Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

So, I've cut them in visuals. They know on blue when you're introducing me, they go the cameras. The two slides after that, they just stay on cameras and then Good afternoon. I call this uh March 24 special meeting of the budget work session to order. Roll call, please.

Mr. Hoy, yes. Mrs. Null, here. Mr. Drew, present. Mr. here. Mr. Shepard, Mr. Chairman, you have a quorum.

Thank you. I just wanted to start by first inviting and and and thanking the uh school administration and and possibly some board members for attending today. I thought this morning was a wonderful uh kickoff to the day with uh Congressman Whitman providing a check for the uh improvements that we plan at uh Bethl Manor Elementary School. Uh 3.2 2 million. And I think Zorn still has that check in his hand. He wouldn't let go of it. Um, and just one further acknowledgement, I'd like to congratulate Dr. Carol on his recent appointment as superintendent. So, thank you. Thank you, Chairman.

I believe at this point I'm turning it over to you for uh the presentation.

All right. Thank you, Chairman, and members of the board. Thank you for having us in. Uh we're here to talk about what our operating budget looks like for next year. Uh we'll we'll talk about that first. That'll be largely based on my presentation to our board in February making the superintendent's uh proposal. As of last night, it's now the school board's uh proposed budget uh by vote. And uh when we get done with that piece of it, we can stop take some questions and answers and then we will continue with giving you an update on the Tab High School project giving the progress we've we've made to date. So, uh, first of all, I'd like to, uh, begin by reminding everyone of the core values that we have in YCSD. These serve as our fundamental commitment to serve our community with excellence. These values, integrity, engagement, growth, innovation, and safety, support the planning, decision making, and work responsibilities of our organization. Additionally, I'd like to thank uh I'd like to talk about my values and beliefs about and the importance of a wellexecuted public education. Public education is vital to the American experience. It is integral to and it undergurs the two major systems we live within democracy and capitalism. A well-educated populace is necessary to create the continuum of civic involvement all the way that starts from being just a member of a well-informed electorate all the way to an elected statesman like we saw this morning uh in Mr. Whitman. Also, well educated and prepared students contribute to the economic production of a community and the nation as a whole as well as positioning themselves for personal financial success and independence. So public schools are economic engines for their communities, producing students that will enlist in the military, enroll in higher education, or

go directly into employment. Therefore, every dollar spent on public education is an investment in both our civic and economic systems to keep them healthy and it is our job to be good stewards of those taxpayer funds that make that investment possible. Now, we recognize that uh given the population of York County, a majority of which of those households don't have school age children in their home. There needs to be an understanding that the schoolhouse no longer resembles what many residents remember from their days as students. The picture up there is an actual York High School picture. In the 1950s and60s, public education centered almost entirely on the three Rs, and the materials were almost all paperbased. The curriculum was narrow, instruction was one-sizefits-all, and the expectations placed on schools were narrow and academic. Now, today's educational landscape is far more complex, demanding, and held accountable. Schools operate in an entirely different world. So, while there are those who might say we should only teach the basics, employers and our parents expect more. They expect and need graduates who have developed critical thinking. Communication, collaboration, creativity, and civic responsibility. All elements outlined in Virginia's profile of a graduate. Modern curriculum spans STEM, world languages, CTE, fine arts, digital literacy, financial literacy, and specialized pathways that prepare students for a global technologydriven economy. And critically, today's schools must also meet state requirements that did not exist in prior generations. At the same time, the responsibilities placed on public schools have expanded dramatically, starting with

infrastructure and staffing to address safety and security. But schools also now support mental health and well-being, growing English learner and special education populations, students experiencing housing instability, behavioral and trauma informed supports, and a wide array of family services that simply did not exist or were ignored in earlier decades. This expanded mandate along with the staff and tools and technology required to meet it must be reflected in our investment decisions. And in that environment, our increased of increased expectation and account accountability YCSD has thrived. All of our schools remain fully accredited and all earned ratings of distinguished or on track on the new state system, making YCSD the only school division in region 2 to have all schools meeting or exceeding expectations. We also enjoy third-party recognition of excellence in our niche and US news ratings as well as receiving our third blue ribbon in as many years and we are now enjoying our fourth year as a purple star division. So board members, at our November regular board me meeting, I shared during my superintendence report some graphs that illustrated our academic performance as a school system and how we exceeded third party organizations expectations based on both our socioeconomic and levels and based on our funding. I'd like to share with you this scatter plot. Now this is uh a measurement of our fourth grade reading performance against our funding as a school for those schools. But this is indicative of the performance that we have across the division. Now you see uh an intersection a vertical and horizontal axis and

that's the average for the elementary schools in our school division. And the only thing that I've added to this is the red dot. And that's the intersection of the average state school funding and the average state performance.

What you're looking for is being higher and left of that red dot. Indicating significantly better performance at a lower cost. So when you look at this graph, it is undeniable given our placement that we are doing it better and for far less than the rest of the state. I also stated that night that we would only be forwarding new budget items that were mandated or invest in our staff through compensation and training or our students through enhanced programming or staff positions that can advance us in improving their educational experience. Which dot was York County?

If you'll go back, you see the colored green and yellow circles. All of those those center around that the the intersection there in the top left. That's our average. See the the uh the highlighted vertical and horizontal axis. So where those meet is our average. The red dot is the state average. What does each circle represent? Every circle you see there is an elementary school in this state in this state. In the green and yellow elementary school in this state. Okay. Right. In the green and yellow that are highlighted where you see the actual color those are the elementary schools of York County School. Okay. And and some circles are bigger than others. That indicates

that indicates the size of the school. Okay. And what's the difference between green and yellow? Uh green is uh socioeconomic.

Okay. For those that would say that we waste tax dollars, I would remind them that we exist permanently under constrained funding that causes a constant economic efficiency demand that prompts us to continuously evaluate whether we're getting the most out of our resources. You'll see a few examples of that today. I'll be the first to say our state funding is not adequate, and I'll provide specific examples later in the presentation. and an unfair share is definitely placed on localities. However, at the same time, part of the state funding formula sets expectations and relies on localities to contribute. Part of today's presentation also addresses practices of the past where we've had to solely or overly rely on endofear funding to purchase necessities such as textbooks, buses, technology infrastructure, and building maintenance. I think we all agree that these important components uh are so important to our performance that the funding for these needs to be provided for in a stable and predictable manner. Now, questions we asked during this process include will additional positions or funds improve the chances for better reading, math, or attendance outcomes. And you'll see some new points of focus there uh today. And we asked the question, is there a better way to utilize positions or repurpose those already approved funds? You'll see some of that today. And during the process, we also plan workforce reorganization to repurpose positions and consolidate software platforms. So at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Bowen, our chief financial officer, talk a little bit about per pupil expenditures.

Dr. C, before you do that, sir, could you just explain what region two is? Region two is the state is organized in different regions. Oh gosh, I I think there's 18 schools in region two. Southeast ed uh of Virginia spanning everywhere from I think WGC is the farthest north down to like SuffK and Isa White and and those all through in Eastern Shore. I'll have that in a later. Okay. Well, that's right.

So, um Dr. Dr. Carol talked a little bit about per pupil expenditures and and the results. I wanted to focus a little bit on just the per pupil expenditures. Um this is important because it helps frame the budget conversation. Uh not just in terms of how much we're asking for uh from the state and how much we advocate from the state and from the county, but how efficiently York County School Division operates compared to our regional and statewide peers. So on this slide here, you'll see these are the uh comparators that we regularly compare ourselves to when it comes to testing and funding. There's nine school divisions including York County. And you can see here that we're nine out of nine as far as per pupil expenses. What is the numbers? Dollars or what? This is the number of dollars per pupil.

This information comes from the annual school reports that every school division reports to the Department of Education. And so between the highest of Newport News and York County, there's about a $4,300 difference per student in funding.

Dr. Dr. Carol mentioned uh one of our points of pride of course is the niche ratings. Um what makes this particularly compelling is the funding comparison. Falls Church in Arlington ranked se second and third but they spend approximately 10 to 11,000 more per pupil. This just goes to reinforce that YCSD delivers exceptional outcomes with significantly fewer resources and that efficiency is central to every budget decision. Do you think there's some issue or some way that the by just the the the scale is driving the cost up? I mean just they they I mean our school system is only what 13,000 students. So and then some of these some of them up there are 28 30,000 if not more. C

certainly the location has an impact on that and you can see it from this uh slide here. This is um this slide shows all 131 school divisions. Highlighted here in blue um are the three in the niche ratings. You can see Arlington and Falls Church to the top left um close to the top in the state in spending and then York County all the way to the right. We're 109 out of 131 school divisions. Those school divisions highlighted in yellow what? Out out of 131 school division in in per pupil spending

per pupil. Okay. And um so what we're seeing in the yellow, those are all the school divisions that are in region two along with York County. And then in the second column, a little more midway down, you see the green, that's the state average. And on state average, we're about 28 $2,800 less per pupil uh average per people pupil expenditure um here in York County.

So Mr. Bowen, I'd like to interrupt here and just just for illustrate purposes here. So, like you're saying, you're talking about a lot of divisions that are up there that are larger and in Northern Virginia, but someone who is more similar to us, Williamsburg, James City, let's say, not to pick on them, but uh that difference is $998 per student. So, let's just talk about what that would mean for us. So, if you uh for easy math, that's $1,000 a student. So a thousand times 13,000 students. That's $13 million a year more proportionally they get. Now we're talking federal, state, and local funding. We're talking about the whole picture. And I would never say we we should have $13 million more. But when we talk about the uh you know the shortcoming of or or always being under a constrained status, we're talking about if we had 13 more million dollars or a fraction of that on a year-to-year basis that builds up that has a cumulative effect. And so that is the difference between their funding and ours is the is the comparison as if we had 13 more million dollars every year.

Yet your performance is so much better. That's true. And it but So money is not everything on that.

