Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Okay, I am going to call to order this meeting of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors on Monday, March 16th. I call this meeting to order of the Montgomery County School Board at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 16th, 2026. We do have an amendment to our agenda. Dr. Derek Roundtree will be participating electronically in tonight's meeting. Do I have a motion to approve an amended agenda to include electronic participation from Dr. Derek Roundry? So moved. Second. Mr. Roberts and Miss Franklin. Any discussion? Miss Osborne, will you please call the role? Miss Bowen, yes. Franklin, yes. Dr. Gry,

yes. Miss Parton, yes. Mr. Roberts, yes. Mr. Yes. Six in favor. Motion carries. And I'm assuming there are no objections to that from our board. So, we'll just continue on with the agenda. The next item is uh the pledge of allegiance led by our county administrator, Miss Auntie Hill. Please rise as if you're able and the flag. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.

Thank you, Anthony. Um

so Chair Purcell and I have um kind of talked a little bit about the order of this meeting and then making sure that um for those that are watching from home that the live stream um works properly for them as well. And so we're going to go first into presentations. um our county administrator will start with the presentation and then our superintendent will follow with the presentation and then we'll have tons of time as much as needed for comments and questions and discussion amongst the two boards. So if you're ready to go, we are ready to turn to the presentations. I was looking for Jen. I was told not to touch anything on the post because we don't

I looked over there too as soon as I said that. I'm only allowed to turn the slide.

Good evening and welcome. I'll kick the meeting off tonight with an overview of the McGomery County proposed budget for fiscal year 27. I've combined portions of the presentation from March the 9th to the board of supervisors with some clarifications that are in response to some feedback that we received over the last week. Each year when we're preparing the proposed budget, revenues are estimated, the base budget is evaluated for savings or reductions, county budget requests are evaluated, and the schoolboard budget is presented to the board of supervisors. After evaluation of all of the components, the proposed budget is balanced. In fiscal year 2027, I'm proposing a budget of $285.7 million. I'm recommending a real estate tax rate increase of 5 cents, bringing the total rate to 81 cents per $100 of assessed value. As we presented on February 9th and again last week, estimated new revenue is just over $1 million. For the past three years or so, new revenue has ranged from 5 to7 million annually. This year, the lower base revenue amounts are attributable one to interest. The interest rates um have been reduced by the Fed and they are expected to reduce the rate two more times this year. County sales taxes down due to a change in the distribution of school age population between the county and the towns and personal property taxes decreased in the base due to several businesses relocating outside of the county. Initial requests from all county

departments in the schoolboard budget request to the board of supervisors totaled $16.6 million. So, if fully funded, the combined request offset by the new revenue would result in a required real estate tax rate increase of 12 cents. This slide shows revenue estimates for the county and the school operating fund for fiscal year 27. And I'll explain the uh line item that says utilities designated revenue over the next few slides. Mark McGrder, the county's management budget director, shared this during the presentation of the proposed budget on March 9th, but I wanted to give you a little bit more context about these numbers. One thing that is important to note, and sometimes we forget that everyone hasn't lived through certain things with the board of supervisors and the county staff. Um, so we wanted to give you a little bit more context about the McGomery County Public Service Authority, which is also known as the PSA, is now beginning in in for the first time in this budget. Um, it's included as a utility department. So, in the fiscal year 27 budget, we've added designated funds to support that newly established utility department. This funding transitions the PSA employees to utility department county employees and results in an increase of $2.4 million in the county's general fund. Now, while this change increases the overall general fund with the total revenues, it also increases total expenditures by the same amount. So there's no increase in taxpayer dollars and there's no net impact to the budget. The dollar amounts of the expenditures

and the revenue are the same. So they offset each other. Another way that you might look at that look at that is as if it were a transfer from another fund. This is a new slide. We added this uh to show the impact of the utility department funding that is coming from the public service authority. So when you take that funding out, the total new revenue for this year is split 67% for the schools and 33% for the county. This is a familiar slide. It shows all revenue sources for the entire budget for all funds. And as you can see, designated revenue is the largest category. The majority of that funding is provided to the schools. And undesated revenue, as you know, is comprised primarily of real estate tax revenue. All expenditure categories for all funds are also shown on this slide. Seven. Uh, where does the funding go? School funds are shown in blue and they include school operating, school capital, and school nutrition. Debt service is shown in the green and brown slices of this rather than showing the green section or the debt service that is related to the schools. Rather than showing that with the blue section with the other school funds, we are showing that separately because school systems in Virginia are not legally able to issue debt. The debt must be issued through the locality and

because of that it can't be shown as a school fund. It is important, however, as we look at this graph to include that school debt service amount with the allocation to the schools because those dollars go directly to support school capital projects. While the previous slide showed the allocation based on funds, this graphic shows the allocation based on functional areas. The board of supervisors has continued to focus their two top priorities, education and public safety. I'll provide some additional information first regarding public safety because that's a functional area that has changed significantly significantly since fiscal year 22. Beginning in 2019 through 2026, 10 school resource officers have been added to the sheriff's office. Also in 2025, eight deputy positions were added to the sheriff's office to ensure that we could safely operate the McGomery County jail. These totals approximate $2 million. Since December of 2021, 48 career paramedics, oh thanks, EMTs, and firefighters have been added to the fire and EMS department. Again, this is similar to the utility department and the public service authority. We've lived through these this time period of a bit of transition and sometimes we might forget to give as much explanation as we need to as to why we've done these things. Adding these

employees to this system was not a choice that we just said, "Hey, we're going to add some more employees here." McGomery County is mandated to provide emergency response services to our citizens. In the past, fire and rescue volunteers have been able to provide this service and they still are doing a really great job in some areas of the county. However, as many of you know, volunteerism in Montgomery County and throughout the nation has continued to decline. As a result, we had an obligation to hire career paramedics, EMTs, and firefighters to respond to calls for emergency services. In December of 2021, the board of supervisors appropriated $600,000 to begin providing career EMS response in Eastern Montgomery as volunteerism declined in this area of the county. And in fiscal year 2023, the Charlesville Volunteer Rescue Squad notified the county they were dissolving as a response agency. As a result, the county began providing 247 career EMS service in the eastern part of the county. The county now provides 247 career EMS service in Ryder and 247 career fire and EMS service in the eastern part of McGomery County. In total since fiscal year 22, approximately $5.4 million has been allocated to fund fire and EMS. We frequently discuss the need for the state to provide more funding for schools and I included this table this evening in my budget and also in my budget message to help demonstrate how great that need is.

We've included here the localities that we typically compare ourselves to and the table really illustrates the board of supervisors commitment to public education. This slide shows the total FY27 proposed budget by fund as well as the changes by fund. I want to again emphasize that $2.4 million of the general government category of $6.2 million is for the utility department transfer and the impact of that is nothing to the overall budget. We have many opportunities uh remaining in the schedule for the board to uh consider the budget proposal and to discuss what the board chooses to do with the budget. We also have several opportunities for citizen input. In addition to the meetings listed, we will have a regular board meeting on April 13th and we have an opportunity for a budget work session at that meeting. Also, if the board would like to hold additional work session, those can be scheduled as well. Thank you.

Thank you, school staff will now provide information on MCPS's proposed fiscal year 2027 budget. Okay.

