Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Two charts that really demonstrate both enrollment by site type as well as seat type. Again, you'll recall that we have a mixed delivery model. Seats are located at private, licensed child care programs. Must be a minimum of five star rated. We prefer nationally accredited also.

We work with Head Start and the public schools for our seats. Now when you look at this you might say, Good grief, it's so confusing. But it is a moving target and the numbers do vary by the month. Some of that's because of the way attendance and enrollment is recorded. In Durham Pre K, we record by attendance.

So if a child is enrolled, we do not count them until they start attending. Whereas some programs do track by actual registration rather than start date. Just as a guide. So looking at enrollment by seed type, the reason this matters is because we want to maximize the resources from outside of our local fund source. So, want all of our Head Start seats filled.

We want our NC Pre K seats filled. Obviously, I, all the different types of seats, we want them filled. And presently, the enrollment rate for locally funded seats, not including the Durham Public School seats, is at 94%. We do budget for vacancies. If we were 100% full, we would not have enough money.

We do that deliberately. Our goal is to be at 96%. We're at 94% at the present time across all seats. And that's because it's not realistic realistic to be at 100% because our families are very they move around quite a bit. And I know that we experience that in our public schools also.

So, what our governance committee, which is the oversight body for Durham Pre K, prioritizes is this idea that we are serving the most needy children first, even though we are a universal program. We look at the poverty level of our enrolled children very closely. It is a critical component of our work. We are very pleased that 60% this school year, 60% of our students come from families making less than 200% of federal poverty. Which for context, for a family of four, that is the equivalent of $64,300 per year for a family of four to live on.

So 60% of our children fall within that and below. 44% of our families live at less than 130% of federal poverty, which is for a family of four is the equivalent of $41,795 a year. So you can see that we serve a diverse group. Some would say, Wow, you have 22% of families making over 400% of federal poverty. Well, I'll remind you that those families pay on a sliding scale based on their income to attend the program.

So, that is the cutoff where families contribute to the Durham Pre K program by paying based on their income. So, one of the key things for these elected officials is how well is this working? What are the approaches, how is the braided program working. You will hear across the country about challenges in communities around collaboration. And yes, we have our challenges too.

People are people. However, we have invested heavily over the last eight years in professional facilitation to help all of our partners, including the staff from early years, Durham Public Schools, Durham's Partnership For Children, Families And Community Rising, which is the agency that has the Head Start grant. We have vested heavily in facilitation, absolute priority to build our collaboration skills. And some will say, okay, well, you're at 94% enrollment. What are your partners?

What are you doing collectively about this issue? And one of our key work areas is to really dive deep and examine

what the reasons are for vacancies.

What are the barriers for our community to enroll and participate in Durham Pre K? What we hear over and over again are about transportation needs. We have very little transportation in Durham Pre K. We do have it available for one of our sites at the present. We do hear about access to wrap care, which is what we call before and after school care.

An access issue paying for it, as well as an access issue for availability of it. And so, that is something that's identified. And then, in addition, just general community awareness. Our priority to really understand all the micro communities in Durham and how we best educate them about the opportunity. Because as we know, if you don't know about it, you can't even consider it.

So for our partners in the last year, our work has really looked at how can we expand seats in locations that are convenient for parents. And we do have a geographic spread, but we do have priority to meet parent needs. We want to increase transportation to our high need families. We want to increase the hours available for before and after school across all sites. We have a hodgepodge of availability now.

Some sites have really extended hours and some don't. We want to bring that into alignment. In addition, we want to improve and increase the number of scholarships we have available based on income for RAP care scholarships for before and after school. And then also, we are working collaboratively across all partners to improve and increase the marketing and outreach for the program. I think it's really important to remember that families have so many competing messages.

It's crazy. We even deal with trying to be sure people understand that this is a community program. It is an investment from their tax dollars. Sometimes when people hear about it, they think it's a for profit program, child care program. And so we also do that. We also do address that. And lastly, I just want to address what our families are telling us. The results from parent surveys we survey parents after participation. We survey them when they enroll to look

at

their satisfaction with the process. But most importantly, we survey them after they have had their child in the program. We do surveys by phone, as well as electronically in Spanish and English. And the results from last year are very positive. The program this year, the surveys just began.

We surveyed in May. Last year, 95 of families said they would recommend during pre K to a friend or fellow family. 93% of respondents rated their overall experience in during pre K as very good. And 93% of families felt that their child was more prepared for kindergarten as a result of participating in during pre K. I think that one of the key elements we look at as our in our partnership across all agencies is that families reported what they would most feel needs to be changed.

And those are listed there. So what's interesting is if you look at this reporting, 30% of the list of the pre K site placement process is something that needed to change. Interestingly, the families who cited that were the higher income families. The lower income families cited transportation as their key, as their number one aspect they would want to change. And then our middle income families listed the availability of before and after care.

So, that, you know, when you dive down and really examine the surveys, those are important components. I think that, you know, we are committed, obviously, today I've just sort of given you an overview and we are going to hear from Durham Public Schools, Doctor. Pittman next. But I think as a whole, what we need as takeaways here is this collaborative is working. It is very challenging, but it is working with the agencies coming together and braiding resources.

And in an environment where investments are very modest by the state and feds, Durham continues to be at high readiness. If new dollars become available externally, we are ready to run with it. Our local investments are really creating an infrastructure where we can meet children's needs very positively. So I am going turn it over to Doctor. Pittman, and then we have allowed time for questions.

Thank you, Doctor. Chappell. And good morning to our County Commissioners, Board of Education. It is indeed a pleasure and a great opportunity to provide an update on Durham Public Schools Pre K program. And our focus today will be specifically on our enrollment and how we're looking across our schools with program placement. With me today I'd like to introduce our Director of Early Education, Karen Thompson. She will be a co presenter with me a little later on. If I may, I would like to publicly thank Doctor. Chappell for her leadership and her support. Her staff has been amazing.

They provide outstanding service to all of the partners but especially have been a great help to Durham Public Schools and for that we are grateful. So for today, our presentation is going to focus on an overview of the number of classrooms Durham Public Schools currently offers, the types of programs in those classrooms, the numbers of students that we serve and how students are accessing those different programs. And then for some of our enrollment challenges or opportunities, Ms. Thompson is going to lift up some of our marketing and outreach commitments and efforts most recently this spring but will certainly bridge into the future as we go forward. In your packet of materials I'm going to be presenting through the slide show will also parallel the handout on some of our data, numbers of enrollment, either document might be helpful to reference as we move forward.

Next slide. Oh, I've got it. Thank you. Alright, so this year we are very excited to say out of our 32 elementary schools, 30 offer PreK programming in some regard or another. In addition to that, we have of course our witted pre K center.

So those combined, we have a total of 81 classroom spaces dedicated throughout our facilities to early education. And that's a huge commitment of the district and we appreciate the support again of our commissioners and Durham Public Schools leadership. So let's break out the 81. Of the 81 classrooms, 35 are dedicated to more what we call the general pre K, general education pre K, mostly those historically might have been known as our Title I classrooms. Please note that of those 35, one classroom we held in reserve pending enrollment expansion or need.

And so at this point, we didn't need to open that classroom, but it is dedicated, ready and the funding for those positions are protected. In addition, we have 28 classroom spaces that serve what we call our EC separate or the children who are most in need of specialized programming. And we'll go a little more in detail about that next. And then last year or two ago, we expanded our Montessori program and so we have 18 classroom spaces dedicated to Montessori. So on the next slide, let's look at where the students reside in all of those different classrooms.

There we go. So Montessori is a little has a nuance to it. Montessori program is a multi age program and so we serve and five year olds in these spaces. They have to protect space for kindergartners because they are in neighborhoods for which kindergarten children are zoned. And so through our magnet lottery, Pre K children access those programs specifically through the lottery and are randomly assigned.

The challenge there is we have to watch and protect the class size through the House Bill 90 classroom space so we cannot exceed 18 students per class even though it's multi age. The second number, two sixty six, that's our separate, those programs serving separate children. Mostly you can see there the autistic or developmental needs programs, our hearing impaired separate programs and also we serve what we call group where children may come in two or three or multiple times a week for services in speech and language, occupational therapy, physical therapy and other. And so the final number, the five forty one as Doctor. Chappell referenced, this is where we will find braided funding.

We'll see Title I funds and see Pre K funding, Durham Pre K and of course our EC inclusion. In those classrooms we protect spaces. Our starting ratio is 15 general ed, and those would be children that pass through a screening process and qualify through academically at risk through our Title I federally mandated screeners. Those children must qualify for those seats in order for us to place a child in one of those classrooms. And in Durham Public Schools, we reserve 15 seats for that purpose and also protect three seats for children who don't need exceptional children's separate programming but do qualify for EC services and we want to place them in an inclusive learning environment, we'll put three children in there.

We'll note later in our data some of what we've monitoring as we watch our Title I seats. If it looks late in the year or mid year and we have some vacancies and haven't hit quite to 15, we may instead of 15 to three, we may put 14 Gen Ed and four EC. So there's some fluidity there, but we really are targeting the fifteen:three ratio. So now let's just look at percent of fill and the handout may also be a nice companion to reference. We broke out our classrooms at the bottom on table two.

Well, let me start at the top of our table on the handout, if I may. We can see that of our 35 classrooms, you can see the breakout of 25 are mostly the Title I with the braided funding, three additional classrooms are purely funded through Durham Pre K dollars. Thank you to our county commissioners for that commitment with ARPA dollars a couple of years ago. Those are fully filled. All those seats were filled and Lions Farm also is a fully funded Durham Pre K program.

And then in addition, you can see on the handout we have six classrooms serving 80 children at the Whittit School. When we started to look at enrollment in our classrooms, we saw that across the district, 16 of our classrooms are completely full and we marked it at 100%. Some of those we may inch up a little above with the EC depending on caseload and the individual education plan. And we have six classrooms in addition that are serving between 8394% of their capacity. And that translates to one or two or three seats that are open.

But we have six classrooms in our general ed program and the Whitted School that are coming in under that 80% mark and that really caused us mid year, we were talking with Doctor. Chappell really looking at how do we revamp and reinvigorate getting the word out, our marketing efforts, really getting the great news about the Whitted School and our other classrooms that still had vacancies. And so Ms. Thompson is going to come forward and show a deeper dive into what we've been trying to really reinvest in the marketing and campaign outreach to those classrooms. And then our final category, the exceptional children's pre K, that is a growing number every every day.