Yeah. But what's a good point because does it really tell us why? I mean we have a I think your county is probably if not one of the number one or number two somewhere in there a number of federal employees military military retirees active duty things like that. Um and we know a lot of people that work in the Navy which is the largest component of the military um in Hampton Roads. uh work on one side and live over here for the schools. Um what's what can I draw any parallels? Can I say it's because we got a lot of military a lot of federal employees working uh that are involved either retirees or what that here in York County and as a result there's I don't know some aspect of that that's causing uh our efficiency. I mean I that's the one thing is never clear is what's causing it. Have we just got the right people? I mean, what is the what's the answer here?

Efficiency or performance? Well, okay. That number efficiency comes you all. Well, I mean, that number is your is your funding per student. So, that comes from just adding up the what comes to us from federal, state, and local.

Well, that's just adding up the number, but it's cost is lower. And what's driving it lower? What drives that? See, that's the one aspect that's never clear to me all these years is what drives it lower. What drives that cost lower? I mean, are our employees uh willing to work for that much less money or is it because they like the environment or is it because we got more employee more federal employees or we got something going on over here? What's going on here that's not going on somewhere else that they have to spend $13 million more to get and not even get not even get the same level of education? So I think it's a combination of things. Um so like we look at Suriri um very small school division. They're number one in the state.

That's crazy to me. So you have to look at the dynamics of the of the division. There might be a higher economic disadvantaged population where they get they receive more state and and federal funding. Um their county is a rather large county. So the transportation costs are more uh costly to go from one end of the county to the next end of the county. So there's there's a lot of different things. Um, I would say it's a combination. It's our staff. It's the support from uh the county, the investment of our families. We have a highly engaged uh family uh population here in York County, more so than the other two school divisions that I've worked in. So, I I would say it's a it's a it's a number of things that contribute to this.

What What is your co what is your top three cost drivers? labor uh personnel benefits um and the changes in state uh standards just whatever that happens to be at the time. Um so that purchasing new material.

Yeah. So uh this coming up year we have about a $3 million um price tag on textbooks and this is because of changing math standards and so that that's right now going to be a big driver budget driver for us. Um, in previous years it was the reading standards and so the state provided us with a little over $3 million of one-time funding. They gave us three years to spend it and so that was that was a driver for us and we had to use those funds to provide additional supports for our students who were in reading recovery and um and that helped us in our test scores and our our our team of instruction did a phenomenal job. We hired some reading specialists. We hired some math some reading coaches and the results were phenomenal. And so we'll talk a little bit about how we've taken some of the new money this year and we've moved those positions out of that one-time money into into the budget for this year.

So staffing is one of your big it's about 80 to 82% of our budget. Okay. So staffing is and staffing um classroom material, we call it books or whatever the case may be. What what what's another one that's one of your biggest drivers? Transportation. I think the next slide or the two slides from now we're going to get to our budget drivers. Okay. And real quick, can you speak to school staffing? Because I think a lot of people when they think school staff and they think the teacher environment, but you're much more expansive than that. Can you spend 30 seconds and explain to everybody school staff consist of

school staff consist of about a thousand teachers um and in a host of support staff. We have over I say 125 bus drivers. We have bus assistants. Those assistants ride with our special education uh students. We have custodians. We have maintenance workers. We have plumbers, pareducator, we have pareducators. So those are in classrooms to support our kindergarten classes, but also to support our special education classes.

We have um support staff. We have a finance team. We have an HR team. We have an instructional support team. Um we have a what's called student services that largely um supports our students um in discipline McKenna Vento students um support the administrators in the building with those with those issues um IT staff and IT counselors school psychologist social workers health we have speech pathologists we have uh as occupational therapy I I think what you're asking maybe is what is the total complement of workers that you have over 1,800. 1,800. That that's all inclusive.

Yeah. Well, doesn't include our substitutes. We have about three to four three to four. That does include the bus drivers. Yes. Okay.

But again, I just want to illustrate that it's when you think when you talk school division, it's more than just when you staff, it's more than just teachers. Has about 800. It's almost twice as many 80% more um personnel beyond just teachers in under your employment number. We hire between 160 to 200 new staff members every year and we still have a number of vacant positions. So through all that hiring there's you know there's onboarding there's professional development ongoing professional development for our our licensed staff and so there's a lot of requirements that come with the employee groups bus drivers and continuous bus driver training right and one last question on this number does that include your capital

um it does not so that's that's strictly the cost cost of operation running the organization that's operational Yeah, this is there's a couple of things that are excluded. I think summer school, food service, and capital are excluded from this number. Okay,

so let me dive into revenue. Um, and I'll begin with really our primary budget drivers for state funding. Um, I'll talk a little bit about local composite index. This is the index that's assigned to each locality and it determines locality's ability to pay for the cost of education. Talk about average daily membership. Um this is somewhat synonymous what we talked about about enrollment but enrollment is not what does not uh equal average daily membership. Enrollment is how many kids do we have in enrolled in our school on a particular day. Average daily membership or is how schools are funded and it's it's over a period of time. How many students from the beginning uh of school start first day of school through March 31st and that's the state's formula. And then also changes to the V uh Virginia retirement system rates and these are the rates that employers pay on behalf of their uh employees including their pension, hybrid disability, group life and

go back and explain the composite index and how it how it ours changes. Yes, I'll I'll have a slide that okay and then also the state uh standards of quality. This is we often see this a moving target every general assembly. But not only that, once they have the state standards set, um, as our enrollment increases, it may be that we need to hire additional staff. Right now, we're kind of on the verge of needing to hire additional English language teachers to support our growing um, English language learner population and sometimes that is driven by state code what that ratio has to be. So when he says on the verge meaning if we hit a number then we have to

correct. So this is the history of local composite index. So this is from uh this is nine bianium. So the state operates in a bianium budget and at the beginning of that budget process um they update the local composite index for each locality. And so you can see here I'll start with the second to the left 2012 to 2014 we saw a significant spike in in the LCI. This was a result of the great recession. Now this data trails three years. So what happened during that time is that the great recession hit Northern Virginia before it hit the rest of the state. And so that's why we saw our numbers increase significantly during that time. But since then we've seen a steady decline and in the past three years we've seen a significant decline. The difference between what our proposed rate is for next bianium which is 2628 that 3518 and and what it was in 2012 2014. It's about a 8 to9 million difference in funding. So, state funding shifted. It shifted from the local burden to the state burden. And so, that that's a great thing when we see that number go down. I point this out because I don't know how long this number is going to go down. This is going to turn on us. And I will tell you just just the the 36% difference between 2426 and 2628. It was about $485,000. It's just a very small difference but that local composite index uh impacts about 90% of the funding from the state and

and I think for our viewers explain what actually is a composite index and how it's determined. So it's um it's very complex formula. Yes.

But it involves um the locality's true property values. That's about 50% of the formula. Um and then it takes on the wealth of the community. So that come that information comes from the department of taxation. That's about 40% of the of the uh formula and 10% of the formula is the sales tax of the locality. And so all that's each each segment is divided by the average daily membership at the time that this um calculation is done. And and then it calculates a local composite index for every locality. average daily and membership of school of the school division and then it does a statewide average daily membership.

All right. So feed all that in the algorithm and for 2628.3518 offsite and the higher the higher the index the more local pay. Yes. Yes ma'am. Right. And the lower the index the more the state pays. So to put this in perspective's about 38. Uh Northampton County on Eastern Shore um is over 5%. About 50%. Richmond over 50%. So 358 of what is that saying? 35% of school funding in this case. So based on the standards of quality funding model,

the state comes up with a total figure. This is what it should cost your county um to educate their students. Then they take this formula. So 35% is going to be paid by has to be paid by the locality, 65% by the state. Now just about every locality in the state with the exception of a handful. I mean mainly out west the very very poor districts. Um the localities provide funding in excess of the minimum required. Are the are the extremes like one end to the others? Like I think it used to be that the lowest you could go is 20.2 two and the highest you go is 08 eight and 20%. It's still there. Yes. Okay. And and I and I guess to drive the point home that you just mentioned,

look, your county provides this.35 or 35% of the funding is not going to meet your needs in total because of standards that we have to be the number one school district in in the state. That would just be 35% would just just begin be just be getting by. If you only provided the minimum, uh we would be cutting several hundred positions. Yeah. It it wouldn't be getting by. It it would be similar to us not providing the extra funding for the sheriff's office. Suddenly, we'd be down twothirds of the deputies that we have now. And that would be unacceptable, you know. So, it's just trying to put that in perspective. And that applies to everybody,

right? Yeah. So I'm just trying to put that in perspective. That's what I meant by earlier about the state is not adequately funding education for right.

So this is a history of our average daily membership. Um I'll just start with FY20. We were 12,914. That was the highest we had seen in York County at that time. We were projecting in 2021 to ex to eclipse the 13,000 mark and we were very excited about that until COVID hit and we lost 670 students. Now the great thing about that uh about what happened there was that the state held us harmless. They kept the funding the same even though we lost those students and that was you know very chaotic time. Um but it's taken us 5 years to recover from that COVID loss. It took us until 2025 till we eclipsed 12,985. So in 2026 we eclipsed for ADM purposes 13,000 students. We were budgeted at 13,051. However, um with the update on the projected number for this year, we're actually 33 less and that's going to cost us about $450,000 for this year. So, we're working to cover that loss of revenue. Um what percent of students in the county does that represent? So, that 13,000 obviously there's some that go to private school, some that do homeschooling. What's the total number of students?

I don't have I don't have that. And that that also includes some tuition students as well. Um not only do they pay the tuition, but we get the state funding for those students. And how many of them do you get military money for from federal government? We have about uh 36 to 38% military connected. Really? So this year we have received over $9 million. I want to say it's $9.4 million. that exceeds our current budget allocated for impact aid and our budget right now is $ 8.7 million. So we need to receive at least 8.7 million from the federal government. So we're again have exceeded that for about the fourth year in a row.

