I mean, it's in there again for the budget. It's still there. Okay. I think it appropriated every year or something. They didn't know they're trying to codify it, but there's some pushback from the districts because what what districts are afraid of is they'll codify it and then it will be required by law, and then the state will pull the funding, and then we'll be required to provide the meals for free, but no money for it.
So there is not necessarily an interest. And that was one of the topics last month. Don't buy the funding. That's. Yeah. That's the that's the worry. Yeah. So really we wanted to tie this in obviously their renewal for the upcoming year. It's all in your board packet that's all pre-approved by the state of Michigan in line with the original contract. But we also wanted to kind of give Chartwell as a venue to talk about what they hope to do, to try to get that participation level out more in line with, you know,
I mean, we're not far off from some of our peers, but somewhere like Novi, we get compared to a lot of the teaching and learning end and demographics. So I think that's a good marker for us to say if we can go up about 10%, you know, our way there and see some progress towards that mark, then that's a good thing. So. Questions approval. The only question I have is these pizza conveyor things. And they're going to take longer to get the food to the kids six five minutes. Which is really nice because our lady is actually high.
It actually keeps on pressure okay. Because in the oven it takes about 25 minutes. So when we start running low on pizza, you just toss one on the conveyor belt. It takes five minutes. So right out of the oven right onto the serving line. So it's very good. And then when you come and eat at Troy High in the fall you've got to try it. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you so much. Thanks for all your work. It next summer. Everybody. Everybody wants a quick one minute break. So we'll have a quick break.
Three item. Put out unmuting while we're welcoming. Kyle told me you may remember Kyle. He he did a little interim stick for us back when Rick was leaving on Rick or No one. Candace. Excuse me on Candace. Right to go to the old Kyle jumped in and is a seasoned CFO, and we are very happy to have him back in that interim capacity. So, Kyle. Thanks for coming back.
Good to meet you. Thank you. All right. So you can see all that up there using Kendra's new fancy template for my budget. So so I'm going to go through everything kind of breeze through some of the first few slides here, just kind of reiterating some topics. And then at the end we'll kind of circle back and back to the chest. I'll go through the the slides as we talk about where we kind of derived our total reductions from. So just a brief overview, I'll just kind of talk a little bit about what we'll discuss quickly at the public hearing at the next meeting,
and then just jump it into the various funds that we have. So just quick reminders. I like to put this in the presentation every time, just as a quick reminder, especially for anyone in the audience that may not know, but we have homestead non homestead properties throughout the district. So your homestead properties are essentially your primary residences, your general homeowners, their first primary residence and then some other noncommercial agricultural properties as well. And then on homestead, that's primarily business properties. You're run on properties throughout the district and secondary homes, vacation homes and commercial agricultural properties as well.
And then the total taxable value is the combination of both of those added together. And then those taxable values are capped each year in terms of the increases. So it's capped at the the lesser of either the rate of or 5%. So typically it's always less than 5% from during the pandemic where it was like seven 7.5%. Then it was five and then it got capped for the first time. So just visually, this is kind of from last year to this upcoming year. Taxable values. We've got homestead in the blue in the middle there.
The orange is your non homesteader then combined. So you can see a little over 3% total increase from year to year. And then taxable values. We also have our state education tax. So these are the various taxes that both homestead and non homestead top of these pay. So your state education taxes paid by everybody. So that's on all all homestead and on homestead properties. And then our operating millage which the voters approved for us back in November of 2024. That's 1820 down just the non homestead properties in the district and then hold harmless.
So this is a rate I see a lot of commentary out on the interwebs about this and how the district should be flush with cash because we have the whole harmless marriage, the whole harmless millage. I would remind everyone that it is simply put in place post proposal A to keep us whole. So from what we had to what we had the day after it was approved, it just kept us where we were at. So we were fortunate enough to have a voter base that approved that back in 1995 and has been approved every time for every election cycle since.
So that is only on homestead property. So just under general homeowners in the district. And for perspective, last year was 2.7294 mills and then sinking in debt fund. Those are levied on all properties. So for last year we had 0.9606 for the sinking fund. And then we also had 6.1 mills for the debt fund. So the debt funds as a reminder, that's the money we collect to pay off the bonds that we've issued as part of our large amount program. And then briefly on the amendment, this was approved back in 1978.
So it was a constitutional amendment. But basically what that did is it forces taxing entities to roll back their each year just to make sure that the taxes that those citizens and businesses are paying each year doesn't increase more than the rate of inflation. So you'll see on the next slide here that each year we're doing a rollback calculation on all of our tax rates except for the debt millage rate. And then that's going to roll those back slowly over time. So looking at the various rates so on homestead properties this is just a visual of the state education tax
the hold harmless millage and then the debt and sinking fund. So you can see the the orange there the hold harmless. Each year it continuously goes down a little bit each year. That's primarily because of declining enrollment. So when we get this spreadsheet we'll find gentlemen at the state of Michigan. It fills it out for us. All we do as a district is go in and we plug in an estimated enrollment for the upcoming year. And then that spits out what the new rate would be for the upcoming year based on that projected enrollment. And then at the end of the year, we go into the same spreadsheet,
and then we do an adjustment to the prior year amount based on actual enrollment. And then that difference, which is typically it could range from 50 grand to a few hundred grand, but something that's generally immaterial to an auditor. It gets rolled into the upcoming years rate. So you're essentially either getting a little back or taking a little more to get it up to where it should have been based on actual environment. So you can see that goes down by 0.15 or so every year based on declining enrollment. And then same thing on the sinking fund. We roll that one back based on the noise reduction fractions
that we get from the county. So that's rolling back the rate based on the rate of inflation. So you'll see a small decrease typically in the sinking fund as well. And then the debt fund we don't have to roll back by law because by law once we assure bonds we have to levy whatever rate we need to levy in order to make sure we make those payments. And then the state education tax is obviously part of proposal A, so that's fixed at 6 million. And then on Homestead Village comparison. So again they're paying state education tax in the blue. They also have their operating millage at 18 mills. So that one is in orange.
And then the debt fund and sinking fund as well. So for the non homestead the only one we're rolling back is the single harmless rate. And the or I'm sorry the operating legend wrong at the bottom there. That's why I say whole timeless I should say operating village. I'll change that for the next meeting. But operating and sinking will be rolled back for that. And then just visually, it's always nice to see the breakdown between homestead and homestead properties. Your businesses are typically paying almost double
in terms of the military to the residential, and we are required to levy that 18 mills in order to receive foundation allowance, too. So we essentially collect locally the 18 mills, and then the state pays the difference to get us to that 10,836 per pupil that we see. So jumping into general fund here, actually going to go through and do the other small funds real quick. And then we'll circle back to general fund since that one's the longer conversation. So our ancillary funds we have.
So these are our capital projects and our sinking fund in our capital maintenance fund. So we have our 2019 capital project fund. That balance should be zeroed out here by the end of June. That was the primary driver of the administrative office renovation. So this caps off the 2013 bonds that we had. This was the third series issued in 2019. So those dollars will be fully spent as of June 30th of this year. And then that would leave a proposed budget of nothing remaining. Then for the upcoming school year 2023 capital projects.
You can see here in the middle column, amendment three. The revenue is strictly just interest earnings on those funds. And then we have our planned expenditures for the year. So you can see just under $70 million thus far and projected through the end of June. And then that would bring our balance down to about $61 million for those 2023 capital projects funds. And then for the upcoming school year, again, a projected interest rate. We're seeing slightly declining interest rates. So that's going to bring down that total a little bit. And then we have about $54 million planned right now
in our cash flow statement for that fund. So we'll get that one pretty much fully spent by the end of the year, which makes way for series two that was just issued back in March. And then that fund. So I did give you a sample resolution of a common debt fund resolution at the board for the past. You so choose. But what this does is when we present the debt funds, we have 5 or 6 different debt funds individually that we keep track of on our books. What this resolution does is it basically combines it into one bad fund. So we keep
track internally of all the different amortization schedules for each fund. But this basically allows us to record all revenues and all expenditures in the same fund for all funds combined. So a lot of districts are moving to this because it's just extra work to allocate out all the revenues and expenditures across 5 or 6 different funds every time to make a payment. So for us, we end up just transferring money in between them anyways to balance them out. So a lot of districts are just saying, let's go to one common debt fund where we have schedules of payments for each fund individually,
but for budgeting purposes we can lump them all into one. So that's Miller Canfield put this resolution together for us. So that'll be on the next board agenda for the board's consideration. And I ask the question, so 2019 fund is gone. Couple projects that we've done. So the only thing that is remaining is for 2023 fund. So those are the capital projects side of the debt that we're leaving with the sinking fund and others. So these are so we actually have like fun 315 to fund.
321 so they're the actual debt funds. So for your purposes, we typically present them in totality like this as opposed to giving six different slides of each individual one. So it's going to essentially get rid of those other smaller funds and then combining them into one official debt fund, it will get rid of them for your accounting purposes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Because really from the board's end, you're really only going to see the capital project funds. Those are the funds that we received the money. How are we spending them now? The debt fund is now what are we collecting locally
to pay off the bond interest payments that we have two times a year. So it just simplifies the accounting process on the back end. Why did the state require us to do this before? It's always been an option. Some districts preferred to break it out individually and then like we still will maintain schedules like that, but it just helps streamline it more on our end to have one common unified debt fund. So when we get tax dollars from from the city of Troy, we're basically collecting them. And then we spread it amongst six different funds based on a percent
that that fund is going to contribute to the payments each year now. So this would essentially just allow us to deposit them all into one fund. And then the payments come all out of one fund now okay. So that makes sense. It's just one time resolution we adopted. And then for the incoming budget, the proposed budget would then just have one fund for the debt monies to come in and out of. And then sinking fund. So you'll see here amendment number three, we have about $4.4 million of expenditures projected for the year. And then adding to fund balance, just under $1 million.
So we'll have about $1.8 million plan for that. And then going into next year, right now we're still between bond work and sinking fund projects. We're trying to build out a little bit more of a budget, but tentatively, we're looking at about $3.8 million added back to that, with some of it contributing towards the Athens renovation, so that we adjusted some of the scope there on the existing part of the building. And we need a little bit of extra funding. So we're going to use this for some of the mechanical upgrades that would be needed throughout the rest of the building.
And then we are also able to shift from the preschool fund and from the general fund to debt payments that were made out of each of those funds to the sinking fund. So we had just over $400,000 coming out of our general fund for the TLC building at the district acquired. And then we also had just under $400,000 of money from the preschool fund that was being used to pay off debt that was issued to purchase those two facilities and build that. So we worked with Miller, Canfield and our auditors.