Children qualify or screened individual education plan teams hold their meetings and determine what placement and what services a child may qualify for. So at this point, Wirlya now we want to take a deeper dive in what are we doing about the programs that are under enrolled, celebrating those that are fully enrolled and all that we've done with our partners in that regard but also what are we doing to help reinvigorate particularly the Whitted School but other programs as well. Ms. Thompson?

Sorry. Good morning. So I'm going to share information about the Whitted program, our outreach for Whittit, and then our outreach for our other Durham Public Schools preschool programs. And I'm gonna start with just sharing information about the Whittit School. So the Whittit School is the the only dedicated preschool age facility in Durham Public Schools.

It has eight classrooms. Six of them are general or what we call our general education classrooms, and then we have two classrooms that are for our exceptional children's program. The Whittite School is licensed by the division of child development and early education. We have five stars which is the highest. We have licensed teachers and instructional assistants that are trained in early education.

We have a full day program with an option for parents to have wraparound care. I know Doctor. Shapiro as well as discuss wraparound care that need. WITT is also either a free or low cost facility depending on the family's income. So this next slide I want to share a video highlighting the WITT program and its high quality preschool program.

In the video, the parents are doing testimonials emphasizing the nurturing environment that their children are experiencing as well as they're sharing how the child has grown in confidence as well as independence and how their children are excited about learning. The video also shares children participating in hands on activities and they're collaborating with peers. So I'm gonna you can go ahead and start it.

Welcome to the Whittest School where learning begins with joy, curiosity, and care. Our preschool program provides a nurturing environment where young minds flourish. Through play based learning, we spark creativity, build confidence, and develop a love for discovery while preparing children for success in kindergarten.

We teach them their letters, their names, their numbers, and actually learning how to write and read, and also recognizing them. That's really important.

Our small class sizes and experienced teachers ensure personalized attention, helping each child learn and grow.

I think this has kind of been,

like, one of

the best family communities that I've had. They are very supportive. They try to make sure that all the teachers here have what they need and vice versa.

We believe that parents are their child's first teacher, and respecting families and building positive partnerships are critical.

I love the support that we receive from all of the staff here. Whatever we need, they're here to help. They offer suggestions if I'm not sure what to do or if I have any questions in general. They don't hesitate to help out or reach out and offer advice. So I love the support from everyone in this school.

We emphasize early literacy, math, and social skills, setting the foundation for kindergarten and beyond. We use research based instructional strategies and best practices for early education to build a strong foundation for every child. From outdoor play to hands on STEM activities each day at the Wittit School is designed to inspire a lifelong love of learning. Give your child the best start to their educational journey. Fill out your application for the Middlet School. We're ready to ignite your child's limitless potential.

Thank you for letting me share that video. You'll also hear about that video and some of my information about the outreach efforts that we have done. We have posted the video and it's all over social media recruiting the families that we have here in Durham County to come join us at the Whittite School. So this next slide, mid year we created, established a cross enrollment marketing outreach team in efforts to increase numbers at the Whittite School. We started the office of early education as well as other partners with Sashi Reyes and which is the director of English learning services as well as our exceptional children's department leadership team as well as the office of public affairs.

We met as well as doctor McCorman and established information that we would want on flyers and what we were trying to get out to our Durham community families. We also reached out the leadership teams within those departments reach out to the various partners that are listed. We shared the flyers. They put them in bulletins. We met with organizations who posted the bulletins, gave them out to their families, as well as put them in information that they sent out to their families.

But we actively were recruiting families at the mid year which was January through March with those specific communities that are listed. And that was specifically for the WIDD program. This next slide talks about WITT but we also have been working on recruiting for our other under enrolled programs in Durham Public Schools. In March, Doctor. McCremon who is the coordinator for the Whitted program, met with mister Yarborough and worked on an article article featuring information about the Whitted School.

The Whitted leadership team with office early education as well as the Whitted coordinator set up information tables at Durham Public Schools job fair in effort to recruit families. Doctor Lewis came over March 17 and shared information with social media as he gave out backpacks right there at the Whittite School about our facility and us having vacancies. We had leadership members that went to welcome baby to recruit as well. We had our roll up and enroll with our community partners on April 11, and we shared information as well about with it. April 30, we had a fall spring festival.

I was about to say fall. Spring festival, and we also had an open house where families came out new families came out to see the facility as well as we had our district annual countdown in kindergarten event at the museum last Monday, and we were also recruiting families there as well. Doctor. McCremon has opened doors. Families are welcome to come and also set up tours of the Whittite School.

On this next slide, you'll just see all the marketing efforts that we have been doing for the Whitted and as well as other just general public schools preschool department. We have been submitting announcements and articles about the WIDD in our weekly spark social media. I know you've seen those information on Facebook as well as our video that we just shared with you all. Next Door Neighbor also had article about WIDDY and a seat available as well as any information on the flyers that went out to the community partners. And then we just had the event welcoming prospective families.

So moving forward, as a department, as Durham Public Schools, we will continue to program advertise continuously throughout the year. I think staying connected with our partners throughout the universal application process, we've found that to be very helpful with our numbers and where we are throughout our process with our enrollment numbers. We are exploring additional wrap care options because we know families that is one thing they are asking for is wrap care. We are being proactive with outreach with the families when they accept their seats going forward and also engaging with those families. So once we know they're accepted, like reaching out to them, asking them what support they need at the time of acceptance to get enrolled in our programs.

We will continue to monitor under enrolled programs. I think doctor Shea brought up a good point about parents. The low enrollment parents really want the convenience of locations of preschools. So we're monitoring that and also tracking and monitoring our total enrollment for our Durham Public Schools program.

So at this time, we are open to questions or discussion or any additional information.

Alright. I'll open it up to questions. Commissioners, school board members, go ahead. Commissioner Burton.

Thank you, doctor Lee. Thank you for this wonderful presentation. I'm really excited about what's happening at WITTD. I've had the pleasure of working with doctor Latoya McCrimmon at my old school, Spring Valley. And it's just really exciting to see that we are doing this for our youngest residents. I had a couple of questions. Well, first, let me make a comment. I know about trying to get the word out about pre k and how its availability. And I just texted my friend, she has a grandson, trying to inform her about pre k for her grandson. And I think there's this perception that there's no more pre k or no more free pre k, things like that.

And I think that's why maybe some of the reason why it's under enrolled, you have to pay for it, not realizing Durham County government were helping to fund it. So I think if we can continue to have that getting that word out that would really be great. But the couple of questions I have was do we transport the children to the pre k sites or is that a responsibility of the parents? And then also with discussion about the convenience. So say if you have a parent who's in one of the DPS pre k's, are they is it the one nearest where they live or are they it's where the availability of the seats are? So that's just what I wanted to know.

Okay. So transportation obviously is a huge barrier. We do have transportation to one of our private sites available to the general community. The transportation for very young children is a very challenging prospect. In addition, obviously, to the cost, there are quite a number of requirements for very young children. And our strategy for increasing transportation is in the next few years is focused on our private sites at the present depending on resources.

So for your question about availability based on-site, it is, we start with looking at the parents' address. If that program is filled, then we look at the next convenient area for parents. So it just depends. So it's yes for both. If it is filled, we would look at the next closest location.

And the parents are responsible for getting their children to the pre k site. Correct? That's how it works? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you so much.

School board member Harold Goff. Did you no. Oh, I thought you said you did. I apologize. Carter Arden.

Thank you so much for this robust presentation. I'm really thrilled to hear about all this amazing work that you all are doing to extend and continue to expand access to pre k for the youth of Durham. And I have a student who was part of Durham pre k in the last few years. He had an amazing experience and we now I can't help but sing the praises to everybody I talk to. So thank you for not only improving access, but also for really maintaining a really high quality program.

Just wanted to reiterate a couple of the barriers that you noted as I've heard parents in the community talk about them as well. And that's the wraparound care when the program ends at 02:15, it's just very challenging for families that have two parents that work. And also the placement process, part of what, and I think you all are, have probably heard this too, but I wasn't sure if it was clear from the presentation, the notification not coming until the end of July is especially challenging for families. And I'm hearing from you that that's also when you're receiving a lot of applications. So I don't know if this is just an intractable problem, but many families feel they need to plan for their care before that time.

And they are already on waitlist at other places, for example. So perhaps notification earlier in the process so that they know where their child will be placed and can kind of plan for their transportation for the year and things like that would help improve enrollment as well. But didn't know if you had anything to share around your learnings around that as well or what you're hearing from families.

Yes. It's a very big issue. So one of the challenges with a program that braids resources is that each program has very different fund sources and very different roles and guidelines. And last school year, for the current school year twenty five-twenty six, our placement process in particular last school year was extremely challenged. And many families only received an offer in mid to late July which is not positive at all for any family.

We have worked very hard collectively across all partners to try to address this issue. We are addressing it number one by increased resources through the placement process. Some of our programs are required to rank children based on need. And so the surge of applications in July is problematic for those programs. So what we are trying to do in working with our partners is to not to minimize waiting and placing children where we can earlier.

And we changed our timeline to address this need across with agreement from all partners. So we are starting placement earlier this year. We are limited also by budget. So when, for example, the state didn't pass a budget for the current school year, that directly impacted our NC Pre K resources. And so in an environment where you don't have a budget, it is also quite challenging to enter into contract with our private sites to provide services.

And that created some delays. However, this sounds like just a list of excuses. The bottom line is, it is our priority to offer seats as early as possible. So, we've worked really hard to change our process. Secondarily, we also, from an investment from Durham County through some one time grant funds, we are working hard to modify our universal application portal.

And the new portal will open for the twenty seven-twenty eight school year. Unfortunately it's not open yet. But that portal will also speed up the process because it will create some automations that allow our staff to make placements earlier. If you can imagine, you know, you asked about the commissioner asked about where people live versus where their preferences are presently. Parents don't have the opportunity to select a site.

They do have the opportunity to give us their preferences for a site based on which seats they're eligible for. So once they go through the application process, the staff assess eligibility and determine what kind of seat in our universal program their child is eligible for. Most children are eligible for more than one type of seat. And then parents have the chance based on where those seats are to give us their preferences. We try to honor preferences whenever possible.

But when families apply really late, that directly also impacts their ability to get a seat at a place that's really convenient for them. And so you can see the complexity because you have all the merging of minimum standards requirements and rankings of eligibility. And so, the bottom line is we're very aware that it's problematic. And, you know, if I had a four year old and I didn't get an offer till the end of July, even though I believe in public preschool as a very strong option for school readiness, I would have troubles choosing to enroll. We all know that earlier is better.