And then whatever excess then goes into the revenue stabilization fund.

And so for uh FY27, our budget's based on 13,000 students. So we're seeing another 18 student decline based on the projections of the Department of Education. And so with that, um, this is what our projected revenue changes are for FY27. Um, the state, and this comes from the governor's proposed budget, 13,000 students, uh, 51 less than what our original budget for 26 was, is 6 almost $3 million additional funding for the county, and this is a working number because this hasn't been approved yet, is 1.2 million. What we're using to base our budget on. We had some adjustments to local miscellaneous um funds. And this is for things like uh tuitions, summer summer school tuition, um student fees, and also indirect cost. So we had some adjustments there downward about $15,000 and then adjustments to federal grants to the tune of 834,000. So in total, our revenue increase is $6.5 million

over last year.

Over last year. And this is just a snapshot sixyear history of our state funding. And you can see in some years we uh received uh a lot more money and 24 was the year we got the $3 million in all-in funding from from the governor and u then we spent that over the next three years. It ends this year. So the state economy and the funding formula um typically however the state economy goes is how school funding goes because we're such a large portion of the state's budget and over the past six years we've we've had a very good economy and we have been successful with with state funding particularly in recovery and state funding but still with the with the amount of money that the state has um right now um we're still seeing minimal investments and recovery from the great recession. So uh coupled with that is unrealistic standards of quality. When we talk about the standards of quality, you have to understand that these are minimal standards that the state funds and again local government is providing more than they're minim minimally required to. And this is really evident when we look at just on the funding of assistant principles and par educators. Uh you may have seen this before, but on elementary principles, assistant principles, we have 10 elementary schools. We have 12 elementary uh assistant principles and the state funds us for next year in 27 2.58 positions. Now that's not full funding because what happens is they they they apply the weighted average of salaries um for those assistant principles and then they apply the local composite index. So the state's going to fund us 65% of 2.58 assistant principles and we pick up 35% and in the remaining nine.42 42 local government that picks up the full 10.

So this is where we point out and we continue to argue this and advocate to the state that um SOQ standards are are deficient. This has been the JARK study correct for for many years. They they've made some they made some uh ground up on on in the JARK study uh particularly where it comes to support positions but we still have some to go. So question um on APS, what causes multiple APs at a school? Is it the number of students? Is it the number of problems?

It's a combination of both the number of students and sometimes a special program and it's at that school that might have make more demand on that AP. No, I was just curious because I noticed some some of the schools have two APs. What's our largest elementary? Uh, Tab L I think is around 700. Okay. Mr. Right behind it.

Uh, no. Mcrder's that's kind of flipped a little bit that when we reszoned. Uh, we're shifting more to of that burden to Waller Mill and that is that is growing. Uh, right now U McGrder I think is around 608 610. I could get you those numbers. Are you doing any redistricting at all? No. Thank you. I just wanted to raise that point. Okay. Now, we do have an of the last redistricting, some of it is on pause because the lynch pin was additional space in the deer elementary parking lot.

We're working on that project right now. And then once that is completed, then that allows us to do some more shifting uh through three other schools that's been voted on. But then we would have to take a look at, you know, the situation on the ground at that time and see if that's still necessary. But we have that open.

So I showed you an a six-year snapshot of state revenue. This is a six-year snapshot of county revenue. and um just want to say your continued support has been critical in helping us balance our workforce needs and rising operational costs. So in ident in addition to identifying new revenues, we actively look for savings. So for FY27, we're proposing or projecting approximately $2.6 $6 million in expenditure reductions through a staff attrition, IT cost efficiencies through consolidation of several software platforms and VRS savings. Nutrition nutrition is a highpaying person goes out and and a and a less paying person comes in.

Correct. Okay. It's not actual reduction in total staff. That's what I was driving at. Yes. Not a reduction in staff, but just a reduction. So it's not just people retiring or leaving. Correct. We maintain the same personnel and we're just replacing them with lower. Sure.

So with the reduction in those expenditures um in the combination of our new revenue, we have 9 almost $1 million in additional total resources available for the budget. And I'll turn this back over to Dr. Thank you. So every year our schools and departments submit funding requests. Every year we are unable to fund the overwhelming majority of those requests as the budget recommendation focuses primarily on what are our musthaves, what are the legal requirements, what are this what uh state mandates that end up being unfunded. We had a big one last year uh compensation and health insurance impacts. So um I'll remind you again of our priorities uh from our strategic plan. The reason I share this with you is because you're going to see some color-coded uh slides. So orange is the collective commitment of of the schools in the community. Supportive culture is what we try to kind of our workplace culture and for the students the climate. Highly effective talent is our people and future ready graduates is getting kids academically prepared. So almost every uh expense should be able to be support our strategic plan priorities. And so I wanted to remind you of that. So we now we will dig into um the operating budget. So the this is a slide of those things that end up being neutral for us. Um I mentioned earlier that we're always working to maximize our recurring dollars or repurpose funds. So here we're creating a position to supervise our school nutrition program to be in compliance with new state requirements. uh in addition adding an FTE for HVAC and plumbing work dedicated solely to our cafeteria kitchens. Both of these positions will be paid out of the school nutrition fund uh which has a healthy balance and both should be easily supported annually by that fund. We also

list here some hardware replacements. We have typically funded these types of expenses through state safety grants or end-of-ear funds. These capital funds will move to our maintenance reserve fund to finance a regular replacement cycle. That Valcom system is the emergency alarm that when we push the button, then it it automatically tells everybody a consistent message on what they're to do across the audio in the building. As far as supportive culture, uh there are some additional costs. So, we got a nice bill from Mr. for Bellamy for various county services uh great

cutting in the grass

uh video services ground maintenance and uh to support uh increased cost for deputies that comes at a cost of 251,000 uh you mention you heard me mention HVAC and unfunded mandates earlier in the presentation so there uh last year we were hit with an unfunded mandate that we have to uh certify every HVAC system in all of our schools every four years to Ashray standards. Now, we design and build to Ashray. Uh but that uh but uh we don't make sure every unit is up to it every uh every year. Uh you know, we repair things as they break. And uh but this uh this bill now or law requires us to have that certification reported out to the board every four years. And so our estimates are we're going to need another HVAC tech just to do that work. Uh that's going to cost us about a h 100,000. Uh we're going to have to have materials and supplies in order to make those repairs to keep them up to that standard. Uh and we've got another 100,000 for that. Now at the bottom line, you see utilities increase. Uh the bill that was in uh the uh general assembly this session talked about the fact that we also had to keep our humidity a certain level all through uh the summer that seems to have uh been carried over. Uh but we're also experiencing other uh utility increases. So we're going to leave that in there for now. Let's see let's see where we uh end up. Um,

is there a freon replacement program as well? Are you forced to change out to maintain current recommended? Uh, oh uh if we needed to, we would. And we do actually have some R22 that's still still used and we we banked it. I mean, we have uh we have storage for some of it. Okay. And uh but at some point that all is all going to go away for a replacement. What are the Ashray standards? Ashray is the I couldn't Well, Mr. Kilbert, do you remember? So, it's a worldwide consortium setting standards for air quality in public. Air quality. I was going to have you define what ash. Yeah, I knew that.

Yeah. Um, humidity levels, uh, carbon monoxide levels. They set standards for all of those and they, um, have bumped those standards up across the board regardless of whether the building is occupied or not. Okay. Um, security platform. What is, what does that concern?

Security platform would be the next thing. So, we're working on identifying a platform where um you can have uh all staff that have a badge where if hit a certain amount of times will actually put the school in lockdown. So, uh further decreasing the time it would take to get the school locked down. Uh it has a number of features with the visitor management system all the way through to if we had to have reunification. Uh it it it works all the way through. We have built a system like that. We've done it all manually. Uh but it's also something that was part of the most difficult piece of what we do. And so we're looking at a piece where we can can source that to a security platform. Uh there's one that we're looking at that's used um nationally and also in the area. And so we're working on on getting to that to that piece. Now uh clinic and athletic training supplies. In recent years, there have been things that we have been required to have in the clinic and also athletically. Uh foremost is uh AEDs and portable AEDs. Uh recent uh mandate was that we have to in our athletics uh scenarios have an AED within three minutes round trip from the source of that AED to the to the person that would need it. and that includes cross country races, golf matches, you know, anything. So, uh, we have to make a good faith effort to have that. So, we've had to order additional AEDs. Those need battery replacements. There are other things in the clinics now that we have to have on on demand. So, we're we're creating a budget line for that. Uh, high school athletic directors, uh, the VHSL has in recent years just opened everything up. You can be practicing all the time for every sport. Uh throughout

the summer, our athletic directors were on an 11-month contract, so we're adding a 12th because they just need to be in contact with their coaches and be helping monitoring those offseason workouts. So, to increase the salary to cover that ju just the 12th month, right,

not the rate. Um and then also an increase to the IT hardware budget. This is something that we've been doing over the last three years. Um, you remember me earlier in the presentation talking about trying to get things off of that end ofear funding. So, this is for servers, switches, projectors, desktop computers, wireless access units, UPS battery backups. Uh, some of the items on top some of those are some of the items on top of our onetoone devices that have been typically left out u for uh or just funded through the end ofear funding. And last year we were able to replace our 9-year-old teacher workstations that we had pushed to an absolute deprecation point. So now highly effective talent. So this is the one all the employees pay this the only slide they pay attention to is uh the pay increases. So uh what we're proposing this year is a 3.25% average across the board for all licensed and non-licensed staff. Now that breaks out differently because the way our pay lanes are uh established that the average step is 1.5%. So we would on the license 1.75 for the non-licens and then the balance go to a market adjustment and that comes at a cost of just under four million. The next line is our quadrrenial review. Now this is something we do annually. We break up our workforce into four groups and we are in group three or the year three of a of a four-year cycle. This is primarily the people that are non-licensed grades uh 22 through 28. And the what we do there is we do a salary comparison within our comparator market and we look to see if if individual jobs if the midpoints on

their pay grades where that matches up. uh with the comparators and if it's more than 5% below the average then we make an adjustment. And so for this year to keep them up to date that would be 141,000 for the affected positions. And this is something we do annually to try to keep up that market competitiveness. And where you fall this year on kind of Hampton Roads um list of salaries. Are we where we want to be? Should we be higher, lower? Well, this brings those. Are you talking about the teacher salaries?