They signed off. We're going to get a legal opinion sometime this week on the ability to take those funds, since they were sinking fund eligible projects and actually pay the debt on those projects out of the sinking fund, which is allowable under the law. So it's going to essentially free up 400 grand from the general fund and $400,000 from your preschool fund. So we're trying to alleviate some of that pressure. So that's going to be planned for as part of the sinking fund budget as well. And then our capital maintenance fund, this is a fund that the turtle was money was supposed to come into this year.
And then the state got a little behind. So we're the last I heard it could be December of 2026, is when we anticipate that $1.85 million from the state of Michigan. So I'll believe it when I see it, but nonetheless, I'm going to continue to budget for it. So that's why you see the the amendment there shifting. So and then we do have our operations vehicle being paid for out of this fund as well. And then some transfers from this over to our general fund. Now just to help out a little bit in the interim. Special revenue funds, we have our food service fund.
So as we talked through Charles there, we had our spend down there of just over $1 million. That was the kitchen servery line for next year upcoming. We kept it pretty much flat for right now in terms of revenue and then expenditures. Obviously without the upgrades, we were able to reduce that down. So once we get into the fall and actually start seeing some numbers, then we'll be able to update with our First Amendment on this one. But looking to add a few hundred thousand to fund balance. Always the reduction in revenue. That was all based on participation.
So less than just the flames coming in. So it could be a little bit higher than the 7.6. But obviously we budget conservatively. So. So overall there's. Less because the less meals served less participation means less money back from the state. Yeah, $1 million $70. And then our career center on this is our Michigan Works program. So this is strictly a grant funded program. We are more of a fiduciary for. So we receive the money we pay the expenditures on our behalf.
So it's always a net zero five. So again just a modest increase to their revenues and expenditures projected for the upcoming year. Our community service fund this is our care programing our enrichment programing. So again we're looking at some modest growth and revenue and expenditures. The biggest factor for the change in fund balance is we're taking some of that fund balance and transferring it over to the channel fund. Right now. We've let it build up over time, you know, nearing 100% of expenditures. So we're to a point where we wanted to pull some of those now back
into the general fund and really soften our deficit that we have right now for this year and then dwindling that down over the next few years as we look at some larger scale reductions to our budget here shortly. And our preschool fund as well, you can see that GSP just keeps growing rapidly. So the district continues to add GSP classes across the district. So you're going to see revenue go up. That's all grant funded through the state. So your revenues always equals your expenditures. Part of why we wanted to look at moving that $400,000
debt payment out of the preschool fund into the sinking fund is as we continue to shift families to GSP. A lot of families that qualify for GSP are intuition right now, and they just simply don't know. So there's an outreach effort to shift them over to essentially paid for preschool. So what that does is then it lowers your tuition model, which then lowers any profit that you might make. Even though we don't typically make significant profit on the tuition program, it's still profit that contributes towards that debt payment. So as that number shrinks and more GSP classrooms pop up
throughout the district, it's going to tighten the ability for tuition to cover that for hundred thousand. So we wanted to make sure that we had a plan in place to be able to do that. So when do we pay for preschool? Employee at. When do we pay off our preschool 20, 40 and 40. So it's about a it was about a $20 million. Was thinking 2030 okay. Off by ten years.
What is the shift of tuition payments and what is our total percentage of that? We have 260 students in 1713 programs, so we've got about eight. It's not an exactly. Yeah. I'm just curious what that is a percentage because I did not think. About 500 students. So. The state has five x the income thresholds since the onset of the pandemic to essentially cover anyone that needs preschool probably be covered by look at the graduation.
Yeah. So people that have fallen apart. Yeah. So the is much bigger than that. And it's four year olds. So you get some that do tuition for three year old and then they switch to GSP the same exact curriculum. It's just who's paying the bill really. And you need to use if it's GSP it's differently. Yes. We asked if we could pay the debt payment on the preschool building that is used for GSP. And they said, no, you can't do that. So then that's when we sort out the sinking fund to cover that expenditure.
So 93% of the total bond that was issued was used towards sinking fund eligible. So we're transferring 90% of the debt payment over just to give Miller, Canfield suggested just giving yourself a buffer. Okay. And then a student activity fund. So we're simply just a fiduciary for these funds. So these are any clubs across the district that students can have. We're housing the money on our books. So each year it varies. But we bump it up a little bit each year. And then we'll
typically come in just under those. So those are just dollars that we hold on their behalf rather go through and like look at all those accounts and say like, does this club operated in the last building from time to time? They'll they'll ask for a transfer out, you know, transfer to a similar purpose if you can or if it's there's no similar purpose as long as it's a student activity, it can be transferred to another student activity. Yeah. You typically don't want to go for the student to a staff type account. So then jumping back over to general fund.
So over these here in a minute. So this is just a snapshot of kind of where we're at. So. Our third amendment here in the middle you'll see our last amendment was about 5.6 million. This one actually worked out to be just a little bit higher by about $5,000. So we drew up all of our revenues to match our state aid record, all of our grant allocations, federal and state have been updated and then expenditures as well. This reflects obviously moving things out like those debt payments over sinking fund and then chewing up every other budget kind of
went through line by line to make sure that everything is still alignment. So obviously our goal is to come in ahead of that. But conservatively that's where we feel we'll end. So again, that 13.5% mark as a percent of our expenditures for our fund balance. So looking at next year we went through. And just to kind of give you an idea of what what we do on the revenue side. So I'm not going to go through this whole spreadsheet, but I think it's a nice visual. So we have all of our revenue accounts here. We have 160 revenue accounts that we go through.
And so what we do as a district is we say, okay, here's our final amendment based on actual thus far, year to date. And then what we do is we say, okay, what is in the three proposal. So you have a governor, Senate and House proposal. What what dollar amounts are they looking to allocate statewide for each one. And then we convert that to an actual percentage change based on the current years actual budget from the state. And then we take that percentage and we say, okay, what's the lowest of the three proposals. And then we apply that to our final amendment.
So we're trying to take line by line, the lowest of the three proposals to be the most conservative. And so then that factors in with some local adjustments. And then we back out some one time grant dollars that we had or some carryover dollars. And then that all adds up to what our proposed revenue is for the year. So that's where this 191 million 778 came from. And then on the revenue or expenditure side, we backed out $12 million in reductions that will go over here in a minute.
And then we added back, as we saw, you may have seen in our Spring Update document, we presented it back in the winter retreat as well. This $6.88 million of total cost increases for salaries and benefits as well. So that was added into this $193 million figure. So very conservatively, we're looking at $1.5 million loss as opposed to a $12 million loss. If we didn't do anything. Now, the state did come in last year with some one time mixers, funding for retirement costs of about $2 million.
None of that's factored in yet. So we're hopeful that when they actually released their final budget, there's going to be some other line items in there that will that that'll kind of close that gap and get us to hopefully above a break even point for the year. So that's factoring in the significant work that our administrative team across the district has put in to trying to find these savings. So that was kind of our goal. If we can get us back on an upward trajectory, getting us was that 15% mark. That's the ultimate goal. Doesn't need to be all in one fell swoop, where we need to net a few million dollars next year, but as long as we can show a nice progression and be in the 14%
range next year and then hopefully 15 the year after, that's our goal we get in years past, we've kind of looked at 2 to 3 years out. We is that is it somewhere in here or that's. So that's actually one of your handouts if you want. So that's this updated projection model here okay. And I didn't ask us here. I said I didn't. It was a nice way. Perfect. Second. Yeah.
So this document we showed at the retreat obviously. And then we wanted to update it again with our final amendment free proposal and then the projected amounts for next year. So we try to show this from a structural standpoint. You can see that $12 million structural deficit for this year if we don't do anything. And again that's that's a byproduct of Esser funding is gone. There have a lot of positions across the district that have been added, and funding just isn't there in the district elected to maintain those positions and spend down our fund balance, which was nearing 20%.
So our goal was to spend those funds down and stretch out these positions as long as we can before we have to start looking at a reduction model. So you'll see there are the 12 million, and then obviously the $5.605 million deficit for the year. That's projected to get that spent down to about 13.5%. And then looking at next year. So structurally, even with those 12 million and change we've talked about over the next few years, they're still going to have to be more reductions pending the outcome of state funding on schools.
So structurally that's your deficit. Obviously we're looking at that $1.5 million deficit next year, conservatively assuming the state doesn't come in with anything additional, which historically they do more of a supplemental type added in. So and then you'll see the transfers in. We're trying to adjust those down each year. We don't want to be too reliant on some other funds. So for now we'll leave those at zero and see how it shakes out. And then obviously you'll see an upward trend as we try to progress towards that 15% mark there.
And again the goal is to come slightly above those. But that has and I don't think I included on the print out. But this is that 6.88 million that we talked about. So that's where those cost expenditures. So we'll actually go through and update those once we get our final buyout numbers. And then we'll have a new roster so to speak with updated FTE. So these numbers may actually go down here as well. So instead of 6.889 it could be 6.5 million or something for total cost increases because we're going to have fewer staff members next year.
So again, we'll catch all that up in the First Amendment once we get a final roster here in the next month, and then we'll have some time to look forward to go through. And really, assassin who actually left, what what positions were replaced, which ones were vacated, that kind of thing. So that number I foresee also going down which will be favorable to our budget. Is this important. That's not yet okay. Good good. Yeah. We can put this on I just we don't have all the stuff. Yeah I thought I selected all the points on that. Look at it again.
And then likewise we kept the 250 per pupil. That's the estimate coming from the state. That's what we're using in all of our models. And then going forward with $150 a pupil, which is what we had for this year. And then the state came in a little bit higher. So that always benefits us. But for modeling purposes, we'll keep it at 150 and 11,869. Was our planned enrollment for this fall. 90% of that plus 10% of the last spring count is the 11, eight, 87. So that's the number that we're using for all of our calculations as well.
31, double a 20 that come in so high because of the other districts declining. Yeah. We came in at 4.4 million. So we're actually going to defer a little chunk of that to next year. So you're allowed to do that. You can do for any state categorical like that for one here. So we can we typically do for a million, million five of all grants combined each year just helps smooth it out as you're trying to ride through a deficit era. And then for next year, as of right now, it looks like
we're in the same situation where last year, unless language changes. But there might be some language changes with so many, 75% of districts did not take the money and it did not look great for. Yeah. So so there there's talk of it still requiring having the language in there for the investigation, but maybe to lessen the the way I of eternity my privilege. So waiving your rights.
Yeah. We were going to clarify like mass casualty define it a little better because it was pretty broad prior. So 79 at the behind the scenes at the capital event written about this. But one of our. Representative Kelly, and basically the statement that because so many districts have declined it and show that we didn't really need it. So I'm just a little concerned about keeping it. Yeah.
