school board work session March 3rd 2025 e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e good afternoon the time is now 4:01 the WIA Public Schools Board of Education work session for Monday March 3rd 2025 please will please come to order
let's go around the table for introductions we'll start from my left this time not Dr Anderson said Sarah Johansson yes please thank thank you Valentina ears B through every
Destra Sheila prior Heidi kater Chase Anderson and I'm Milan soney thank you everyone as a reminder the board does not vote on any item at the work session this afternoon we have two items on the agenda I just want to make a brief announcement something that I think we
should all be proud of congratulations to Marcus Westman the wetta school high school uh student council president who was just announced as the winner of the National Association of secretaries of State he just got the John Lewis award
for youth leadership I'm sure we'll hear about that uh in the next meeting but congratulations to Marcus all right first we have a finance and operations report and executive director Scott Lage will present the
20242 revised budget Scott all right I got a couple people joining me here too so I know they rushed up here uh because they're excited to be here so I'm just kidding um I guess uh just real quick introductions I've got Jen wel um here to my right she's our
student accounting manager and finance manager and we've got David draskovich to my left and he's our Director of Finance for the district and of course I'm Scott lless age um executive over finance and operations so um thank you board chair soney members of the board
um I know I am always famous for this but I really don't think this will be too long of a presentation um everybody that sits on my committee meetings is laughing right now um but I really do believe that so um as you recall the revised budget um this is the time of
the year where um we get to kind of do a little bit of reconciliation on our prelim budget if you recall when we presented the preliminary budget to the board back in June um that was work that was done starting in February March April and May so there's a lot of unknowns at that point and we use a lot
of um estimates a lot of projected information and then um now we kind of are able to reconcile that reconcile that and put the numbers more in line with where we believe they'll end up so all right so today we'll go over kind of the
background information along with some assumptions um that go into the creation of the prelim budget and then we'll look at the preliminary budget will be um a comparative item that we presented back in June and then we'll review um the following fund one budget for the general fund um as the
revised you will notice um a lot of these slides are kind of repetition and board members I know you're getting familiar with that but it's on purpose it's just kind of a good reminder um you'll also notice um some similar slides with updated information because uh we feel it's really important to talk about the whole experience the
district's gone through um I if you looked at it just at a point in time right now you might think wow this is incredible things are going really well um I would say kind of our story is pretty pretty unique in wetta even compared to a lot of places across the state due to the pandemic um we were
impacted pretty tremendously by it and I would say we were um impacted very uniquely compared to a lot of districts around the state um so I think it's important to kind of tell the whole story so I won't bore you with all the details because you've seen a lot of that this presentation obviously is
available right now um and it will go on to the district website as have the other ones as well for the public to view uh just so how we always kind of start out the government structure um I just like to list these because it's really uh important to recognize that there's different funds inside of the
district the one that we're covering today is just the general fund but it's important to note that like our food service fund Community um service building construction and Debt Service those are all um different funds and they all have their own unique rules um and then just Refresh on the
fund bounds categories um obviously uh restricted we hear about those often as well operating capital capital projects Levy ltfm is a big one um that you guys have gotten familiar with um and then non-s spendables those are kind of your non-cash ones the prepaid in the
inventories um assigned just a few of those listed there are Q comp and then um some other assigned funds that we have based on our um last audit and then the one that everybody kind of pays attention to and really focuses on is the unassign and that's for obvious reason because those are the dollars the district can
kind of utilize as it sees fit as the board sees fit all right the timeline I just like to keep this up here and it does get modified admittedly because um as we go through the year um sometimes there's some unknown so we like to try to stick
to time frames as much as we can um but we also um are kind of working around a lot of unknowns and we like to get as close as we can to the information so um as you'll see there this is kind of the point of the year um where we would bring the uh revised budget to you um
one thing I didn't say on the front end is obviously this is just a presentation today so we're not ask asking for any board action um that would be next Monday so board would feel free to reach out to um all three of us with any questions all right um so just very
familiar slides but um I think this is always important because um obviously uh we have expenditures as a district um and we are a pupil driven Revenue system so um it is the uh it is can be a very vicious thing and it can be a very great
thing so we've seen both within a four-year period right um as a school district so um you can see for the current fiscal year we're at 2% growth uh board chair soney and I were just talking about um the formula for next year the increase will be
2.74% so as you recall with the legislative session um year one was 4% this year was back down to two and we just found out that it was going to be 2.74% for next year so um that is exciting um all that said we all know
that our expenditures are a lot more than that um and our our expenditures continue to outpace our revenues um I I like this slide I didn't want to take this one out because I think it does a pretty pretty incredible job of showing just where we would be if
our um funding model had kept up with inflation over the years this is an updated slide from aers and Associates our partners um and you can see on the top right there um the updated number but if you take that updated number which is 8,645 subtract that by the allowance
that we're getting in the current fiscal year which is 7,281 and then multiply that 7,281 by the number of students that we have increased for theis Budget you can see right there you land on that 92 93
million um and now if you take that same math but um apply the 8600 um you can see the difference there so and that's just one year so that isn't compounded year-over-year that's just one year so that shows you um what a big impact that has and I'm assuming
over that same time frame um you know our cost did not decrease or only stay at that so I just think that's something important important to point out um luckily we are in an environment where we are seeing big student growth again um and I don't think um we should shy
away from the fact that that is kind of the Savior for us if you will um because if you're in a district that has flat or declining enrollment I mean just the quick numbers we went over on the math it's not a very sustainable model so that's where you're looking at cuts um every three to five years so I know
David and I and Jen talking with our colleagues um they're going through Cuts so um and I think we are also and we'll touch on this but we are lucky we got ahead of it when we did and board members if you have questions at any point please feel free to
interrupt I keep this on here too just because this is a budget presentation and I know um really the core kind of guts of the presentation is right at the end when you're looking at oh where are we going to end up but these are all components that go into it so the levy REM um Levy Revenue reminder just uh
just pointing out here that um you know a lot of times people say geez there's more houses going up that's more money for the district that's not necessarily a true statement so um it just gets spread out so um we've gone over the slide several times but I like to keep it in here just to kind of show that
because I think that's a misconception that um we all hear a lot of times so um and this is one I just added this is a slide that David and I got this um fall from um PMA and I just have this on here um just to show kind of where we sit on a Lobby tax comparison to other
West Metro districts and you can see there um I don't know if I have a pointer on this but um I should have put my famous yellow arrow but if you look down we're right underneath the red State average and if you um look all the way over to your right you can see we sit at that
2621 um and then you can see below that kind of where our neighbors around us sit so I just thought that was kind of a good comparative it um slide all right um revise general fund assumptions I won't go deep into this
but I'll just highlight a lot of them so kind of the one big thing that we're all paying attention to is obviously enrollment right that's we're re pupil driven Revenue system so we are always watching that um because we want to be conservative um and we want to really be aware of where we think these counts are
going to come in we're also in a very unique situation because we as the board knows we just went through a demographic and capacity study so um we are seeing pretty tremendous growth we're continuing to see that um and so we have
increased on our prelim budget we used an enrollment of 12,684 we have increased that to 12,760 students um you might ask yourself well Scott what do you mean I just saw the enrollment report that Jen wel sent um it's higher than that uh
well that's based on um we're using what we think it'll end up for ADM so that count like if you look at a count today Jen what was the count today I don't remember 12847 and so um thank you and so I feel bad Jen gets bothered all the time with that I think I said it at many meetings
but I think this summer Chase and I were bugging Jen on a daily basis yep I'm pretty sure we were um and so uh and I'm pretty sure David did too but uh that is looking at the count right now so we're paid on the average daily membership so
as like a kid that starts right now that is pro-rated so we don't get the full 1.0 of the pupil unit and so we get a portion of that and so by us using 12,700 60 um that kind of accounts for the kids that started later because we are picking up what for a while what
were we picking up a month about 20 students a month so you can see that adds over time and then we also see a dip with our seniors at at the end of the year we do lose some of those seniors do you remember offhand about how many 10 to 15
students probably okay perfect so that's just kind of an average I just want to point that out so it could end up a little bit higher than that um just depending on how the year um shakes out but we have increase at 76 students from the preliminary budget um as the board
probably recalls um we were even a little bit lery on that 12,684 but the district continues to outpace even the demographic studies we've had done by professionals so um so positive thing from a revenue standpoint um it just
creates challenges obviously with our capacity um formula allowance I kind of talked about that that's roughly 60% of our budget and 2% of that um we're we have 2% on the formula this year um so we're at the 72.81 and so that was a
$143 increase from last year and then next year's increase that we were just looking at um with that 2.74 is just under $200 people unit so that'll be positive for next year uh Levy dollars the levy accounts for about 30% of our Revenue um and I know I've pointed this
out a few times uh this isn't like a standard across the state so depending on where you're geographically located and the makeup of your District um the net tax capacity all that this can shift um pretty big and so most districts don't have 30% Levy Revenue it's closer
probably to 10 15 20% um we have a very supportive community and we have a good net tax capacity and then the special ed cross subsidy that's been really huge for us um with that legislative action that was taken in uh the spring of 2023