Yeah, teacher salaries. I think um this Dr. rights. You reported out we're pretty consistently number three in the division or in the on the peninsula, but anywhere from two to four depending on which pay lane you're looking at uh you know based on degree, bachelor's, mast's, doctorate and the three and a quarter% is likely to maintain that level

that I it it should be close you know some I don't you know some divisions have gone for 2% others are in the four range so I I I haven't seen where that would break out. Okay. Uh but that three and a quarter is a number I'd like to see go higher. Our step that that barely covers inflation that they're experiencing. Any additional dollars is uh something I'd like to see that bumped a bit more. Uh so get back to under the quadrano review. We have three positions there. Uh we have a few positions. are usually in our lower uh lower salaried positions that we look at annually to make sure and they're also harder to hire. So our para educators, our bus assistants and our custodians para educators were recommending a 2% now this is on top of the uh 3.25 that goes for everybody 2% for the paras uh two 2.5 for the bus assistance and 5% for the custodians. we are uh seriously understaffed in the custodial ranks. Um and so then the last line is we are changing we are breaking out special education para educators from the other par educators. We have now have a long run of not being able to come close to filling all those positions. We're creating a new title for them, student support techs, and there is a raise in there. Plus, we are folding in supplements that they get in self-contained classrooms. Some of this is uh people handling um you know, diapering and other other needs. We're folding that into the actual salary so that when people are looking for those jobs, they're actually seeing it because they were seeing pair educator and here's the rate after they got the job

then they would find out there was some additional supplement but that wasn't drawing them to the job. So we're hoping this is going to help us with uh drawing people to some open positions where we need the most help. So now you said you're hiring about 180 per year. How many of those would be uh replacing those who have retired? Dr. Wrights, do you have our retired retirement? Or or moved on.

Well, I'm getting to the moving question. Well, we have uh you know, we have different we track the reasons that employees leave. I report on that annually. I just can't uh remember that off the top of my head and I think Dr. Writes is going to his presentation. So last year we hired 97 new hires and of those were retirees don't think I have that number. I we once again we can it varies from we can send you that also if you'd like.

And where are we losing staff to who are moving between divisions? Oh well on that I can't answer because I remember his slide. We are a net importer of uh employees not an exporter. U he has a slide where he shows the exact numbers. I can send that to you also where we compare ourselves to our comparator region. And I think there was only one division where we didn't outpace import from export and that's because only one person changed and one person left but nobody came in. Okay. Uh and that I think that was Picosen, right? Uh but everybody else we we imported more than we exported. So we are the division of choices. We are the we are a destination division. Yes sir. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Okay. So now we'll move on to just some other u talent pieces is um as we said self-contained teachers. Now these are teachers who work in special educ education classrooms. Students don't leave the classroom or if they do only for a short period of time. And so we're just asking for uh we're going to add $1,000 to each of those 25 uh staff members. Uh now the big one is the health insurance premium.

Uh this remember that we we did this in February. We have since found out that our consultant says that we should be considering a 19% increase in health care uh or health care insurance. I don't know what number you have. Uh, we put in 10% into this budget and I'm going to address this later. Um, okay. So,

before you move on, while we're talking about salaries, um, right now you're you're paying people across the board 3.25. Why are you not performance merit-based? What's the incentive? If I'm a teacher and I'm doing really really good at my job and somebody is not, they're getting the same pay. So what's the incentive? Do you There's no bonuses. There's no like to me it just doesn't make sense that you would just pay everybody across the board. I don't think that's fair.

I think it's unequitable when you have some that are stars and some that are less than stars. Right. So my experience would be when you put bonuses on the table, it gets thrown out the window every time you have a recession. I've seen it over and over again. I saw it in Florida and I saw it in North Carolina. I've also seen merit-based systems that have tried Wait a minute. What do you mean by thrown out the window? Every time there's a recession, it's the first thing is cut. Oh, by cutting. Okay. Well, that's what you meant.

Yeah. I'm sorry if I That's what I mean. So you're saying that during those tough times, you're not able to offer that merit based bonus. So I've never seen a merit-based program that has been able to sustain. And then

and on top of that um my experience has been that when uh there's been efforts to differentiate pay that we find that there's such a difference in the demands of different types of teaching positions that to try to find one equitable system has been difficult. And so I I've just yet to see a good one. I I see where logically it makes sense, but I've never seen one really done well anywhere. I guess I'm shocked by that with all the schools across the United States that there's not something that is a merit-based performance-based. That that shocks me.

There there there might be. I just have not seen it in my experience. So my my one experience with this with the state um they tried to implement this and um what ended up happening is the state funded the agency and said 3% of your employees are exceptional and then they gave you money for those 3% employees and then it became um a real fight over with with supervisors because you have it's very subjective. you have someone who who evaluates very very strictly and you have another supervisor who doesn't evaluate at the same level and so there's some inequities in the process or in the people themselves when it comes to making those decisions and evaluating employees. So there was limited funding that's that was available and that's what we've been dealing with coming out of the recession is the limited funding trying to catch up from the five years that teachers were not provided raises. And so um we continue to provide everybody that that fund that that same raise in order to bring them out of u the loss that was incurred during that uh great recession. to to Wayne's question, if if not financial incentive, how how do you incentivize people to higher performance on the teacher side? And second question, if merit-based performance evaluation and compensation doesn't work on the education side, you still got 800 some people on the non-education side. could that be applicable there to help incentize performance and and and reward people for performing at a higher level as opposed to across the board.

Okay. So my follow-up question would be so where is that where are those additional dollars coming from to incentivize or am I going to hold salaries static for a few years to create that ability? Well, that that's a question you work towards. But fundamentally fundamentally how can What would that what would that look like? Then you can talk about what would it take to to fund that? Have is that something that all you all have explored? Have you have you seen it on this on the administrative side worked elsewhere? I have not seen it. That doesn't mean it's not out there, but I have not seen

in fairness with all the collective bargaining uh bills going through the state right now. How how would you possibly build a a merit-based system? it's gonna that's not something the unions would support. Now, we have provisions that we can withhold a raise um if somebody's on a performance plan, but outside of that, everybody gets the same raise. I understand the concept. In fact, I've lived through several iterations of this in my life. The problem is there's always a way to game the system.

Always a way to game the system. And it becomes a it becomes an inhibitor a lot of times. I mean, you'll get your bright and shinies and they'll they'll they'll progress to the point of incompetency, but for the most part, uh it just it it becomes the focus is not on the on the job. It's the focus on getting more money. And so, um I've just it's it's always gamed. It's always gamed. And it's um it's not very productive. It's got to they got to have I mean it's if if it's money if money is it then maybe that you could do like that you could do that on the stock market or if you got brokers in a brokerage firm and stuff like that. I can see if that's where your money game, but but these folks are not necessarily money oriented because if you were, you wouldn't be a teacher, right?

So, I mean, there's other things you can do, make a lot more money. A lot of other things, too. But again, that that that environment is what I've lived under for 36 years. I mean every year my performance gets evaluated and I either meet or exceeds and then my my um raise my bonus is impacted by that and how much my salary increase is impacted by that. So that incentiveize me and everybody that I work with to try to get that exceeds

rating so you get a higher salary, you get a high your limitation on what you're talking about though is how much business you get. Okay. I mean, if you're not making money, you're not making money in your company, you're not going to be getting these payraises. You're not I mean, I mean, I I lived through this as a contractor and um and the only way you were going to get raises is that how much money did you bring in and how happy was your customer? And then not every everybody got it, but you still in the same token uh that and then you just price yourself right out of the market. And in this particular case, I don't know how you price yourself out of the market and the fact you just butt up against the tax rate. But u yeah, I it's it's the concepts of doing this. I does I they're there. I've seen it. I just don't know how it applies in in the local level. I just I just see a struggle. It's a time consuming um

subjective and well, it's always very subjective. Uh you can you can make some objective parts of it, but it's very subjective and it's just game. It's it's a game system. So I think it's just easier not to do it. Well, just because it's easier not to do it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. I know. But it's easier I'm just saying it's not it's easier not to do it. I'm just saying it's not not easy. It's just not easy. It's easier not to do it. I think that's probably why it's being done because it's easier that way instead of doing it right. Easier not to do it. It's easier not to do it. You get to this point. You get to the point where your number one school system in the state, what you incentivize and do what? Make them number one A+ in the nation.

Yeah. The other potential downside to to that is when when you work in a teacher shortage like we currently experience and we have some flexibility to provide a raise to to another teacher above another above other teachers. is that it it may be it it may be we may be more inclined to say we're going to give it to the special education teachers because we have a hard time hiring those. So, we're going to to keep you. We're going to give you a 5% raise and give everybody else a three and a half% raise. That might affect some of those decisions when you're when you're judging someone on a merit-based. Um so, it can get it can get cloud in the process. Yes,

there are pockets. It's the easiest thing to do, but I've never seen I've never seen a system um in government in my 37 years um that works on performance base that's equitable, particularly when you have a large group like teachers and you have PE teachers compared to chemistry teachers or physics teachers, uh CTE teachers, world language teachers, all these very hard to fill positions, but it might be easier to fill a a PE teacher than it is a world language teacher right now or particularly a sped teacher. So it just becomes very problematic. It just adds another layer of complication to to the process. I understand the discussion, but let's continue with the

What's our national what's our what's our national shortage of teachers? Used to be a quarter of a million. I know the national I haven't looked at that recently. No, you guys used to come in here and throw that at us all the time.