So basically, hopefully that answered your question. But I do think the system improvements will go a long way towards solving some of the problems.

Okay. So we're right at time. Let's we have other questions. So let's make sure we're brief. Alright. Chavez?

Alright. Thank you so much for this. I just wanna say after I I saw I already, you know, was passionate about this area but I saw a presentation by doctor Chloe Gibbs at at Duke and just the the the investments, how how much they manifest, you know, our investments in early childhood education from an economic perspective, but off obviously, from many perspectives, psychological, academic, all of that. So I just wanted to ask. So with Witted, I thought maybe there was a pullback of wraparound care at some point.

Is that not true? Or what was the was there a drop in enrollment is my my question as well, or is has it been continuously kind of low?

So before COVID, WIDDIT was, like, an enrollment, like but since COVID, there has been a steady stream of, like, under enrolled. So, we I know people talk about coming back from WIDDIT, but since WIDDIT, we have had our numbers have not been what they were prior to COVID. Wrap care, we have, there was a period of time that we did not have wrap care, but we are serving wraparound care this year. We right now, we have amount of a number of slots, but there was I think there was word out that we did not have slots, but we are serving students for wraparound care. So Okay.

I know that's an important

factor as

you all mentioned. And I wanted to let me skip to this. So doctor I have an almost three year old. And doctor Lewis and doctor Danner informed me that we do have spots for three year olds. If if that is the case, I have dug deep as a parent to look, and I did not find them. Is that the case that there are spots for three year olds? I'm not just asking for myself, but, yeah. If if so, I can't find that information.

We do have a limited number of seats for three year old students for our public schools.

And and my I guess my feedback would just be that it's hard to find that information. So Okay. But thank you. And then I also just wanted to ask if there was a if it was possible to get a DPS pre k specific report on on the instructional outcomes. If that is a more than fifteen minutes request, we could get consensus among board members but would love to see within DPS specifically how we're doing on those measures.

So

in terms of student progress and data, the preschool program in particular is not funded for extensive evaluation presently. We took excuse me. We've taken the approach to look at the enrollment as a whole and we prefer not to compare sites. What we are looking at is what is the progress being made by children as compared to other children nationally. Typical progress.

When you break out individual sites, at the classroom level, those assessments that teachers are doing help inform instruction. And our coaches work with individual classrooms to address teaching strategies in those classrooms. But when you pull out a classroom, that small number, that small population, it is not as useful if you're comparing sites. And so that's why we don't we deliberately haven't pulled out by site type. We've

been

looking at the whole enrollment. And I think that obviously this body has a lot of investments and wants to see more and more extensive data. And as we move forward, that priority will need to look at how to fund that type of work and what is most appropriate. Because again, we don't test our four year olds. You know, it is a developmental assessment. Our goal is to have every classroom have the highest quality instruction so that parents can be confident that no matter what site they go to, they are getting that high quality program.

Thank you. So I understand it's more formative than summative and I want to just thank you all so much for all your work. I really appreciate it.

You. Vice Chair Long.

I didn't have a question. I just had a quick comment I wanted to make about the Durham Pre K program because I was emailing with Eliana from our county side and I was just very happy to hear this because I'd asked at our last meeting when she came what our enrollment compared to with the state and she shared to me that we are actually at double what the state's average is of pre k enrollment which is really huge and just wanna applaud the team that obviously we have very limited resources but they have built a really scrappy efficient program to reach so many drum students. Thank you.

Thanks. In addition to that, we have a much a very diverse program in terms of our constituency as compared to some of the state numbers.

Commissioner Jacobs.

Thank you for this excellent presentation and I know we've been waiting a while for it. I also really appreciate the collaboration exhibited here and to finally this is the first time, am I right, Linda, that we've gotten this outcome data and this type of data?

Across all the programs.

Yes. So this is really monumental because the program started in 2018, and this is the first time we are seeing the evidence that our investments are working and are worthwhile. So I really want to celebrate that. And also, I want to applaud everyone because the fact that you all are working on addressing making sure that we are using all the seats is really important, and I appreciate the efforts that are being made around that. And I'm gonna say use Durham County also.

Like, we can that video. I think the irony is that Witted has wrap care. Here we're here we're hearing that people want wrap care and Witted has wrap care and it's not full. So, you know, we can really work together to market that. Also wanna note, the county manager presented her budget last night, and what we're looking at is basically pretty much flat funding.

Well, I mean, what we have to do is plug the ARPA funding that funded the Murray Massenburg program, and so we're only gonna have about a half $1,000,000 of new funding in the Durham Pre K. So I do think it's important to recognize that we're maintaining our commitment, but we have budget challenges. And so, you know, we still are a ways from our goal of the 75%. I also wanna raise that this program was meant Durham Pre k was meant to be a public private partnership. And so one of the things, I think, going forward is how we can work on really making it a public private partnership and for the larger community to invest, the business community.

And I also wanna note that this our joint boards years ago committed to making pre k a priority for Durham Public Schools, and it's amazing that now, basically, 30 out of 32 DPS schools have pre k and then, of course, the WIDD. That is also a huge accomplishment. I wanted to ask about what are some ways and I appreciate the strategies, but has there been any talk about forming, like, a working group related to the barriers with every kind of partner partner that we could think of around, you know, early childhood and also those specific needs because money is not gonna be something that's gonna solve this problem. We don't have it. But I I just think it seems like we need a very focused, collaborative effort to address the barriers and just wanted to hear, is there any talk about that?

And then my second question is related to the data. And again, you know, I'm thinking we don't have money. I know it takes money to do the evaluation, but thinking about partnering, for instance, with NCCU and Duke University on studies, you know, student projects or some of institutes and things around tracking how kids do when they get into DPS and k through three. Are we you know, I would love to hear if there are any thought about trying to get the data on how kids do who have been in pre k, like k through three. So those are my two questions.

Okay. So to address the collaboration, I think you would find it difficult to identify another program that has as many partners as the Durham Pre K Collaborative. Through our partners, we intersect with programs across Durham with a goal to connect families to other resources, as well as to find ways to leverage those resources. And so for some of our barriers in particular, those groups meet regularly. And we can certainly make some information available if there are others who would like to expand and participate.

No problem is solved by any one group or any one program. We know that. And I think what Durham is really good at is bringing people together collectively to identify challenges and solutions. And so we definitely are very grounded in Durham and make sure that that happens. The county early childhood representative, Ms.

Fink, is also a great resource because her entire job is to intersect with all those community partners. And so we do take advantage of that. In terms of resources you referenced, bringing resources in from other sources, I think what we have been successful at is bringing in outside resources for some of our workforce development supports. You know, we have an apprenticeship program to build capacity across Durham to have more BK licensed teachers. That apprenticeship program started with external funding from a foundation and then expanded through a variety of grants.

So we've had success in that arena. We have not had success in the area of bringing in resources for actual seats. So you talk about support from businesses and different fund sources. I think that that's something in our long term that additional fundraising is definitely a need. In terms of the evaluation, we continue to pursue opportunities as they come across.

For example, right now, we have a partnership with Frank Porter Graham as a research institute. We work together to complete an application for a research project through the Spencer Foundation. That process made it through round one and is now in round two. We hope to hear by August as to whether that would be funded. But that is an evaluation of the workforce development support.

And so what we've done a good job of is responding to opportunities that come through competitive processes. Grant applications, resources in that way. Where we do have to strengthen is in our actual reaching out to ask for support from different sources. I know that everyone would like to see a chronological evaluation. You know, to follow children across time is a gold standard.

It is also extremely expensive. And I think that I would be remiss if I sounded optimistic that the resources would be available for something like that. However, we can continue to look for those, and we can continue to have it as something that we would like to do, certainly.

Board member Beyer.

I just wanna thank you all for your leadership. Thank you for reminding us of the audacious goal of 75% that actually applies to four year olds and our dream was three year olds as well. So as we dream forward, I wonder if you all can continue to collaborate within the faith community, pediatricians to get this word out early, to get it out at birth to families. I don't know but I wonder if GoDurham Connect could be a helpful resource for the transportation barriers and I think we need to do a better job of getting that information out to our DPS families about that incredible investment in transportation. And I wonder if as follow-up data, if you all might have more demographic data on whether we're reaching Latin A families, immigrant families and whether there are specific barriers to that population that we need to consider as folks plan forward.

Thank you.

We are reaching them very well and we have demographic information I can send you today. We were trying to be brief today and we focused on income because that is the priority that governance has set. However, we track all our demographics and I think you'll be very pleased.

Chair Olmstead.

I'll make this really brief. I agree with so many of the comments that have already been said. And I just put this idea out there. I think we can flush it out later on the DPS side if there's a way to track some of that student data because we know they're gonna have kindergarten readiness and all those different ad items. So I'm wondering on our end, is there a way that we put a little marker and we're able to help track some of that data. So we don't have get into it, I just wanted to put that idea. Doctor Lewis, I see you hit your head nodding.

Literally just sent a text to doctor Brewster about just that. I know with our student information system, we're able to put in a a badge or an icon on student and we can look at that those students throughout their career in DPS. And so thinking about where they begin with us when we do do assessments at the kindergarten level, how do our during pre K students do in comparison to those that did not go to a during pre K site. And then long term looking even at the third grade reading level still tracking those students at least up until the third grade to just continue to show families as well the effectiveness and the benefits of enrolling in a Durham pre k site. So yeah, we can definitely have some more discussions about that.

I love that and we know the national data is already there. So now it's just a matter of what it looks like in Durham. So thank you all.

Okay. And for Doctor. Pittman, I had a question about Montessori Pre K. I guess the larger question is who are we serving? Are we serving those who need or can't afford pre K?

Or are we serving those who are able to take advantage of the system, particularly Watts. When I was on the school board we had challenges with Watts because there was a walk zone priority, a sibling preference priority, and then the lottery there would be like two seats for general availability. I'm curious about what those numbers look like. You we don't have to have it right now, you know, but I'm really curious about that because I would prefer to see the numbers of the people we are serving who can't afford. I drive a bus right by Watts every single day and I don't see any black faces.

I don't. I I every single day and there's always kids walking, they're riding their bikes, their parents are walking with them and everything, I don't see a black I can I've been driving for almost a year now Mhmm. And I can count on one hand with missing a few fingers the number of blackface I've actually seen at a school. So I'm really curious about that and what can we do about about that. I I don't know that there is anything we can do because that walk zone and sibling preference takes up all the seats.