All right. Good evening to both chairs and both boards. Appreciate you having us here today. want to thank you for the opportunity to to present our budget to you. And first, I do want to thank Mr. Graham, uh, Mr. Fitchkowski, Mr. Gravski, and Miss Biggs for joining me in visiting school over the last couple of weeks and coming out to the listening sessions, even taking part a little bit in those listening sessions. It really does reflect your interest and your commitment to our public school system, and I thank you for coming out and joining me. Our schools are one of the county's greatest assets and the success of our students is directly connected to the support and investment provided by this body. As we discuss the upcoming budget, our focus remains clear. Ensuring every student in Montgomery County Public Schools has access to high quality highquality education supported by excellent teachers, strong academic programs, and safe well-maintained schools. This proposed budget centers on a few key factors. Supporting and retaining our outstanding staff, maintaining strong academic and student support programs, addressing facility and operational needs, and to ensure that our our buildings remain safe and effective learning environments. We also recognize the various fiscal responsibilities faced by the county and the associated challenges. In this budget cycle, our team has worked hard to develop a request that focused on what matters most, and that's students. Montgomery County values education. That's clear. And our schools play a vital role in the strength and quality of life in the community. Look forward to to working with you all continued conversations. Now, I'm going to turn it over to Miss Bland.

Thank you, Dr. Kimble. And thank you, Miss Hill, for providing a great deal of detail in numbers for the budget. We've talked a lot over the last couple months about numbers. So, um, our presentation this afternoon is not going to be driven so much in in those numbers. We do appreciate that. So, this evening's message is consistent with the information that we have shared in the recent months. The needs of our students continue to drive the division's budget. Over the last four years, the total cost per pupil has increased by approximately 37%. These increases significantly outpace both the cost of living adjustments and the consumer price index. As a school division, we are legally required to provide the services necessary to support the students. Many of the students that are entering into the schools now were born in 2020 and 2021. The needs of this younger population are not always compatible to those of students who are currently in the upper grades. The district is seeing an increase in the need for more intensive and specialized instruction at the earlier grade levels. The district remains committed to providing the needs and ensuring every student has the support necessary for growth and continued education success. I would also like we talk about the charts um to briefly address the current situation with the general assembly. As of Saturday, the legislature adjourned without adopting a final state budget. uh special budget session has been scheduled for April 23rd. It will begin on April 23rd and they will continue until an agreed budget can be reached. Until a budget is finalized, the

division will remain in a holding pattern to get the final details. This evening though, I would like to share several graphs that reflect the division's revenue sources. This chart on page two provides a history of the schoolboard operating funds budgeted revenue by source since fiscal year 2023. Um, keep in mind this is just the school operating fund and it does not include capital and and other funds. It also includes the percentages based on the school district's original funding request for 2027. And the the final um chart there shows that um it will show the percentages as well for the county's current proposed budget. Um as you can see the state revenue in blue um at this point um with no changes made so far to the budget. This is a significantly low amount that we're receiving at this time from the state which can greatly impact what our our final budget numbers will look like. This pie chart illustrates the school district's revenue as a percentage of the county's total revenue. Now, it's important to note that the budget amount at the top of over 187 million um excludes the school school district state, federal, and re local revenue sources. Those funds are provided directly by their respective governments and they're restricted for school district purposes based on the funding requirements. And this has a breakdown of of each of the funding sources that's provided. Finally, we would like to share a short video featuring both students and staff. We asked them to share their perspectives on the budget and what it means to their schools and their classrooms.

Thank you.

We're the first thing that our students here in Montgomery County see on a day-to-day basis. And I believe that, you know, it's important for us to have health care, the proper health care. That way, we can ensure that we are healthy. Uh we have uh people's lives in our hands. Just want to say a huge thank you to the board of supervisors for supporting the whole budgeting process for McGomery County Public Schools. Um none of this would have been possible, this new academic wing here at Christiansburg High School, without everything you all have done and all the support that you've shown. Along with that, we just so appreciate um you all supporting us getting a new full-time nurse here at the high school and also custodians to help maintain and keep this new building clean. Um as you move forward, um I just want to continue to thank you for everything you do and all the thought you put into um what we need here at McGomery County Public Schools.

Thank you. A lot of custodians are not having a livable wage. And without a livable wage, it's hard for them to provide for their families. We have a lot of custodians working two jobs and that's that can be a problem for them to provide for their families and be home when they need to be. We need to stay competitive with area schools so we can have salaries that are competitive so we can draw in employees. When we do get new people in u they're making minimum wage uh and a lot of other places is making the same amount. So when we do get them trained, uh they leave and go to other places.

Thanks for supporting our school. I had one lady, she just recently, she just recently left. So any overtime that was going on in the building, she wanted it just cuz she wanted the money. And now she gone. She going to Virginia Tech. So tech paid her more money. She gone.

Thanks for supporting our school. Hello. I would like to take this opportunity to say thanks first. Thanks for everything that you all have done to make sure that our school fallen branch actually is doing the best that we can do to succeed. But I want to say additional funding for us will actually help us reach all of those particular goals. I have a personal goal that our school will be a role model for all those in public education. And the way we can do that, of course, is by having the right personnel, the right staff, and the materials that our students need. So any additional support that you can provide definitely will help us reach that goal that I have in mind. Again, thank you. We appreciate all that you do FOR US.

THANKS FOR ALL YOU DO. All right. So, we have switched off of presentation mode and we're now back in conversation mode. Yeah. I think in closing too, but Saul, I want to thank you for our our bimonthly meetings, too, and uh just coming over and helping introduce me to the budget and uh just just how this all works. So, at this point, we'll turn it over for discussion.

Great. All right. Who wants to start the discussion? We're gonna have a really short meeting if everybody talks.

Question. Um, I appreciate the work of of both sides of preparing this presentation. I've asked this before, but is there any reason for not making this material available before the meeting so both we can prepare as members but also that the community can be prepared as well because I I have a difficult time listening and reading at the same time. So it, you know, we're trying to melt two different budgets and so I'm trying to com in real time compare our budget to what's in here and it doesn't line up perfectly. And so if I had had time beforehand to prepare, I could be better better prepared with questions. So is there any reason?

Well, what was presented on the county side was already presented on March the 9th. So I just say these two presentations is there, this is a procedural question. Is there any reason for not that we couldn't get this in advance? Maybe maybe ours was posted on the 9th and it it is a little bit different. We added a few slides, but the general reason that the county position on this um we present this kind of information is the presentations really don't stand completely alone. We add context to them and um it's been our practice to add the context as the boards review that.

Um if the board supervisors wanted that to be done differently, we certainly could do that, but that has been our practice over the years. So I absolutely agree with this and it's been raised before because even sometimes even seeing the information can be difficult always trying to follow it. Um this information would be very very helpful to have ahead of time to be able to know what we're going to be talking about tonight. It may be in another presentation at a different time for our board or your board, but when we're in this meeting, it's night would be nice to have this information in board docs so that we can see it for this meeting. Nothing I dislike more than having to trace back between different agendas to try to find information for a meeting that I'm in. I should have that information in front of me.