that really did Cover um a lot of costs for us uh our challenge right now and we've talked about this at several board meetings is that we are seeing our special ed costs rise pretty considerably so the impact on the general fund um will kind of wash out at
some point if that makes sense so even though uh we are getting a lot more coverage with that 75% reimbursement we're also seeing needs uh go up which is also driving costs up that is not unique to us um and something that I've mentioned and I don't want to get too
deep into it because it gets really complex but um we did find a mechanism where we could use uh 1.5 million doll of our federal special education funding and shift that over to pay tuition billing um it's a dollar for- dooll paydown and then we can shift those
costs into State special education so it allows the district to essentially generate about 75% more Revenue than it would have in the past so that was another option that our team um worked with special Department to um come up with the way to help offset some of
those additional costs and then finally the federal allocations so um we've brought this before too but um the co dollars came to an end on 9:30 of this year and so you've seen a big adjustment in our federal dollars all right uh key budget
assumptions I I'm not going to go into this too big this is just more of an information slide but it just highlights what we talked about obviously for fy2 we now know what that is so um um we know that it won't be the 2% it'll be the 2.74 all right um David I'm talking way
too much did I just take your slide that's okay I'm not gonna argue we had a deal so sorry David um director Johansson would say even on Friday at our finance committee of the board and uh Danny would say too that uh
David and Jen both talked a lot more than me so and that was kind of the plan it's not going to plan right now so um I'm going to they're going to have to stop me you're okay okay all right um so just key budget assumptions something that I always like to point out um you're going to see at the end of this
presentation that the district's sitting at about 3.2 million projected Revenue over expenditure and we always go back to the fact that growing enrollment is basically the big subsidized that allows districts to continue to expand add programming um add a lot of things it
generates a lot funding and then um depending on where that growth comes in you can also kind of benefit it from an economy's a scale standpoint so um if you look here and you just take the basic um form allowance of the 7281 that we just covered a few slides ago and you
um multiply that by the increase of students over last year's revised budget which is 352 that's $2.5 six million and then if you just use kind of a high level estimate when you factor in state aid and the levy and multiply that 350 2 x
10,000 now you're seeing a 35 million so the reason I point this out you can probably come to the conclusion but it's just to show our um Revenue over expenditures is driven by student enrollment and growth so um I point that out because when that changes or when
that slows and this team will make sure that we are all over that um and we're guiding the board and the superintendent um but that will obviously change the way that we do business so it's something that that we we are watching constantly and um as a district we know
we are very well aware of what happens when not only you slow but you lose enrollment so which is the reason for all of these slides just to kind of tell the full story this is just an information slide it's just a breakout it's a visualization of where our revenues kind
of sit from all right and then budget recap same thing that we've already discussed all right David thank you Scott uh so this one's for the fy2 2425 expenditure projection information uh we
we did the prelim budget based on what we expected the salaries we to end at now with those being ghost contracts being done we are able to come with the Revis and see what the actuals are going to be for the future and so that's giving a us a better projection of where they're going to sit you know by the end
of the fiscal year transfer station uh the budget increased by during the prelim 6% there has been just a very minor adjustment for the revised budget which we which we work with Rich Anga from ciso and he's fantastic at his budgeting so and re review it once he
sends it back to us uh utilities I had Jack Sterns do a 10-year projection on that um last prelim and we had to increase that with electric going up 4% Heat going up two and water six um which was a fantastic thing we did so we used
10 years of data and kind of saw where that projection was and then Jack this year for revised had to increase it a bit more just with everything coming in ex extra cost as we move forward with inflation ltfm the projected was 14 million expenditures we have not adjusted this budget still stays the
same since it's a 10-year plan that we revise every year with mde um special education uh there's an in uh prelim there's been just the adjustments with the salaries and benefits with the actuals now what's the contracted services are cont contracted uh Staffing
is done so we know where that's going to sit and with with a 1.5 increase into state aid um from the Federal which those dollars like Scott said the 1.5 reduces our tuition billing and then thus we generate 75% more with having those those costs in the state aid
instead of on federal um technology where that we work with Wade um Phillips on that and he does a fantastic go job his his budget is all Levy based so we update that as the school goes school year goes on and so we sent him the budget and he revised it as we move
forward and it looks fantastic perfect thank you David um just one thing to add on the special education that's what I was uh talking about earlier we're just seeing those costs kind of increase so just full transparency to the board um we increased that budget about 4% so just
looking over since about fy21 I think our costs are up about $8 million so it's just something that we're we're watching um but obviously we need to serve the needs of our students in the district too it's just a big cost that I think a lot of people predicted would come out of the
pandemic uh this just a visualization um just breaking down I like this because it shows um we are a a people oriented business and so this is where the majority of our costs come in so you can see here uh roughly 71% of our costs um
are coming from salaries and benefits this is just uh more the same just visualization I think I said this at board meeting I had a mentor once that told me uh to show graphs and visualization so that's why they're on here so he would be
proud um just to point out the pandemic in cost en cment so um as I mentioned at the beginning of this the pandemic impacted Wisa really uniquely and I think even for um our legislators and um
local government I don't think they truly understood the impact that wetta had I think it's easy to say um what Wisa has tons of money they have a big fund balance they have a lot of this which none were really true so because we are a pupil driven Revenue system um
we we were hit pretty tremendously so as as all of you know we were planning on growing by about 250 students um we we did not see that come to push and we lost 200 students so and then the timing of the pandemic um we didn't really have necessarily time to react and so we held
on to a lot of staff and as the board remembers that July um it first started as a twoe shutdown and then in July it was almost double up your staff because you're GNA have to do in person and hybrid and so districts were left with making choices um and we made a choice to hold on to our staff and so um that
cost us pretty dearly and so we saw you know losing those 200 kids so a net of 450 roughly and then seeing very little growth that next year obviously that compounds pretty tremendously so um that's why we went into Cost Containment um and just to point out on
this slide there's a lot of information we've covered something similar in the past but um when you look at the underfunding for decades that's why I love that slide about three or four ago that showed the 17.4 million that we would have if if our Revenue kept up
with inflation and then as I pointed out not all schools were impacted by the pandemic uh or not all impacted the Same by the pandemic so if you were a district that kind of had flat growth um or at a high frame red percentage you probably did pretty well during the
pandemic to be honest um because you saw a lot of Revenue come in um and now I don't know that that's the case because those cuts had to happen now with the dollars winding out but the pandemic impacted everybody so uniquely but we were all affected kind of the
same I won't go through this I kind of touched on some of it but um just the decision obviously we went off the best information we had at the time during the pandemic mic we stayed loyal to our students and staff to provide the staff to support those students during that
pretty um exceptional uh crazy time so um and then finally just uh government did step in with federal dollars but I don't think it was necessarily proportionate because it was based primarily on kind of the title funding um but obviously we're all impacted
pretty tremendously so all right um this one I think I've kind of touched on uh the top part so moving forward with the financial um Fitness of the district and long-term sustainability so
this is something that we're constantly talking about but we're looking at um enrollment all the time we're looking at what we're going to get in funding in the future which now we know for next year which is helpful um because usually we we aren't a we aren't able to really predict that until we know um and then
we also recognize that we know that our expenditures are going to outpace our revenues by a percentage so as soon as that enrollment slows or stops obviously we just need to be very very well aware of it and even as we're planning with our fund balances um just to keep that
in mind so all right I think I've covered a lot I think Chase you're probably right I can probably cut some slides out in the future so um but this just kind of highlights I think this is just good information to have and like I said a lot of these slides um I put them in here because this goes out on the
district website and it's something that the public can reference back to along with our community all right this just kind of highlights this shows what I talked about a little bit earlier this is a little bit different um and it might be a little bit tricky to understand because I'm grabbing 101 counts which is
the official count um on October 1st and so it doesn't necessarily align with some of the counts we've talked about but I like it just because it's official you could use different dates throughout the year end of year but I like this just because it's official so you can see um prior to the pandemic the
district had seen some pretty big growth years and steady growth as an aggregated average you see the drop there um and now you see that we're growing pretty tremendously again um this would be the impact so outside of that $17 million that um we
would have if if our General Revenue had kept up with inflation this just shows um what could one could come to assume based on the pandemic the dollars that the district went out uh went without so on top of the revenue not keeping up with inflation um when you look at where
we would have ended with enrollment which is kind of that yellowish line um it shows 13,111 for um the last fiscal year that just closed if you just did simple math and applied that um the district at a minimum would have missed out on about 11.4 million and a maximum
of about 22 million so pretty significant impacts for the district during the pandemic and this is just more um graphic it just shows where the green is where we thought we would be and the the blue is where we ended
up uh this just shows um and we've talked about this several times but the district made the tough decision and I don't take credit for it I give credit to my predecessor and uh the other Executives and leaders in the district along with superintendent Anderson and the board making the tough decisions but when we went into Cost Containment um it
was very wise and I think um as we pick up the newspapers and watch the news on TV I think it just highlights what a wise decision that was I'm sure I I know it was wildly unpopular um but it it showed that um it was the right thing to do the other challenge could be you