Keeping it. But then also like will they actually, which is just concerned that since it came in at such a high number, has that influence or will it influence our ability to retain positions related to student mental health and safety? I know that I saw the posting for the safety director. I don't know the title of that position, the mental health and safety coordinator. Yeah, yeah. And then
I know that we like social work counseling that that sort of thing to. Okay. Yeah, I think the only, the only vacancies from a counseling perspective is really due to a retirement, but then also based on like ratios to make sure that we're sustaining a good ratio that's well below the recommendation. So yeah, we have within this grant, I think we have four counselors at middle school that were added with this grant that we're able to sustain. Okay. Yeah, yeah I'll go for those in detail.
Just a minute here. So explain the 22. Is that I or. Okay. Yeah. That's so historically we've as districts only received money for special ed transportation. And then a few years ago you were able to start submitting fall counts for general additive transportation. It all goes back to the SFC, the School Finance Research Collaborative. That said, it costs money to transport even general and students to. So that's 650,000 we get is for that purpose on top of what we get for specialized transportation
and either anticipate that to move forward conservatively. No. This year was supposed to be the last year the pot of money they had. And then it's in all three proposals now for next year. So I think there's a push to try to follow that SFC model where there is a separate component for at risk Eld and transportation particularly. You just didn't add them because you didn't. You want to be more conservative. Okay. So as we get more clarity from the state, then we can update some of those other more one time based monies. Yeah.
But we we try to plan 2 to 3 years at a time. So we want to make sure that we're planning it's not there. And then we can always add things back later. So now let me go back to the slides. We're kind of jump into the yeah the budgetary. So as a reminder we when we started this process, we set some priorities for ourselves for our team. And it was trying to identify our known obligations. So that more specifically was John's task in
in helping to settle contracts, extended contracts. So we were able to do that and all of our represented groups. So Tesla test as well as a so that is completed. The second piece was really an effort to to try to focus on having as minimal impact as possible on student students and student supports, and we'll go over exactly what where we where we landed with, with the, the recommended reductions. And then lastly through attrition.
And that's where our early retirement incentive severance plan comes in. Pleased to say that we we have really great coverage with it. We saw several weeks ago where people can can elect, but we had 7079 retirees just today. We anticipate a few more. Yet we don't know exactly, but we anticipate a few more we are on. We got really good coverage
and I believe and I'll show you in a moment here. We recall we only put in the budget. We put in our budget reductions, 1.5 million savings. We anticipate that savings to be greater than the 1.5. We just don't know yet. We have to go through and through everything up and see which staff members are not being replaced, because that's a true 100% savings. Those that aren't being replaced, but several we will replace. There's several positions world language positions,
for instance, science, of course, positions that we have to have. And you'll see here in just a moment some reductions that are just straight elimination of sections and so forth. So showing that. So that was our that was our our task. We talked in March about our January and then again March about some of the challenges that we face with enrollment. Of course, we've been talking about that one. You know, the issue with Lansing, and there still does seem to be a lack of urgency, although it is it is nice to
have at least have those three budgets done. So there is a opportunity for us to prepare. And we are that the the May Revenue Estimating Conference to come back is fully fund does continue to show promise. The monies are there in the school a although overall general fund appears to be down and will continue to be down for a while. And there is that chance that likelihood
that they will continue to take from school aid to balance general fund. And so as much as we we try to push back against that, and that is something that we're going to have to we paying attention to. And then, of course, you know, we've talked about our ongoing expenses that that 6 to $7 million of increased expenditures on an annual basis for our known for our known costs. So and then retirement costs are something we're going to continue to keep an eye on as well as special education.
And so that's all of those were part of our conversation, our targets. We want to work towards getting to that 15% fund balance measure. We identified 12 million in reductions as our goal. Pleased to say that we we got there a little bit short of the 12 million, but I'll be able to show you exactly. We as we showed as we shared with you, we wanted to take a kind of a holistic, objective approach to this. So put together a matrix that allowed us to ask questions around
the impact on students equity, what are the true savings? Are they and so forth. We shared this with you. This is the process that we went through. And we'll show you where where we landed at this point. So. Take these. For you all there. Yeah. And then and then we've got up here on the screen as well. But I want you to have hard copy case. So know what this group like.
So we'll kind of take you through. Through this you can see the our goal of 12 million. We we're at about 11 eight and I'd say about 11 eight because that is going to change. It's likely to change. It was already changed several times today as we went through the list again. We missed missed something here, but we added it back here and so forth and so on. But I feel really good that where we let say I feel good, I feel confident that where we landed our reductions that we can, we can sustain.
But it is in be told it is not easy. $12 million from the budget, that is 93 to 94% people, because that means you have to cut people. Yeah. And you have to cut positions. So it was particularly challenging for us with respect to that. But but having that matrix, I think, helped take some of the emotion out of it and kept it as objective as possible. When you're talking about positions that every one of the positions
that are on here are useful to the school district. But we had to start somewhere. So you can see then by department area breaking down by department area, the number of proposals. That just means that that those are areas that we've looked at. So some are very small, some are larger. And then the the actual savings to the right there. See what we got up through the 11. We'll go through each of these. You can see this is where we, where we, we were able to keep the, the vast
majority of the, the, the reductions of 9 million fame out of the green area. So those were the have the least impact on students and instruction. The yellow a little bit greater impact. And then the red is the area that is is has more impact than we would like to see it. Also, when we think about the potential of bringing back rolling back some of these, I the idea would be to start at the red and work our way back up the list.
If it's if it's possible. So we want to just go through these and give you a little context behind the behind each of these. So you have a sense for where where we're at. You can see that that that is two program that those are two sports that are that are not mHSAA sanctioned. That will go back to club stats. So it doesn't mean that we're not going to be offering them. So that would be waterfall and sacred swimming doesn't mean we're not going to offer them. We're going to continue to offer them. They're just going to go back to club status.
So they'll be they'll be funded like our our club sports are funded. So the general fund will be open subsidized. And those Dan talk to you about about reclassifying debt payments. That's where this shows up in this area. So that's those were kudos to Dan for thinking creatively and digging into digging into some of these areas that didn't we hadn't thought to look at. And so we see him and his team for digging into those and finding ways
in which we could give her some of those monies. I would the general fund and the operations area. We have already reduced three FTE. Those are technicians. You'll you'll see from an operations standpoint, as we have individuals who leave operations, we're going to start contracting a good amount of that work out. So where we have our skilled trades, for instance, if the skill tradesperson leaves, we're going to likely contract those those positions out. That's a savings to to to the school district.
The upper was going to be about $85,000 in savings. And that was a call to them saying, we need we need you to sharpen your pencil. And that is essentially some summer programing. Summer temporary. Temporary will be temporary summer help. Instead of paying them all summer to be here all year, you're basically paying for them to not be here during the summer. So and back in, during factoring the pandemic, when it was really difficult to retain those staff, we had to do some things creatively. So we retain staff over the summer
in order to not lose them to another, to another company. And so we begin carrying some staff over the summer, having them work, of course, but we carried them over the summer. We just we don't feel we need to do that any longer. Feel like the staffing wise we're in better shape. So we got we don't need to do that. What is it that they do? Whereas custodians. So yeah. From a communication standpoint, reassigning a staff member back to the classroom full time. And then district wide purchase services. So we're going to reduce purchase services.
Remember that's the other big pot of money. When we look at that's like the 18 or so percent of the budget or the of the personality that are associated with. And this one's more on the operation side of purchase, service and supplies. So as we did this bus drivers kind of thing. No, this would be more of like as we outsource certain types of repairs like we can go through. And if we're doing the project appropriately or I shouldn't say appropriately, if we strategically repair
something the right way, then we can charge to sinking fund. So if it's not just routine maintenance, but we're going a little bit deeper and we're actually replacing replacing a component or something like that. Rob and his team have gone through and said there's a lot that we just simply maintain because it's from the general fund. But if we go a little bit farther now, we can actually repair or replace it, and then now it's become sinking fund eligible. Yeah. So the next SEC director that Todd left us to take a job with Ford Motor Company, and we use this as an opportunity to restructure that.
So we're replacing that position. It's no longer going to be a director position. It'll be a coordinator position. And that will be a coordinator position on more of a school year contract. So it would be more akin to a this individual will be working the the actual school year a couple weeks before a couple of weeks after week before we get there where Todd was a year round. So that we're reducing that and that saved that contract to about $100,000. The next is that 1.5 million that we we anticipated.
We wanted to be conservative on that 1.5. Our hope is to come in well beyond that 1.5. The more savings we can find there divides us an opportunity to reprioritize, potentially bringing back some of the reductions. So we're hoping to we're hoping to see significant more savings. With respect to that, we are reducing two administrators across the school district. Legal fees or reducing legal fees. We think we can reduce by that much, at minimum, that much. It's helpful that we won't be negotiating over the course of the next several years
so that when when we're negotiating that typically it's up quite a bit. And in terms of legal. So pretty comfortable with that reduction schedule C so those are the those are the clubs and activities and so forth. Primarily at the high school there's a very few or there's some at the middle school very limited at the at the elementary in schedule. See some of those are required by the contract. And so we're not talking about those that are required by the contract. We're talking about those that are more discretionary.
So we're tasking the principals going through that list. And our goal is to reduce that by 20%. Can you give us an example o c. So schedule C position might be chess club might be ping pong club any number of. So but it's just adding money to one of the teachers for running for for running back. And so we are many there are many clubs that don't run for their very limited enrollment. So it's it's identifying a maximum
a minimum number of students in order to run the club and then and then having a staff member there as well. So it's just kind of going through. And so we're going analytically and just to look at the counter and then the participation rates and what we'll likely find is there's a number of them that haven't been running and just reduce those. Is it does it violate the contract as a parent to step in to we do have some parents that are schedule C very few, but we do have some. But they have to be paid.
They weren't there on volunteer. No they'll they'll be paid but they'll be paid on council as a vendor. So it goes to teachers have the first right. Employees have the first, the first opportunity to take advantage of those clubs. But it's not like scouting or something where you just volunteer because it's something that they're right. I'm sure all of our schedules see our hopefully have anybody that volunteers not typically or doesn't get paid their bacon so they help don't get paid.
Yeah. Wow. Okay. I guess I guess a follow up to that is so if you have one of those clubs, can they still continue running? But not as a schedule C, but as a volunteer parent club? That was the first home that was. That's a good question. Yeah. They just need background check and all that. But yes, you've already identified you said you you have identified the minimum to run and reduced it or this is like your this is this is a this is the next work for us. But that's our that's our target.