Would it be helpful? Um if after we gave the budget presentation earlier in the month, if we provided that presentation directly via email to the school board because it is there are a few new things in here, but it's all the same information as what was presented tonight. So for like the next budget year, if we once we have the presentation, just email it directly to the school board for the initial budget presentation. That would be that would be great because I I don't expect the board of supervisors to go through boards stock and look at all of our documents related to the budget. I go through and look at

that's great but I you know I don't assume that and I think in terms of helpful to know exact you know to have that sent if that's going to be the basis for presentation. So can I ask I guess not a procedural question but so so I understand if we go to the distribution of new revenue the school operation the the grantual has proposed the 7.9 million that is inclusive of um our school nutrition funds correct like that is that is all funds

the 3.8 8 million in designated revenue is school operating and then the 4.1 um would be the county portion of of my recommendation for the schools and then if you chose to put some of that toward nutrition that that would be your option. Okay. So just to make sure that I understand. So when we finalized our budget, our request on the county side, not including school nutrition, if I'm correct, you can correct me if I'm wrong, was an increase at a total of am I correct in 8.2 million?

Yes. That included nutrition. Yeah, nutrition. That nutrition. That's the total. Okay. So, it's half of the request is what's in the proposed roughly. Okay. 4.1 exactly half of 8.2 actually. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's with the five cents tax increase. The one thing we didn't do in that is designate stuff for nutrition specifically to allow you the freedom of being able to move the money however you you see fit. So that wasn't a problem where you had to come back to the board and ask. We didn't want to have to go through that again. So we wanted to make sure that what we do have and what we're able to do that you have the freedom to be able to do what you need to do with it and not have any other restrictions. I appreciate that. I just wanted was trying to reconcile our budget with yours because we break that down. So, I just wanted to make sure I had the base number right.

I have a question that I should have asked at the board meeting. Uh same slide, slide number five. School capital $61,50. That's I should have asked originally, but where is that coming from? When we uh increase the tax rate, it causes the penny value to increase. So, that represents that. So you see it for both the school and the county capital. So it's just the incremental. Yes, it's the incremental increase. It's from additional growth on the value and also the any value.

Mark, if I say something wrong, you just pipe up. Okay. I I would to ask if uh Go ahead. Go ahead, Derek.

Oh, sorry. Yeah. Uh so I wanted to check. So it looks like the undesated funds for this year that are the the split between the county and the schools is 45% to 55%. Uh 45 for the county, 55 for the schools. Is it correct that over the last five years that number has gone from approximately 5941 to this 5545 split? We can get that. I don't know the historical comparison um over the last few years.

I mean it's definitely changed with the fire EMS right transition. It has changed with the fire and EMS transition. It also changes somewhat based on the amount of of state revenue that's received

because it changes the percentage overall. And then also it looks like over the last five years the split of state funds to county funds in Miss Bland's presentation shows that we've gone from approximately 44% county funds to 42% over the last five years with the last couple years being that 42% opposed to 44%. So, we're seeing a a slight a reduction in investment from the undesated funds. And that's

is that correct? Go ahead. Well, I I was I think I think some of that to to Angie's earlier point or maybe it was you, Derek, like as the budget gets bigger because the state is funding a higher portion just by comparison, the the county's piece of that is a smaller percentage. Even like, you know, we've continued to invest pretty uh consistently dollar amounts year-over-year, right? Three to four to five million a year. But as the state these last couple of years the state money has kicked up so the budget gets bigger and so the percentage of it from the county yeah has has trickled down a little bit.

Add into that the increased amounts given to public safety and the offsets. It's a little bit but it's has more to do with more of the amounts but yeah I don't disagree with you on the small percentage but I know how much that percentage means. Yeah. But understand where you're coming from, but understand that the where the differences are. Some of it's math, some of it's going to public safety. I have a slide that might help with the overall Yeah, I think

Yeah, just as we increase county uh needs with public safety, which I I totally agree with them. Um, we just need to to not take that money from other needed areas, but rather increase the the funding overall. But we're uh I know we're in hard times this year, and I appreciate the the effort to to get the budget in a uh in a situation that we can fund our county. But I think it's important too to point out that the dollar amount has consistently increased. The percentage may have decreased slightly, but the continued investment has been there. So

if the dollar amount starts decreasing, then we have real problems, right? Steve, did you want to say something? Yeah, it was just a question that I been meaning to ask and never have. Um the on the video reminded me that um didn't all those positions get a a pay raise just recently along with the bus drivers and the HVAC guys and didn't they all get that? Where where did that money come from and where did you find that money?

Yeah, sure. Sure. So, um there were two separate times that there were increases. Um one was for bus drivers because it just the recruiting efforts were just not going well. Um and and so as part of that, we increased the starting rate and that did bring additional drivers there. And then in addition, we had several HVAC positions that sat for two to three years, two years um unfilled with multiple grounds positions. We kept losing, you know, it was just a high turnover rate with those positions. So several positions in the facilities department were actually increased to to to help take care of that. Um because those positions sat vacant, we were able to to realize, you know, some funding to allow that to increase. Um but we also realized that that would be an impact on our our next budget, you know, going forward that we would have to consider that and you know, that would be an additional part of the budget that we have. So you the money came from unfilled positions

for the for that for that current year. Yes. Did that include teacher unfilled positions?

The the the the savings for teachers are really um very insignificant. If if a teacher is out for um even a day, half a day, we have to fill that with a substitute. So there are substitute fees. Um sometimes two substitutes have to cover teachers depending on the situation. Um, so there's really very little of no savings, you know, that are realized, um, when teachers are out. Um, the only true salary savings that we see would be an unfilled HVAC position, for instance. You know, if it's it's months at a time. Um, keep in mind though, the work does not end when you have when you're short that one HVAC position. So, what tends to happen is that we have to allow overtime in those other positions. So, that starts shrinking any savings that you that you may have. Um, but that's where they looked at getting the savings to do that.

Thank you.

Anything else there?

Am I not loud enough? Anything else, Dr. Roundtree? No, that was everything for me. Thank you'all. Thank you'all for the presentations, too. So, I'm going to ask this question. I know we brought it up once before, but with compression, we knew it was going to add when they changed over and can drop the steps from what is it 20 20 now 20

20 from 36 to 20. It added an extra 1 million plus to the annual budget to go forth and correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. at exponentially going forward as it does add that with the annual 2% raise as we go in. So that increases the raise for what was it the um for teachers it came out 4% for not yeah three 3.86 86 for other positions is almost it's over eight

over 8%. Increase. Now I know we don't set the starting positions and the salaries for the schools. We don't I understand the comparisons coming from position to position but the by rule and regulation on this the job description and scope of work do not match up for the same amount of responsibilities. That being said, we have nothing to do with how the schools set the pay bands. Correct. How we set your positions because we don't. Correct.