could look and say wow the district you know the goal was to cut about $1 million over that three-year time frame and now you're projecting a $3.2 million Revenue over expense like what were you guys thinking how were you so off um I would say we Absol absolutely had to do
this and the unknown the unknown variable is the massive student growth that we're seeing which is why we had the fall we did with the demographic and enrollment studies um so this all came into play this was absolutely crucial because it kind of right-sized things
after the pandemic um and if we wouldn't have seen that student growth or we would have seen slightly below estimated student enrollment growth um this would be pretty crucial and if we hadn't done this we'd be in a different story right now we would be breaking even or we
would still be cutting so um it's just important to remember that because um I I always point to that student growth but it it can make it look like geez did we really need to do those cuts and I've been asked that several times and I say absolutely we had to do those cuts
so all right David do you want to talk about the ltfm adjustment yeah so why is it a school district is a 1A district so it allows us to um Levy for the dollar amount that we need to maintain our school district so ltfm is long-term
facility maintenance we do a 10-year plan with mde and every year we do update that and so this what allows us to work on our schools and update them to get them to work in capacity for things that are like for like so replacing anything that's similar but
nothing Beyond it does allow for some pieces you can go more energy efficient elights and that's one thing that ltfm will cover just with the changes in efficiency and everything like that that's one thing it will cover um we we
usually Levy around 7.5 to 16.5 million every year um so this year you'll see an adjustment of $5.4 million and this is from a prior two fiscal years ago so how the levy works it's it what you see for your adjustments are two fiscal years
behind so we're seeing like an adjustment of 5.4 million and the reason is this because it was in 2122 when Supply chains were having an issue in and we also couldn't get contracted Services just because there was a lack of people working in the in the market and also the supplies were not readily
available ready read available so that is one thing we are seeing this adjustment come through it doesn't affect our fund balance at all because it is restricted fund balance so it sits in its own restricted fund it's just mde taking those funds back so it's no negative effect to the district we just
couldn't get to those projects on time due to supply chain issues perfect thanks you D thank you David and those um those will continue to flow we'll have a big adjustment coming this next year and then we're hoping that will start to flatten out so I know um
director John deuts talked about it last time but uh our partners at w had mentioned if we wanted to truly keep up with everything in the district um and that assumes we'd be able to find contractors and be able to get the work done but we' have to spend about $21 million a year on ltfm just to keep our
buildings in a good spot but we are very grateful to be a 1A district um which is a really important thing for us because we're able to keep up in our buildings um and one could say you know if we didn't have these funds the buildings would fall into disrepair much earlier
and the expense to build or redo or tear down and build a new school would be far far more than um these funds so it allows uh us to be responsible with the local taxpayer dollars all right all right Jen um just to kind of talk about this and then I'll
turn it over to Jen um as the board knows um we're winding down on our covid funding um I'm not going to lie I think all of us that are responsible for the reporting are glad I think Jen's got one more big session to close out all the grants but Jen I don't know if you want
to kind of talk about the co funding sure um go through the bullet points quickly in the beginning Allin since fiscal 21 we've as a district received 11 .8 million much of that funding was targeted to specific areas a lot of
parameters around how we could spend it and when we could spend it um the remaining funds that we carried over into this fiscal year expired on September 30th of 2024 um we have um drawn all of those funds so we have received everything um
and as Scott mentioned there's just one more final survey to be completed to say how we spent it and then that wraps that up perfect thanks gen and I think one of the things I highlighted earlier I talked about just the impacts to districts differently um because when
you really look at that 11.8 million that's absolutely a lot of money but when you're factoring in roughly on average of $200 million expenditure budget each year so over that time over that four-year time frame it's $ 11.8 million on $800 million worth of budget
it really didn't do a whole lot so at the time um that wasn't a very good thing obviously we went into Cost Containment um but in the end it was probably kind of we should be kind of grateful we didn't get a lot because a lot of districts across the straet across the state fell in love with a lot
of those positions they added and the funding obviously didn't continue so you're seeing lots of cuts throughout the state so um I think we are very wise with that um we were able to supplant some of it early on um but a lot of those were one-time funds or positions
that we've worked with teaching and learning and other departments to kind of wind down if you will and we've we've had a plan for a year or two of how we would cover those or if we could cover them in the interm until additional funding came in all right cross subsid a we kind of
talked about this but I just have this on here again this will go on the web page it's just good information um for the board and the public to have but just pointing out the cross subsid a was a pretty huge thing so um in FY 23 and that came about now covering about 75%
of our expenditures and then was us being able to use 1.5 million of f edal to generate even more State special education funding it's been a big help for us as we've seen our um demands increase for that which has driven our cost all right now to the good stuff so
that was a lot of talking um we'll start out right away so this is kind of the part where it gets a little bit confusing because we have ltfm included and then our next slide here will be excluding ltfm um and
that's what you saw on your board packets as well this is similar to what you saw in the preliminary budget back in June um but we like to show both so as David talked about with ltfm with that adjustment it does not really impact our finances on its face it does
because it's in our um financial report it's a restricted account but it kind of es and flows with the levy so honestly it's more of a cash flow issue than it is um than it is a financial issues so what I mean by that is because we levied that we intended to do those we received
the funds through the levy um so if anything it helped for cash flow for a while um and then they obviously take those dollars back after the two-year leg so um David I wonder if you want to run through kind of the differences yeah so the first one is
local property taxes that's our Levy um we increase that from prelim budget about $600,000 and that's due to last year we're seeing quite a bit of delinquencies on our taxes collected so those are individuals not paying their taxes businesses and homes and so that
was an uptick so we were conservative and said we'd do a little bit of offli and so those tax payments we get them in May and June and October and November and we also get a final one in January so we've collected all the ones for this fiscal year and I'm not seeing those
delinquencies like we did last year so we are able to add that back in so that's a nice little chunk of change back to Yetta Public Schools without having to see those delinquencies um State AIDS are up 1.6 million ion almost 1.7 million that's due to our um student
count increase and so that's nice to see as that moves forward um the federal aid is up 1.3 and that's due to mostly all the carry forward funds so every year the funds that we don't use we can carry those over for the next two fiscal years and also until three more months until
September and so that's that uptick is from that so we're you we are budget those funds and we are going to utilize them either this year so we budget them and then we'll make make sure that we carry for those funds next year if we do not utilize them and I think I would just add on the federal aid um as the board recalls on the prelim I mentioned
this was being put together in March April and May of last year and so at that point we were estimating what we thought we might get to go through for federal try to spend down those those funds um and so obviously once the fiscal year ends when we do this revised
that uptick and increase in federal is due to the carryover that we weren't able to spend that we likely spent right away in July or a August or September perfect thank you Scott uh the next one for revenues is other local revenues this is most of the
miscellaneous donations and also um interest ear revenues and that's increased by 196,000 this is mostly due to Wade Phillips area he gets e-rate funds back so any any supplies that he purchases they are some of them are able to get a rebate on it and so we budgeted
that 196,000 for this year and we've been working with Wade more thoroughly and making sure these budgets are budgeted and also how making sure that he'll spend them in the future and so that's been an increase on that onto expenditures salary benefits are down 1.9 million the reduction is is when we
built the preliminary budget we budget conservatively we had 26 FTE that we still needed to hire and so we budget at those employees taking family benefits and also taking the match on their 403bs which is 4% of their salary and so we're actually seeing a lot lot of people
taking singles and it might just be due to the district's benefits costing a bit more in premiums so that's been a reduction in that and that that was about 1.4 and the alsoa reduction 400,000 is we're not seeing yet the unemployment cost increasing for the
summer unemployment it has increased over prior fiscal year but I just don't think we believe that not everyone knows about it or has claimed it so I would I would say those costs will probably likely increase in the future and also we won't be funded based on you know 1md
they set up down uh I can't remember how much the pot of money was but I know it is dwindling yeah I think I would just add to um to director drut what he was talking about with the health to obviously accounting for um those uh new hires and we also saw just across the
district we saw um our health benefits kind of decrease from what people were taking so if people were taking family before they jump down so it was kind of across the board so we saw big savings there too and as David said with the tsas with the um with the
403bs we have to assume people are going to contribute enough to get the match and we also saw kind of a decrease in that as well so that makes a pretty big impact and then the summer employment just to point out um on our audit report those are dollars that we set aside so I
can't remember right off hand I want to say it's like 1.3 million it's a mixture of um summer unemployment for the future and the um another funding stream I'm I'm blanking right now but we yes um we have set that aside um as the board recalls um because
that pot of money is going away with the state I think it'll be gone this year and so the district is set up to handle a few years of those adjustments so sorry David no no thank you um the next next one on expenditures is purchase Services um that's right now an increase
of $2 million um quite a chunk of that is from uh building and grounds and operations they were under budgeted in fiscal years so we did increase their budget this year and also a little bit with inflation due to the utilities um we they don't have an option they have
to repair our buildings if it's not under ltfm you know like for like they have to go in and fix things so we have to M make sure our our buildings are up to par you know for our students so we definitely increase that budget just so we could go with actuals and say this is