Doctor. Lee, just briefly, if you'll remember the Growing Together initiative that went into effect a couple of years ago, you're describing exactly one of the issues that the Growing Together initiative needed to tackle was access. And families telling us that they live right in the neighborhood and they can't get into their neighborhood magnet program in your example, Watts. That's why we expanded the Montessori options. We added another elementary and we created the school board passed boundaries that every magnet school now has a hybrid model so to speak that there's a neighborhood assignment in and the remaining seats are for the lottery.

To your point, it's to help promote access and equity of access and certainly one of the desired outcomes is more of a diverse reflection of their school communities but also our school district. So, to your point, it was one of major commitment areas when we were looking at access to those magnet programs.

Okay. Thank you very much. We need to move on. Thank you all for this. Appreciate this presentation and the questions and information as well. Next item on our agenda is the county budget update. We have thirty minutes allotted for this. We are behind schedule but we need these two are gonna be very important. So both the county and the school budget updates, well we have thirty minutes for each.

Yes sir and we will move through quickly. I presented the manager's recommended budget last night and went into great detail about the framework and how we developed the budget and some of the challenges that we face. We'll not go into all those nuances this morning and but we'll touch on a few points. Keith Lane and I were tag team. I'll cover the major priorities section that you're looking at now and and then he will go into some of the other slides.

And so with our budget, I feel like this has been a ongoing conversation that we've been having since the fall. We've been planning for a lots of unknowns. This season that we're in which started some time ago shifts because of the economy overall, slowing in dollars, flowing through the system, the infrastructure dollars that happened in the Biden administration, it had an economic stimulus and those dollars are slowly declining. And there were other factors in the economy that have happened to cause some decline in overall revenues. So it's not a surprise that we see this slowing pace, and we've been planning.

Over the last couple of years, the county has been very strategic in how it's navigated and managed growth. But with that, some of the shifts from a policy perspective were things that we did realize would come. I'm sure y'all remember back in September when the SNAP funding was not available. And that was very scary moment, I know, for Durham Public Schools because you are reliant on dollars that flow indirectly from there as well as the county, and that reinforced the importance of financial stability. And just for an example, 6,000,000 are allocated from the feds through the state to the our residents and we had to be prepared to some kind of way close some of those gaps.

And so although the community rallied around it, it was a reminder of the what ifs if the funds don't come scenario and why financial stability is so important. So we managed our budget this year and in the past with fiscal stability in the forefront. Right now, there are lots of unknowns, but we feel confident we have ways to move forward. And we'll talk a little bit about that, but we did reduce our fund balance to ensure we have sustainability in the future. With our fund balance appropriation, the intent is not to use it.

It's a placeholder. You're hoping that you over collect in revenues and you're projecting that your expenditures will be slightly lower. So the intent is not to use it, but it's a buffer. But when we see that we may be using it or the potential to use it, we tighten it up on the expense side so that that revenue source is not used. We maximize existing revenue in the budget so that we would have a responsible tax rate.

And, of course, the our commitment to Durham Public Schools as well as our existing county programs were there. Although we did have reductions in our budget, we've protected those mandated areas as as much as we could. And so the budget also is recommending limiting a property tax growth rate increase. And although there is one that's recommended, it's one that's contained because we've made some reductions on the expenditure side. We provide services at the current levels and focus on public safety needs because we've grown over 13% in recent years in our population.

And we have pressures that we have to address. We needed to change those areas as well. So the funding overall and the scenarios we'll walk through and Keith, I'll kick it off to you. But again, for a more detailed overview, please listen to this discussion last night. We're gonna cover this in eight minutes. Because our chair, I feel him licking. We will get through this. I'm just I'm just messing. I'm just messing. Dismissing.

Good morning board of education members and superintendent and commissioners. Nice to see you all again. I think this is pretty much gonna be a thematic continuation of a meeting we had with the board of education, the manager and I a couple of months ago. Except our revenue situation got a little bit worse from what we thought it was then, and that's not helpful for anyone. I'm gonna simplify this down to say property tax revenue growth number is the key driver.

80% of our revenue comes from two sources, property tax revenue and sales tax revenue. That orange number up there, $453,000 is how much new tax revenue we got this year coming in 2627 for a billion dollar budget. You go, wow, that's really low, but what is it in comparison to? Normally that number is $12.15, $18,000,000 in new revenue without a tax rate increase. This year it's $453,000. Our general fund budget is a little over 7 right at $700,000,000. You do the math. It's minuscule. And Jeremy Teeter knows this. When you're dealing in the number of zeros that we are, this number doesn't catch up to anything.

So how did that happen? That's another story for another day, but we had a lot of appeals on commercial property that happened during the revaluation that happened started and was completed last year, and that really took a took a bite out of our revenue growth. Hopefully, next year, when I say next year, 2728, we'll get back on schedule with some better growth, but we have to deal with that minuscule revenue source. What that means and what it forced the manager to do to try to meet the budget needs of which education is always our number one priority was that we need a 2¢ tax rate increase. What is 2 additional cents on the property tax bring in?

17 and a half million dollars roughly. 1¢ equals $8,500,000. That $17.117500000 dollars, if you look across multiple funds, is directly related to supporting education funding, additional $10,900,000 for DPS, additional $1,270,000 for pre k as you just heard, some funding for DTCC, and for some lost revenue. Our tax rate goes up 2¢ to 57.42¢ from 55.42. This is the third year in a row.

If the board of county commissioners approves this tax rate increase, that we will have a tax rate increase. We are at a point, and I've said this before, where funding decisions we make particularly around education this isn't picking on education. You are simply biggest elephant in the room in terms of dollar calls for the county. With the increases that we're supporting, we're getting close if we're not already there to having to need a tax rate increase every year. But there are other tax rate increases for folks out in the county.

We have volunteer fire districts that support fire department services for those folks out in the county that aren't part of the City Of Durham's fire department, and there some of those fire districts are getting a tax rate increase as well. What about our next biggest revenue source? Sales tax. Remember I said 80% of our revenue comes from two sources, property tax and sales tax. Sales tax revenue is going up 3,000,000, but what I want you to note, if this little red light works on there, doesn't.

Look at the general fund increase. That's where the money goes to pay for Durham Public Schools and 95% of our work. It's only $771,000. So 80% of our revenue source has a growth of $700,000 plus $391,000 for the general fund. $1,000,000 for a $700,000,000 budget in our two biggest revenue sources. That puts stress on the entire budget process. This is the history of growth in sales tax revenue over multiple years. I want you to see those years, FY '21, '22, '22, '23. Those are large. Those are tall bars.

Those are good years. After COVID, lot of money flowing through the system. The amount of new sales tax growth in those years were 11,000,000, 11,000,000, 21,000,000. That pays for our benefit cost increase. That pays for new position. That helps support additional funding for pre k and DPS without a tax rate increase. Look at the last three years. 3,000,000, minus 1,200,000, and 3,000,000. But of that 3,000,000, only 700 and some odd thousand is going to the general fund. Again, minuscule amounts of new revenue, which puts tremendous pressure on the manager to figure out a way to balance the budget.

Some other revenue sources. Of the 20% we have left, we did have some positives. Our EMS patient fees go up $2,000,000 Register of deeds fees where you go to sell your house and you have to pay a fee to sell your house as it exchanged hands or pieces of property, that's going up a million. Our investment revenue because of higher interest rates is going up a little bit, but we're losing estimated to lose a million dollars in state hold harmless funding. That's a big number, that $9,000,000.

That number could drop significantly based off it's doubly economically variable, but we're planning on losing a million dollars. The manager talked about having to lower our fund balance as a revenue source by 4.5. So if you add those two numbers, we're still in the negative for those other revenue sources. So we're down to a net negative in revenue if you think about it without a tax rate increase year over year. That means we have to do a couple of things.

We have to shrink our budget and consider that and or we have to raise property tax rates. What's our total overall budget? We're still at a little over a billion dollars if you look at all our funds, but that's an increase of only point 67%. So on a billion dollar budget, we went up $7,000,000. The general fund, which is where all the action happens for the most part in the county, went up 1.48% to $699,900,000.

It's an increase of $10,000,000. But remember, DPS' budget increased $10,900,000. And pre k went up 1,270,000. And there were small increases in DTC funding. And we had to pay for some other benefits cost. So other departments actually had to take a decrease to handle some of those increases along with a property tax rate increase. And that's what the manager asked departments to do. She asked departments to for a department wide 2% total reduction of their budget, and that allowed the county to find $6,200,000 in savings. Key priorities, we just went through some of these. Additional funding for DPS at 10.9.

Additional funding for pre k at 1.27. As the manager noted, and I think commissioner Jacobs did, some of that is lost ARPA funding. We're refilling what ARPA funded, 770,000 with an additional $500,000 in expansion funding, but we also have to pay for employee benefits. That $1,600,000 increase this year was actually less than it has been in the past, but that is a growing number. Normally, that's 5%, 7%, 10% growth a year.

That's a $52,000,000 cost to the county annual for employee benefits. And then the manager did want to and is recommending a COLA, 2% COLA increase for county employees. We'd love to do more, but again, we don't have the available revenue to do that without raising the property tax rate higher. The cost of employee compensation for COLA is $3,600,000 Then we had public safety needs. We have a growing county population and the needs for EMS response services is increasing and has increased.

We're a little bit behind on that, but we are the manager is recommending an entirely new ambulance unit. That's 10 new positions and an ambulance and hopefully that puts an ambulance out on the road, an additional one twenty four seven throughout the county to help alleviate or shorten response times. We have five new LEO officers, but those LEO officer positions that the sheriff is requesting are being reallocated from detention officer positions that we can't fill over in the detention center. And then the manager asked to help offset some of these increases, departmental reductions of $6,200,000. So in some ways, we're doing a little bit of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

New position growth. There's really seven total new positions in the county. We had a Dine program in public health that's funded by the federal government for decades, a very important nutrition related program that DPS is well aware of. That program got defunded mid year by the federal government. The county picked it up for 15 positions. We're recommending that five, four point nine seven positions be reduced out of that. They're vacant or will be vacant by the time this gets done. And moving that down to 10 positions, so that's a loss of five positions. And then we added, how many were there, David? 11 total new positions.

The net is 7.3. 7.03 new positions and that includes the 10 new ambulance unit positions. How much for DPS funding? Total funding recommended for Durham Public Schools is $235,400,000. It's $10,900,000 increase.

That's roughly almost 5%, 4.85% over your 2526 budget. There's an additional indirect funding that supports Durham Public Schools to a tune of 87 and a half million dollars. Those are includes SRO officers at schools, public health nurses, debt service we pay on DPS capital buildings from '22 GEO bond referendum and previous earlier ones 2016. Some project build support, the pre K support that we talked about and then some non profit support. Per pupil funding for DPS increases $368 to $5,929.