I just want to make sure I make sure I don't want to step out of turn. That's why I'm asking. So, when I hear this and I and I and I completely empathize with everybody in reference to we don't feel like we're getting the right starting pay or we don't getting this. I understand it's based on the budget that you receive and you can only do with what the money that you get, but we don't set the position salaries or the pay for those positions. Now, and again, I understand where it comes from and at the end of the day, we are the ones that with the purse strings and it restricts on some of the things that you can and can't do. But that being said, and I made a point of it this year, and I've called a couple of y'all to make sure my points were known, I wasn't gonna have anything to do, and I wasn't gonna go through line by line like before. It's not my gig. It's not my It's not my game. It's not what I'm supposed to do. That being said, I do understand some other ramifications of this budget as we move forward. And I just want to make sure that's clear that we don't have anything to do with the positions. We provide the funding and then you're able to do what you want to with it. I also understand, this is a word I got from social services because they weren't able to fill positions, salary savings. So words, couple words that I never able to put together, but I understand that that money gives you the ability to offset like the bus drivers and things like that for non education directed positions. And I honestly hadn't thought about the substitute thing. My wife was a substitute for almost 10 years. So I should have thought about that. But uh I just want to make sure that's clear. We understand where that comes from. But again, we're not saying anything on any just making sure that we know where we're all at.

A follow question. So, yeah. So, why are I I appreciate that. Are why are you pointing that out that you don't set the the pay scale? Is that in reference to something?

No, it's a clarity point because it keeps getting brought up over and over and over again about how this position doesn't match up with this position. and we tried to look at it and we go, "Okay, where's this coming from?" And I dug into it. I just want to make sure that that it it wasn't something from before, that it wasn't something that was laid out in rules before we got on the boards. I wanted to make sure I went back and made sure I was fully researched into what we were doing and we don't and I just that was a clarity point and I know it gets confusing sometimes because they are county level positions and they do kind of fall. we get start playing with the retirements and all the other stuff, but at the end of the day, we don't. And that sometimes that gets mixed up and that's something that's a public comment because make sure that everybody understands that we don't. And that's that's some of the discrepancy, but that's more of a point than a question.

That's something we've heard a lot of public comment on in our meetings. And so I think that's where

I just wanted to make sure that I I assumed that was probably the case. I think for my response to that is that um they might not be there might be discrepancy in what's expected on one side versus the other but what was surprising to me was the the the significant difference. Now I asked for clarification from from from our administration like are you sure that that this is this is what I'm seeing is correct and the re the word I received back was yes. I haven't seen anything to suggest that these were inaccurate comparisons. Now for my pers my answer to that is that it's true we you don't dictate but at the same time you control the purse. So my perspective on this because I I as you probably know I raised it publicly is that I'd like to see for the county to work together rather than they say that's not my responsibility only the purse is my responsibility. I would like to see the two boards get together and say let's let's let's work toward par so that people who are working for the school district are see are paid comparably to people who are doing similar jobs. I would like that to be the message. But could you do that now?

What do you mean? It's been tried before. I mean Mary's got some experience with that. But couldn't you do that now? No. Couldn't you do that now? You can't say no flat out because you actually could. But the problem would be the problem would be you'd have to sacrifice things in other areas in order to make that happen. And I understand nobody wants to do that. You don't want to pull any money from an education point to have offsets. But I'm just saying for you could it's just it's a difference between possible and feasible. It's possible. It's not really feasible at this point where the budget is.

You can't I don't think you can do it in one year. But if you if you look at what our expenditures, what is mandatory for us with special ed and some other services were provided. If you look at what's mandatory in terms of caps and enrollments in classrooms, if you look at all of those and you look at some of the additional things we want to do with like school nutrition, well, that's obviously we're not going to be able to provide the lunches. There were a couple other programs, but if you look at our co our budget proposal, we are we are incrementally trying to address the issue, but there is no way based on what I saw in those graphs of discrepancy in pay that there's anything close to the the the finances available to to reach that parody. So from my perspect it's like this is a multi-year problem and there we should be collaborating on a plan so that if if anybody who works on the county side or works on the school board uh um MCPS's side they have comparable pay. I would be willing to listen to that if there was an incremental plan or it was presented as an incremental plan or something to that effect as opposed to a 12% increase right off the top. And I'm just that's and I completely again respect where you're coming from on this and understand that this is people's lives and we need to make sure that they're taken care of in a responsible manner. We still have to look at this and go the increases in money are happening. The increase this year is about cost of living and inflation. It's not a big dip into what you wanted for the other things. And again, that's frustrating on our part, too, because we'd like to be able to provide more, but there needs to be a plan. Much like the capital plan, this hasn't come. The other one needs to come.

Well, and then another component of that that, you know, if we're to have a joint discussion on kind of stabilizing the rates for similar positions, there's different educational and uh experience requirements. So, we analyzed um from from what we were hearing in public comments, the positions that came up, we analyzed each of those positions side by side and only found one position that had a similar educational requirement. Every other position had completely different educational and experience requirements. And so that kind of factors into some of the salary differences I think as well is um you know if for for some positions we had a college degree requirement and there was a high school diploma requirement for the same name position on the school side and so it just kind of meant that salaries were different. Well, it could also mean you could read it a different way and say, well, the reason we don't have the requirement is that we would have to pay them more

if in order to require the college degree. So, there's there's a different way of of looking at that. And it's not just the sal when I saw some of the graphs, it wasn't just the starting salary that was significant lower, but also the top end of that was also significant. This is I mean, this is you're right.

Based on education, you're right. It starts off differently. It's the same way for teachers. They get paid more for masters than they do with the with the undergrad. Correct. It's the same principle. I mean, we're I think we're arguing the same thing from a different point, but we're saying the same things. It just starts different because your description is different at the beginning and that dictates what you do moving forward. But I'd be willing to sit here and and sit down and talk with you and most of you know me. Call me anytime that to be able to talk about this in a manner where it could be laid out moving forward as opposed to dropping a 12% increase at one time. So we have the ability to try to to play a little expectation management to be able to to make the adjustments in order to help fund those needs moving forward based on projected incomes that we have the opportunity to have. And I'm I have no problems with that. I just want to make sure that we play a little expectation management because the more we throw up in the air and the more stuff we throw out and the more pressure that comes down, especially with income at a level where it's at right now and the designated undesated revenues that are coming in are very limited, it really constricts our ability to be able to to meet those needs and it doesn't make us feel any better not to be able to do it. I think that's that's one of the biggest things. We feel terrible that we're not able to do that, but we're also not going to tax people into oblivion to be able to meet a 12% increase when some things could be paired down if we did do an incremental plan. But it falls into the same line with the capital plan. Hey, if we could have something that could be laid out moving forward that you had a plan of this is what it's going to be incrementally moving forward, then maybe it would be easier for us to be able to adjust that into the budget in advance as opposed to like last year where you did a 16st step drop

and a and a full compression of steps and an increase of a million on the budget. While I know it had to be done, parts of it to make sure everything was competitive, we still could have worked that in. We still could have sat and talked. We still could have called each other and gone, "Hey, what do you think about this? Hey, could you do this?" And that's something that all of us don't do. I talked to a couple y'all. We don't talk back and forth and y'all know it. We just don't. I talked to a couple. I don't think I've called you, Ed, but I talked to Penny. I talked to Derek. And I I try to make sure that that you know where we're coming from and I listen to Penny. Penny's gonna make sure I know where y'all coming from. So, let's lay out a plan. Let's sit here and look at and not just be so knee-jerk to it and let's do 12% right now as opposed to moving forward and being able where we can work it in and not have to go, "Okay, this is what you're getting. We don't even have a plan moving forward." Again, and I'll throw this in a capital plan moving forward that incorporates everything so we can work it in with ours. And I know that's something y'all are working on. It's been working on since me and you got on here

before and before. But why don't we do the other part, too? Let's let's look at the numbers. Let's play it out with a minimum projection and be able to see where we can go with it and not just drop it all at once. So, thanks. Yes, sir. I look forward to to having those conversations with you. I've already met with with two of your members here. Bigs came by with Miss Hall. We sat and talked for a little while. Uh, Mr. Karan, also great conversations, right? I look forward to doing the same thing and really starting this next budget cycle as soon as this one this one ends. And so those are the kind of conversations. Yeah, me and you haven't had a chance to run each other. I've been I a couple of them know what I do on this for my job and it's been I've been a little busy.