Got it. Yes. Our target. But you could consider making them voluntary if they really wanted to run them. Yeah. So responsibility anymore. Yeah. Insurance still with cover it because it's still technically school sanctioned okay. So if it's happening within our buildings we just do proper background checks as a volunteer and that is still covered. Is there a number like for clubs and activities like five symbols, some bargaining contracts, data specific number? I've had district I've seen districts with 10 or 12 minimum okay. Because really they're looking at
what are you paying for a stipend to run that club? Do you have enough kids paying X amount of fee to do it? Yeah, that's part of the work, is to establish a minimum number of participants and then a minimum number of times as well. But that it's a number of participants at those times. So if you know adolescents, you know, a lot like show up for the very first meeting and I'm free meetings later, you got five kids. So it's figuring out what that looks like for something that is already since this is in their contract. Right. They're already.
Okay. Yes, yes. So the next attendance Secretary reduction from 12 full time to six half time. So you'll know that in all of our elementaries we have two full time secretaries. In this case we would be going back. We would be going back to where we where we had been, I think 2011 here, ten where there's one and a half. So the one full time and then one half.
And then it says from 2 to 0 in high school. Yes. And then to attend to a one from each high school, one attendance secretary from each high school. How many are there to two school. Okay. So you're doing your doubling past the one left. So no. Yes. There's secretary at each school right now. So yes okay then who who will do that work whatever that is. So you have counseling secretaries and then we have one office secretary person.
Doesn't the principal have their own two. Yeah. Yeah. So they will share between those three secretaries that we're in shared pick. My kid also helps absorb a lot of the absence management and visitor piece. So yeah. Can you for the elementary school how it's written. So there are 12 full time secretaries which is one for each elementary school and you're making them 12 half time. Is that what it is? Just to reach you taking half of them and taking up. So you take so it's from 24 full time to 12 full time.
Is that what it should be? But the number I don't understand what they said. It says from 12 three time to six half time equivalent which is a quarter. So yeah only think of the attendance secretary at each child entry. So you have one main office secretary and then in attendance. So that attendance is going from full to half time to be six six full time back to from 12 to 6 full time equivalent. First of all, it should be 12 part time or six full time. One of those, you know, we agonized over how to write this in here.
That's okay. How do we explain this in one little box? That's fine. That should say 12 times. Yes. Yes, it. Do you understand? Do you anticipate? I mean, that matters, but like losing people like I want full time right now, essentially. But we have a lot of landing spots that are opening up through the buyout. Gotcha. That our goal is to over the summer, to transition those that don't want half time over to a potential role. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Media specialists in the
elementary from going from 10.5 to 9.5. So that was 100%. And that what that essentially does is that puts media at the same at the same level of staffing as the other specialist media had had a little bit more that actually reproduces media to where the other specialists are. In terms of stacking, does that mean they travel between the different elementary schools so they'll be doing other stuff other than media? Yeah, they will travel or they all traveled.
Okay. So elementary media will be what, 1 or 2 buildings or how does that work out? It's nine and a half, 12 buildings. So two buildings to figure out some schedule. Okay. Does that accommodate like collection maintenance but looks actually I know that's always been an added thing in media is the like, yeah, I run the class in teach succession today. But then there's the like all the books. Yeah. That piece. And then you have a parent usually who comes and helps out here. Right. So you'll notice the next one have reduced media from 2 to 0.
So what what will likely be doing is looking for volunteers to work in those media special centers. Just. The next, you can see reduce general education by nine FTE. So that is that is based upon tightening up some sections and so forth, reduced involvement and then tightening up some sections. We believe we can we can reduce close to nine FTE. So where we have nine retirees that's a complete
100% savings. Now that would change depending upon enrollment. That number could go from 9 to 8. If if the enrollment were to spike in a building somewhere. But Kathy, keep a close eye on those and the principals. So that's that's that. No mass specialist. So you recall that part of the essas monies good portion of extras monies. We added mass specialists and
and so on at the elementary from 8 to 2. One of those is going to be a title one position. So it's a title one building. So we'll be one of those. And the other one will be the the CSI, the serious sis. Excuse me. So replace a position so none in buildings anymore except that one and one more time. Yeah, yeah. So this is something we should keep an eye on.
How we do. It's. It's a risk that we need to keep an eye on, right? Yeah. I mean, and again, it's it's in the yellow, which means it's in that tier two, which means that again, as we prioritize bringing some of these back, it might be an opportunity to do that. Those were some of the Esser funded walls that but we've used them to get our. So that's that was was sort of the backbone of the math was the specialist support class. And now we don't have that. We realistically spread one person over 12 buildings.
It's not it's more like training or training or regular teachers to do that much. Yeah. Something we need to keep an eye on. It's an intentional we're doing. Next reduce literacy specialist. So you can see from 15 to 14 there's a bit of a reduction there. Is the metric for that. We had a retirement. We had a retired we had a retiree. Right. Yeah. So reduction through attrition not like database.
We still have one for school looks like. Yeah. So that those more impacted buildings. So title one building and and then those that have greater need we'll have a greater percentage. Are they pretty evenly distributed. Do you have one in each school. And then maybe the two actually pro union. Are there any buildings that have two. Which ones would that be. Yes. So I don't know maybe. That's what I thought okay. Are they title and funded or general fund funded extra. To entitled title one 3131.
Yeah. Oh there's 30 181. Yeah. You can, you can group your title funding. Oh okay. Yeah I see now I understand. Okay. Yeah. If you, if you elect to spend your title one dollars like at a secondary level, then you're forced to then use 31 at risk funding for title one purposes. Okay. So we have literacy specialists in that at risk funding okay. Sounds good. Thank you. You can you basically group either K-5 or secondary and title one you elect which road you want to go down.
And then you have to use Atlas funding to fund the other part of it then. Specialist from 14.6 to 12.6. I just have receptionist. So this is this a central office position? That's for two typically that worked in the front at central office from 2 to 1. Combining those positions. Those are retiring but allowed us to consider doing that. This next one reduced building self allocation back when it was more challenging for us to maintain substitutes,
we went to a model where we assigned building subs to buildings. They were permanently assigned to buildings, and then they would be the first to be called upon to be used. And if a if a sub was at a building and didn't have to be used that day, they could be sent to another building to be used. We are we're going to move away from having more of those, so we're going to have fewer of those assigned building subs. We still have some, but we're moving what we're moving away from some of those.
That's that's that. Would you say school counselors from 16 to 14? I didn't really have 15 at 16. That's high school. 31 AA that was kind of what I was getting at was that extra money. So. Why are we kind of putting off or carrying forward $2 million and reducing high school counselors? I think it's a it's a balance of and Christine can talk
about ratios a little more. It was more of an alignment at the two main high schools of getting the student counselor ratios, because they were they were very low. It was like 1 to 2, 20 to 1 to 250 is the recommendation. Right. So like at Athens it was well it was pushing 200 I believe. So we have a number I think it's a balancing act. Two of like that 31 AA money. We don't know how long it's going to be there. So if we have attrition like this then let's try to reduce the number
a little bit to four, not two. I school counselors retire. We have one. We have two middle school counselors were retired. So our high school will be two high school counselors into middle positions. So certainly and I know I know you all. These are really hard decisions that we work. So we were looking at those retirements and resignations. We looked at the ratio for our buildings. So at Athens, our ratio going into currently
we have six counselors at Athens with a ratio of to 60 to 1. Moving down to five. Counselor at Evans we'll have our ratio at 312 to 1. At Troy High we're at 291 currently one moving down to 6% 340 to 1. Our other buildings, if you we did the math with all the other buildings and all the other buildings, if we were any, we would be bumping far up, far, far higher. So like Smith, if we were reducing a half because I looked at how they used to do that, it would have put Smith at 380 to 1.
I looked even at like, IA, could we maybe reduce a half at IA that we put them at 372, trying to really be mindful of where we could keep our lowest ratios. So one from Athens and one from Troy. I keep us at our buildings being real for all of our buildings, except for Bohlen, are under 350 or under 350. With these reductions, what's the 250? The recommended is 250 to 1 through the American school Asca organization.
The average is 1 to 500 average. That's in the national average. So not that I advocate for that. Certainly I see our contractual limits. 400 corporation. Right. Yeah. I just feel like I need to push back on this one because. Part of the reason that I voted to approve 31 AA was because I felt so strongly that this was money.
That was very important, because mental health is like I guess I'm a little surprised it's even in the green because it it does impact our kids learning. Like if they aren't in a space mentally were there okay. Learning is is going to be secondary. And I know we've we've talked in previous conversations about kind of even the availability of our counseling staff at a proper ratio, which we finally got to.
And it just is kind of shocking that we came in at almost double what the money that we thought we'd get for 31 AA, and we're still reducing. A position that's really part of our. Our strategic plan, the red pillar. I mean, I would say I would much rather not hold back 2 million and take the, you know, however much the savings is. Couple hundred thousand to 61,
that we should not expect that money to be available. We should not expect that nothing to be bad, because you have to hire people who have to. How would that ratio be coming in the coming two years without reducing count? That should also be right. Yes. So it will it will eventually move its way into the high school. It'll take a few years for it to get to this. So another three years you will get to that 250 level probably will start to move our way back down. Okay. So we have a couple of years now.
I guess the question for everybody on the board here is, should we spend the money in these couple of years to keep the ratio or should we could do this and. That's what I mean. I think there's money that's designated for that purpose. And it would still be pushing 1.7 million forward and allow us to keep that ratio for another year. And then at least we have a year to see what happens with our millage, you know, and then maybe if that doesn't come through, then we look at it at this topic again.
And also the student feedback from SAB was they, we asked this question about counselors in social work, and they all said social workers is what they would rather see. Yeah. So we have a large number of social work. We had 24.45 social work right now, producing it down by a few. So every building still has so forth. But that was some of the feedback we got from them. This is the high school. But essentially you're saying you're taking both so well. When we look at like some of those social workers are funded through Ida,
but a large number actually funded by 31 AA, I mean, the one. Question or comment. I know when I initially got on the board, and I don't know if that's still the sense that I know at the time there was a sense of Athens that kids did not have enough access to counselors. And realistically, our counselors spend so much time throughout the year, everything from AP exams to scheduling to to all of that. I mean, at the beginning of this school year,
the counselors essentially there's like a flat out go to all the kids across those schools where they just didn't even want to consider scheduling changes. So if it was and that was a thing at the beginning of a lot of parents reach out to me. And I know I got that similar feedback at Athens and I had similar feedback. But so what happened? I guess my question then would be what happens next year if it was already that bad this year? What is it going to look like?