Why does it increase 6.6% when the budget only increases four point eight five percent? Two things are happening here. The net number of students for that Durham County Schools and Charter Schools have for Durham County went down 600 students. I think DPS schools are estimated to go down a thousand. Charter schools will go up three to 400, so it's a net loss of 600 students.

That loss in students plus the increase in funding equals a 6.6% increase in per pupil funding. So we're almost at $6,000 a student. This graph simply shows the growth in current expense funding or total funding for DPS. That's the orange line. And the blue bars and the green bar are the delta growth year over year.

What I would note, and I think the manager noted last night, is in the last five years, funding for Durham Public Schools and the charter school about we fund has gone up 69,000,000 annually. And over the last nine years, that's $101,000,000 from twenty seventeen-eighteen to twenty twenty six-twenty seven. It's a $101,000,000 annually. That's an impressive growth amount. Not sure it's sustainable in the current environment without property tax rate increases every year.

We always are concerned about Durham Public School capital funding, and the manager made it aware to the board of county commissioners and the public last night that we are collaborating openly with Durham Public Schools to evaluate short and long term needs. We're here for you as needed, and we continue can expect to have additional discussions this fall as we produce an updated county capital improvement plan. Durham Technical Community College gets a minimal 3% increase. We did this for most of our outside agencies. It's about all we could afford to try to cover some inflationary increase.

Total funding for DTCC is almost $13,000,000. Of that $13,000,000, 2,100,000 is for student scholarship support and some dedicated educational opportunities for those students. During pre k support, we talked about it's budgeted at $10,100,000, a $1,270,000 increase. Heard all about that. Public safety, we talked about 10 new paramedic positions and one new ambulance for a twenty four seven ambulance unit in the county.

But we also have to replace ambulances every year and one SUV that is cost of one ambulance is not $488. You need to put a k on the end of that and it's a cost of a single ambulance is roughly $488,000. And we're replacing five of those this year. In the sheriff's office, we talked about the five new LEOs for county coverage and growth in RTP, but those are coming from reallocated vacant detention officer positions, so it's not a whole lot of new cost to the county. Just like your food costs are increasing, the food costs for the detention center is increasing significantly.

It's another $635,000 increase to our Aramark contract, the people that feed our detention center folks every day. Well, the man the sheriff also has to have replacement vehicles, and we're replacing 39, 38 replacement SUVs, and one replacement motorcycle. Transportation funding, there's been a lot of discussion about that. There's no net cost to the county but we have a lot of money flowing through us for our Durham Transit Plan update which is very important. I won't belabor the cost but it's something that's been in front of the commissioners multiple times recently.

Human services area. Human services are our public health department, social services largely, and a little bit in community intervention services, public health. We have funding, joint funding between the city and the county for a master aging plan. And just like your health insurance costs go up, the health costs we have to pay for folks who are incarcerated for a short amount of time and the detention center are also going up. So 600 plus thousand for food, 600 plus thousand for health. Cost for detention center, it's well over $1,200,000 just to handle increasing cost for that particular agency. Yes, ma'am. Manager Hager?

I'll let you finish it now. Okay.

We have additional money for a joint violence reduction plan with the city at a a $250,000 and a homeless strategic plan implementation of $500,000.

Real quickly, it's important to note, as with Durham Public Schools and other entities, there's that multiyear outlook that's happening. One of the cautions that we're trying to figure out is what's gonna happen with some of the federal and state decisions around some of the entitlement programs. And right now, there are projections related to the Department of Social Services that may mean we may lose some revenue associated with that of about $2,000,000 and then the cost share formulas to support Department of Social Services for their delivery of activities. We've had scenarios between a $3,000,000 to an $11,000,000 cost share shift locally. So we're not sure where that will land, but that near change does mean that we have to plan right now for those potential shifts and that's why lots of realignments happen within the many of the departments, but especially DSS as we plan for some unknowns that are pretty major right around the corner.

Thank you, manager. How are you? Benefits plan. I think I noted earlier that the total cost annual cost we have budgeted for our benefits cost for employees, health insurance vision, it's roughly $52,000,000. That's a $1,600,000 increase over the previous year.

We continue to have a 100% premium contribution for our employees at what we now have a base level. We have two choices. The manager strongly recommends the board add an additional $250,000 for wellness support. What that means is we hope to keep our employees healthy through internal possible ways so we can limit growth and cost for health insurance in particular. Community stewardship, we have two enterprise funds.

The key thing to note here is our storm water, our wastewater treatment plant. We fund water out in businesses. We're asking for a 10% increase in that fee. That fee usually increases every year as we plan for future growth in the system, and that's how we pay for it, the sewer utility fund. We have a storm water and erosion control fund that protects Falls Lake and some water rules that have been passed down from the federal and state level.

And those are fees that had increased for a couple of years but they're staying flat this year. And that gets through the budget hopefully really quickly. I hope there are a few questions. Key budget timeline you'll wanna note, we'll start having work session meetings on May 19, and then we'll have a second one on May 21. We'll have a public hearing for the budget which is advertised in the paper on May 26 and then we'll come back and have budget work sessions on May 28 And if needed, on June 2 and June 4, and hopefully we will approve the budget on June 8.

There's a budget survey on the county website under the budget department that residents can take and let it be known what their considerations should be for the budget or what they would like to say commissioners, what's important to them. So I hope you'll do that. And you can find the budget the recommended budget document and a budget in brief sort of interactive Power BI table on the budget department website as well under the county. And that's all I have. Are there any questions?

Commissioner Burton.

Yes. Thank you so much, Keith. You went fast. Love it. So I had a question about I'm going back to the slide where it says Durham Public Schools allocations historical trends. I was wondering out of that time frame like which years did we have tax increases? Like did we have a tax increase for fiscal year twenty seven twenty eight?

All of the years.

Oh, see. Oh, okay. Every year we had a tax increase.

We haven't had a tax rate increase every year, but we have had tax rate increases the last two years, the 20,000,000 and the 15,000,000. And we may have had tax increases. I know David can check and see, but at least it's been four out of the last five, five out of the last six years.

Okay. Yeah. I just want to make that clear because I think for our residents, understanding there's sometimes people will say, just raise the property taxes, but we've had property tax increases. So I just want to make that known. Thank you so much.

We'll answer that question before we leave. Thanks.

Board member Beyer.

So I just want to start with gratitude for grounding us in the reality of where the challenges of this year's budget cycle are and also starting from strong ongoing support for Durham Public Schools. I think that is critical to celebrate as as joint boards as we sit around and and face pressures from the federal and state government. I'm just wondering aloud to everyone at the table, especially doctor Lewis and and manager Hager, you know, we have the reality that although our employees are state employees, we have fallen behind on what we want as far as living wages and being able to keep up with both the city and the county employees in that regard. And I wonder if in the shorter term it might be possible to convene some of our staff that are well versed together in both our wages but also our benefits and maybe help us with a strategic plan and future boards with strategic plan on how we kind of Sure. Lean to that shared value.

We we don't we don't want county employees or city employees to be out of reach of of DPS. We have more employees and so the impact on wages is a great thing. I I wonder if some staff support for that because I feel like the commissioners are about to get some ginormous pressure from with valid concerns that that our employees will be bringing. So I wonder if there might be some support for staff in how we make a multiyear plan to to to equalize or share in that growth like I don't know. I just throw that out.

I I will say that the conversations I had with staff about our budget is that I cannot afford to raise taxes. Period. And if we need we do need to address inflation issues so that our employees can have some relief because of just inflation. But I told them we're gonna have to look within to do that. And so we shifted some areas funding wise to see how can we cover that.

So the goal of making sure we did some type of adjustment happened, but it was based upon a realignment of existing dollars to make that happen. And so from a strategy perspective, we've been very strategic as we've grown this budget. We've not we've been very judicious in how we've managed our vacancies, so that is a space and it is a long term strategy as well from the standpoint we saw this coming so we kept a lot of positions vacant just in case we needed to do a cut. So although we have a 2% cut for those who are funded from local dollars, that does not mean we are having to lay off anybody because of that longer term lens in how we are planning. So I do welcome the chance to talk about what we have done and the strategies.

And I know it is more complex because of the braided funding that schools have in trying to navigate some challenges of state dollars and availability from that. But a lot of that burden and opportunity is how does that base realign to address those highest priorities? Because even areas such as utility costs increase, that was achieved through realignment so that it didn't become a pressure from a tax dollar rate increase. And so the realignment process is critical and I know it's tough. We've been going through base budget assessments.

You will see in your budget document a more drilled down look of our measures and there is a companion document that is real detailed as well. So we have been on a journey for a while and can offer our approach. But longer term, whereas it may require some dollars, the complexity because of what's the county's responsibility statutorily compared to what in the past we've been able to do because we didn't have we had more resources. And now the the the issue of huge policy shifts that now mean more constrained revenues. And so it's a little different than it was five years ago or even in last year.

But as as what was presented, we have done our best recognizing our taxpayers have experienced some pretty significant tax rates increases in the recent years.

Manager Hager, thank you for that last statement. David did a quick fact check. We have had tax rate increases seven of the last nine years. If you include the recommended tax rate increase this year, it will be eight of the last ten years.

Board member Harold Goff.

Thank you so much. I'll just start by commending all the work that it takes to simplify all of this information to to give it to the public in ways that can be understood because I guess the analogy is like when you're in the classroom and you have something complicated to share, you have to meet people where they are, you know, you find your students where they are and you try to bring them to a greater understanding and the journey to get there. You know, sometimes, you know, they don't comprehend it in the ways that you really want them to but as long as they're growing in that direction, you know, that's a celebration. I say all that to say I have a couple of questions that I'm still grappling with. I'm still trying to understand like is Durham County's population increasing?

Yes, ma'am.

So we have lots of people moving to Durham County but our property taxes, I mean our our property taxes are not increasing. The revenue from those property taxes are not meeting the mark. So we don't have enough people moving here for that.

It's not just people that matter. It's property valuation. It's things being built. Property valuation has grown significantly and it has funded a number of things without a tax rate increase. It's just the need for expenditure growth to support DPS, to support EMS, to support the sheriff has outpaced the growth in population and the growth in the property value. It's not necessarily a one to one comparison.

Understand. I understand that much. So I'm just trying to make sure I'm processing. So when you're saying property valuation that includes people that includes people who are coming here to build business. What does that include?