I did get a message to call you though, so I appreciate and I've got yours and I apologize for not following up on that. That's on me. Oops.

Oh, okay. Well, those of you that know me, I've been I've been saying this for over and over and over again that my dream is that this would happen that we would develop a relationship such that the county administrator the superintendent are working together. We don't just like lay it out at budget time. And that's part of the problem. Like on the county side, like right now, we're we have a study going about what are we going to do about fire and rescue and EMS like and the future and how that how is that going to go? What are we going to need? What resources are we going to need? The same with the employees and compensation. So, what would be really good is the things that you need for your folks for budget and uh for salaries and benefits and all. I'm going with these two. You you can't do it all in one year. But if you have a plan and you get people invested in the plan, that would be school board, board of supervisors, and there's an understanding of what needs to happen for you to achieve this plan. And I think we've done it on capital a lot of times, but we've never done it with operational. So, right now, we're looking at a budget. If you if you look at what you asked for, um the 8.2 million and the difference in what has been proposed is 4.1 million dollars that you're not going to have if the five cents goes through. So, what do you do about that? Well, there's a whole list of things that you all really want to to work on. So, let's say that, you know, we're at the end of the budget. There were things that you couldn't fund. That would be to me when we come back together and and we talk about like we were unable to fund this. How can we go about doing it together

for the next year? I mean, that's where I can see some real good conversation coming up. I appreciate that. I just do want to clarify though that you're using a $12 million stand in. You're you're referencing 12 million 12% 12. Oh, I thought you said 12% 10 million. Okay.

No. Okay. But to to the the larger point, um we were trying to do everything all at once and because I asked this question, there were targeted uh positions uh that were identified and and maybe B you can you can u give us some perspective here uh the request that we have dealing specifically with the differential in salary how much of that is of our request I honestly don't know I'm asking this but can you see that's the problem they're sitting right behind me they need to sit behind you I don't like that

I'm like so you're looking right at me it's like yeah sorry it's not a wandering She's really good.

That's right. No worries.

So, so we don't have the breakdown for those specific positions. We have it, you know, for overall support staff, but um that includes everyone except teachers and and guidance counselors. So, we don't have the the ones for the specific ones that would have the the adjustments to get them, you know, to parody basically. Um that includes the listed that we had. Um we have some of the specialists, administrative assistants, uh it was quite the list of of those that we prepared. um technology technicians.

That was a question I was going to ask was what the split because I think is it six well 5.1 million right is the salary and hand the total just the salary piece of it or 6.9 is the total right 6.9 6.85 yeah and so yeah what is the split between staff and then the teacher um as well.

So for support staff um it is um right at 2.9 million um to cover all the increases um for support staff and then in the teacher category which also includes guidance counselors and the athletic directors as well um that is approximately 2.26 million. Did we get a break out of that? Yeah, this is the one I think Angie provided. Okay, cool. Were you gonna say something, Gonan? I I am going to say something

because I'm attending this um supervisor certification program. I'm learning a lot about uh budgeting and I'm about to finish budgeting module end of March and I'll be in Richmond, I guess, not this weekend, the weekend after to finish that. So, I learned a lot. Not that we're doing anything wrong here but the major part what I've been I think Chesterfield presented Hanover presented and what I've been seeing what they are doing is which we've been you know talking about not just one time joint session like that but having a joint meetings uh especially of course the superintendent and county administration more than more than our joint meetings laying out five-year plan. Um, unless it is COVID or Wall Street collapse, we should be able to predict what every year we need and then look at even even 10-year plan if you want to stretch like the um, you know, for the for the U

strategic plan.

Yeah. And then of course you have to every year twig obviously it's not going to fit and align. And then the other thing is uh, this was interesting. I wanted to actually share these slides, but I was late to make a copy. But this lady uh that presented, she is Terry Stone, CPA, and she's the assistant superintendent business and operation in Hanover County Public Schools. But the interesting part with her background is she served on the school board and she served on the county supervisors. Now she is the financial person for Hanover. So she put some interesting slides uh you know uh for I think the title was local education school funding. Um you know one slide is well the title is working together and then she says what I tell school site funds are finite understand competing needs not just one service area embrace the local government does not understand complexities of the schools you know so us not understanding you know what's going on communication with exclamation respect each other's position and get more flies with honey. Now the other side is again working together and says what I tell the county side. Now don't assume they don't know what they're doing because it is foreign to you. VOE reporting is time consuming. Start of school is requires timing. Build trust and respect each other's needs. information regarding audits, financial statements, budget details and then look for and ma maximize areas of collaboration whether you know purchasing department crossraining financial personnel um you know but I'm

going to try try to say and I've been thinking about this before even I I guess came to the board of supervisor seat that you know we really have to I mean this is a one local government this is not school board against you know the supervisor and I think the other thing we were talking about with m Miss Franklin also because we have to pay 100% more to get what is needed in the classrooms we really have to go after state I mean they did did dodly this general assembly time and I'm hoping they will do a little better next time around but just imagine if we don't have to pay that double for as so you know to cover the other personnel in the school system. How much money we will have as a as a county government to do all the other things we like to do. So I think maybe we can charter a bus and we all go and raid their offices. I'm I'm all for it. If they don't have a space, we'll be in the hallways.

Hypothetically. Just want to lay that out there. Let me lay the leg. Where's Marty? insurrection hypothetically hypothetically but we have to show their presence you know that's what that's what I'm trying to public input and the more of us do the input the better the results

yes and again you know we have to act like a one unit um so that we can accomplish more and it will be good for I mean for county economic development the schools should do good I mean you you don't One is a county government falling apart schools. That's that won't work. And obvious school needs because we are the taxing authority, you know, we're needed too. So we really need each other. So we have to like find a way of working together

and and we do such a good job of trying to put more into the required local effort that like Angie showed on slides slide nine. This is really important and we do it and um and I've talked to some of you. You know that when we go down there to lobby the first words out of our mouth funding for public education and this time not only did we um bring that up but do you have a plan to fund the JARK study which they don't

and they were supposed to be working on that. So what they've been doing since the JARK study came out is just throwing money. Here's some more money. you're getting extra money, but what is like we're talking about a plan. What is their plan? And one thing that makes that hard is because it would cost the state so much money to meet their responsibilities. And it's very difficult when you're in a state where you change governors every four years. And if you're in the House of Delegates, you're running every two years. And if you're in the Senate, it's every four years. And and Virginia is made up of regressive taxes. Personal property tax, real estate. They're regressive, but I don't see that changing anytime soon. So, we have what we have and we really need to, and I agree with G, and we really need to continue to put that pressure on the state. But I want to sort of pick up with us. I think that we have tried and we have added every single year money. And when that when everything happened with um EMS and and the fire and rescue, that was a shocker that year. It was like a $2 million shocker. And it's only gonna get go up as we continue to lose volunteers. Hopefully, you won't lose anymore. Come on, Todd. Make sure you don't lose anymore. But anyway, um

well, and the volunteers. Yeah, we've talked about this, Mary. Yeah. Um our we still have strong volunteer bases in kind of the population centers and RER Fire is a major standout. Um, and so it's where um where there's fewer people living in the communities, there are fewer people that are able and wanting to volunteer, which is why you see the fire and EMS. And those communities are spread out. So your response time is even more critical. So that's another issue. Well, and plus the impact of the interstate on response times. Yes.