Keep in mind we have to cut another $4 million next year. Yeah that's true. I mean, this is a this is a problem. Yeah. That just continues. I mean, absent additional funding, which I agree with you with respect to that, you clarify because again, you're talking mental health to me. I was going to wanted to have that discussion when we talked about social workers, I realized that counselors can be growth, I think, too, so I don't I don't know how that well educate us,
but I mean, I'm standing that, you know, you're looking at mentally a child with mental health issues, that the primary response would be the social workers. The feedback from the student group is that for mental health reasons, because we brought up, by the way, and mental health, and that's when they said they go to social workers supports. So I mean, this is a I hear what you're saying, that this is a, you know, following the schedule changes and so on. But do the kids initially go
to their counselors first, or do they go to the social workers first? Because I think a lot of times they go to the counselors first, like that's their first. The counselor helps kind of identify and and it out. Yeah. Like for the team. Yeah, right. Like they're very strong team like our social worker at the high school. And I don't know I don't know how the stuff. So I'm actually going to say because of the size of our high school full time social workers, we have full time psychologists. We have conversations about building. So they are very much a team. So when a child is in crisis and mental health crisis, they work collaboratively as school counselors.
Certainly the first step for the point of first point of contact. And then depending on what happens and how it's resolved and the steps, they work collaboratively through that. So they play a role without question. You know, our counselors where a lot of hats, right. Everything from scheduling and supporting families as they try to access other resources like 504 and helping them through that process to being parts of our team to, you know, running lessons when it comes to support and character development and mental health and classrooms.
So I think one of the challenges that we face right now is we do have two vacancies. And so one of the challenges with school counseling is a large number of our school counselors are only school counselors certified. They're not classroom teacher and counselor certified. And so it's an opportunity to right now, and I'm never going to advocate against us having our counselors, the work that they do is great. But I also realize where we are and financially. And if we hire two new counselors and then a year from now,
we're not in a better position, how many are we getting and where do those folks go? And I guess that's just as we work through this whole list. I think that's the question with all of it is we can right now, we can make this reduction without impacting anyone financially, right? We have our counselors who can fill those roles. And I think that was our rationalization of this work. You're you're you're you're absolutely right, impacting anyone from the employment perspective. But we may potentially impact our student perspective.
So that's what I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Let's put Mark. Yeah put them on that. And I think about that. The only other funding source we have for counselors will be at risk funding. And so at that point you're reprioritize what your at risk dollars are going. Yeah. So yeah I mean that makes sense because there's like other three priorities that yeah. Let's say that becomes and almost wish we were doing strategic planning right now because that would help us to be like, oh, strategic plan says we should be focusing on blah blah. And then it helps to be like, yeah, sorry about this or that.
Well, it's still a refresh we have. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And I understand that. So you see the next one is Jeanette. Sections by ten feet. And that's just tightening up class sizes. That's tightening up where we can tighten up. Can you give us a little bit of an overview on that. And if there are any concerns that we're going to hear from any of that. Just because. Yeah, that's I mean from year to year, you've always going to hear something. There's going to be some classes that don't run okay.
We are being very objective, saying if it's less than this many 20 okay. Yeah. And we will that's going to be across the board even even if it's like jazz it's 6 to 12 yet okay. Yeah. You can hear that because you're going to hear hear. Yeah that's okay. Fine arts fine arts folks express some concern. But what we're starting to see in the middle school now is, is reduced enrollment. And so. Several this Smith has been dealing with
with these scheduling challenges for seven years because as their enrollments been going down, they've had teachers that have had to share, that have had to move between buildings and so forth. So they have been experiencing it. It's just now starting to hit Bonaparte. It's now starting to hit. It's now starting. And it has been somewhat, but it's now starting to hit on the park because they're going to be 75 students less next year. And and Larson's going to be right after that because they're going to start hearing about those. So it doesn't mean it might mean
in some cases, the teacher is going to prioritize what's offering. And we're always going to we're going to have contractual obligations that we have to meet. So class side of obligations and so forth that we have to meet. And we're not going to. Live within those parameters. It's important to know the scheduling will be tight. That's how you got here. So as we kids all have full selections now going into the summer, they'll have opportunities in the fall. When they come back, it'll be very few opportunities for kids to move classes
that just there aren't a lot of there won't be a lot of seats, which is good. That's fiscally responsible of us to not have just open seats sitting there. There will also be in some scenarios where we have maybe 32 kids signed up for a class. Two kids will not be able to take that class. Yeah. So and those students will be removed based on seniority and their opportunity to take it over their four year experience. So you will be so younger. They enter grades, will be given their second, third, fourth choice instead of the one that they took. Yeah.
So we would expect to hear back. Yes, maybe fine arts, maybe a class that has less than 20 kids and then some elected primarily. And then we also looked across our buildings. So it's full. There's 32 kids at Athens and there's five seats at Try High. We offer those kids the five seats at try and we run a shuttle. So if you want to take the class, there's a couple seats in the other building and we'll get you there, which means the classes need to run at the same time. No, that would we usually do. No, no we don't actually don't
run them at the same time because I have more options based on their schedules. Okay, okay. Okay. Specialists. So we're talking secondary now from 6 to 2.8. Same rationale really at the elementary. No. Is this. Ask you to spread those out point four. So what's that one day. No I went in high school and secondary. It's a part of part of their day. So it's to teach five. So you teach three and then you have two hours of support daily.
And so half your day. So that very much minimizes your EMTs reach there to the impacts of okay. Is this more opportunistic? Are they more that we're tired or is more strategic? Literacy specialist. That's for so all the secondary teachers will teach. That are in either math specialist or literacy special will teach courses and then they'll have part of their day will be supported. Okay. But they're all assigned to a classroom for some portion of the day. Special secretary from 1 to 0.5
okay. So for dates that's a large number. And I could see we're moving from 158 to 104. In many in many cases these are these might be individuals who are supporting students in some manner or another. So Sarah is working with all of the buildings to reprioritize and making sure that those students support aides are assigned by IEP. So anyone that has an IEP or the IEP calls for that support will be provided.
But we had to we had to scale that back. Why is it under special ed if it is supporting general students? It's just over time there's kind of been a little creep. And come to find out, the billing and onboarding is literally just processed by special ed. Oh process. So so I mean that's significant amount of money and make it seem like we've been spending a lot of money on something we shouldn't have been. So what were what were these individuals doing
that was not, well, supportive special? In some cases it is a it's a youngster that maybe is being observed for the they they may be evaluated. They may be in the process of being evaluated. So they may they, they may just may have some challenges. So we're observing them in preparation for potentially going through the process. And so and they might have done. Assigned to that individual. And sometimes it's not it's not a one on one. It's a it's an aide within a building that is assigned to a problem.
Students like be assigned to a public during that during the course of the day. But this is one of those where it is. It is just kind of freedoms. There's been freedom. It's gotten away from us and we need to get that back. There was a large number added during the pandemic to just trying to help the funding needed. Well, they they weren't even like Esser funded, funded as her funding in general went towards mass social workers, some additional counselors. But then these were added a supplemental.
So a lot of them just so what can they do to prevent this from happening in the future of us saying, well, it's it's saying no, honestly. And it's sometimes it's difficult to say no to parents. I know, I know, big organization like ours. We can't keep track of it. So we have to have processes to do that. We have to say no. I mean, special ed is very thorough spreadsheet. I mean, they can tell you every one of them by building and whether or not they're associated with an IEP. Now, they went through and kind of cleaned up their inventory,
so to speak, of who is where and what are they doing. And that's really where this number was derived from. And none of these, none of these are individuals were assigned to a student for, for a, for any reason other than it felt it was necessary. And so it it's just one of those things where over time and it gets assigned to a building, gets assigned to a student that aid oftentimes in that building and that was used for other students and so forth.
So yeah, I mean, so we feel better now. This is our recalibration and feeling back and kind of a recalibration of early. So Sarah and her team are working on that now. And the portion that is IEP driven we do get reimbursement from the state floor. So that's all partially fund like 30% funded by the state of Michigan. But there is a large number that we're not associated with an IEP. And so those are the ones that were part of this reduction. So that's 50 for jobs.
So they're all they're all contracted throughout the staff. And their their pay scale is below a pair of professional. Yeah. So we've gone through building by building. Tried to identify the ones that specific. They're not associated with an IEP. Sure. Say is a person with extensive experience in like a setting where these people might be assigned at the very least, this the line item should be yellow because this is going to impact classroom function. Let's say you do have a youngster going through valuation without support.
That youngster is disruptive at best in class room setting, which is why I feel Rich's point for Creek. I feel it, but on the other side, I want to think about these teachers who are going to be tasked with higher class sizes, less support, right? And then without this support, also, no way it's a green item. The very least 54 might be a little aggressive, but I don't know if the spreadsheet is special, but I think it's going to have a bigger impact than not on the classrooms for the for the teachers and students remain.
So are these supports mostly behavioral versus academic or goals? Better idea than I think more behavioral. That's right on here. I just want to keep track of them. So the next one teacher reduction. So we were able to see that we were able to reduce three level four sections and one ECP sections based upon the level program that Sarah shared. Because we're moving to that program,
it provided us an opportunity to make some shifts, and we're taking advantage of of that three less programs and then two arrows for each of those programs. So we're going to push them to Oakland schools. So there are going to be and so they'll be in our building still. They just may be in a different level okay. So based upon their needs. So I. Well, based upon the plan which moves from levels,
it moves from one through four to A, B and C we have some. We're able to obtain some economies of scale by by utilizing the program. And so students are being assigned to programs based upon their needs. And it's allowed us an opportunity to be able to reduce exceptions. So the county level plan allows us to have more kids in program. Right. So we're going to increase the number of kids in the program
and reduce the number of staff supporting them. So reducing four step plus the parents are the pairs from the same programs. The level four is like each teacher gets two pairs. Yeah. We're just two pairs okay. And those that'll be you know, three. The pair doesn't say how many. Either. Like a lot of little population in some cases for example of for it's eight bids and eight bits. It's the same amount of intensity that's.
With the closure for programs for 86 in basis. And so that's where we came. As normal. Step for the student system. I just have to say for the record, the system. It scares me a little bit to say I worry about the students will all be their their needs will all be accounted for and accommodated for further ID. That's that's stuff that we talked about
Staffordshire. So so you're basically you're basically saying we had far more Paris per student than what the county allows for. And now we are in line with that. Is that what I'm hearing? We have a Paris and you can reclassify students in a different way and thereby putting them in different buckets. So it used to be a one, two, three, four bucket. Now it's ABC bucket. And it allows you based on how you classify the student to put them in the correct bucket.
Some buckets might allow for more students, like if you're in a preschool certain ages 4 to 1, if it's above a certain age 10 to 1. So the buckets, I assume, allow you to have more students per teacher so that that's the that's the savings. That's what's how the savings. I'm going to go back to the function of the bucket stuff like from the real bucket might be a bad word. I'm going to use that word words out there. Function of the bucket is what concerns me. These probably should be yellow as well, because if you're upping number of students in the bucket right?