what it's going to look like by the Year by the fiscal year end um supplies of materials that increased by 1.9 is some of this is due to new funding sources um when we were waiting for the read act and also the literacy act um also John's area for his supplies
and materials that go for you know buildings and grounds and repairs and also just a little bit smidge of seeing extra costs in our inflation I do run the cash flow module and make sure that we're running cash and I can see that our supplies are well over what they have been in the past fiscal
years operating capital is at 1.3 million this is an increase from prelim and this is mostly due to our technology that we need to make some purchases for a lot of our school cameras um they're coming to end of life and Scott has been
working due diligently with Wade on that and also um it's for the purchase of furniture so with our growing enrollment and how fast it's coming in we've utilized everything at the warehouse and so we have no furniture left over so around this March time frame me and Jack Stern are working together to make sure
that we're we're getting our kits of parts for the elementaries and also making sure the middle schools are whole for next fiscal year because we will end up doing a middle school refresh in the near future maybe with the bond referendum and also so our plan is to make sure we have a kit of parts for
that and so it makes it easier for ordering so that was a big chunk of budgeting that I think Jack was telling me it's around $700,000 of furniture moving forward with that perfect thank you David um and so when you look at that this is the one that if
you looked and you went oh my gosh we're in big trouble um when you look over on the bottom right you'd see a negative 2.3 million that is with the ltfm included so um obviously like I said that is more of a cash flow issue than anything but technically we show it on
this slide um to the left I didn't go through a lot of this because it it we've gone through this before but just so the board knows that's just information kind of on the funding um the general fund and then um with our unassigned fund balance that we've talked about several times just talks about you know why we keep that
and then some of the things that could happen that would be helpful for us to have it so this is the side that really is kind of how we're doing business right like how everything's looking um how we're projecting that we think will end up and so you can see there um on the
preliminary budget when we came to the board in June we we were projecting we'd be about 2.7 million Revenue over expenditures which is a big positive change coming out of Cost Containment this year being our last year of Cost Containment um but obviously we all know we are up kids so um we are up students
pretty tremendously and next year we're forecasting um another big growth year to a point where David and I feel very uncomfortable and we question Jen all the time even though I went over it with her and a whole bunch of people did and Dana did and um but we're just seeing
pretty incredible growth so what does that mean we're a people driven a revenue system and so we're seeing we're we're seeing that Revenue increase which then is obviously impacting the bottom line that doesn't go without costs um that one thing that I guess I'll point on the salary and benefits we did see
the decline there we have added um quite a bit of Staff with the student enrollment um and so those costs are still grabbed inside of there um but you can see here uh we're projecting we'll end up at about 3.2 million Revenue over expenditures um when you look at that on
the bottom line it doesn't tell the full story because some of that um won't or that won't all be to the unassigned fund um it could vary anywhere from probably 2.3 million to 2.7 million will hit the unassigned fund um so that will probably
take us up I think I David and I looked at that a little bit before because uh we figured the question whoops yikes I went way back that wouldn't be a show of mine without something going wrong so all right perfect so um just looking at that
so if we did rough let's say of this 3.2 million um if 2.7 went to the unassigned and the remainder went into restricted or assigned accounts um that would obviously be added to the unassigned fund balance which last year ended at 16.9 million and we ended the year at
about 8.32% unassigned fund balance if we added 2.7 million to the unassigned fund that would sit that would put us at about 9 99.4% um just historically over the last
last 12 years we've averaged about 8.82% on assigned fund balance just to give perspective to the board um the parameters are that 5 to 7% obviously it's a little bit hard to control and we're seeing the growth that we are and then the es and flows that we have so um
we're hoping we're kind of in normal times um for at least where we can predict a little bit but I figured that question would probably be coming so that's something David and I have been looking at um I will say and Dr Anderson can chime but I know um as an executive
team and leadership team we've been talking about um next year and some of the things that um we can kind of add back I don't know Dr Anderson if you want to talk about any of that well one of the things that I would share is just a focus and a priority that I've uh
spoken about at PTA meetings and in work sessions is the focus on class size and classroom teachers and prioritizing uh not only that aspect and and trying to uh regain some ground that we lost
during the uh reductions that we made and then also on our student service uh student support service area in regard to um student support teams not necessarily additional in special education or El even though there have been some increases there as well but
when we think in terms of counseling services and providing that uh support to students um not only at the elementary level but hopefully at the middle school level as well as we continue to take a look at Staffing ratios and and trying to uh reinforce
and support uh all of the needs of students uh even Beyond just their academic needs and us you might recall also that the state has been increasing funding specifically targeted for
counselors and uh similarly uh functioned if that's the right way to say it student support service staff that can be utilized and I think uh the increase that the state do out a couple years ago are in year three with the upcoming 25
26 school year so I think then that'll be at least that established cap at the time of those increased resources so um not only are we seeing an increased need for students to be served through uh our
special education programming and uh El programming but just students needs in general um have continued to uh increase and the uh Elementary counselors that we've added in the last several years have been very well received and uh have
been very helpful within the buildings working directly with the teachers principals and uh other members of the student support team so as we uh continue to uh work our way forward in our staffing design and model for next year um that has made has remained the
priority and and focus area for myself and uh our leadership team members as well perfect thank you Dr Anderson um this is this next slide it's the same information on the left um on the right I know that's really easy to
see um should have made that bigger couldn't um but when you look at it I think just kind of closing statement um obviously we know we're not asking for board approval tonight but obviously we are seeing things kind of turn around um I don't think it's by accident I think
the board and the district leadership are wise to going into Cost Containment we we did um and then we've just been very lucky that we live in the geographic location that we do in the state of Minnesota because we are seeing growth um we're forecasting continued growth um even next year we look it's
like I don't even want to say the numbers um because obviously we saw them during the demographic study but we're looking at a potential year of north of 400 kid growth again like we did this year um spread kind of across all three areas I think when I was questioning Jen
again today um she pulled all the date out like she has like 12 times for me and we went over it again but you guys pay me to be paranoid so um so when we look at that I think Jen what did you say even from what we projected next year even at the middle school level um
from what we projected to what we have enrolled right now it's I wonder if you talk about some of those numbers not to put you on the spot without anything in front of me um yes what we projected with the demographic study that we did this fall um and who is currently in our
system as if School were to start today I think we're short 60 students at the middle school level from what our projections are right now and it's only March so thinking about the time that we have there and at the high school level I want to say it's like 25 students so Elementary is a little harder to gauge
right now because kindergarteners need to get enrolled and and get through that but um yeah it's a lot of growth again this year yeah so we're watching that very closely so um again just kind of En closing obviously things were coming out
of the last year of our Cost Containment hopefully um but I say that just kind of with the Asis that um we need to recognize and I'm always the one in the room because it's my job to just remind of the things that could change it quickly and so we also know there's a lot of uncertainty around Federal
funding right now something we need to keep in mind um the if the student growth would slow or if you know we're projecting north of 400 kid growth next year and let's say comes in at 200 um we're trying to be really methodical even with our ADB backs as a leadership
team um with what we're looking at because we don't want to kind of return to the situation that we had in the past um and then obviously we have negotiations continual negotiations with our staffing um and different bargaining units um and then the special education cost increases this is something even
with the cross subsidy we're watching very closely um one of the really kind of um things that we have to be aware of as a finance team is maintenance of effort because as those dollars go up we're now stuck with those dollars so you can look and go um wow you know
we're getting 75% reimbursement so impact still you know is coming close to what it used to impact us before because the costs are growing but we're now going to be kind of saddled with that $26 million amount so and for board members uh we have to spend at least is
it a penny or a dollar more than pen a penny more than we did the prior year so um it it can put aot lot of um a lot of constraint on the district in the future so we're just being really um watchful about that and then obviously we are
always looking at referendums so um that will be something that will be coming up to the board in the next um year or less with the refer operating referendum um we've got the tech Levy um just a lot of variables so and then as I said um short-term facility needs that's
something that we're addressing right now that the board is aware of um at West Middle School so with this big student um student growth um the district had to be very creative too so um luckily principal Carlson at uh West Middle School is a fantastic guy along
with the other two ele uh Middle School principles and they worked really well together on this but um as the board knows we'll be doing a project over there to convert over 13,000 square feet of locker room space into US classroom space to be able to handle the need um and uh principal Carlson's building will
increased pretty tremendously over the next two years so um with a cap of hopefully a thousand kids but I think he's sitting at about 840 right now we're projecting them to be at 966 next year um and obviously um we're hoping that that locker room and redo of some
areas can be really resourceful with the properties that the district already has to really be wise with those dollars and spend them efficiently so um trying to think of anything else obviously we're watching um things just keeping Pace with them
and then we're just kind of taking a picture of the whole thing watching it all the time and we all know that um in student enrollment growth is kind of the key to our success of pulling out of this so all right and I just talked about all
of those things and I'm still waiting for the day that they say you know what we're going to catch up to inflation and then we're going to it's going to be retroactive and then we'll be having a whole another conversation but I'm not going to hold my breath um any questions from the board