Property valuation is just that includes any new there are different types of property. There's commercial property if you build a warehouse, if you build a business, Then there's residential property which you build a house. An apartment building is actually a piece of commercial property. It's owned by a single person and things rented out and we have our tax administrator, Keyar, here. And so all of those things are increasing. Number of people, more and more property is being valued, that things pieces of property are being created with higher values. In fact, we had a revaluation that had a lot of property, went up a lot in valuation. All that being said, it's still not enough to to pay for new people without tax rate increases.

Okay. And then all the so people are moving here but it's still not enough. It's like it's out the need is outpacing the the valuation of the property.

Correct.

And all these people who are here are not spending enough in sales tax. Like, we're not spending money. Like, we're moving here and not buying things.

They're spending money, but gas is not sale doesn't have sales tax on it. Food does not have sales tax on it. Energy cost does not have sales tax on it. Rent does not have sales tax on it. What you pay for a house to the bank does not have sales tax on it. So as you have pressures to pay for your key basic services, that we don't get sales tax on. We get sales tax on buying clothes, going to the DPAC, things of that nature. So as you have less money to spend on retail goods because you're paying for food and housing and more energy cost, then our sales tax growth slows. Does that answer the question a little bit?

Yeah. That that clarifies some things. So so it's hard for it's hard for someone to understand. It's it's so multi layered. That's why I just wanted to voice it.

The struggle of trying to be a resident in Durham County and to live here and to have a home and to take care of your family and to find employment and all these different things. And then to also know that these tax increases are coming and trying to understand that all these people are coming in here, gentrification conversations and and different things going on. It's hard to grapple with all of that and, you know, with clarity, you know, people really understanding what the real issues are and how we can can fix it. So I just wanted to voice basically what it sounds like is we have all these people flooding into Durham County but none of it is is benefiting return. What

can I

No? That's what it feels like if Well There's no return for the residents here for for what we're calling growth and progress. And so that's that's the the struggle. Well, I

I do wanna clarify that two things. We are in a robust economy from the standpoint that our real property valuations increased approximately 68% from the prior valuation. Okay? 68% is unprecedented. So that as people moved here and they purchased their homes because of the competitiveness, they the price values for those homes increased or same for commercial property.

So it went from $43,000,000,000 of value to $72,000,000,000 of value. That is incredible. Mhmm. And so I'm from the Eastern part of the state and they're seeing a reverse because people are are are moving away or they may not have as many commercial businesses coming to the area. So whereas we're seeing an increase, they're seeing something in reverse.

And so although our value, people doing home sales, etcetera, is increasing this year, what we budgeted for projected value was higher than what the final numbers were because of the appeal process. So that 68% was slightly higher when we budgeted last year. And so there's a 3,000,000,000 adjustment because of the state structure for the appeals process. And on the commercial side, if you have a building that is not fully occupied, you can appeal that value based on the actual number of spaces that are filled versus vacant. And so that process caused some some change in the value, but we're still naturally growing.

So I just wanna make sure that we're naturally growing. The issue is is just like if you have a budget and you get a raise every year, if you get a 3% raise but you have a 5% request, it doesn't mean that you're not strong, just means that on the expense side you just have to to balance it out a little bit differently. Next year it'll be I guess in the 2728 year it'll be different because we've got we would have moved past that initial reconciliation process that happens when you first do the adjusted values and we had over 10,000 individuals to appeal that were residential properties and those we had very few adjustments there, but on the commercial side, we did have some adjustments. So do you wanna spend them a little bit more time on that? It is I still have to get guidance in Keyard.

Did I misrepresent anything?

No. You sounded wonderful. Please please forgive me. I'm a little stopped up, battling some allergies. But, yes, the 2025 reappraisal produced a very, very, very large increase for historically.

Durham County has never seen that type of increase, and the reappraisal was a direct impact resulting from the real estate market over that six year period. So from 2019 to 2025, Durham County's real estate value, land, commercial buildings, everything's value increased, and we captured the last two years of that. So from 2023 to 12/31/2024, we were tracking the sales and the transactions that took place over that time period. So what you're seeing is a result of the real estate market. Alright?

The the tax value. What she explained, what the county manager was explaining was the repercussions for the commercial market who did have high sales. They had very high sales during the same time period, but they also had vacancies. So these people bought businesses, but the return on return on investment was not established. They did not reach those returns.

So they paid 85 in some cases, they paid $85,000,000 for a building, and the return on investment shown in the income approach produced $60,000,000. So we have a loss in regards to what the value was set at initially based on what we were tracking, and then what they challenged those values with when they actually had actual income data to support their appeals. So the commercial market, healthy, but it is still reeling away from a high vacancy rate. The vacancies have been pretty evident over the last three years, and, hopefully, they're gonna turn around. We're see we're still seeing sales.

So we're still seeing some good positive sales in the commercial industry. Although, they do have the benefit of three approaches to value. Whereas homeowners such as myself, we only have the benefit of two. Alright? Cost approach, sales comparison approach. We don't have the income approach. Commercial businesses do. So what the county manager is explaining is we do feel like we still have a very healthy market. We're just seeing the very most immediate impacts following a reappraisal.

We can move on. I don't wanna hold all the time. I wanna move on. I just wanna say that I understand that we have a healthy market. I don't understand and and I and I'll I'll keep working on this. I'm not holding anymore. But I don't understand how we have such a healthy market and and still have so many disparities of need. The market is not translating to, you know, to our communities like we don't like people don't understand how Durham can be so it'd be experiencing so much growth and it's in and and disparity at the same time.

We have had that is a great it is hard to understand. It's hard to wrap your hand around and I think the manager hit on it quite simply. Our revenue growth over the last decade has been significant, impressive. The other side of that coin though is that our expenditure growth in aggregate has been bigger. So even though you're getting a 5% raise every year, to use that metaphor, you have 7% increase in cost. You feel like after ten years, why do I feel farther behind? The simple fact is is that everywhere our costs have increased. Dollars 100,000,000 more annually goes to Durham Public Schools in nine years. Nothing but growth. That's just one area.

Perfect example is the school of the the school of the art the replacement schools. A 100 and plus million dollars when it was first. It went up to $250,000,000, $240,000,000. We had to find that money. We are gonna pay for that school, but that means less schools now have available 22 g o bonds to be fixed. Revenues have gone up a tremendous amount. Simply put, all all things being equal, expenditures have outpaced revenue growth even with people coming in.

Alright. Commissioner Jacobs.

First of I wanna say thank you, Joy, for always hear you in meetings wanting to, like, get very grounded in in questions and I so I appreciate your questions. And, yeah, I mean, basically, we're it's like if you think about your own personal household, you know, we're just spending too much money and the costs are going up. When we think about inflation and labor costs, we're just, you know we had $54,000,000 worth of budget requests this year between DPS and county departments. We don't have that kind of money. And the other thing is the shift is you know, there's some macro shifts with the state putting pressure on us, more and more of the county budget now paying for schools than we should be.

So I just, first of all, wanna acknowledge that the challenge that we we are all facing and it's not just us, it's everywhere across the country. We're dealing with national economic issues and we also are very fortunate as the county manager noted because, you know, we just had an announcement, $1,400,000,000 biggest investment we've ever had for jobs. And so what we do have going for us is zeroing down on the education adopt jobs pipeline, things like that. And how do we reduce costs? To your point, Joy, is things like having a better land use policy where we're linking transit and land use so we build more densely, things like that.

So we have strategies for sure. But we have to change the way we're doing things. It's just as the county manager said, and so we just can't keep doing things the same way. And I think what our manager was just responding is that our we've been doing we asked a lot of our staff this year to go in at the last minute and cut 2% off of their budgets and also really basically flat funding last year too. No new we really have been

For the accounting side, our budget is overall decrease.

Yes. Yeah. If you take out the increase for Durham Public Schools, the county budget will have decreased in in terms of our own departments. So that's pretty big deal that we're basically showing that we And the and

the other challenge, we'll stop Yeah. Is that we have increased pressures because of the growth. There are more individuals using services and but we have been everyone's been charged to realign. There are some services we may not continue at the same level, but those are things that we're we're looking at. And so just like with your personal budget, you shift and make sure you meet those most pressing needs and we'll work collectively to do that.

And I just wanna say the EMS that is the one area we're expanding is because it's really scary. Right now, we have a fourteen minute response time average and so nobody wants to call 911 and wait fourteen minutes. So and I I just wanna say, you know, and I know we're I'm looking forward to you presenting next because I do agree that, you know, we need to all put the salaries first. And so, yes, how do we get classified staff up to what the county is doing? But for me, my question is gonna be how are you all prioritizing that in your budget?

Because you're gonna be, at this point, getting 2 and $35,500,000 from the county and local funding. Where are the opportunities for you all to make cuts, realign, to come up with that additional, you know, $10,600,000 to get the classified staff salaries up because it can't just be coming to us to ask us to provide that money. We can't. That can't be the solution. It needs to be I really wanna hear what are your ideas, what are you all doing around doing the same thing that we're doing, which is looking inward and finding the money within.

It's just not sustainable. If we are talking about increasing people's salaries and at the same time we're increasing their taxes, we're not making life more livable for them. And when we say that, you know, our workers can't afford to live here, it's also related to their taxes. So and I agree with you, Natalie. We need to also have a conversation with the city because, yeah, it would be great if we could get up to 24 or 25 an hour.

But we're all taking the money from the same place, schools, county, city, it's all coming from our residents. So anyway, so I look forward to hearing and I'll just stop there.

Board Member Tapp.

Thank you very much. I just wanted to just highlight once again the robust conversation we just had. The community is asking me a lot about the budget and how we all get to where we get to and that conversation that we just had is so important for them to understand how these things work because it's sometimes it's difficult for me to even explain it sometimes about how all the tax things work. So, Joy, thank you so very much for just bringing that up and thank you all for taking that time to let the community know exactly how these things work because I think it helps a lot. In terms of salaries, I do agree that all of us are going to have to continue to look deep within to try to get these classified salaries where we need them to get to.

And that conversation in my career has been had a lot. And so hopefully we can all continue to work together. And I also wanted to say that I do have to leave and I don't want Mr. Teeter to think that I'm leaving because I don't want to hear the Durham Public Schools presentation. But but I do have to have to leave. But but thank you all for for that. I really appreciate

it. Chair Onsdab.