Yeah, that was me. I was the one that would tell you that. And and then it happened. And so, uh, but we have, uh, enjoyed a good experience the last couple years as far as filling our spots. There have been a few that are still hard to hire. Uh, but on the whole, we're doing, uh, very well right now. All right. So, just just to remind you that I'm going to come back to that health insurance premium because that is that is a big pain point for us. Okay. So, uh, moving on to future ready uh, graduates. So, uh, Mr. Bowen earlier mentioned the all-in funding, which was basically grant funding from the state. And we're often asked, you know, once you get a grant for something, doesn't that automatically just get absorbed into the uh into the budget. As we look at uh who we've hired in the money that we've used for the all-in funding, we do want to retain two of those reading pairs and put them onto the budget. a half a literacy coach and one assessment and compliance coordinator. Now, this only constitutes 20% of the salaries that were in all of that uh all in funding. So, it isn't an automatic we take it all on. In this situation, we're uh we see benefit to absorbing 20% of what was provided. Uh we also have additional requests to improve service delivery. uh Tab High School as uh I'm sorry, Tab Elementary School had had to uh perform 43 child studies for special education this fall and we need some more capacity there. So in that second uh second line there are special education teacher specialist uh that right now if we were doing it today it would go into tab elementary but it might be something that floats or is

shared between two schools or moves to a different school as we anticipate continuing to have more special education identification work. What would require 43 studies students that would had been referred? Each stud is for a person. Each person. Okay, I'll just sing it as the whole sing as a unit. What the heck? And but that's not a we just go in, we look at a kid for an hour and make a determination. It's a it's a long elaborate process. So So when you talk about we talked about assistant principles earlier or a lead special education teacher or something, somebody's got to be there to do that work. And so we So when you do a study then what happens?

Well, they're either determined that they qualify for special education or they do not. Okay. So that's that's what you're doing. Are you finding children coming in at later grades that require special education because they have not made it in private school or they're not made it on home school? There is always there are always students who were not identified at their previous uh location. I don't know if I have any numbers. Dr. Skinner, do you have that on your fingertips?

I I do not have that on my fingertips. Remember, we we do have a large military population. So, we have a lot of students coming into our school division and sometimes we have to go through the process with those particular students. Okay. There used to be a rule of thumb ages ago here it seems that like for every 50 students you get one you get one student that needed special education which if you run on average what a quarter of a million a year. Yeah. Right now we're at 12.2%. That's the way you think about that.

We got 13,000 students and every 50 out of every 50 going to get one and everyone's going to require about a quarter of a million dollars in investment. That's a ton of money. And and the federal government doesn't give you enough money for that either. I never get over that number. No. No. Even though they passed a bill that they should. No appropriations.

Well, there you go. Another unfunded benefit or partially funded. Uh and then and then the $5,000 item is just a supplement within our special education department. We want to add a uh some additional duties for a lead there. Uh for continuing uh you know that we are a participant with the New Horizons uh center and uh all of our tuition combined. It is only $12,000 additional. We're very pleased with this number and we hope that that holds. What percentage?

How many students? I mean it's broken up, isn't it? according to different school divisions how many you can have so many slots do it uh vocationally I think we have 260 is that it's it is about yeah around 260 and then there's also the special education students with the center for autism uh but I'm talking all in the the addition is only $12,000 to what we already paying

so 260 on the vocational side participate from York County schools how many want to participate Many of our students do get in. There are there are waiting lists for some of our programs that are more um stair fighting program things of that nature. But there is a cost savings because all of those programs are very specialty programs. If we were to house those in our school division, it would be costreventative for our students to have those experiences. Right. Understand. But we we there's there's more demand than is capacity for students. We do compete with the other school divisions for those slots and we but we are the number one user of school systems really

in the new Verizon program. Well, they're x number of slots and we fill our slots. The others don't fill their slots. Can you take over some of their slots? Yes, they do. Sometimes in special education that can happen. um we can do that but oftent times once they make these offers to students they begin their courses and at that point in time you you really can't because your classes have started and Mr. Page, by the way, is the chairman of the board of trustees for New Horizons. Also, good for you. Great. I'm sorry. We have great presence for our students at Horizon.

All in with the budget. It's um $4,60,000 is what we projected to pay in FY27 for gov school, CTE, and special education. So, we were pleased to only see a $12,000 increase.

Okay. And then some other uh for educational experiences uh $10,000 added uh for band instruments. Uh 10,000 for uh support increase for VHSL. Uh that's uh that's referees and that type of thing. They've uh referees are able to command more money because less people are doing it. And so uh we are experiencing raises there. And then administrative mileage. We've put additional expectations on especially on our high school administrators to travel to away games now also to monitor behavior and so we're having to pay mileage for that. So if you're getting away with only $10,000 extra to pay for rest you're you're doing good.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Um let's see. So then just some miscellaneous just kind of loose ends there. Uh we found out uh earlier this year that our phone system our voice over internet protocol Mel Mel is out of business and so we are not going to have support for that system. So we are uh identifying a replacement for that right now. What's the use for you?

Uh we also would like to add money to our white fleet replacement. We still have some cars uh that uh were built in 1998 that we're using. And so we want to add this to, like I said, get things off of the uh off of the uh off the year end reliance and put that in the operating budget so we can uh replace those faster. Uh we have $50,000 increase in our general liability premium. Uh capital projects. Uh, so this reads wrong. Capital projects office. Okay. Where Mr. Kilburn is now taking. And that's for supplies.

I think I think in my original thing I said capital projects office supplies. Well, papers involved, but also there are things that he needs sometimes just to keep keep things moving like uh Mr. Keller, you gave me a couple. Perfect example was this week at Tab High to put up the field lighting. It's prohibitive for me to have to stop and go back and modify a PO for $890, but I needed mats to protect the track so that we didn't incur further hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, right? So, if I have a nominal amount to go and just keep the keep the wheels spinning, keep the projects moving, that's really what that is focused on.

Um, we didn't have that in the past. It was always we had to figure out how to pull it out of the overall project and it slows us down and we might throw in some paper. Uh and then also a needed basis, right? Like if you don't use it, you don't need it.

Uh and then legal support. Uh just we're looking at trying to do some ways to support uh Melanie uh farming out a little bit of work around the office with the uh clerical help or something so that we can keep her going because she she uh supports a lot of work in our our division. So bottom line to recap uh you can see the total funds available the $9,000 or $9 million figure that uh Mr. Bowen mentioned earlier. You see the breakouts based on those strategic plan priorities and you see that the biggest driver is in the highly effective talent. So that's our salaries and benefits

and uh and so that's all accounted for. The big thing here being that we walk in with a budget gap of zero using your working number. So we are not here asking for more local dollars. anything that we would do additional if um if we were to get more state funding uh that when I talked about wanting to increase that number from three and a quarter that would come completely from state funding that would not we don't uh we don't anticipate that we would be coming back and asking for any more uh and so that's why we've prepared this budget this way. Um so all in all uh when you look at our complete budget now this is operating would be 200 just over $25 million and that increase is 6.5 million and that's I think a modest 3.3% increase across the board and so uh you know at this time

these slides online somewhere

uh we we'll we'll be giving those to you. So just a a brief update on 27 um and this is with the general assembly's uh proposals to the governor's budget. So the governor released his budget in December and since the house has concluded but what what the house has proposed is what we're showing here compared to what the senate has proposed. This is what the uh the state's calculation tool looks like. It breaks out all the funding in individual categories. And so what I'm showing here with the house is just what change to the governor's budget is. So here in the standards of quality programs, the house is proposing providing $755,000 more for special education add-on. That money would be required to be spent on special education programs. Um on the Senate side, they're increasing the uh projection of sales tax at a tune of $338,000 and then also a little smaller increase in the special education add on $147,000. This next slide is where we see the big difference. Um so this is the incentive and categorical programs. On this on the House side, they're proposing almost $3.9 million in a one-time flex payment. This would this would be only for 2027 and it could be used for things like textbooks

um for every school technology. Yes. For every school system I mean. Yes. So it varies per school division based on your average daily membership. But that would be that would be the amount for your county. Well, this is far just for us county. This is just for all right he's saying that number value changes for each different school division and then on the Senate side substantial

there's there's an there's a change in the in the compensation supplement so this is the Senate is proposing to provide um SOQ funded positions and support positions with a 3% raise instead of a 2% raise so the governor proposed 2% the house accepted that but the senate wants to increase that to 3% And so in doing that, it would provide us with 743,000 additional dollars additional go back. Additional to what to additional to what the governor's proposed budget has already provided. So what we've shown you so far is based on the governor's budget. This would be additional funding that we haven't incorporated yet because they haven't completed the process.

All right. So the house share is 3.9 million on top of the 4.6. Correct. Okay. All right. So that's one that's one time. Understand? But but that's showing there's the House and the Senate supplement to the governor's proposed budget. Yes, those two column is a compensation supplement one time. It gets rolled into basic aid in the following years. Okay. Okay. So, so, so what is the state offering for a pay raise this year? They the governor proposed 2%. Okay.

The House accepted the 2% but the Senate is proposing 3%. And so because the House because the general assembly didn't finalize a budget, that's what they still have to negotiate. Okay. So, and on top of that, then we get the three you get the 3.25%. So, based on the available funding that we have identified in our budget with the new state revenue. No, wait. Just answer the question. No, no, no, no. That's to help fund the 3.25. Oh, well, that's what I wanted to know. Vary it and everything. I just Yeah. So that 3.25 includes the state, correct? Yes sir. So your proposed budget is based on that 4.6. Yes, sir. Right.