These are not low needs kids. Typically you wouldn't be in a program class if you were a key concern. Well so so another so the levels the the level C. Are more impacted suits and students. And then and we're still required to maintain a certain camp over a certain number in those programs. And we won't enough to have the appropriate amount of adult supports within those rooms. It's the it's the it's the level B programs that allow you to put more students in because those are less impacted students.
Those are students that are in many cases are out in for a good portion of the day. And now that they'll be out for more of their day, well, they also still need any support in like by a student support aid. We are cutting teams are building the building. Yes. Yeah. Yeah I'm just trying to protect both that very vulnerable population by my comments right now. Yeah. And that very vulnerable staff because those are folks we're losing in droves, right. Who are like here. Too many kids, too much stuff. Yeah.
So from both of those perspective, I feel like and as I look at this, cuts in special ed is the largest monetary cut that is filling up in special ed and also some of our largest. So her in this same population group, which concerns me deeply, having the most people to subsidize special ed to the tune of about $9 million out of the general fund, correct? Yeah. It is not funded appropriately. I hear that our kiddos. Doesn't matter, I hear you.
Thank you. The end of the day, our job is to balance the budget. Balance the budget. I hear you not not an easy task, but this is going to make all the other debates that we've had about curriculum whatever pale this is. This is the hard work. And you need to be ready, because this is kind of where we were in 2011. We're going to get a lot of community feedback because it's going to be a lot of people. Yes, but it's got to be done.
Professionals that that go along with those programs. The social work reduction 24.4 to 21.4. There are three. Right there. There's a psychologist reduction. There's a retirement from the psychologist group. So that group will go down from 10 to 9. Social workers opportunistic. No. They're doing like educational assessments. Yeah they do to see if kids have a disability
and no no, no I'm saying. Is that because of retirement opportunity or is it more strategic for its opportunistic? Yeah, I just didn't I think I jumped up I can't I miss the social worker lives as well. Yeah okay. Elementary resource room paraprofessional reduction. Their company is that. Me identifying with students.
Of those for the we have we have been producing most and there were four remaining that that we produced this time. So for retirements and you're taking advantage of it. You should have that. We have finished all of the shopping with the. Secretaries in pairs are still working through it. Okay. So. They have come to the next one adjusting resource room and T.C. staff. What was the total number on that one?
Remember that? 3 to 7.3 between the 2 or 12 K12. There's a lot of special wedding here. Yeah. Special that is being cut a good bit. Yeah. 0.8 million and a 3.3 million. Sorry. 15. How many total. Total. That.
We're going to from 15 to 2. How many. Is that what you said. No we're reducing 7.37. Sorry. You have to be 15. So 50% reduction. No reducing 17. Maintaining okay. You're maintaining 15 okay a third reduction. So what we're doing is what we're essentially doing is is. Increasing that ratio.
So we're going to develop to a certain ratio that that ratio is going up. It sits at about 15 to 1 right now. It can go all the way up to 22. So working for that ratio the student to and you mark that high risk. Yeah it does say right. And you'll have to adjust IEPs to deal with service times. I assume this will be basis based on entirely based upon. It needs. Yeah. So people were that much looseness in the schedule
in case really. Yeah. So that's not the feedback I'm getting some special ed folks. So they're maximizing the case. The case loads and resource room can go in secondary 23 elementary 21 I think a resource. And then TSI is 1 to 25. Don't hold me to that exact number. But we're maximizing to those numbers so that we are efficiently staffing. Teaching and learning. There's 4 or $50,000.
You see subscriptions professional development. That's reduction on secondary Eld peer reduction going from 11 to 8. Technology consultant that was someone who was with us. That's a straight reduction then. Reviewing the building tech needs. That's all. What does that mean. So each of the buildings have we have ten building techs across the entire district. So it's just we were at 16 at one point a couple of years ago.
We tried to window it down just based on need, especially as you go park models at the lower grade levels. So now we're kind of but that's. Yeah. And they come and go and some are 12 hours a week somewhere, 20 hours a week with varies. So as some leave we try to reassess each and every. Who's the technology consultant. What does that mean? She was brought in about a year ago, and she was a former director who retired and then came back in to really help do more one time based projects for us,
getting student systems set up better on the streamlining. The former director of transition. Yeah, this is like a service. Yeah. She was a legit staff and she she very much knows it was not a permanent thing. It was more of a help us out, get us through some bigger one time projects that didn't support. Maybe I should say that we started top of the list, but just kind of looking at this and, you know, I know Stephanie stressed that a lot of special education is going away. And.
As a parent who has kid who this is me saying, this is a parent who has a kid who participates in athletics. I kind of maybe thought that. You know, I understand the role of athletics and how important it is, but $43,000 doesn't seem like a whole lot to give when when we are removing people who in some cases provide direct support to kids in classrooms. And I and I know I brought this up last year
when I talked about kind of how I, you know, in some cases, athletics seem to like and there's been a shift in that in the last year, year and a half. But we are an education institution. That is our primary goal. You're here to educate kids. So. Meeting two sports back to love status just doesn't seem like a whole lot to give. And again, as a parent who has kids
who participate in athletics as sports, I understand the value of it. But that is not. But our primary charge is education of children. And so, I guess I would say, you know, especially considering we haven't quite made it to the, you know, $12 million mark is looking at things that are not direct education of children and seeing if they might be able to give a little more, I think is fair.
The problem with that, it's just not a lot savings. The money is in, the money is in salaries. So I guess reducing people, reducing the coaches would be your answer that we don't review of all of the programs to see if all of. Yeah. Yes. But then when we do sports which is good. So you've looked I mean it's a value.
These are value judgments that we as a district make. And we can choose to make the value judgment. And I'm not saying it's wrong or not wrong, but I always start with the fact that we are here, charge to educate, to provide an education to children. And that is our primary goal. And so and anything that we do and as we work through our strategic plan and it was able to put our budget. Right, the
project 1.5% of our 1.5%, that would be almost 3 million, 28 million, 2.8 million. So it is. Okay. So there is 40,000 to give in one further, I mean, aside from staffing costs, the other thing that you can do is you just forgo uniform upgrades, things like that. I mean, we cycle through all of the sports. So each year you're kind of picking a few and then you, you know, cycle through them along next, whatever that means.
You might spend about 50 grand a year, you know, upgrading a few different sports. And then every few years you're refreshing it. When's the last time we increase the pay? The participant? Yeah, couple of years ago. We have a lot. And what is it that 150. I can't that high school. It's like it's close to 200 at the high school level for one sport. Yeah. We bumped up and then at the middle. Yeah the gate of that. And they're all virtual electronic now and they charge of service okay.
And so there's 2.8 is that that's total expenditure. Budget is not revenue. What is that. What is minus revenue. What is the district subsidizing sports. Participation in schools as we always see a good. So I agree with you but I'm just I'm not saying what's right or wrong. I'm just thinking about these are value judgments we need to make just to find out how much we really subsidize sports. 5858 so if they bring in from a revenue,
I know they're not in. So we're subsidizing to 1.8 million. In referee costs and game management official. All of that went up pretty significantly in the last couple of years, county wide. We spent $40 million on officials pay to participate in the high schools to 200 hundred of max family, max of 600. And then our free and reduced kids gets so they don't get go back on before that. But.
Any comments from anybody? I know we were talking through the whole thing, but. I guess the special stuff just. 50% of the budget. You know, 3.3 million of the budget cuts are coming from special, which is scary. But yeah, keep in mind. Joe's numbers went up pretty significantly during the pandemic. Okay, we subsidize quite a bit, especially during the pandemic. And we can't we can't. And one point say we're
subsidizing $9 million for the general fund. We need to find efficiencies. Just keeping it like that. I know that SSA numbers seems pretty big to you. I mean, it is a big number, but keep in mind, let's say we maintain 100 of those. We have 18 position. We have 18 programs across the district. That's SSA per program plus teachers, plus Paris. That's ten people per classroom, more than the kids in the room. We have to reduce staff.
That is, we are not plus percent staff in this. We can't keep saying that. And the fact that that's that's where the that's where the ones we can cut athletics. And people are leaving not coming to district because it's a it's a value for many people. That is true. Yes. So and I don't mean that it might be, it might be just I mean we're the ones that we're going to have to answer for this to be. I mean, to, to be fair, because we're I'm the one who gets,
you know, we're the ones getting text messages because 18 people are retiring who chose to retire teachers at high school. And so we are the ones who are going to have to answer for each one of these line items. I think a lot of people come to our district not for the athletics, but for the academics. So I don't, I don't and again, this is as a as a person who has kids who participate in athletics. So I don't not value that as a component. But I also our main purpose here
and I said this a year and a half ago when I brought up because I, you know, is that, you know, our main purpose here is to educate children and that is the main goal. And, you know, some of these other things are in the periphery and they support kids being happy and all of that. And I understand that. But it might be, you know, maybe there's room to raise athletic fees or whatever it is. I think a lot of I'm sure a lot of parents
will be able to and might be willing to, to absorb that. I as long as kids who these families don't can get the support that they need from the from the district. So but I think it's because we're not in athletics. What may help us with this special ed is to understand one how many students we serve, and two, what's our budget? What's the amount of money we spend on special? And when we wouldn't bring, I wouldn't be bringing these recommendations. So you didn't think that this is dangerous?
Okay, okay. So I want to put this out here. I did the math. So like in secondary 58 minutes a day, 15 minutes of class times five classes because I get that great resource from teacher or a teacher consultant. 323 is the case for resource from teacher. So it's 290 minutes of service. They have a day divided by their 23 kids on caseload, gives each child on their caseload 12.6 minutes a day to meet their goals 12.6
their case loans are going to be built on this. The required minutes, but I get that nobody's case, nobody's minutes for resource or TC or below 12 minutes a day. Like it doesn't mean it's just not written that way. And if it is so bad for the parent, I think I'm here speaking for parents who are not going to show up at our meetings and complain because they're too busy raising their their special needs kids to say, hey, 12.6 minutes a day for my kid who can't read or can't compute when they get to use the secondary as the example, because that's the numbers I have.
But that doesn't seem so. Christine, before you answer that scene, before you answer and this is to to to to you answer, rich one, this is our first opportunity to have this conversation. And we would not be doing our job if we were not expressing these thoughts, asking these questions and all of that. And so thank you. So I understand that you guys have been working really hard and we appreciate that. But for us, for you to go through this list and us to say,
okay, okay, okay, that's fine, that's great. And then we approve, it would mean that we're not doing our job. And so I don't I understand you guys retired. You've been working really hard. But we have to ask these questions. This is like our you know, this is our main job. So, let us ask let us express the frustration because we don't have another opportunity. This is when we do this, when we are seeing this for the first time. So so I just kind of wanted to preface this.