Thank you all. I'm gonna keep, again, this brief. I just and I appreciate the conversation. I think highlights the sentiment that people feel. I'm paying more, but what am I seeing more, right, in my house? So I'm paying more taxes, but what does that look like and and how I experience my life living in Durham. I just wanna note, and I think we've talked about this before in the slides that you all get around Durham Public School allocations, that is Durham Public Schools and charter schools. And I just want our public to continue to remember that this allocation, yes, is going to Durham Public Schools and to the students that unfortunately are choosing charters, we're also having that money come through and pass through us. I think it's important for that conversation to be had especially as we talk about enrollment trends. We're still, you know, passing that money along for all of those students.

And I'm surprised someone's already uplifted this and we're nervous about what's happening down with the property tax, things happening down at the general assembly and what that means for the future of public schools. So I think advocacy is super important right now because we know, as you mentioned, commissioner Jacobs, that the county can't sustain what public schools needs for the future. And I think about this perfect storm of aging facilities because we've seen bonds from the state not happen as they should. We also have increasing costs that are happening and we need increasing salaries. And so this pressure cooker that we've been kind of simmering in for a little bit feels like it's all coming to a head.

And the advocacy really needs to happen down in Raleigh, also at a federal level to make sure we can sure up those funds. For these are what I would call the basic goods we need in public service. So thank you all.

Okay. So we're gonna move forward to the I didn't mention anyone. No. No. We're gonna move forward to the DPS presentation. But as they come up, I just want to remind us we can't compete with the city minimum wage. That's out of the question, alright? We, like at the county, we can't. So when we have these discussions, let's just say school and county because the the city does something on their own. They they have their own kind of magic numbers. Okay? So let's let's try to ground it ground us in the conversation there.

They have fewer employees.

Yeah. They have fewer employees and their own taxing engine. Just please let's let's make sure we're grounded in that.

Good morning again everyone. Thank you so much for this opportunity to kind of share where we are and definitely appreciate the county's commitment to supporting Durham Public Schools. I will say the this this this budget presentation and this entire process has been grounded in a number of things. One is increased transparency, but also can our continued commitment to financial stewardship given a time that the times that we've had these past couple of years. In addition to that, recognizing that we have to continue to work towards ways that we invest in our in our staff, the people that make the magic happen in our buildings and departments.

And so as we, you know, talk about our continuation, those are some of the unavoidable costs, the rising utilities, the rising cost of of health care, but also the necessity to invest in our our staff at a time what, you know, what we just talked about when all things are increasing, you know, just the thought of pulling up pulling up at a pump right now and and thinking about some of what our current staff is making on an hourly basis. So we do continue and have will we have done and will continue to look inward in terms of where we can cut some cost savings. For example, we've cut about $2,000,000 just at central office over the past year. We're looking at our allocations and some of our principals and staff have been reaching out to board members because we are making some tough decisions as it relates to maybe some course courses that we are no longer able to offer, how we're staffing our buildings. There has been a lot of nice to haves in Durham, but we also kind of tightening our belt it relates to how we allocate our resources to our buildings.

And often say, you know, we will continue to cut cut the fat, but not the vein. And that vein is indeed our students. And so it's keeping the students at the forefront, but also come in groups with this reality that we are gonna have to make and have been making some some tough decisions and some more tough decisions will be will be coming as relates to some internal cuts that that we're doing. I'm sure Jeremy will say more about some of the cuts that we've made. And so, yes, we were watching feverishly last night.

You were competing with American Idol, but I was more in to you. I was kinda upset with the outcome of American Idol, but that's another. But we were really paying attention to the budget presentation last night and do appreciate the continuation allocation that you provided us. And we have to think about now the expansion and what will we do in that regard as well. So again, this budget was not just something that was developed in conference room. It's a tremendous amount of community engagement, staff engagement, went back to the drawing board based on continued feedback and presented our board with a recommended budget which they ultimately approved. So Jeremy will kind of talk a little bit about that in our response to what we heard last night.

Okay. Good good morning, commissioner school board, county manager Hager, doctor Lewis. So just wanted to start off with obviously very, very pleased to see the county manager brought forward a budget recommendation that reflected our continuation costs. That piece always makes me extremely nervous. I've been finance officer in some of those Eastern North Carolina communities that the county manager referenced, and it we very rarely got continuation costs and had to make cuts every year.

So just very, very grateful for the Durham experience. And so just wanted to lift up that when we packed up shop before the weekend, you know, these were the headlines, right, that the the general assembly had been back in in in session for three weeks, and we weren't really hearing much about their efforts to to pull together a budget for next year, much less this year than we're in now. Still don't have one. And so we we know that right now their focus has been trying to work sort of behind closed doors collectively between the house and the senate to figure something out versus having two competing proposals that go through the full process. So last night as we were putting the final touch on some things, we saw sort of a new headline, some folks anonymously sharing information with the media.

So we don't know who it came from in the general assembly, but sharing that the House and the Senate have gotten closer and sort of leaking some of the details of the direction that might move. So in I think, right, the sense of they're they're making up for some lost time with having not gotten something done for this current year, which I don't expect them to do anything that affects this year. Just in in a couple of weeks, we'll be finalizing the final teacher payroll for this school year. And so there are some logistical challenges if they were to do anything for the current year. But what it sounds like the direction they're heading is potentially a 3% increase for classified employees and an average of 8% for our certified folks who require a license.

And so average is sort of the key there because they will whatever salary schedule they will produce will be all over the place. They will likely do more for beginning teachers versus versus veteran teachers in the efforts that they unroll. We saw that sort of consistently in all of the various proposals that have come out in the past year that they wanted to do more for the beginning folks. So we're watching that carefully. And as you'll see on an upcoming slide, for purposes of us looking into our crystal ball to figure out what they might do, we assumed a 5% increase.

And so you can see that 8% for certified potentially, 3% for classified potentially. And when we look at the construct of our local budget and who we pay from local funds, we feel good about that weighted distribution in our efforts. So we're about 80% of our employees in the local budget are classified with about 20% being certified. And so that weighted distribution works to our favor. If things pan out in this manner, we will have asked of you an appropriate amount of continuation funding in order to operationalize this.

And so we're always grateful when our clairvoyant abilities can come through and work in our favor as we navigate the absence of state activity or conversation. On the next slide, we again lift up that 5% aspect and then also the benefit increases. So what we contribute to the state retirement system, what we contribute to the state health plan. We have been advised by the Department of Public Instruction to look at the governor's budget proposal very carefully to get insight on where those rates are gonna land. So those benefit rates are often the least contentious part of the conversation that occurs.

So the state treasurer and his team often let both the general assembly and the governor know about where they need things to land. And so we, again, as we were looking in our crystal ball, we landed at assuming a 25.67% contribution rate next year. That's exactly what's in the governor's budget. So we're anticipating that our retirement needs will be spot on in the work that we did there. For health insurance, we had estimated an increase from 8,500 to 9,100 per year per employee who participates in the state health plan.

The governor's budget is pointing at 8,925 And so we we hit that pretty close in terms of moving forward. We always I always go when we don't know, I always favor about $600 per employee because that's the largest increase per year that I've seen sort of in my career. That was close to reality this time. So that was all those elements together were a key kind of foundation of the continuation request to the county. I just wanted to make sure you had an update on how those headwinds were moving.

And so then also utility increases, I heard the county manager reference that as well, and that's something that we're all concerned about. And so Duke Energy is really sort of doubling down on their on their money grab. And I would hate for them to not make another billion dollar profit. But something that we're wrestling with and so we don't have sort of final consensus on where the Utility Commission is going to land in terms of Duke Energy's request, but we're preparing for it nonetheless and as they continue to push down on their efforts. We also have other types of insurance coverage that we carry as I'm sure the county does, our property insurance, general liability, things of that nature.

Based on how those quotes have been coming in, particularly our general liability insurance, we're feeling increasingly optimistic that our aggressive forecast was the right way to go in terms of what those increases were looking like for next year. So that 10,899,999, thank you, County Manager Hager, for getting that into your proposal. I think it's reality in terms of how those variables are gonna line up. From there, you know, this next space right on as as folks noted, the the board and and the superintendent did have considerable expansion requests with the largest aspect of that being advocacy around compensation for classified employees. Very glad to hear about the prospect of some folks working together to troubleshoot that.

And this was the space where we certainly did receive the most feedback from our stakeholders in terms of the request. And so we have a few board meetings to go before this fiscal year concludes and we open a new year. And so my team will be working very swiftly for about three more board meetings or so with Doctor. Lewis and our current board to convey where we are, where we're spending dollars and where we can take a harder look some additional cuts if that's a direction that we end up moving in order to create more breathing room for that classified pay scenario. And so I know Doctor.

Lewis has touched on some of the historic cuts that we've made since he and I have been here in terms of eliminating positions in our central office and some other allocations that we've had to adjust. And so far, the adjustments that we have made at DPS have been from a point of obtaining some solvency and sort of bringing things in order in that regard. And so now with this recommendation in place for a firm continuation footing, we sort of move forward to any kind of adjustments that we would make would be to go through that prioritization in order to see what we can do with those expansion requests. And so I know this remains a priority for our board in terms of classified pay. So we will be working very tightly to look and see what we can do on our own and model that behavior that we saw from you all at the county.

From there, there we go. This is just another aspect, right, of classified pay that came forward in the feedback that we received as we went through our budget development process. So putting in place some form of supplement for our bus monitors or safety assistance that emulates what we did for our bus drivers in the last budget cycle. So that's another space where we will take a look and see what we can do internally as we continue to work through this process to move into the new fiscal year. Our occupational and physical therapist was another sort of population where we received a lot of feedback about making their compensation mirror the way that it's handled in other urban districts.

And so I know that this is also a high priority for us and we'll work very tightly with the team to to look at what our options might be in order to make that happen for our folks and and balance out some of those other spending priorities throughout the district. And so charter charter schools, I didn't talk about them on the continuation slide. But in in all aspects bless you. In in all aspects of the of our budget. Any any new funding we receive, we're unfortunately sharing with them.

And in a in a place of budgetary precaution, we're we're moving forward in to the new school year assuming 26%. So in the current year, it's 23%. We know we have two new charters opening with the capacity for a thousand additional seats to fill. So just assuming for our planning purposes that they will all be Durham County residents, it may not pan out that way. But until we know, we sort of plan for that worst case scenario.

And so that would put us in the neighborhood of 26% of local revenue that we share with charter schools. We have sort of doubled down on our efforts to do something from the perspective of marketing and recruitment. And so we recently completed our RFP process. So the last time we were together, we mentioned that an RFP was going out for our firm to assist us a marketing effort. So that has since completed this process.