Well, no, you're talking about competitive pay. For the ones that been on the board of supervisors for a while and a school board, I want you to listen and tell me if I'm wrong. We went through a budget session one year. We put $1.7 million for school employees later on in that year. Go back and watch videos. The school employees didn't get that $1.7 million. We never was told where it went to. Am I correct? You are.

So for to sit here and say county employees make more than the school employees, that's probably true. But it's not the board of supervis. It's not the county citizens fault. I know some people make fun of me when I say this, but you have to set your priorities the way we do.

You have to set your priorities. So talked about that 1.7 that was a match for bonuses that came from the state and to help our employees be able to live those bonuses. We had to produce part of that. And I absolutely agree with you because it irritated me and I'm using a nice word um when that did not happen because employees received part of that bonus and then you all said if the revenue comes through then we will give you the other part and it did not go to our employees in a bonus like it was supposed to. And I absolutely agree with you and it still irritates me today that that didn't happen. But that was not a part of a compounded budget. That was just a bonus situation. But I agree. So, uh, with I appreciate you all doing the comparison with job descriptions because job descriptions are very important when you're talking about these types of comparisons. Um, and when you get down into job descriptions, you may end up with a situation that you did not think that you wanted to be in because as you said, this is the requirement on this side. This is the requirement on this side. And if you're going to raise those salaries on our side here, it can mean we're not going to be able to have as many folks to do the jobs that we have now. Let's just use administrative assistance. We have a lot more administrative assistance than the county does, right? We would like to increase their pay, but to do that and bring it to par and I'm not I don't even

know what that looks like is comparison. I'm just using it as example. We may end up with less administrative assistance because bringing their pay up and the job description does not match your job description as far as education alone will run us into big problems. So, it is not as easy as apples and apples. This can be apples and oranges and it takes a lot of time and a lot of consideration when you're doing this. Uh, I want our employees to be making livable wages, to be able to not have to work two and three jobs to survive, but it will take a lot, I mean, a lot of time and effort if you're going to look at jobs and look at the job descriptions and the qualifications in those job descriptions to be able to make that happen. And how do you still make it work for the school system and still have the same number of employees and not have that 12% increase that we're asking the county for? Because that's what it would take. And again, hypothetical, but I'm just saying this is how things can play out. Mr. respectfully, you're giving me a reason why we shouldn't fix the problem rather than recognizing that MCPS employees and county employees both work for the county. Speak to that constituency. Speak to both sides of the county because the message you've just delivered is that's your problem.

Wrong answer. That's not our problem. Wrong answer. I'm saying that's what it came across to me as let's work to the future. So there could I'm not I'm not disagreeing that there might not have been a mistake in the past, but that should not dictate prevent us from finding a common solution. Yeah. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Okay. Sorry. We give y'all the citizens give you a budget. You sit down, you do your priorities, right? We do our priorities.

I'm not apologizing for us taking care of our employees. Our MCPS employees, your employees as well. We have no control over them. Are they your employees as well? So, you don't fund the schools? Yes, we fund the schools, but they're not our employees. This board has two employees, county administrator and county attorney. We've been talking about working together for years. This never happened. If you want us to work together to do this, we can work together.

Let's do it. But you can't change after you do the budget. You cannot go the very next night and change around what your priorities are. I don't know what you mean. Last year. Oh, no, no, no, no. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no. That was not a board priority. And it was made clear from the very beginning. It was the board agreed to put let's put it on the line

SSOs on in the budget to put it forward. But it was made very clear in a couple of different meetings. This was not a priority of the board. Just like this year and every other year, there are things that we put in the budget that we hope we will be able to fund and then we go back and we figure out what has to go because we don't get fully funded. I'm not saying that to be you all don't fully fund us because throughout the time I've been on this board, you all have worked well except for one year. You all have worked well in helping to try to support schools. So, no, no, no, no. Let's not talk about us going back and doing anything different than what we had already talked about before. And if other people misled your board to believe that that's what that was a major priority for our board, they misled you. They misled you, not our board. Go back and watch the meetings.

That's what I'm about to tell you. One, last year y'all said we need one penny to give the students free lunch and breakfast. Correct. We had one of our board members go back and watch the meeting. He said, "I'm going to vote for one penny increase to give the students free lunch and breakfast." That didn't happen. That was one board member. That's not how I approached the I I approached a complete budget. Now you got it back on your list here and that free free

and that was not that was not what any board member said. There was a list of items that if you didn't fully fund our budget, some of those items would be cut. We did not promise you any single item. No item was promised if you cut any of the budget. If you don't fully Let me talk, Mr. King. Let me talk. You had your moment. You had your moment. If you don't fully fund what we ask, then we have to set the priorities just as you just said. There you go.

We set the priorities when you didn't fully fund us. Now, if you fully fund us, if you fund everything that we ask for, you give us that budget and we change things, now you have an argument. But until you fund every dime we ask for, it is our job to set the priority and set the budget for the school system. You didn't fund everything. So you is that is is

it is that correct from the rest of the board of supervisors members? Are are you all misled? The citizens we're talking about affordability for citizens. You know, we have worked as some of them said, we have worked together for years. And all I'm saying is set your priorities. When you come and say we need X amount dollars, this is what we need to do with it. This board, as long as I've been on here, has never cut the school budget. We may not have funded every penny, but we have never cut the budget.

I don't disagree with that. And when y'all, before you even raise the taxes, 1 cent, which you voted against, yes, I did.

I stood up there in front of y'all, and thanked the board for their work and thanked them for consideration of raising it 1 cent, which I I thought they were probably going to do. I didn't know for certain. I thanked y'all. We went back to the table. We did the hard job as you always tell us that we need to do. We cut what we had to cut. We set our priorities. We set a budget for the school system. And then you told us we were wrong. When did I say that? Last year.

By taking the money away. Okay. in resetting the money. You told us we made the wrong choice with our priorities. Oh, school safety in your in your actions. Yes. In school safety. Yeah. Correct. Can I start ask? Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. Go ahead.

All right. Um I'm going to say this. I'm gonna say this as nicely as I possibly can in as a PG of manner as I can because we can't legislate what happened last year and refix it. Okay? And there's no sense in having a pissing contest, which is what this is going to turn into. Okay? Yeah, I got it. I'll take a hit on that. But it's it's what it's turned into. All right? So, let's work now and let's not be adversarial on this. We understand last year got it was a rough go for both of us. Let's stay where we are now and talk about where we are currently and how we can work moving forward because we cannot work backwards. We can only move forward on this and work as a team to get this done.