Yeah. And I think it's important to have the information behind us so that it's understood. Right. That's why I want to scan the measurements mean. So, you know, it's out of context to say it's 12 minutes for a kid. I think when we look at how the structure of resource works, especially in secondary, our students are cohort based on IEP goals and needs. So if I have a caseload of 21 students and I start the year, I, it's my job to cohort those students based on their IEP goals. And then that's how they're served.
So for some of our students who are on resource, they might not get integrated studies at all. So I might actually not interface with my research firm teacher. I might be service in my classroom with a push and support. So I might be in a classroom that is co-taught, and that might be where I'm getting my minutes. And then for other students, they are in smaller classes for their focus on IEP goals. But we've worked over the last couple of years to have our IEP, our researcher and teachers trained in either reading or math. So they're focusing on that during that time. So there might be eight kiddos for 58 minutes
together who are all focused on reading comprehension. And then there might be six kiddos who are all together working on math. And so they build those groups. They actually build those now before they leave for the summer. And then we build the schedule around the groups that have been built. So I understand, like breaking down those minutes. If I were to see every child every day, like what that might look like. But that's just that's also just not the reality, I don't know. They're scheduled. I don't know that it makes it better. It just they're not scheduled to see every one of their kids throughout the day.
It's just not an equal representation for each one of those students. No. Each kid has particular IP goals which determine how many, like Rich, how many minutes I get. I'm using like a base resource for your kid in a high school, since there are no longer the the maintenance of terms. So you can't it's like resource for whatever it is. No, it's a it's a thank you. So thank you supplanted class. So that would be like a kid who's real high needs for reading. And that's what what I think you're talking about smaller classes, you know, yada yada versus integrated studies.
Still in grade studies 58 minutes divided by eight kids is 7.25 minutes per mile to work on their goals. If they were each doing something different and they were spending. Yeah, I mean, I mean, and that's like the nature of kids who have I don't get it if we're just doing fine. I mean, I hope not. And maybe that's an issue too. But like, I assume you made the adjusting resource room in TCL Red because you said that that creates a great impact. But on the other hand, you also said it was it was also said,
and please take this with the fact that this is our most vulnerable population in the district. This is our most big achievement yet. And yes, they are the most costly population to educate to. Also true that if they were that their staffing, if the staffing for those kids for that program was that race, why would it be red? Why is it red? And it's like it's just like we're just tightening things up, changing past practice. Right. So is it red because it's changing past practice or is it red because it's going to impact.
Yes it is. Yes. So the impact on legal risk, low feasibility, widespread opposition. Yeah, exactly. And it's the only red thing here. It's it's a valid discussion okay. Where do we where do we bring that amount if we don't want to do this. It's a completely open discussion. Two solutions suggestions I think to make some we need more information. What kind? I'd be curious to know.
Look at kids IEPs this year and their minutes of specialized instruction. And look at those same kids minutes the next year and see if there is a reduction. I guess my question is, a parent's been asked to have a reduction in the minutes of instruction to kind of facilitate this condensation? I don't know, I'm just curious, like know the student's IPS drive the drive the stack, right?
I'm just saying, like every year review the IEP and you look at what's the appropriate minutes of instruction. And would we see are the minutes of instruction that the student currently has. Is there a reduction that's happening that hasn't happened in the past to facilitate this? Look at the move up. You might. Yes, yes. I don't know. I'm just saying I would think who can ratio. And being able to determine the staffing for our research sirventes
trying to not be mysterious despite this number straight ratio being one. So I just I speak specifically to that. We looked at the number of students who were needed for resource and then the caseload maximum, which is 23, not all the way up against because we know we have kids who move in. So looking at what that so the number 20 2051 divided by 23 right. Gives us 2.2 FC that we would need to be able to distribute those students
within the county Max within flexibility with a little bit of flexibility. And then we looked at how many kiddos would be eligible for TSI service. So let's say 15 a max is 25. So we did that divisor that gives about a point six feet. And then we added those together to identify the FTE needed at the building to support that caseload. And that that is the calculation that we used for each one of our buildings. So and then we added a little buffer in for movements so that we would have some flexibility.
And that is that is the straight just the structure on how we got to this number. So what we're sharing is that in the past our caseload numbers were smaller because we had more special ed teachers, and we didn't have a in special ed over the last few years particularly. And so our caseload, we have a lot more room for movements. So it was closer to instead of 2015 perhaps for a teacher. Now we're going to be closer to 2021 for our teachers. So we are staffing with those those student
maxes more in the front of our mind so that we are more efficient. That's how we that's just how we got to that. The impact of the planning classes and all those other pieces, that is not a factor in this determination. Right? Right. I was just hoping to explain how that came. Thank you. But I hear you concerned, though. Is there anything we can do to engage slash recruit our parents to help us in the process? I guess in the sense that, I mean, whatever potentially that
they are getting lesser instruction or less going to get less instruction. They're not know they're going to get the same amount. They're going to get the same instruction as their IEP calls for. Okay, that's the question that I was trying to get at was like, are we are we trying to reduce minutes to, to keep compliance. And and because ultimately like what's in the IEP is what has to happen. So that's but I guess my question indirectly is right now they're getting
much more than what's in the IEP because we have a lot more teachers. Not necessarily. Well then what are they doing? What are the teachers doing the rest of the day if they don't so much so right now, just so right now, the PC right now the current ratio is 1 to 18. We're looking to push that. We can go all the way up to 1 to 25. We're looking at going like 1 to 23 to give ourselves some wiggle room. So that's that's five more students that can be seen by a TSI. Okay. And then and in a resource room right now is 1 to 16,
we can go all the way up to the high school to 1 to 23. We're going to look at going like 1 to 21 to give ourselves a little bit of doing. So when you that ratio reduce staff. So the instead of okay so they're not getting the lesser number of minutes of instruction. But there may be more kids in the same group. It's like okay. So the same instruction time is happening except not individual attention for same. And maybe we could use some parent help to get more.
I don't know if that would not necessarily send help, send out work to the with parents to parents to try and help them get it. We know we don't usually partner with parents to try and get them to do their tasks right. Maybe use that. Like to provide intervention. Do you mean no? No, we don't know. More to get them to the grade level education, I guess whatever it is that need help, maybe repetitions and stuff like that,
I don't know. I don't know is always good and there's always room for improvement in terms of like getting parents to involve on the schools and things like that. But the bottom line is like my concern is, are we going to be able to meet the minutes of instruction required in an IEP? And what I'm hearing is, yes. So yes, yes. If we can't then we have to add staff, right? Right. That are our obligations to add staff, which is why you see that as red. Because there's there's a chance that we recognize that we may have to add staff because of the tightness of what you're talking about.
If we're taking up two times okay, then we're going to have to add staff. So we're trying to give ourselves enough flexibility here so as to not have to do that. But that's what walks in the door. Right. Who walks in the door, Tom. Right. And but but Sarah and her team Sarah and her team are meeting currently have gone over every IEP with principles to make sure that we're students are properly placed to have building corporate supports. And last year, if I recall correctly, you did
we did have a significant number that involved kind of late in the summer. So okay. Okay, so general question, I noticed that you've talked about potentially looking at reductions in the athletics program, if there's any there's some concerns about high school counselor reductions. And then we have a general concern about the special ed reduction. Those are the only three areas, right. Any other open areas we have.
And I know this district highly prioritizes fine arts, but we haven't had we looked at fine arts. Tightening. We tightened up a lot of schedules in the in the fine arts. So that's what they mean by specials. Right. You were talking about. Yeah. Tightened up electives. Those sections reductions. Yeah. Yeah I heard something push back in the middle schools for the abandoned orchestra thing. Yeah. We are hearing that.
Yeah, yeah. No more, no more room. No more. So there is no band in sixth grade. Is that what was the concern from Larson? There's band is experience. Yes. For sure. There was some like weird social media. Yeah. There was a social media post that there was. Yeah. When removed from misinformation. Yeah. I think someone on the thread like fix that. That's not true. Some teacher. Yes. But yeah, I saw that too. I was like, no, somebody had told us ahead of time,
okay. All right. Sections in sixth grade. Larson well we have 33 students in them. So just because I feel like that's a reference point that's been thrown around the district a lot for next year, but they're not obscenely large. Yeah. They're not 80 or 90, like people said, 33 students in sixth grade band. Yeah, that'll be two sections is bad. That's contractually allowable. Oh yes. Yes. So two sections of 33. Correct. Okay. I know just because I know a lot of you asking that
because we heard it, because we heard them for. For like being an orchestra. I know, like if they have over a total number of student service, they get like the additional hour with the numbers kind of decreasing, are we still at a point where we're having to provide that our all of our all, all of our teachers have a sectional our oh. So it's only the threshold is very small isn't it. Okay. So once you hit 100 students, which. Yeah, it's four sections of music clear hundred easily.
And then they get a section. Gotcha. So they only teach for. So they only teach four of the six classes. Gotcha. Second, so all of the performing arts teachers, we have more than 100 students assignment. Okay, so that's that's contractual. That's. But I told you that's not my 15. Any other questions?
Okay, I wanted to I guess we have another. Well, can I just ask. So let's talk a little bit more about next steps in the process here. So we'll go back. We'll have some additional conversation on some of the feedback and see what we can land on that. And then I'll share that back out with you. But meanwhile you'll get a better number. Yes. Like like for instance if, if that, if that seven savings comes in at 3 million or twice as much, that's a million and a half,
then that makes these conversations. And then you get rid of the value for us to hear back up where, where some of your, your angst is. And, and quite frankly, it's our angst to none of us. None of us was excited to put this list together. If you tried to do it in a in a manner that was balanced and as as non emotionally driven as possible, so that allows us to come back. So when we when we chew that up that.
To you that we would consider further dispatch rolling this back and so forth. So the budget proposal for the next meeting that you have to adopt, which we all know original budgets are never what your true budget is going to be. It'll reflect 12 million of what's here. But that is just on a budget. So when we come back in December or January to update and amend it, then it'll reflect what actually came to fruition. Oh, okay. So not until just because you're approving the budget
in two weeks reflective of this by function code. So it's simply going to list that what's here by function code. But what we actually reduce may be different than what that budget is. And then we'll amend it later. So like this isn't like the final stamp of okay this is it tonight. And that's it. No more conversation like we'll be able to. Recommendations. Can I tell you before you go, you'll know exactly what we're going to start costing out the the retirement or the separation plan numbers tomorrow.