The committee has evaluated those proposals. We have checked references for the top sort of firm that would assist us in that regard. And our legal team is reviewing the contract that we received before we sort of press the button to move forward on that. But I will share that we're just based on the reference calls that we made and the work that has occurred in some other states and other large school systems. There's a pattern of success with bringing students back to the traditional public schools.

And so we're looking forward to getting that contract complete and getting something in front of our Board to get that in motion so that we can augment our marketing efforts to retain and to bring students back to Durham Public Schools. So we look forward to shifting that number back downward in terms of what we share with charter schools. Capital outlay was another part of our request and fortunately this

is a space that we don't have

to share with charter schools despite their best efforts to have the General Assembly change that practice. We've managed to whether or not sharing with them in that regard. And so we could see in the county manager's recommended budget the continuity of the $5,000,000 per year for capital outlay support. And then in the board's recommended budget, there was some space in there for refreshing some technology throughout the district. And so this is another space, you know, barring barring no changes between now and the county commissioner iteration of the budget June 8, We will continue to press in and evaluate our resources and and identify where where is the greatest need in order for us to move forward.

So I've put on my running shoes and have some work to do with my colleagues to help make sure we accomplish what we were hoping to accomplish with some of those expansion items between now and the new year. And so then this is just sort of a summary of that same history that you saw from Mr. Lane earlier in terms of the funding that's come our way and a sort of a synopsis of what we had requested. And I'm trying to give us some time back and open it up for questions that anyone might have for me or Doctor. Lewis.

Thank you, Mr. Teeter. First, I just want to thank you and your team. I know you guys came in during a very difficult time and just really appreciate the time and effort you've put into getting DPS back on track. I had a question or so.

I think commissioner Jacobs had asked this a little bit earlier, we can get to it of what saving since like you saw a county manager's presentation, she asked every department to make cuts and we had 3% cuts across every department. 2% cuts across every department to find savings to minimize as much as we needed a tax rate increase. Wondering where were you able to in the DPS budget look for and find similar savings opportunities? Opportunities?

Absolutely. And so we go through at least since I have come to Durham, we go through this process in the spring right as our purchasing deadlines wrap up. Know we conduct a sweep so to speak and I know some of my colleagues in the room that have experienced the sweep are gritting their teeth at me. But we sweep through, right? So any funds that were not utilized by various departments, we sweep those and sort of evaluate what remaining needs that were critical to the district did they not get taken care of and we make sure that those are dealt with after we sweep the funds.

And so one of the things that we're looking at with superintendent before we open the new year, right, is sort of that zero based budgeting, right. So moving into next year, how much of that, of what we swept this year, that dollar value equivalent, how much of that should we redirect towards some of these expansion items, right, that could not occur with the current iteration, right, of the recommended budget from the county. So lots of opportunity there in my opinion. And then two, for the year ahead, we made some pretty significant adjustments in terms of staffing largely to respond to what will be a decrease in state funding next year, What will be an increase in charter school obligations for next year. So we're looking at about $13,000,000 or so, right, in less staffing.

And that's just really us kind of being responsive to changes that are occurring connected to our enrollment. But I think sort of more in the spirit of your question, right, we if we stick to our strongest financial notions and we redirect operational funding that we had this week this year, we can accomplish some things in a similar fashion that the County did.

So is the 13,000,000 that's what you're saying from these efforts that you're able to find savings

And I think from in that regard that is just simply sticking to our allotment formulas that we follow for staffing. And so that's allowed us to absorb what could have been a major financial hole for the district. And so not we've seen districts in the news who have not followed those formulas and have been in some really bad spots. But in terms of so that $13,000,000 is just really for us to sort of be normal next year. And in terms of what we could pull back in savings, there's the capacity there for between 3,000,000 to $4,000,000 from the operating budgets throughout the district.

And that number could grow potentially right as as we continue to press into what are our real priorities. But sort of at a minimal level, right, I think there's some opportunity there for 3,000,000 to $4,000,000 that we could redirect.

And just to be clear, Mr. Teeter, that 13,000,000 doesn't come sit in the DPS bank right. Okay just making sure we're Right clear about that

reflective of what we're not going to get from the state next year and what we're going to be passing along to charter schools.

So that 3 to 4,000,000 is that already incorporated into the budget asset you'll have or that's something that potentially is?

So right there's the potential for us to reroute that right. And instead of it just by default going to departmental operating budgets we've got the potential to reroute that and reprioritize that to take care of some of these expansion items that that are important to the to the district. Yeah. You.

That's helpful. Commissioner Burton.

Thank you, chair Lee. Thank you, mister Teeter, for your wonderful reports and presentations. I have a quick comment and then I'll go into my question. One of the reasons why I asked about the the previous presentation by Keith Lane with the property tax increases is because I have this interesting role where I've been on both sides. Right? I've been in the classroom as a school media coordinator. I was a DAE president. And during that time period, we were working really hard to try to get the raises up for classified staff. Actually, I remember in 2021, we got it finally to $15 an hour. Right?

And now being in this role as a commissioner, what I'm clearly am seeing, and I saw it last year, is that we're not gonna be able to use this property tax to buffer anymore because we have high inflation, we got higher cost, and what happens is, okay, if we raise the property tax, inflation gets us. Right? And then the charter surcharge is what gets us. And I think that's where we're getting into this problem. Whereas before, from 2017, '18, '19, 2021, or what have you, you didn't have these high inflation costs.

You didn't have these high home value costs. And so we were kind of riding the wave. Right? And so now we have to kind of pivot and think differently of how do we get the money for our classified staff. That's the challenge. How do we get because they need to get paid. I've worked with these people. I know how hard they work. And when they work, they're not thinking about, oh, my money comes from the state. Oh, my money comes from here. They're just thinking, drive this bus. I work in the school cafeteria. I'm the TA. I work in the front office. I work hard.

I wanna get paid. So I think it's contingent upon us to kind of think about where do we go in order to solve this problem, but I don't think the property tax us raising the property tax every year is going to solve that. So I want to make that clear. The question I had was about the capital expense. I wanted to find out because you need the schools need a extra 2,800,000 for the Chromebooks and the BrightLinks and things like that.

And I was just wondering where the schools were with the bond money. Was there any bond money left or what have you to help with capital and maybe divert some of the money that the county gives you to help pay for the Chromebooks and the refresh of the BrightLinks?

So thank you for that question. And I so I pay property taxes in Wake but I get a lot I'm delivering to the sales tax in Durham by way of Nantucket Grill. And so we and so I'm feeling like we're feeling the same thing and so I totally get the property tax quagmire. And so we have really sort of started looking at all of the capital outlay pieces and grateful for the partnership with Mr. Lane and right in helping us unpack sort of the Durham history.

And so I think beyond the bond dollars, right, we we also have you know lottery dollars and repair and renovation dollars that come to us by way of the state. And so we'll be working and so that's kind of where my mind has shifted is how can we reconfigure where we're paying for some projects, right, in order to make things available. So some things that are a little more brick and mortar that we were going to use capital outlay money for potentially rerouting that to lottery dollars, right? And then freeing up the other source that's more appropriate for the technology, right? And so we're also very careful.

As a rule of thumb, we don't use the bond money for technology. And so we may do some other kind of rearrangement of our puzzle pieces to figure that out and that's likely what we'll do.

You, Jeremy. Just a little education here about GEO bonds and our long term debt. We generally pay on long term debt, lobs and particularly general obligations, twenty years. What we like to buy with that money are things, assets that last at least twenty years. A computer at best lasts three or four years. You don't want to be paying sixteen year later, sixteen years later on a computer that's long gone. That's generally why as you heard Jeremy say, you try to find other dollars other than geo bonds for that type of purchase. Buildings, long term things, that's what geo bonds and LOBs go for. Thank you.

Commissioner Jacobs.

Well, I just want to say I really appreciate hearing you say that you all are looking internally and are being creative and making hard choices and decisions and trying to find additional money. I think that's, again, what we all you know, we just have to do it. And if you are able to find, let's say, the 10,600,000 for classified, what would be the the charter tax related to that? What would that number look like?

So I think if we and so I think the good news, right, it's only an entry tax rate for charter, So we're just paying the charter share as we receive it. But then if we free up you know our resources right, if we free up $10,000,000 we freed up $10,000,000 and they're not part of the puzzle.

So that's the So that would take care of okay.

So we pay them one time, they

can this. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's another bonus there. Okay.

Can I ask a clarifying question, commissioner Jacobs? Yes. So you're asking if DPS were to fund the $10,000,000, not if the county funds the

10 For the expansion. Yes. For the expansion.

If the county were to fund that 10,000,000.

We don't have the 10,000,000.

No. I wanna make it clear that you were asking if DPS would fund that 10,000,000.

Would there be a charter tax? And what he was just saying is no because it's internal. Yeah.

We also don't have it. Just just to be clear, we don't have it.

She was she wasn't saying like find it as far as like extra money. She's talking about cuts.

Making cuts.

Making cuts and so forth to provide for that.

Yeah.

Not find it like right out.

Yeah. Because I mean, I don't know, you know, with programs like Growing Together, some of the, know, great programs but things that are, you know, that that are costly and that may need to be delayed based on budget realities. I I have no idea. I'm just throwing that out there. But, you

know Has sorry. Follow-up to that is, has anybody at DPS costed out how many positions would need to be cut or which programs would need to be cut in order to locate that $10,000,000?

So on average, you know, so for for every 1%, right, you know it would be about 16 to 17 positions, right, if you were to think about it in terms of people. So then you multiply that by 12, right, you're looking at like 192 or so. So substantial would right in position front.

Yes ma'am. Alright. Any other comments? Okay. You very much. Thank you DPS for your your budget request update. Me and Chair Olmstead, we have we've met and we talked about the memorandum memorandum of understanding. We're already an hour behind and so we we know that the next time that we meet to be with a new sitting of a school board. However, everyone has a everyone should have copy of it. What we would like is if everyone kinda reviews it.

We take we took into consideration the the information that was sent in, the request that was sent in to be added and so forth. We kinda rewrote it, kinda tightened it up a little bit. You can review it. Please provide your feedback, but we I think it's just going to be I think it's gonna be be better if we we do it the the next time we meet. It's just we're already an hour behind and I have to go to work. I'm sorry. Like, I I I have a job. So okay. Alright. So are there any objections to that? Nope. Okay. I'll accept a motion to adjourn. So

moved. Second.

It's been moved and properly seconded that we adjourn. All in favor say

aye. Aye.

All opposed please use the same sign. We are adjourned.