thank you Scott David and Jen uh so Jen if once you finish the cares act report the last report you will have more time to focus on enrollment every day right that's right every day yes y okay um thank you thank you again uh board
colleagues any questions or comments on the presentation Vala then yeah well thank you so much for putting this presentation together it really means a lot um I'm grateful for for the um you know little check-in we were able to
have last week um just really touch based on um on the numbers as we see them um my one question I believe Jen you touched on it briefly um to kind of go back to our registration numbers again but um what is our um our kindergarten numbers we're in kindergarten enrollment right now um so
just kind of talk it's still early but just kind of what we're seeing with our kindergarten registration so far we're on Pace to where we have been prior years at the same time frame um I was actually just talking to uh Dr Anderson today about that that we we get a little
bit of a lull right now and then it'll start to pick up again like families want to get through spring break here and then they start thinking about their plans for next school year so we'll see an uptick in that um it's not anything we're not down from Total percentages of what we're expecting from the last two
years at least that I have data for all right thank you I will have some questions already asked several of them via email um can I uh can I reiterate back what I heard so you are planning to have Bond referendum
then uh operating referendum and Tech Cy am I right yes not all at the same time but yes over the several years it means that we will be asking from taxpayers more money yes yep that's correct but over the next several years so obviously due
to the need needs of the growing District that's where a building Bond referendum would potentially come to the public and that would be based purely on the need of the um student growth that we're experiencing um and then like I talked about at the West medal school um we're trying to maximize all of our um
facilities that we can which is also the reason why we did a demographic study um getting to the operating referendum that's something that comes up um every 10 years I believe um and so it will be coming up um as soon I think our first time we can renew it would be July 1
2025 so coming up here and then I believe we have a 24mon or 36-month window to do that um and then uh the tech Levy we have two of those running so I think the next one don't quote me but I want to say that's
2728 um I don't have that in front of me I apologize but yes those would be things and those are things that um necessarily uh you know with the operating referendum those those are things that the public has already experiencing currently and that would be
the same with the tech Levy as well so obviously when we look at a building Bond referendum that would have an impact um but that would be based primarily driven by um student growth I think during the enrollment um study that we did we even had people from the public we got a lot of comments that
said why have you not started on a new building why have you not why do you not have an elementary school built why do you not have a middle school build um as we just covered here um we saw really es and flows and roll over the last several years and so I think the district was planning I think
the district and the board were planning back in 2019 um for this growth potential new schools pandemic hit and change kind of the whole Dynamics so it would have been pretty weird for us to go to the public during a time that we were seeing declining enrollment growth
to ask for new schools so um now it's just coming to us really fast obviously as we're seeing this above average and above projected growth couple of things that I might just add to that too so all of these things will come back to before the board for a lot of conversation and discussion so we have uh Scott mentioned
we have two technology levies one of those was just renewed last fall I believe uh for a 10-year period and then there's a second one that will come up in a few years so we have those two that provide the the technology resources and I just wanted to point out too that the
legislature took action a couple years ago about renewal of General operating levies where it used to be every 10 years approx you would need to go to the voters to have those approved uh they uh created or implemented a new law a couple years ago in the legislative
session that uh school boards May renew their current operating Levy at the same amount for a 10-year period without bringing it back to the voters and you can do that one time with h General operating levies so those will be discussions that we'll be having in the
coming months or year uh just in regard to what the school board may want to be thinking about uh in that regard for the future so those are the the key things to keep in mind but I just wanted to reinforce that we'll be having much more discussion before those would come uh to
the board for uh a vote and uh for sure with the uh possible uh Capital Bond referendum for facilities and possibly up to an including uh building one or two new schools but none of that has been decided yet and we're in the
process of needs assessment currently thank you I have some more questions if it's okay um another question is about Co I'm surprised to hear about that some schools open new positions I think that a year ago we had an article saying
about Robinsdale that it was specifically uh told that schools are not supposed to use uh that money to open new positions because once you open the positions there is no money coming and of course we had to uh find funds
somehow that's how Rob my understanding Robinsdale ended up um in the situation where we we have to cut a lot of I mean where we have to face budget cuts too uh big number um uh another one I was going to ask
with redact I yes I asked via email but probably it worth asking in public uh V about money did you um also put into uh consideration how much money we already get and um are we're going to get paid
by the state full amount so that it's not coming from general fund yes I can have uh director draskovich talk about that but absolutely and I think I'll just add before David talks those are restricted funds so when they come to us from the state um which some have those
have to sit there in restricted funds so yeah so we've already been paid on the redact funds uh it's about $543,000 in most of our training has occurred if I remember correctly with because we paid about
$274,000 in training yeah so those teachers that were in the first wave of training most of those have already been paid the only ones who are not complete yet are our early learning teachers who qualify under that and they'll be done this spring but then we also have a second
wave of that phase one starting a lot of our special ed teachers will start this spring and summer and then that m gets held in that restricted fund for that and then our secondary teachers will undergo training but the state has not released what training that is they want them going through yet and so that has
been delayed by a year and again we have those funds for that but it's in that restricted fund thank you Dana sorry to throw you on it yeah so yes we have been paid on those funds we are paying them out but they like Dana Miller said they are a restricted fund balance so they
will sit there until we utilize all of them it's nice to know because I heard in the past that sometimes State uh put mandates but money doesn't come and then you have to find money how we going to be covering the cost and all that's uh
what that's was also the concern thank you thanks I just have a comment I want to say thank you for bringing us this good news this is a good news report we have weathered our Cost Containment ears
which makes me feel really good because it was really hard it was hard to make those decisions it was hard to you know try to project where we would be and those cuts were really really deep and hard um so thank you also to my colleagues who were also in the past and
and other administrators for having made those decisions alongside us um our wisett a family is growing and that's good news and so with that there's going to be some squeezin along the way and we're all just going to you know settle up for it as we're entering into this
but it is good news because it means that we can offer our students more things and I thank you for bringing that forth um also our annual state increase sounds much better than 2% 2.74 is great so again thanks for the good news report and thanks for putting this all together
for us um couple more questions sorry I'll try to make it quick um uh knowing that we will be negotiating with uh teacher Union and unated group this summer at the same time facing Financial
challenges like SP sped on rise elll on the rise inflation purchase Services Supply materials on the rise how are we as a board going to get realistic picture of what we can afford so that we are not uh sending our district U Back
to another cycle of budget cuts in the nearest Future and even bigger class sizes uh which is not going to be sustainable perfect that's a great question um currently the finance team this is something we've talked about several times we're in the middle of um
working on our three-year projection out so um as I mentioned during the budget presentation we're in a unique situation where we do have student growth so um a lot of districts will do the fiveyear we do do a fiveyear we even look out a little bit more than that but really after three years it kind of gets really
fuzzy and not really reliable so we pay attention to the threeyear um and so what we'll do for the board is basically put that together it will project out where we think student growth will be it'll project out it'll have several assumptions on different growth areas and expenditures outside of
salary and benefits it will go off of aggregated average um salary increases that we know about and then we'll use um estimates on other areas and we'll be able to show you kind of a picture of um where we think we'll be in three years um and then that will help make that
decision so the board will be able to know kind of parameters and what impacts that will have with the district so um I guess I would just add without student growth I think it would be a different story so if we were Flatline student growth we'd be having a completely
different discussion um we're now having a discussion where we're going to have facility crunches and as director Kar said um we're all just going to you know kind of be cozy and um maximize our buildings to be really resourceful to our local taxpayers and make sure we're
maximizing our square footage and I am glad to hear to be honest that this hopefully will allow us to uh make sure that our class sizes are smaller and our kids are getting additional help like um Paris because this uh especially
in elementary kids uh students need it and I'm hearing from my own uh child teacher that uh it's second year when she in her 29th uh year experience that she got such a big class and uh she she
is obviously wanting uh that board will do something about it because knowing that there are behavioral issues on top and loading into teachers big class sizes is not sustainable and I'm very pleased to hear
that uh our teacher our students will get help our teachers uh Elementary especially teachers will get help and class sizes will get uh smaller it's I'm very I'm very pleased to hear that
news to be honest thank you yeah sure goad I just want to reiterate um it's so great to have good news on this and that we will be able to look at class sizes again um do you know where the growth is
coming from I know we kind of know it's new constru ruction right or what what are you seeing where are we getting all these students I like how we both looked at Jen but um um I haven't analyzed that data a lot yet for next school year um I
was actually just telling the same leadership group um earlier today that I am building new addresses in our system um multiple times in a week like anywhere from 5 to 10 a week so that's that's the new growth a lot of it um up in that that northwest corner still um
as we get closer to the school I'll do a little bit more analysis as to where these kids are coming from are they coming back from non-public are they coming new from out of the state um but I haven't really taken time to look at that yet I think one thing to point out too is that I think we'll see Redevelopment