Now that we've gotten dozens in there. So would that reflect in the one that we're going to vote on or that we're going to pass in the budget if we have enough time to implement any of those changes? Yes. If now there be pot up, but we'll be able to say, like instead of 1.5 million, we are looking at 3.5 million through this, this second savings, we would recommend that the way we have. Which can I suggest, I like all the color coding exemptions. We discussed a lot about how she counselors, can you make that yellow
to the rest of the colors I think are accurately what we discussed. That has to reduce secondary first item and secondary reduce high school counselors maybe make that yellow that way. We have that also as an item that we think is a medium risk. Right. And. That any concerns from any of you for passengers that coming basically reducing sounds good. Yeah okay. All right.
So yeah we don't do that. We got another. I just looked since that is that makes your job easier. All right. The only last item that tricks up your sleeves about things. We can move from my general right to do that. Yeah, that's off to you. I like things, but I think it's like a fun game. Rob. Peter to people. It really is. I mean, it's just moving things around.
But some of it, you need opinions and get audit approval. So it's just a process. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Let's move on. Thank you. Dan thank you. So the last item is the proposed Osby a bylaws amendment. There's a whole bunch of them in their. Have you guys reviewed them? Any questions concerns that anybody once you was that you would explain that. Yeah. Yeah. What happened with Gary.
So that's. Yeah that makes sense. Okay. Yeah. It was kind of weird for me as well. And then later on I made sense. Okay. Everybody's good to vote on that. Yeah. Okay. All right. That pretty much anything. Can we adjourn the meeting? Got other. Oh, yes, we have other. Other. Okay. I hope it's going a little. Yes. My others for you. Oh, okay. Late into the end. Yes. She's got a cake. It's my birthday today. You know
what? A day to spend my birthday with this awesome. Sweaty budget. Yeah. We'll see. All right. Thank you. I'll do this later. And nothing else from you. Okay? No, it's. Everybody's tired. I'll go from that end because, you know, I again, I just want to reiterate what you said, you know? Thank you. Rich. John and Christopher Christine for I mean, this this is not pleasant work.
And it means that you have to do a lot of things. So I appreciate that work. I feel confident with this board. We will work ourselves through solution. But this is unfortunate work. We all need to get out there and continue to advocate for funding. I just was have been watching quite, quite interest what came out of the Mackinac Policy Conference. The business community wants to remake education.
So, you know, the I just think we're going to get lots of help that is going to be doing things like this, probably more common than what we would like. So, but I have confidence in this board. We will work through this and you will collaboratively with our administration to do the best we can to get to where we need to be, and we'll get the list,
you know, in terms of testing. To your point, Nancy, with your support, we were able to come up with, as hard as it was close to that 12 million without layoffs. And. So positives there to do that, we'll dig back in and get to where we need to be. Thank you for your support. Thank you, thank you. I had emailed you Rich and Christine. Christine, can you give us an update
on the survey that you guys don't have the survey? Not the math, not that, but yeah. Okay. Good. So and then also, I would like to know I was a little surprised. You know, typically surveys we've been sending to students, especially if it's education related we've been sending to parents as well. So why. So just what the general results were. And then also why this one did not go out to parents. And unfortunately I had lots of people text me with this up.
And there, you know, this is something that you're passionate about. For whatever reason, they will not then take the next step to, you know, you know, the board and email the administration. But I would like to know why were not included, especially since it's kind of been something we've been doing as of as of late. So I can I guess I'll start with that. So we designed the survey based on what we thought the board was asking for. It's just my street honest on this conversation. And that one is we've we thought that the board was seeking feedback on the student experience.
So it was targeted on student. We I really did not know that it would. You were interested in getting parent feedback on these topics. I mean, lots of parents approach teachers to have access to their kids tests so they can help them at home. And they and the answer that the parents I mean, I have screenshots that parents have sent me from and the answers they get from teachers says no. So parents are trying to also engage in these things that are just. And we can certainly send another survey.
There will be feedback. We we just designed this. We thought it was a student focused survey. So this is a very high level. This as you we went out in mid-May. And so we have been buried in a few other things that have been going on. But we wanted to give you that high level. Then that step is to go deeper at each building. So we had about four a little less than 4000 students respond. You can see the distribution by grade level on the left and by building on the right. The nice thing about this is it's all coded by a grade level and by building.
So it will allow us to dig in and desegregated a little bit deeper with our building principles. One of the key questions that were asked, we asked our students, I wasn't teetering outside of this outside of school to get support with and then select all that apply. So we've got about 22% of our students in grades six through 12 who are getting some outside support of that outside support. The majority of that is in math, but in other areas as well. And I think this is good. This is baseline data for us. We don't have any data that has collected feedback on survey tutoring in the past.
Jordan did say that when he was working through the data, he noticed. And what's not listed here we can dig into later is that it seemed to have an overrepresentation at middle, middle level versus high school, that there was more to more tutoring present in the middle level than there was in high school. But again, that's something that we can start to dig into. This is about students reporting on nightly homework. So the question on the last asked, how much homework do you typically have on a regular weeknight. So if you look there, you can really see that 76% of our students report
that they have 90 minutes or less of homework a night. That's for grades six through 12. And then we see the spattering of the others. Of those students, 55 think it's either just right or too little. In 45 say too much. So this was an important question for us, because we know we know that some of our students who are signed up for multiple high level classes expects to have more homework. So those 8% that are my hope, my head is that that 8% that are on either, you know, over two hours, our kiddos
who know that they signed up for that work and they also think that that's okay. So in this one is where we asked a little bit about their self-reported feedback from teachers. So the question on the left is I receive feedback from my teachers in order to improve in some of my classes, most of my classes, all of my classes, none of my classes, or a few of my classes. And that's the distribution that's there. So 49% of our kiddos say that they are receiving feedback from their teachers to improve in all or most. And then we see that the other half of our students are in some few or none.
So certainly areas for improvement for us. And then on the right six and these are six through 12, all combined, correct. Six through the middle school and high school. Very different. And then on the on the right it's about in my class I get to see my test after they are graded so they know how to improve. So we see a little less than 80% of our students saying always or most of the time. And then the remainder of our students, some of the time, rarely and never. So again, areas for us to dig in and ways for us to get better.
Then we ask them about their self-reported use of universal support so which ones they use. So that's kind of the breakdown of where they find themselves seeking that support. And then we had a series of open ended questions. So we just pulled out a few themes. So the first question was I would do better in school if I had access to blank and kids could respond however they wanted. And so four of those key areas where if I had access to more resources or clear materials specifically to notes, guides and practice,
if I had more access to if I had access to more time or a lighter workload, if I had access to more technology or tools or access so devices, websites of AI and if I had access to a better learning environment. So learning environment changes. If it was more quiet, if I had different seating, reduced distractions. So again, areas where we can dig in and look, the next question that they were asked us to list were some barriers or obstacles to my learning include. The leading out of that is time and pressure, workload
and the fast and course of the pacing, disruptive classroom environments and distracting peers outside commitments. So sports work and family and procrastination, organization issues and focus. I think that's a pretty impressive 7.6% of kids who can self-report that. Yeah. And then that last question, what I find most helpful to my learning at school is so leading out of that, no surprise, teacher support and feedback, collaboration with peers, resources and materials, and conducive
learning environments. So again, I know this is super high level, but with 4000 responses. You know, it's certainly something that our goal in crafting this. And David and I spent some time working through what these questions would look like. And talking with our building principals was to frame questions that they could use the answers to to help set goals for the next school year. So for them over the summer, to be able to dig in and look and see what their students are saying so that it can be a useful tool for them as they're setting up for next year. So as we dig in over the summer with administrators, will certainly share
some of that out with you all so that you can see what that looks like. For some of those I would be interested to see, because middle school is very different from high school, and the two high schools are very different from each other. So to see what the what some of those percentages look like once those things are teased out. Sure. So we got about 50% response rate, about 4000. So a little more than 50%. So we we probably have about 7000. And it didn't go out. It went out to a or not. That would be I don't really answer to that. I have to look and see.
Oh yeah they're on there. So yeah they did. Thank you MTV. Okay. Went out to everybody. Everybody. So we're about 7000 and we did our normal statistics thing. Our demographic is very similar to the response. Yes I mean the distribution. Yeah. You know I haven't really looked hard at that. But try again. This is probably we do that as a first step of this data. And looking at Bowling Park looks like it's overrepresented. If I just look at that compared to I mean phone parks and park is a bigger school but less.
Yeah. So yeah. So it definitely. Yeah. So things like that to just make sure that our data is true rather. Yeah. Thank you for doing. And the plan is to continue doing this every year so that we can get some data. I know, I know, our kiddos are over surveyed probably so we may need to do better. Yeah the number. My other other is. So I started reading The Digital Delusion.
That's actually pretty good. So it's. The parts that read so far, parts that they talk about, you know, the mechanism of what's happening in the brain when you're writing or reading text versus digitally and all of that. So I think it's a good read and I think it. So I guess I wanted to put it out to you guys, see one when we would start looking at it. But I think considering we're going into strategic planning and because we're looking at a new reading curriculum, I think for at the elementary and middle school level, I think this is timely. I feel like there are these, you know, converging things that are
that are happening. So I think it would I think it would be complementary to everything that that we're doing. And I know I said it before, there's already a lot of data and we we've already, you know, I think this is now becoming a more prominent topic. There are districts in the state that some of North that have completely removed technology from, from their schools and are going are going back to their many, many in the country. So I think it's it's kind of a perfect time to talk about this
because we're doing two other things that I think are complementary. So I don't know whether this is like starting in August, we can give ourselves into our some way to read it, to say, yeah, give us the summer to read it. Yes. As it all gets. Yeah. So let's yeah, we only have one meeting anyway in July and one meeting in August. So? So my best. Well do it. Do you want to do it the August 1st or September maybe September workshop. Well we don't have a workshop. Yeah. We don't have workshop in July or August.
So we can do it in September depending on schedule. Okay. So we'll get those copies of that. We will have Judy. Yes. She's already she ordered two of us. Oh, I just asked for the two just so we could like I could do some first to see if it for more. And I'm sorry I didn't read it, so. I mean, I already read read her part of it, but it's. I'm sorry. On the beach. I'm ready. Yes, guys. Okay. Anything else? No. That's rich.
You have anything? Okay. My only other is just before the next meeting, we're going to have a closed session for which is I will send out the valuation for that particular fine. That's the only thing I know. General meeting. So I will send you my feedback because I. You're not here. Okay. So then no next meeting. So before our next meeting, we will have a closed session to be sort of 1670.
Talk about moving it. But it didn't work because I think you have a conflict. The week after because I'm doing the mom moving my kids. That's 16th at six session. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. And I will send out the form you guys in the form and do that. That's all I have. I also don't have any weekend meeting if there's the session. 935. 937.
Thank you, thank you. Okay, I'm going to cut the cake now. Can we, can we?