And depending upon what happens the next few weeks, your proposed budget may change when you get that 3.9 or that three quarters. Okay. All right. So it's all right. So, we're still If you look at the governor's budget under the compensation supplement, they provided us for 2% almost $1.5 million. It it takes about 1.2 million for 1% raise for our staff across the board. 1.2 or 1.4, what' you say? 1.2. 1.2. And they gave us 1.4 for 2%.

So, for every raise percent raise we get. Okay. the by the state that counts towards the Virginia retirement system. Yes, sir. Okay. Which then the retire the Virginia retirement system is paid by local government, right? A portion of it is. Yeah. Some of it, but it goes up. It does. So, how is the school paying separately or do you guys pay the is it our bill for the county or is it the bill for the uh for the schools? Do you have do you do you have to in other words over the years all these people are retiring is that part of your your budget or is it part of our budget? It's part of our budget.

Okay. So we we factor in the employees share the employers share of the VRS which is 14.21% for teachers and it's about 6 and a half% for um what they call nonprofessional employees and that that's the rate that's going down. That number what it takes $1.2 million to give 1%. That number changes a little bit based on the percentage in VRS change and also it changes as as salaries go up then it costs more to give a 1% raise. It might be 1.25 next year to provide a 1% raise. Is it is the ERS fully funded now?

Um it's not fully funded but I want to say it's over 80% and that's a that's a benchmark I think we're comfortable with. Okay. It used to be $74 billion on the whole. So this is I was wondering I haven't heard lately. Yeah. But okay. 80% and it's not bad. So what I'm hearing is if the state came forward with additional funding the 3/4 of a million or whatever there could be an increment to the three and a quarter. Yes. But I'm also going to talk about some other things here. Yes sir. Like the 19% increase in the that might be together she was going to fall. Yeah.

And so, and finally, in the lottery funded programs, um the the House provided no additional funding in this program. The Senate on provided $94,000 in additional at risk funding and also $63,000 for school breakfast funds and that that funding will go to the food service fund. So, in total, 4.64 million is the House proposed. Um 3.9 of that is one-time flex funding. So only like 700 and some thousand dollars in reoccurring funding where the Senate is one almost 1.4 of reoccurring funding. The the previous slide had $46,000 for school lunch from the 465.

Yes. For from the governor's budget. What see they they break it up in different categories. I I can't explain why the state does what it does, but you can see in the first category under incentive it's meals school meals expansion. It's 48,000. And then categorical, it's school lunch at 46,000. And then in the lottery, it's school breakfast. So, but what what does it cost you guys to to provide lunches for everybody through the school year? It's well north of $46,000. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. That's addition. That's just the state's

small portion. That's what I'm saying. Our total food service fund um is about $7 million. So, make sure I understand this. So, this slide I'm looking at up here when it talk about total state funds, is that the money coming to us or is that for the whole state? That's this to us. Okay. So, you got $118 million from the state. Okay. They used I mean they're still the number one funding source for you guys, right? Okay. So we we spend $7 million annually in food services. So we receive federal reimbursements. We also receive and this is just just a state sharing what we're showing you. We receive federal reimbursements and we have paid lunches from families.

Okay. But then the state budget is $46,000 over 13,000 kids. What even let them eat cake. Cake's too expensive. Skittles. Skittles. Skittles. Everybody get a Skittles. Skittles. Skittles. Oh, because it looks like federal. What's not shown there is the federal reimbursement. And so, um, again, $118 million with the hope that we will receive maybe a combination of what the House and the Senate has has proposed for us, but we'll find out more here in the next month.

What is your what you talk about? Preschool initiative. What is the initiative? Why do they call it an initiative? Is that something special? Um, we are required to provide preschool services to students with disabilities who qualify. So that's specifically for a category of students. Correct. We currently have um right now in our school division, we have 142 students enrolled in preschool. Okay. And we have about 127 students on a wait list for preschool. Wow. Okay. Wow. That's a bunch. Well, that's why supplemental programs like um Little Law Caven, Primrosemies,

Sure. help fill that fill that gap. So,

okay. So, looking ahead, uh so I'd like to return back to that health insurance uh question. So, you'll remember we put in a number around $2.3 million uh that is a 10% placeholder. So we've struggled here for quite some time mitigating any increased costs and the future of health care costs are only rising. So we need to take some decisive action to reduce those costs and reduce the burden on the division. So I've asked Mr. Bowen and Dr. rights to work with our health insurance consultant to bring us uh a list of ideas so that we can reduce that burden. And I've asked them to try to identify at least $2 million. Uh whatever options that are created, we will evaluate for our final budget

at $2 million out of what's in what's the number total now? 2.3, but that only got you to 10%. Okay. And you expected a 19% increase? Well, that's So, you got to come up with another if I'm going to eliminate it totally, and I don't know if that's possible, but that's uh Well, you can't eliminate health insurance. I'm saying to to reduce this increase. Yeah. Right. So, I'm just asking for options. So, where did you get the 19%. The the consultants looked at our self-funded plan and felt that we were based on our experience, based on usage. Usage. you know, you're going to need to increase it by 19%.

Wow. So, what happened? What's what is what's happened between last year and this year or whatever the previous one? It's not just since last year, but high cost claims have gone up where we normally see, you know, five to six high-cost claims. It's it's over 10 and these are folks that over $300,000. Um they're pushing a million dollars in individual claims. Do you have to deal with workers comp or do you have a program that backs that up? We we have um a reinsurance policy that that covers that. Yes. Um what above 300,000 for

over 300,000 and and and that in that that premium is we're seeing significant increase in the pharmacy. We all know that GP1s are driving largely driving those costs but um trying to contain that. It used to be back in 2010, this came, this information came from Cintara, our health provider, that pharmacy was about 10% of your total plan. It's now 35%. That's the growth of pharmacy and it's continuing to grow. They projected next year be closer to 50%.

How how much of that is driven by the cost increase of pharmacy provides versus the expansion of what is covered under pharmacy? I can't give you an exact number, but it this there's so much that's contributing to it, but it's more than just the price has risen. We pro the what what is now covered under pharmacy is probably expanded as well. Yes. So, oh the list of the GP1s for example, um it's prohibited for specific weight loss. However, if you're overweight and the doctor can tie it to, you know, heart condition or for diabetes prevention,

it's easy to get the prescription. And so, we see that as an increasing there's there's the three three of our top um prescription drugs are the GOP ones. Now, my question is after taking the weight loss drugs, do you see a difference in the people who take it? I've seen Yes, I've seen the impacts on it. What I think what I think she means is is does that drive down other side the longterm side effects we have a difficult thing to measure we hope it's going to drop down because if it's not driving a health other health care cost then the expense you have in that is isn't isn't beneficial

but Mrs. null to your point. I mean, we can only talk about the aggregate and what we're seeing is increased pharmacy costs. If we were seeing reduced other health care costs, then it would just be one for the other, right? We're not seeing that, nor are we seeing anything close to a onetoone offset. If that was the case, great. People are having less surgery or less other type of health care. But we're not seeing that. We we've just seen pharmacy go and maybe there's a little bit on the other on the other end. So the bottom line is it's just more expensive. So how so how you going to drive this thing down without loading up on the on the employee? Well, there's I mean there's co-ay there's

deduction loading up co-pays loading up on employee. That's the that's the thing is there's going to be pain one way or another. Is it going to be a higher premium or are we going to have changes in our health plan and or the way it's administered? And so all we can do is take a look and see what is the best thing that we can do for our employees and for the organization because we have to remember we're paying 80 to 85% of the premium, right? So it's not just the the employee and that includes all of us that that enjoy that plan, but if we we can't just keep 19% various plans like a Cadillac plan to a a middle minimum plan.

We have two plans. We have a point of service plan, which is your typical HMO plan. Then we have the high deductible plan. I I believe that we will all be to a high deductible plan very shortly if the costs continue to rise like the rise. Is there a cap on your plan? U maximum family coverage deductible. So on a high deductible plan, I want to say it's $5,500 is is what's out of pocket. Catastrophic cost. I'm sorry. $3,500 for an individual. Um $6,000 for a family is what you pay before the first health care. There's no cap on what's paid in the event of a no disease. It's just the out- of pocket expense.

So So if you're paying 80% what what's it cost and now the total total? Well, it depends on the plan and what plan. You got you you know you know what your employees buying right now last year. What did that cost you? It's running about 26 million total. what our plan is I believe is for how many employees are we talking about? We have about 12 to 1300 on the plan 26 million. Okay. And that's um that's not all that's not just employees that's employees plus dependent. Wow. So my question is you said they had 10 high cost incidents, right? Yes. What are they

and and what's caused the increase of that? There's a the number of u cancers I think the is the number one that we see on the plan uh had some transplant we've had some mental health um it's been a just a number of things and I I don't think we can say there's a trend last year we had a spike that doesn't mean that it's a upward trend on an annual basis no that's something that varies so the next year you know everything with healthare could be lower usage, but we just had a particularly tough year this year.

And and when we see these high cost climates, um the insurers typically wrap their arms around those folks and they try to get them, you know, managed care to get them out of whatever condition they're in that's causing the increase and and cost. So whether whether it's um you know some home health um services as opposed to hospital services and the likes.

So the bottom line is we want to take a hard look at it, see what our choices are because it it it you've got to deal with it one way or another. Our employees are going to feel the pain one way or another. It's going to require hard choices. We have to make some cha choices because if this continues as it predictably will then um we can't sustain it and you all know in a budget a budget is a zero sum game right so if you're going to pay more in insurance you're going to not be able to pay u the the uh compensation increases that you want to make or whatever else it is in the budget. So, don't you kind of put those though under salary related costs?

It it it is, but I'm just saying that's all part of the salary. If that gets to be bigger, then you can't afford the raises and real dollars that people take up. Well, the the point is that if you want to be insured, that's okay. Then you want to be you got to be employed, right?