in parts of the district that um are kind of changing over so when we think of the east side of the district even the southeast side I think we're seeing um some of that change already I know when I go visit the buildings there's a brand new construction house or two um so I think that will be something we'll
also be looking at but um primarily as we learned from the demographic study that growth up in the Northwest is pretty tremendous and as a district we tend to attract families with children I think the wetta school district is a draw for people so we
might be different than a lot of other areas in that way which is good um I guess this is mostly comments already my question um so Valentina asked about the operating l and the tech Levy those are levies taxpayers are currently paying
and it would be a renewal of those it wouldn't I mean the the to build new buildings it would be an increase but the operating and Tech levies would just be a continuation of what people already experience is that yes and there could be some variability depending on the net tax capacity and how the district is
changing but yes as generally that's a correct statement um and one last thing um Jen you mentioned 60 students at the middle school level I was having a hard time understanding what was that how how much space we have left enough
for 60 students no that 60 students is just where we are from our projections um I don't have the numbers in front of me but let's just say we projected 3,000 students we already have 60 less than that enrolled in the district so that I'm just was trying to point out how
close we are to the projections that we did with a demographic study already knowing that it's March and we'll have students enrolling all the way through um the first part of September before school starts I am getting a little antsy about building a a fourth middle
school but thank you all right thank you um while I make a comment Amy can you bring up the slide which shows those four houses on the left and Eight houses on the right the next net tax capacity slide so I just want to make make a quick comment and Echo Valentina and and
Sheila and in highy I think about Dr Anderson's mention of class sizes Focus I think that will probably be something that the community has been waiting to hear so I think that's a a nice nice thing to hear so thank you Dr Anderson
um on this slide here um it is my understanding that we as taxpayers property taxpayers we pay a certain percent of our house home value is that right so so is that 800 $ a fixed amount
every year that we collect from you know from the levy or is does it vary every year and as the values go up should it not go up yes it should but it still spreads so school districts we have a capped amount so the state determines that and we have
a capped amount that we can receive so um we don't set home values um we don't determine like when you get your property tax statment we aren't the only ones on there so um this would be like in a perfect scenario like if nothing change um and more so the scenario would
be if your house was worth $100,000 just using easy round numbers and it stayed that amount and then the district is seeing this continued growth in theory you would be paying less every year so that $100 you're paying you'd be paying 90 or you'd be paying 80 as the district
expands and new houses are built but what we know is reality is different than that so that house that was 100,000 is now worth 200,000 and so that percentages being applied to it so you might see it going up but that's because of the market assessed value of her home
which is outside of the district so just control know high level I'm looking at this the left those houses are paying $200 initially then the new houses come up and everybody's you know Levy goes down to
$100 what if we had everybody pay 150 which means that the ones on the left are still paying less but you're collecting more right you would collect $1,200 yeah I think uh there're two different examples so the one is like 800 that you're talking
about on the left and then it would be like the district's growing and there's more houses added and so it's the same thing except showing more houses so those people aren't still paying 800 now they're paying a 100 and that was that scenario like I set up their house
value okay all right um the federal education fund and you transfer 1.5 million I think I asked you this in the email I apologize I I read it at the last minute just while leaving leaving home today so I was not able to completely get the gist of it but my
question Still Remains so we have taken 1.5 million from the federal funds and transferred it to the tution for special education so the federal funds that were supposed to be allocated for something specific now that something has lost 1.5
million right um actually it's uh it's a great question um as I mentioned it is super complicated so that's why it's interesting to get into it but um it's actually the reverse of that it would help us gain more because we had a place to put it so um tuition billing usually
that would cost us um 1.4 times now 1.25 more um we're able to pay that dollar for dollar so when we get tuition build by different districts or co-ops or intermediate um that can vary year to year and it takes like over a year and a half to um
a leg for it to True up but we're able to take federal dollars and pay dollar for dooll down on that and then we take those costs that were being paid by that 1.5 million and we code them over to State special education and so by doing
that we're covering dollar for dooll and now we're covering those costs and state special EDS so we're gaining an additional 75% of Revenue that we would have never had before so let me let me see if I'm understanding this correctly so that $1.5 million that was allocated
for something other than special education is not lost right I mean we are not losing the value for other the other program no we're actually gaining value so the risk full disclosure the risk side of that which we which our team and our leadership team is well
aware when we made the decision to do that is um what happens when you shift it from federal to State it increases your maintenance of efforts so we took a calculated approach on that knowing it would be harder to peel that back um because there's very few exceptions to being able to pull that maintenance of
effort back but we felt pretty confident that our special education costs were going to continue to increase when we made that decision so we felt very confident that we wouldn't be the the risk analysis for the district um we felt pretty good about it so um absolutely nothing was gained if
anything 75% additional Revenue was gained so I'd like to add one more just listening to to you talk about it um the federal funds were for already special education Aid so I think I caught that when you were talking about it so it was already Federal Federal special education
dollars and so we're not losing any special education or another program is not losing any money because it's all all of it's meant for special education so like for like yes good okay that that was my my main question okay thank you so delinquencies is what you mentioned there were delinquencies in property tax
payment ments last year I mean how how serious can it get what can we do if the delinquencies for some reason keep going up and up and up and we we have 30% of our revenues from from that side right that bucket yeah
David can hop in too but the state requires us to Levy 105% so that Shields us from some of that as well um and we are in a district that has a high propensity to pay so we don't really necessarily have to worry about that I think in David can talk to it more but
some of those legs might have been related to or delinquencies might have been related to the pandemic and some of the Fallout from that so um I would say as a whole our district is uh we typically don't see an issue with that there is no protection for us from that
right U well it's 100 105% so because we have to Levy 105% we gain a fund balance on that and it protects us a little bit but yeah I mean if everybody went out of business or quit paying yeah we'd don't have a problem right okay that's why we have a fund balance yeah exactly and and that's why we we watch it so closely
yeah you know every fiscal year we're looking at what the delinquencies look like just to see if they're growing or declining okay uh you mentioned unemployment um uh benefits you haven't seen a lot of growth in that uh possibly because the employees
are not aware of the benefits maybe that's one reason I agree but it is also another couple of reasons where unemployment benefits are not given r randomly or you know it's not a given that unemployment benefit applications will all be approved the employees have
to look for a job you cannot sit at home and claim unemployment benefits they can Al they can also not refuse jobs that are pertinent so those are probably the things that are basically preventing us or them from claiming unemployment benefits and therefore we are not seeing
probably that growth would that be a fair statement um possibly I think we're a little bit unique to in our district um because the money is I mean the money will be gone this year Statewide that don't quote me 150 million roughly that was set aside I think the I think the
burn rate I think Dr Anderson I think on your MSD call that money is going to be gone this year so um we've experienced less I think last year what did we spend David 296 if I remember it was 296 in this
year already rdf for summer unemployment it's 450,000 y so we are seeing an increase in uptick but um I think just based on our demographic area we aren't seeing the utilization of that but I I'm only seeing that towards our district I think
Statewide the proof is that it is being utilized because those funds are being burned through so I think we might be a unique outlier in that I don't know if that's fair to say to to be honest I haven't spent a ton of time studying it I just wanted to get it right for wetta okay and then one last question um Amy
can you bring up the chart where it shows the the project growth and then you have that exponential curve going up I think you have you have it only up to 23 24 the dash line and then another Green
Line underneath that's exponential yeah keep going not that one no that that one right there so this is 23 24 so where do you think we are in terms of the gap with with the you know with the
enrollment increase are we closer to that green line I we should be right yeah I mean we're closing the Gap yeah for sure okay yep so we're above average growth from even what projection would be so I mean we were just talking about it today going through the Teamworks demographic study and then uh you guys
pay us to be paranoid so we run two internal models and one with um kind of an outside agency to to just check numbers just because we like check and balance and then a check and balance on those numbers so um are seeing that increase tremendously when you look at the demographic study that Hazel
reinhardt's did in the fall of 2022 um when I started um we are we're gen what two and a half years above forecast on Hazel so we are absolutely closing that Gap so it was wide and as you can see there it's closing and that
12499 um what we ended up on I mean you saw Jen's report today likely a lot of you did I mean we're north of 12,800 and projecting to be roughly around 1 you know north of 13,200 300 next year so so it's very likely and possible that we
will that line will intersect and go above the above the straight lines the next year or two yeah I it's so hard to say I know I just trying to be optimistic yeah you're asking conservative accountants so yeah that's all the questions I have unless
somebody else has a comment question that just came up thank you Scott thank you David and thank you Jen we appreciate your your effort uh I don't know if you if you just keep seeing numbers in your dream all all every night or uh you know I I have to say
though I know I'm the one that does a lot of the talking yeah I have a fantastic team which you know my uh committee chairs recognize and they're on my meetings a lot I have a lot of my team on my meetings and I get to do a lot of the talking they do a ton of the hard work um we've all worked closely
together for almost three years and kind of figured out where our different paranoia are and they seem to all be covered um we have a really big team environment so I know uh Dave direct director draskovich um it's kind of fun to see because obviously I was in his role prior to going into mine and I used