Okay. Can we all agree on that right now please? Oh yeah. Yes. I think that's the most concern you agree that to that just gonna that's what we're trying to do. Yes. That we could work together moving forward. I I'm willing to work. I'm made with anybody. Now, I've always said that I'm going to finish I finish this one thought off because you Dr. Gry actually said something because I do listen and I do read all your stuff.

Y'all brought up that you wanted three assistant principles brought in and a nutrition fund. You brought that up in one of your meetings. I actually talked to to Miss Franklin about that earlier and you said, "What do we want to prioritize?" Right? You said that. Dr. Roundtree said, "Robert's rules. I don't have to negotiate at this point." That also that's that's a direct quote and and respectfully that he's right. He doesn't have to. Robert's rules, by the way. But I know but he said it, not me. I know it's not quoting me. Yeah. Oh, sorry. I missed that one. But yeah, he said it. But was it you said it? We don't have to negotiate. Negotiate with ourselves is what I said.

Oh, all I heard was that Dr. Okay, I apologize. Quoted that. You said we're not going to hack our budget until we have to. Ah, now thank you. I appreciate that because I heard his part. I didn't hear yours and I apologize. And I was the loudest one. Really? I could dude I couldn't hear you. Honest to God, he must have cut out. Might have been ever said that.

Well, I'll give you credit on that one then. But but still the prioritize and you're right. That's a tough decision to make. It sucks that you have to make a decision whether you're going to have three assistant principles or nutrition. You shouldn't have to. And I agree with you. You shouldn't have to make those decisions. You shouldn't. But we're in a position right now where we all have to make those decisions. And this is where we can and this is where we can't. And I apologize for using the language that I used before, but that's what it was turning into. And y'all know how colorful I get. Um, and that's a PG version for me. So, because most of you know me. So, I want to move forward and I want us to be able to do this in a in a responsible manner where we can work together and we can do this and we cannot make this adversarial because it does no good for anybody in the room.

Gotcha. It's my cue. Sorry. And I think um a a key difference is um some of the prioritization on the board of supervisors side does happen prior to the budget document coming out. And so we take everything and parent way down before we do the first budget budget presentation. Um and so the the inverse is true on the school side is you guys present your proposed budget and then have to prioritize after you learn information from us. And so that creates I think just in the very nature of things it creates some tension and some misunderstanding. Um, I for for my own point of view understand that you guys need to go back and prioritize um and that it's not my role on the board of supervisors to dictate or influence those priorities. Um, I'm I'm really happy and excited about everything that's proposed on your budget. Um, and I don't, you know, if I wanted to influence it, I would run for the school board and be on the school board. So I respect the work that you do to prioritize it after that.

And keep in mind your forward is just like ours. Not everybody agrees with the priorities that are set forward. Agreed. Okay. So keep that in mind. Some of the priorities that go forward are not what all of us want. Exactly.

And um so way back conversation two or three times way back to the $15 an hour thing. Um to me that was one of those things. It's not a fine money. It's a have to find money when you've got people making $12 an hour. That's a very big difference in paying someone on a level of education and not education. And a couple years ago when we met at Blackburg High School, if you remember, I brought that up, a grounds maintenance. You know, these things don't have Christiansburg this and Blackburg this and Riner and Eastern McGomery. We It says McGomery County. So if those fields and if those browns and those school lots don't look good, it's a reflection on you guys as much as it is us. Somebody's not saying, "Oh, that's, you know, that's this over here. It's McGomery County." So paying maintenance people because they're jumping from McGomery County to McGomery County schools to Christiansburg to Blackburg to Tech because somebody's paying a dollar more this and that. And I said a couple years ago, let's just find let's just find an even playing ground for those folks. So that's where with the $15, however we found it, wherever it came from, that was a have to. That wasn't a want to. That was a have to. I can't imagine making $15 an hour. Can you guys? I don't know of anybody in here. I mean, and and I don't know what anybody makes, but that's tough. I mean, it's that's just almost un unbelievable to think we're asking people to work for that. And no wonder I don't blame them. I would go here and go there and do this to get a dollar or $2 more for my family as well. So, those are that's where I'm coming from. We need to get our folks like that that are making doing maintenance, doing our custodial work because that if we don't have good custodians and good maintenance to keep up our buildings,

what's that mean? That means more money for us, does it not, which we have to prioritize. You guys have to find when we have roofs that collapse, when we have this and that, that's a have to situation. We've got to come together and figure it out. There is no arguing who wants this and who wants that. That's a must. So, you know, the 20 years I've been on the board, you guys, and I have said this publicly. It you guys have come to our our need most of the time and I appreciate that. Look at the buildings that we have here in McGomery County. Look at the schools that we have built just in my time of seat. I mean, it's amazing what we've done. We have beautiful but to the point having extra people. You know, people go, I don't understand why you don't have this kind of stadium or you don't have this kind of this or you don't have that kind of that. Well, we got four high schools, four middle schools, and you know, not even thinking off the top, 19 schools altogether that a lot of counties have six and seven. So, yeah, our money does get spread a lot more thin than a smaller body of employees. So, it takes a little bit more. And and it's like I said, I didn't agree with everything that we prioritized personally. The step I didn't agree with that. I I think it's going to come back and hurt us and but the board as a whole chose to move forward with that. But um it's something that as you said was a need for retention for our staff. So anything that's decided is for the best and the well-being of what we need in the schools which affects our students which affects our families which is a reflection of you guys as well. So, however, whenever we we need to figure this out and u there needs to not be any you said, we said, they said and and other

than Goon and 20 years, I don't think anybody's reached out to me to talk to me and that's okay. You know, everybody's busy. We have family. So, I look forward to anybody who would like to and I'll be glad to talk to you and see what I can do to help find a way. Comes back to more flies with honey. Exactly. Exactly. And thank you Goon for reaching out.

I've heard over and over even when I interviewed with this board was, you know, the need for increased communication, not just with the school board, but with the board of supervisors. So you can you can come in my office anytime and my priorities are all over the walls, right? as I'm learning more about um with the vision and learning about the needs of our schools and what our kids need and our teachers need, man, it goes up on my wall, right? And that's going to be part of what creates our our upcoming budget, right? And our strategic plan and I hope that you all will be a part of that strategic plan because that'll drive our budget ask in the, you know, next years or so. And I'm I'm an open book. If I if it's going on, you're going to hear about it. I don't hide anything. I I don't play games. whatever it is is the need. It's the need and I'll be able to justify it for you. But I I hope that you'll be a part of the process and not just at the end, you know, we come to you and we present this big budget and having to explain it then. I hope all along you're seeing exactly why we're building the budget that we're building. And I and I hope that you'll come to my office, sit down with me, and we'll have that conversation. You can point at the wall and say, "What's that all about?" And I'll I'll be glad to explain it to you. have this vision of you in a room surrounded by whiteboards just furiously scribbling on top.