Right. I mean, I'm not I'm not being hard nose about it, but the point is that salary related costs are a big hunk of of the cost that a lot of employees never actually see. They may feel it. They're at one time or another, but most folks think, okay, what is my paycheck? What does this show me? Can I go buy a new car, go a trip, or do something like that, but all that insurance stuff that your retirement stuff and you add it up, that's a hunk of change. So, I'm just saying that, you know, I don't see them as two separate items. I see them actually as all part of the employment package, right? Because a lot of employees now are not paying anything. I mean, they're just saying you come in here, especially for military retiree. You come in and hey, you're on military, you're on the Triricare,

stuff like that. So, and so they don't have the they don't deal with that cost. No, I get what you're saying. I'm just saying for every dollar additionally we spend in healthcare, it's less dollars we can put towards compensation. You understand that? So, we're going to take a look at that. Um, we also anticipated, you know, we hope that there's going to be additional funding from the state in the final budget. We may have uh some additional requests and they, you know, I do want to focus primarily on compensation and increasing reserves for our sustainability. Third, uh Mr. Hoy uh referenced this earlier. We're seeing legislative activity in Richmond that is bring up

concerning. We will probably be recommending with extra dollars some placeholder amounts to offset any administrative costs that we anticipate if collective bargaining is signed into law. We'll definitely have increased HR and legal costs that are associated with that. We also I know that family leave is still u alive up there and that would include a a premium, right? That would be like a health insurance, not health insurance but like a workers premium. So we would pay a premium into that. So we would have to cover that cost but into what? You pay it into into a state fund. U and then that would give them what?

Well, it's going to be managed by the Virginia Employment Commission and we haven't seen those details. We don't know what the premium might even be. But what's it going to provide? 13 weeks. 13 weeks of vacation. FMLA. 13 weeks of FMLA. Correct. Family leave. Used to be six. Now it's gone to 13. So, uh, material is at 52. So, yeah. So, we have to anticipate that if that ends up making it to the governor's desk when she signs it.

Uh, state. And then the last thing, we also uh plan to put a placeholder if the funds are there for lacrosse uh in case other factors also are resolved uh that lead to that becoming a VHSL sport. Uh that would that has a big ticket for one time funds to establish, but only $50,000 is estimated as a recurring cost. But we also have some other things that have to be worked out there. If uh we would if the money is there, we would place it there as a placeholder and then if they didn't qualify, then we would just revert it back to one of our our funds or reserve funds. So with that, I'll give it to Mr.

So kind of curious and no one said anything about this, but we go to a a uh annual assessment, you know, so we do it every year instead of every two years. So we from our perspective at least I think it is from our perspective what we're seeing is that the costs that go up people will understand or your request to go up we'll understand better what your you know how our money is being spent you know and taxpayers not our money but it's taxpayer money we'll see how it's spent. Have you given any thought to the impact this might have on you guys? It can't be business as usual. I mean because you you know

it's I mean we can come in and negotiate and all that kind of stuff but it's but we're going to the assessments we're going to be looking at them every year and that's and every year then you're going to we're going to see you know what the we're not changing the tax rate tax rate is going to stay the same. So that's going to limit whatever we get that's going to the houses go up there'll be more money. If houses go down there'll be less money. We haven't looked past this budget year right now. No you might want to give us some thoughts. No, one year at a time at this point get through this budget. Well, they need to be thinking about it because I don't know I don't know what the impact is going to be on talking about it starting in 2028. So that's not that far down the road. Another year. Yeah, we do talking about it. I would say I've seen Yeah, we are.

School divisions and localities have revenue sharing agreements and the negative impact it has. Um it works great when the economy is great because the locality gets more money, gets a percentage of it fixed, but when it goes south, they have a fixed loss to that too. and those those localities or those school divisions have suffered more during recession periods. So, um I think what we do here in York County works well. We come in to ask. We we understand your needs. You all understand our needs. We also look very hard at what the state is doing for us. And I get back to that local composite index. We've been nine 18 years but nine bianial pro budget process where we've seen that local composite index decrease and that's been to our benefit. When that changes is when we'll I think have some very difficult conversations about funding.

Well, I think probably what Tom is saying is to start getting in your mind how do you make up the gap because what we're looking at doing is having a surplus fund that will make up the gap on the off years. And so when you have, let's just say you have an extra million dollars, don't go find a place to put it. You might have to put that you might have to put that in savings for a down year. So I think that's what Tom saying need start think that's a good point. I actually wasn't even thinking about the savings but that's something you know because we haven't even gotten we sort of getting there. We have not really studied it either but that's the point. Put the money aside and Sheila's been bringing this up for you never you got to have some flexy day fund. Yeah you gota have a flex.

We can't come back every year and keep you know squeezing blood out of the tournament if it's not there. Schools can do that. Yeah. We're limited in that prospect. Their surplus we have, you vote on their surplus every year. That comes back to them. They buy technology, buses, books, those kinds of things with it. Well, we give it back to them and they can spend it. That's what we do. So, we don't want them to spend it. We keep it. But that's what they were looking for. But but I I think that the revenue stabilization fund was created with the purpose of having some sort of reserve fund for the school division.

Um so we have utilized that for non-school related I mean non operational things. We've uh used it for CIP and we used it for technology. So we've used it because we've had a significant balance in there but we might need to rethink about using it for those items to just treat it as more of a safety net during those downturns. Yeah, that's the point I was making. Just start thinking through that because we're saying 2028 is when we're thinking we could institute that. I'm going to suggest we move on to the capital area now. All right. We'll never get through it. Thank you. So, Mr. Bowen has one more slide.

Well, I was just quickly the general assembly is reconvening on April 22nd to to um for the veto session. Uh April 23rd is the special session and we understand this is going to be a quick session. Um They may have already come to an agreement on on the final budget. They're just waiting for this special session. And then of course the board of supervisors will consider school board of budget, our school budget and CIP. And then May 18th, we'll take those final changes from the state and from the local government to our board and that just concludes our project.

All right. So yes, so we'll shift now to Tab High School update. Uh so just to remind everybody, Tab High was built in 1972. Uh it was renovated last in 1997 with the exception of the uh addition of the auxiliary gym in 2005. So due for renovation are the roof, the entire HVAC system, uh upgrading to LED lighting, which is what we do every time we touch a building. also working in some smaller projects that we have uh funded for other schools like locker room renovations and learning commons upgrades to the media centers. And I also want to remind you as we look at this that uh Tab High School is a shelter for the community. So we also want to make sure that it is up to snuff there as far as energy usage and for uh usability in a shelter situation. So at this point I'll ask Mr. Kilberg to uh take the con here and um talk you through this. Karen Homewood, members of the board, thanks for having me. Uh interesting fact for you is I was a member of the last class to go through the original building of Tab High, lived through Trailer City, graduated, and now get to lead the renovation this time around.

So, it's a little bit fun for me. Um and I'm still a resident of TAB, so my kids will go there, too. So, I'm going to walk you through the original proposal from the architects when we did the RFP and then I'm going to highlight for you a lot of the design and cost review that we've done over the past couple of months. Um, so we're going to show this is the original proposed floor plan and I'll walk you through each of the highlighted orange sections. So, down in the center of the bo of the bottom of the screen is the proposed new front entrance. So that includes an admin area, a large classroom or meeting space that we call akea, some new group restrooms as well as a conference room and some storage rooms and a mechanical room. Uh to the very far right on the bottom, this is a two-story addition. So above that is the learning commons, which Dr. Carol mentioned, we had delayed that to make part of this bigger project. a maker space, a work room for the library media specialists, another conference room, and then as part of the learning commons, you get those collaboration stations and the open floor space that encourage the kids and the teachers.

They're going to be on the building. The so the very front center, but I do have a slide that'll put that in perspective for you of of what it looks like now and what it will look like in the future. Okay. What are you gonna put in the maker space? uh glow forges, 3D printers, um all kinds of um just technology kind of projects. Um and then the library media specialists as well as CTE teachers will take kids in there to do any kind of project they're looking to do. Um there's sinks, there's countertops, there's pull down cord wheels, so it's whatever they can come up with. Okay. Stuff. Yep.

Good stuff. Um, a little bit to the left of that, the darker orange, but also on the bottom of the screen, you're going to see six relatively same size squares. Uh, the four that are in the center of that is the existing location of the library. So, by moving that to the new learning commons, which is on the second floor, we're able to create four additional classrooms out of that space. Uh, directly above that, you'll see two rectangles. Those that is where our existing KA is located. Um, as we move into the next plan, you'll see that we're not going to do anything in that space, but that was again a net addition of two classrooms. Well, for the board members, aka is our multi-purpose room.

Um, directly on either side, you see two uh orange rectangles vertically. Those are existing group restrooms, and they are scheduled to get a a makeover. It's not a complete work. It's not a expansion, but it's all new fixtures, a refresh. Uh if we go to the top right, the brighter orange section is an expansion off of the gym entrance and that included the proposed geothermal mechanical room, a security vestibule, more group restrooms, uh an athletic director's office, a dedicated space for officials to go and change when they're coming in for whether it's basketball, wrestling, any kind of athletic event where they need a space to go. Um I think I already said about other group restrooms. Oh, and a concession stand. Then, as Dr. Carol said, we also have been delaying the renovation of the locker rooms. So, the darker orange sections at the top of the screen, both on the right and the left, is showing the renovation of those locker rooms at this time. So, I'm going to jump to show you where we've really scrutinized. And I want to emphasize and give some credit here because I work with a great group of people. Um, and Michael Prawall, who's here in the room with us, has been leading the charge um in the transition between Mark and myself. Um, and so we have brought a lot of people in and worked as a team to come up with these optimizations and reduce the overall cost of the project.