to live in a paranoid State and now David's in it so it's nice to see I'm kidding um but David worked really really hard with his team on this obviously Jen is instrumental um with the sped and fed side and then the student counts so it takes the whole team to do this and David's put together
a really really good team and I feel really confident with our team so it is not uh me that just sees the numbers alone so usually they're saying Scott did you think about this did you think about this so um we just appreciate the opportunity we've had to put together a good team you share the nights when each
one sees you see it on Monday Tuesday he looks at him on Wednesday Thursday at night and Friday Saturday I'm just kidding no I think we see it all seven days a week each of us so but thank you so much I appreciate it yeah and then we'll see you on on Monday next next Monday right yep and any questions you
have feel free to reach out all right thank you so much okay next on the agenda we have school board reports and uh we have District Administrative Assistant imig who is also the district election clerk who will give an election update
Amy good evening school board and Dr Anderson uh yes I have the privilege of coming to you tonight in my capacity as our Schoolboard election clerk um kind of as Scott had mentioned and as you referred to earlier this is purely
informational uh this is not anything that needs to be decided on certainly not this evening but I did want um to give you some food for thought and to let you have an open discussion once um I kind of lay out the information before you um so kind of prompted this um was
the state legislature on January 30th um had before it a bill that is proposing that all ode elections both Schoolboard and City elections um are moved to even years they kind of precipice for this
was the voter low voter turnout um but certainly there are other factors involved so you can read through the bill there um and I know you've had this presentation before you um currently there are 25 of the 331 districts I know you like
percentages so that puts us at 7.5% of the school boards throughout the state currently still have odear elections some of them also coincide with their local city elections so I don't have the exact numbers on which ones do or don't but that certainly makes it easier from
a financial um perspective that they have their cities running them not their school districts um I did highlight The District 4 um msba District 4 districts that are still in the odd year and I also noted the districts that are
currently in discussion or considering moving to eveny year um I know on the next slide you'll see the ones that have moved recently uh Inver Grove Heights is planning on moving their elections to even years um on their meeting in March 10th and Richfield I don't have the date
for their March meeting but they're also considering um moving to even year so the the wave is kind of moving in that direction um for lots of different reasons for these districts so ode election districts that recently moved are listed below um I did note on
all of them which ones moved and how which option they went with and the only uh ones that I found they all extended their current Schoolboard terms by one year that's an option that we'll lay out for you in a
moment oh sorry sorry I'm monitoring the slid so I realized I'm not moving the slideshows as I'm talking sorry got two computerss to monitor to make sure our stream is good so um the uh most recent election we had was in
2023 this is again just for the school board um kind of laying out the budget um we budgeted for about 60,000 we have increased our budget each time we've run an election um but our costs have also increased they increased by about
15% um with each election so we would also anticipate that continuing as we move forward with ode elections so considerations in thinking about moving to evene elections um certainly the school
district and taxpayer costs associated with running our own election voter confusion um both we have 10 cities that we service students in our district but those um people don't necessarily know where
they vote on it's different for audio year and evene elections so we frequently have voters showing up at the wrong place um not knowing what it is that they're voting on things of that nature so that could clear up if they only have evene elections uh certainly
the time that it takes away from other duties surrounding school districts are changing to even years um we are a resource um it's kind of a a one-person show um for those of us that have to run our own elections during odd years and
as those resources dwindle um there are fewer of us to to bounce off ideas off of each other I listed some of the election clerk duties that fall on my shoulders this would just be transferred to our loc our cities and counties should you
consider moving to evene uh so the evene election costs would decrease uh quite a bit um we would not have to do any of the the duties listed neighboring districts they average about 5700 and that's certainly a rough estimate really what you end up
paying for if your piggybacking on uh other elections that are taking place is the um ballot space that you occupy so if you have four candidates running it's certainly less than if you have 15 we have had wetta in the range of all of
them but it's it's very nominal fee it's very small compared to having to um you know we spent almost 81,000 and I did just receive another bill that I mentioned so that cost is actually $24 increased so in no particular order I'm
just laying out the the three options that are before you the first option is that for the next two scheduled ode elections um we change those terms for uh your seats to threeyear terms they're
currently always four so those that are running uh we have four seats that are up for election in 2025 sorry three backwards three seats up for election in 2025 those would be for three-year terms and then the subsequent election in
2027 uh those four seats would also be on threeyear terms that would force us into the odd uh evene cycle we would have to run two more oddy year elections but it would just um I think maybe be the most transparent option um in my
perview but there's pluses and minuses to all of them option two would to be to pass a resolution that extends current terms for all seven board members by one year that would immediately put us on an evene cycle um if this was done before
July 1st of this year then we would not run a 2025 election it would immediately move to a 2026 and 2028 election there's no requirement by any means to make any decision before July 1st but if
you want that to go into effect for this year that's when we would make need to make that decision and notify the county auditor the third option is to stay the course um we just keep AUD your elections and wait and see if the state
passes legislation should they pass legislation this year it wouldn't go into effect until January 2026 anyways they have not specified what the transition plan would be if they would dictate it or if they would give us an option at that point um
it's possible that they could force it or not and it's not just for school boards it's also for local cities so um I know minetonka in particular that we have students in minetonka they're on odd year and so um not sure how it would affect them as well so that's certainly
an option to not do anything so just a general timeline obviously today I'm just sort of putting this in front of you um moving forward and pending your discussions and where you want to be we could bring this up again in another work session after
you've had chance to think about what this means for you and where you might want to go or not go with this um so it could come up in any future work session if the board um were to want to move forward with change making any change
prior to July 1st so that it would go into effect this year that would have to be decided at our June board meeting but again that's only if that's the will of the board that's there's no requirement to make any decision prior to that again I got ahead of myself um and
with that I'd like to open the floor to for you guys to discuss this amongst yourselves thank you Emy uh can we ask you questions if we have any okay thank you uh so just one one thing I wanted to add here that uh you know me me put a slide here up for election
considerations to take into account this is for the school district how it affects the cost time Etc but the one of the reasons why the legislature I believe is looking at you know changing this is because of the low percentage of
voting that happens in odd years when we have only the School Board elections that and that is a big difference when when 80% of the voters go out to vote in even year elections when everybody else is running but in our you know when we run for school board during odd years it
drops down to precipitously to as low as 20 25 and 30% so there is one of the big reasons that they are looking at it as well so but uh that I don't know if that should consider you know we should even think about that when we look at our options but I just wanted to throw that
out there so any any any comments any questions for Amy yeah go ahead sh Amy I'd like to ask you um that $81,000 does that come out of the the general fund I'm going to default to our finance
here for that one I don't know what fund I just turn in receip um I haven't looked specifically at that full disclosure but my assumption um or guess would be that it absolutely does come out of the general fund because I don't think there's any sort of streamlined funding for that the cost issue for me seems like a
really big reason to change yeah I agree with you that I think that um and thank you Amy for the presentation I really appreciate I think it's good that you know board members are informed on this um I took
the news that this you know Bill have been introduced you know in a pretty um unfortunate tone I think that you know outstanding school districts make investments in excellence and this is one of those Investments that we are willing to foot the bill to ensure that
our elections happen in a time when we're the only election on the agenda for the people in our district um we get an entire election cycle to ourselves here in Wisa Public Schools so families and
students are able to have the you know important conversations about our district and you know the services it provides whereas if we're folded in with an even numbered years we're folded in with a Governor's race full disclosure in a governor's race election year um
Schoolboard issues really don't come to the Forefront um in a presidential year it's even more so so um I don't want us to be put in as an afterthought I want what goes on our district to be um you know first and foremost on people's
minds um we've also heard arguments about um turnout by the time you get to the bottom of the ballot which is where the school board election sits turnout is not 75% um oftentimes you're lucky if it's 50% um so I think what we have in weeta
schools is really good um we have year where we can talk about um our institutions we can talk about our students and our teachers and how we provide for them the best we can and ensure Excellence for each and every so um certainly I see there being kind of another option here where we take full
advantage of our opportunity in a week um visiting with legislators to tell them you know we don't um you know we don't want this and that'll be my message to legislators that you know there is another option which is just to say we're not going to go along with this um you know I look at the dollar
amount that it cost yeah that's a substantial amount of money but I think it's worth it when you talk about the value from the conversations the value from people being so engaged um versus showing up to vote in an election where it's other issues that take
precedent and when it comes to education I I don't think anything stands ahead of that first of all thank you for answering all my questions um one quick question and you mentioned towards the end of your presentation so let's say we
decide to go on even years but let's say the minut onka city election is audience so do we have to run anything by each of those cities or how that will work no so we we just need
to notify the county auditor that we're moving um there are other elections as national state elections that take place um there are just a few cities that still run their own on odd years um we had this when I always forget I'm sorry