I think I'm on my third one. We just ordered first to right of technologies. No, I really like to hear strategic plan. Um, you know, county is wrapping up our comprehensive plan which is a super long process. Um, so we're doing a rewrite of our comprehensive plan that we're in the public hearing stage of now. We've been at that for 18 months at this point with tons of community input meetings. It's a huge thing. The parks and recck department is wrapping up um its master planning process um looking at, you know, our goals for the parks and recck department for the next 15 years or so. Um we have the fire and rescue study going on um to kind of determine where the needs are and um where funding should be countywide for fire and rescue. And then we also have um a water and sewer system study to determine um where water and sewers exists, where it logically can go and how the water and sewer needs align with the goals of the comprehensive plan. And so um all of those planning documents do not happen in a vacuum. They all kind of are inter mixed with each other. I know you guys are working hard on a capital plan. We're very excited about that and I think that's part of what could be a strategic plan for the schools. Um, and I think what I'm hearing from both sides is that everybody wants to collaborate on that. I don't think anybody's saying that they don't want to come to the table and put in the work. Okay. Just kidding. No. What else? What other questions or comments or

I've got a couple. Go ahead. Wrote them down. I got to do something with them. I love this. Something that we haven't talked about. It it has to come out of your budget somewhere. Uh but it's been around for over a year. How much have you spent on collective bargaining? That was something we all all were curious about. Some people said, "Oh, it won't be hardly anything." And other people said, "No, it would be significant." So, what's the number? What have you spent? I know the committee on this.

The last the last number that I remember seeing coming to us was around 40,000. So it's not these huge numbers that people keep throwing out there. Um and again, most of that is the attorney stuff. We get rid of the attorneys, we do much better. We don't have an attorney here tonight. Well, I know we've got attorney. When attorney when attorneys get involved with some things, it can just just tick the the uh tally up for everybody.

So, is that ongoing expense, 40,000 a year? No. No, that was just the startup. Getting the process in place, getting the contracts and things done. That was just the startup. Now it's a HR process.

Okay, that was my easy question. My hard question is is a lot more thinking involved and maybe you all will jump on me and that's fine. Every year your budget goes up every year. We see what the needs are, but it continually increases every year. But, and I haven't seen these numbers since last year, and that was the test scores, whether they're the uh federal test scores or the state test scores, but they've been flat ever since COVID. And I think last year you all were given money from the state to do uh a lot of tutoring, which you did. There was a lot of kids being tutored. When are test scores going to increase? I mean, how is that going to happen when everything looks like it doesn't change, it just stays the same?

I don't know if anybody else wants to jump in, but um yeah, I'm curious.

Yeah, so this is how it plays out in in the budget. Um if you if you look our at our so scores, um we have a couple of real problem areas. One is students with disabilities. And so if you look at our budget, one of the things that we have targeted is additional support, which means not only sped teachers but also par professionals because they play a critical role. And so one of the things we tried to do that the administration has tried to do with the budget you because we when we talked about the effects of COVID and kids coming in with with higher needs. Okay, what does that mean? Well, one of the one of the effects of that is you know this plateauing you're seeing with those scores. Well, you can't just give them a better textbook and all of a sudden and and even even a better teacher to address those to those so scores there. There's a considerable population in our schools that require additional support. And that's both with our special ed teachers and also 504. There's a lot of kids with 504s. But to the question the the issue about those three additional assistant principles, one of the things that might have not been clear in that conversation is that for um identification meetings that kids have that have special needs, an administrator needs to be in that meeting. Okay? So you need administrators in those meetings. What happens when they're split between two schools and they can't participate in that meeting? That means service denied. And so that's a that's a practical application of that request is that is to meet the needs of those students because if if you look at our three middle schools that um were identified as needing additional support, what was the population that needed additional support? Special edit

pretty much I mean you got 9,000 students. What is the percentage? 15% are special needs. 15% and that brings the whole system down to where yes there's no progress you can see but if you compare the test scores with students with disabilities with our other populations there is a market difference the failure rate of students with disabilities is is really it's high I I don't have that number in front of you but isn't it as high as almost 50% I I depends on subject but the subject yeah it's high these Do you want to provide some context or

there's a lot of different data points we could look at, but if you look at our overall pass rate um across, you know, compared to other school divisions in 2024, our pass rate on average was 74.53%. We were ranked 37 out of 131 school divisions. For 2025, we actually did improve our performance. So we had a 76.5% pass rate across all so tests and increased our rank from 37 to 30th out of 131 school divisions. So so we have seen improvement.

Okay. All right. You're like I said the last numbers I saw were last year and the the federal whatever that test is um it was flat. We didn't get anywhere. We didn't have any gains. And I'm I'm I'm kind of confused as to why special needs kids would be held to that same standard as everybody else. They don't separate that. Nope. Dr. Winer, does that factor in the change in cut scores for 2025 also? Not yet. So that's another change that's coming. Thank you. From one year to the next, too. Yeah. just for

we had a 200 200 student increase in our sped population in one year. That's a lot to adjust to when you you don't have the teachers. Are there any other counties around us that have inclusion like we did have full full inclusion? Yeah. Are they same? Are they in the same rankings as we are because of that or I think there's different models, different ways of of doing it. Some are doing some self-contained classes, some don't. Some do full inclusion all the time. I think it varies from county to county, so it's hard to make those comparisons. I learned something. Thank you.

Did you have any other questions? No, I scratched off of your list. Scratched it off the list. Well, there's one more entity to go after. That's will be the federal government because when they got the 1970 IDA individualized education, they promised 40% and they're only paying 12%. So, if they actually What's with going after the federal government? I'm going to go after someone and that's been going on the whole time because I know Senator Kaine mentioned that. He's mentioned that in a lot of his uh meetings

and it's like they're just not doing it and they can't get them to do it but yet then the county Montgomery County public schools has to make up the difference which i.e. we have to put more money in. So yeah, that's true.

Does anybody else have anything else to add? This is though we don't have another joint meeting probably until June 29th I think. Um I will be there just now. Just in regards to Oh gracious

just in regards to those uh those three additional APs. So that total there's six uh that we had in the budget. Um, three of those were or two two of those are specifically for the elementary schools that were pointed out in the the performance reviews um being Price's Fork and uh Shawsville or not Shawsville sorry uh Falling Branch Elementary School. Um

and those two those two schools are very large schools. uh the the other third AP on a top of the three APs in order to have APs at each school, at least one AP at each school. The other third AP is for Auburn Elementary School and those are to help provide additional support to those very large elementary schools that are on the order of 500 students. um which is just a tre tremendously large school for prek to to fifth grade.

Manny, so I came in here tonight to read your board just as much as I came in to read this budget. Most of you seem okay. And I mean that the strictest mathematical definition. And that's for laughing at the lawyer joke, Steve. I never laughed at that. I saw it.

What I heard was people are willing to work together and move this thing forward. That could have been done in an email, but you dragged me out here in the snow. That's fine. But I will hold you all to that because none of you picked up the phone and called me just like I haven't called any of you. And I'll tell you, I will change that and I would expect the same of you. The last thing I'm going to say before I shut up is I came in here loaded for bear thinking I was going to put on my hat, read the riot act, and storm out. My better judgment unfortunately has led me to tell you that you seem like decent people.

Well, you haven't gotten to know us. I'm not talking. We go way back. Mr. Kits, my language would make you blush. Probably not. I'm very PG. seem like lovely stuff when I've had enough of you all for the night. I'll second that. Thank you.

Well, I think ending on the promise of more collaboration, some study and true comparison of where some of those disparities are is a really great future project. So, I will call this meeting of the board of supervisors adjourned. And I will call this meeting of the Mon County School Board. Thank you all so much. I