who seat who left their seat Cen thank you I always can't recall uh we had a Schoolboard member leave um and so we had to run a special election and the cities all ran that they just you know tacked us onto their ballots um we still
have to go around and I have to do my clerk duties of collecting our our votes from each of them um but that's just within their election cycle that's pretty standard for anything that would be added um and if I could just tack on to that question real quick because Heidi had a great question
that she sent me today um if we were to have a a referendum if we were to have other uh ballot questions that we pose there is always the opportunity for us to run a special election um five times
a year so if other things come up we would still consider running an election um you can do it on the second Tuesday in February April May August and the second Tuesday after the first Monday in November so um for anything you know if we had a seat vacate early things of
that nature we could certainly still run the elections it just wouldn't be our normal cycle thank you sure Amy is a is there a cost difference and you might not know this and I should have asked you before is there so you can answer it later is there a cost
difference between a like a referendum election versus a school board election in terms of our administration of it there is not okay no so the same we would have to have the exact same duties performed by um election judges all the
equipment rented from um the city of Plymouth is incredibly generous with their time and help with things of that nature um but no we'd still have the early voting period as the same for even for special election so okay thank you yes and Melinda I asked this question to
me in the email as well but just wanted to get your perspective from msba standpoint so one of the options is you know extend the term how does that go with voters so if we were to go with the option where we are extending one year
for all board members and just to get everybody on the even year without spending any taxpayer dollars um is there any policy anything we have to worry about msba has not I don't believe as far as I know they have not
considered discussed that at all what they have said is and I believe Amy responded in in with that in that email is msba stance is that we should leave this un to local control okay if Veta wants to do it during OD years let them
to keep doing it that's their stance they are not for or against but they are saying just leave it for on local control and other than that I don't think I've have seen anything as far as extending one one you know from four years to five years or reducing from four to three that I don't think we have
discussed that yet at all so do we have to get any again buying from msba anything or is it purely our decision I think it's our decision is that correct Emy yeah that's correct it's purely your decision actually msba uh because this has come
up often enough they were generously provided us the resolutions for either situation what you choose to do um and again sorry to attack on uh Heidi had asked about um amsd and what their position was and Dr Anderson and I just
got an email while we were sitting here um their response was uh in line with msba they just would like it to be in our control and not be dictated by the state okay all right thanks valtina I also uh discussed with asked
um another school board uh board member from another District which already moved interesting enough she gave us statistics that um from msba that uh through many years uh many school districts were still on a odd years I
mean odd years and many uh chose to move to even years and uh as for public for their school district her answer was that interesting enough a public uh many of them were asking finally you did it
uh and also uh amazingly they didn't get uh pushed back that's the feedback I got from IA School Board member yes that's the same that I've heard U my counterparts in other districts across the state um that have
all moved within I'd say i' I opened it up to like a five to sevene period um because several more had moved prior to covid and uh they were also surprised that there was very little uh voter resistance to their choice it was more
of a an understanding okay yeah Sheila um just as a some further information when when we did have the special election um just kind of in you know response to what you said
Dan the amount of you know votes that Schoolboard members got again was less than everybody else on the ballot but it was still significantly more than board members get on the odd number on the odd year elections I mean just in total
votes cast it's significant ific more when you have it with another election um I I mean I'm just guessing here I don't have any data or I haven't talked to anybody but I'm guessing that voters it's a you know it's a cost of time to
have to go and vote and we're asking our you know Community to come in an odd year when they wouldn't be doing it for any other you know election so they might actually appreciate having it at the same time as everything else um they
might you know even though you want to have the board um topics you know more salients I think you would still have that the people we might even get more attention paid because again people are already looking at other you know candidates and
then they'll see that there are board members on their ballot and they will then learn more because they're going there anyway so that's just my my two cents on that thank you um yeah I I agree with Sheila in fact I have specifically heard that
from community members that why are you not on the same cycle because inherently everybody does their research and it's another category another candidate versus going through that whole experience when there is nothing else
going on so I completely agree with you and when you put cost for election so I was surprised and you can see based on my email the questions that I was asking $100,000 give and take uh for special educ special election in my mind
makes no sense am U is it possible for you I don't want to add to your workload but is it possible for you to you know before our next work session just put a table of numbers that voted in the odd year for
our school board versus the following even year and you know last five six years or five six elections so that we can look at those numbers actually you know for a fact right which numbers were better and which were not better so certainly yes my my predecessor kept
that data and I kept it as well that is not asking for much uh additional work I can that we appreciate that thank you all right so I have one question all these options assuming that the legislature will pass the bill or assuming that it will not pass the
no all of these options are just options before you so it has nothing to do with the state we that that's a giant question mark is if the state were to move forward and pass this this cycle and put us into a January 26 2026 they
just say they would force us into transition and it's very unclear as to what the the transition would look like from the state and the reason I asked that is if you can go to option one if you can bring that up please okay so let's say that the legislature
passes sure or the bill passes bullet number 325 we will be doing this our election this year in November but 27 will not be possible right uh so it it could be unfortunately again I don't I
without knowing what the state would decide on I can't quite predict that um I did have this conversation specifically with Greg Abbott from msba because I had the same question and he said that he's under the impression that should we already be in
transition that the state would let us finish out our transition exactly but again that's just his impression and he also agrees they could just force us on to even year so so it is possible that those who ran and are sitting at this board table in 2023 they will be up for
reelection based on that in 2027 and even if the legislature has passed that approved the bill they might still allow us to have these candidates or you know who runs in 27 run in that year that is yes that is possible I
believe that um director janesta voiced his concern that it is also possible they could remove a year from that group that was just elected in 2023 the state legislature has that power so okay it's possible okay either either way okay
thank you so much we'll find out May 19th I believe is the when the session ends and I don't know maybe a week or so before the governor signs the bills and but it will be before before our June meeting for sure go ahead sh so assuming that the
state doesn't inter you know doesn't change it if we decide to do something um the options before us would affect all board members equally either we lose a year or we gain a year just to make that clear
unless the state says oh you're in transition and we don't care okay yeah so what are our next steps because I think again that June timeline is
directional um that gives us you know couple of months so do we want to wait until certain things passes on the legislation side then bring it bring it back to work session and then bring it back to voting like how do we what are what are our
next steps I I don't think we have to wait for this thing to be approved or not approved we can have a work session in April to discuss this even further I don't know how much more we'll discuss but we do need to I think we can and uh be prepared for both both scenarios
right and U so you had recommended some work sessions right Amy yes I just I figured after this discuss discussion perhaps you would want to again think on what your options are and certainly decide and maybe come forward at an
agenda planning and decide if you want to to have this at another work session but you are you are saying that we have to disc decide one way or the other in by by the June board meeting correct uh no no if if you want to if you want this
to affect the current year the 2025 election it would need to get voted on by June correct yes okay that's what I meant sorry yeah um I need clarification so this uh extending one year it means extending to
all of us correct uh so instead of four we'll be serving five correct that would affect everyone on the board another option is actually going to be affecting future elected U members M right right not us that's correct it would be affecting the three-year term would be
for those that opt to run in 2025 in 2027 so yes you are correct that is so it's not it's only you if you were elected in during those years yes and more clarification looks my understanding is quite a bit who Moved
uh to even years they did extend uh one year uh immate that's correct I I have not found a district that chose to have two more odear elections I I'm sure it exists um I just have not found it at
this point everyone that has done it in the last like I said 5 to seven years that I've spoken with they've all chosen to extend the current term for one year one thing I feel like um how of the optic Optics how um our people are
looking at extending your own uh serving for one year it's kind of uh if if it would have known up front for example when you're are running then uh that you get five here because of that it is one thing and extending your own it sound
like that is a little bit it will probably be as difficult or as easy as asking for a tech Levy renewal right you have to convince right the community I suppose that we doing this for a specific reason obviously you know it's not like we we woke up one day and we
said we will extend board duration board members duration to five years obviously we have to give a reason we have to give a reason for that right yeah and I agree with other school districts if they have gone with that option because it's very
clear why would I spend close to $100,000 so $200,000 on two elections just to move it 5 years from now so I totally agree why they went down that path uh but that's where my
question was are there any legal implications in terms of extending the term but if it is not then I completely agree with other school districts okay all right so if there are no more questions again like Amy said we
we can have board work sessions before our final decision and uh let me know if what you think if you think you we need one maybe two board sessions a b sessions we can certainly have those uh before the the vote I guess so thank you
everyone all right this completes our work session for this evening the next School Board regular board meeting will be a week from today on Monday March 10th the time is now 5:50 the wetta Public Schools Board of
Education work session for Monday March 3rd 2025 is adjourned