Just a quick question though. How do you how do you do the locker room changes? Um, because you're not going to get that done across a couple months of the summer. So, Michael's actually led all of the locker room changes that we've done in the past couple of years and he's been able to accomplish them during the course of the summer. Um there are certain things that we can phase in and do them over breaks. Certain things that we can do like if he's doing block work and ripping out the lockers that's obviously a summer endeavor

and I and we have uh been able to work with the schools to get a couple week start you know early PE didn't dress out and they stayed stayed out in the gym but and the only one we ran into trouble with was Yorktown Middle School and that's because they were having some foundation issues that ran us into the first three or four weeks of school. So, everything else we've been able to to handle it. Okay.

All right. So, this is the same orientation. So, center at the bottom of the screen. Although I don't have everything highlighted in orange. We made a few a very small change, but it was geared towards relocating the entire main office suite. So, that's your principal, one AP, all of your uh administrative assistants, attendant secretary, all to the front of the building. So, we did take over one classroom there, but that meant we could repurpose where they exist, which is directly above it in the center of the screen, the the bright blue color. And by relocating them, then we get to create three classrooms instead of the two that we were going to do out of the existing KA. So, it's still a net six ad. Um, even though we're creating the three in the center. Uh, so nothing changes in terms of where the existing library is. Still a four classroom ad, the group restrooms, still a makeover. What really comes into play here is our focus on the gym entrance and the geothermal system.

So, if you'll notice, there's no expansion to the right. By going geothermal and relocating our pump room to a more uh optimized location, we didn't need to build out from the building in that direction. They were adding spaces because we needed to build out for geo on that side. We were actually able to bring everything that was proposed, the restrooms, the um uh school officials, a concession stand, all back inside the original envelope of the building. So, we're cutting off, I think it's 15,000 square feet that we would have had to pay. And just by moving that geothermal room and bringing everything back in, we're projecting that between a three and $4 million savings. So, the gray you show is all the geothermal.

So, the gray is actually all uh open parking space. the the bottom of it uh will actually be the loading yard. Uh and we're really opening up the space. You'll see it in the rendering a little bit later. Uh it'll be the loading on the bottom side of it. And then on the top side of it, the the orange rectangle you can barely see is actually us relocating the dumpsters away from the the walking path in uh putting up an enclosure around them to, you know, beautify the space but still keep the functionality. The red hash marks is so you're envisioning a trash truck driving in the lower entrance up to the dumpsters and then leaving through the upper entrance. And then if we decide to do it, we could add handicap spaces at the at the upper section that gives better access, you know, for athletic events or anything taking place in the school.

So on the top right, um that's somewhere near is where the voting precinct is. We still going to have space up in there for that. So do they vote in the gym? Well, So this would be their their point of access. They would either come through the gym entrance now. Yes. So right now that's a loading dock for us. So what we're doing is improving that whole entrance to be a security vest raising the floor up. So they would be entering through a secure entrance and they would park where they normally park. Okay. Yeah. That's a little difference cuz you see that little orange square above the where you got the entrance. Now that uh that's right up in there is where they come in. Yeah. Right above that's where they come in the bathroom.

So they're coming in this then this is a sidewalk into the auxiliary gymnasium. There's no changes there. Changes. Okay, that's it. Um and as Dr. Carol pointed out, this is a shelter. So us adding those group restrooms there. It meant that we didn't have to expand two other sets of restrooms. There's a set of restrooms on the leftand side of the gym that services athletic events in the cafeteria. And there's a set of restrooms that's on the back side of the auditorium that's for the vocational hallway and sometimes um you know drama events at night. We're adding a set of restrooms at the back near the gym entrance and in the front edition. So it's still servicing both of those but also giving you extra uh facilities for that.

A handicap bathroom. It all of them. So both of the new ones are ADA compatible and include a family restroom in between both sets of the group group restrooms. What what's the population on a typical school day for Tab High? That's about 1,200. 1,200, 1200. And how how many people can the school accommodate in an emergency as an emergency shelter? Same number or No. No. But I don't know that number. I'd have to get with Sean Seager Bloom on that. I don't think we've ever talked about Well, and they don't they don't use the entire school. They typically try to keep it to the cafeteria, the gymnasium, the locker rooms, and then this new area. Isabelle

and also the Y's going to have it right at 100 people. I just want to make sure this the new HVAC we're putting in there will accommodate people in an emergency situation. Where is the Where is the cafeteria here? Is it uh come through the entrance? Yeah. So, it's in the same spot, right? Yeah. Main gym. This is the cafeteria. This is the auditorium. That's the auditorium. Okay. And that open space to the left of the auditorium is just still a hall and we call it the commons. Yes. It's a wide open space. Okay. And then the very top right which you pointed out earlier is the auxiliary gymnasium which has interior and exterior entrances and exits. Auxiliary. Right.

So that Yeah. That'd be even more overflow space. Okay. And the parking down there in the bottom is going to be now that's going to be that kind of parking or is it normally they park right along the along the street? So correct me if I'm wrong, Michael. They keep the along the street and we're adding this on the right hand side. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

All right. So, this is a picture from this weekend of the existing main entrance and this is a picture of the rendering that we got Friday based off of the 95% drawings. So, you got your KA on the lower level, learning commons on the upper level, uh security vest at the main entrance, admin suite on your lefthand side, very industrial, different,

this is the existing gym entrance. And keep in mind with us relocating and making geothermal part of the base bid no longer being an option, the cooling tower that you're seeing, the chiller that you're seeing, that all goes away. That's equipment that we don't need to replace. So that's another cost savings is we don't have to build a much larger mechanical yard with outdoor access. We can shrink that addition that they needed exponentially down to just the five pumps that we need for a geothermal system. Then there's a rendering of what that entrance would look like. So notice the equipment gone on the left, little bit of cleanup on the right.

And then here's an overall seeing that front edition and the gym entrance. That's

so um I transitioned into this role back in November and at that point in time we were at the 65%. Um but we were pulling these numbers to make sure that you guys saw for energy efficiency. Brutin High School is the sister school of Tab High School. They're the same basic floor plan. Brutin High School is already geothermal. It costs us almost 120,000 more per fiscal year to run tab high than brutin high. So when we talk about return on investment, we put a lot of scrutiny into the cost estimate and think that we're actually very close if not past the return of investment. But even if there is a return of investment to the tune of let's say a million dollars, we're only talking 10 years. But then when you talk about utility costs increasing, which we know they are, everybody's seen the bills on their own house. Um, Dominion is looking for more, um, everything's going up. But the thing that we also have to remember is that in 20 to 25 years when the rest of the mechanical HVAC has to be replaced. So all those heat pumps, all the makeup air, we don't have to replace that geothermal. So, what's going to cost us today if we went with the direct replacement of $4 million for a cooling tower, a chiller, boilers? What's that going to cost us in 20 years? 8 million, 12 million? So, um geothermal really is the right now we think it's the most efficient way to go, not just energy-wise, but financially. And then we're looking out for the school division at future costs.

So, once again, I want to make sure we're clear. Uh you know, last year there seemed to be some misunderstandings. We were talking about the fact that the entire HVAC system has to be renovated. And then that difference or ROI we were talking about was only in the difference between a mechanical system and a geothermal. And so here we're giving you a little more information of number one is we look closer at it. uh we feel like it's not or the numbers we're getting is that delta is not going to be that much and then when you add on 20 years from now when you go to do a renewal you're not hitting that cost again. So of all those mechanical pieces. Uh that's not all the mechanical but it's the big ones. And so now you're realizing the savings a second time. So just wanted to make sure we were we were clear on. So at 35% we were at 40.78 million for construction costs only. When we started reviewing at 65% and making these optimizations, we drove it down to 34.77. Uh and to echo what Dr. Carol was just saying, as as the plans evolve and you really dial in on those those designs with the architects and the engineers, those cost estimates become more accurate. So we're supposed to get the 95% drawings this week and we expect to have an even more accurate cost estimate. and you'll shoot that over to us. Yeah, sure.

Um, so this is just a recap on that and we did meet with them. We have a a progress set that we got last week. We've already started reviewing that. Um, we're we're working closely with the county and their permits office having, you know, informal conversations to get that that review process started and they'll be getting the official documents very soon. We'll get them ne uh this Thursday actually. Um, so then if we follow the normal schedule, you're in May uh for the permit review comments and we're hoping to go out to bid early June. So it's summer of 27 when you would do the tear down of lockers etc. So

it's possible for us to phase right that so the locker rooms if we're not making changes that that we can do if we're making changes that we can do during the summer we might start uh the roof uh work there's two different scopes of it. Some of the higher flat roof doesn't need a complete replacement. It just needs cleaned a new membrane laid down and more flashing on top of it. But then the lower flat roof is a full replacement. So, if we could go after some of those high roofs this summer, anything that we can do to start the project, um, and also for us that means engaging that general contractor, keeping them employed, which for them means a a longer drawn out process, but they get to keep their employees and a a more relaxed schedule, and we'll just coordinate with the school. We Michael and Mark did a great job of pulling off Brutin High School's roof during the school year. We're we're looking to do things like that to get the project started. Trust me, there was some feedback during bud and roof repair.

Thank you. So, that concludes our presentation. We're open to any questions or was in your plans last year. You didn't mention it this time, right? That that is out of the plans now, but that we'll we'll visit that when we get there. All the infrastructure u Mr. Kilmer, would you speak to the possibility of solar in the future?

Yes. So right now actual the we're going to put in solar ready electrical switch gear. The roof membranes are going to go back to be solar ready for the penetrations. The structural analysis is being done to make sure that we can support the the weight of a solar infrastructure. We just don't have the budget to actually go after the solar panel system itself. So everything's being done in anticipation that if we want to if we have the funding to add solar in the future, the building is ready for it. And you'll remember when we were doing the initial planning, there were federal incentives to do so

and new possibilities for us to actually engage in those. Those are off the table right now. We don't know what two, four, six years is going to bring us. So that is something we want to be able to switch to if possible if it makes sense fiscally. Well, I think Dominion is talking about no longer allowing the the uh electrical grid to take the surplus. So that would be another negative change on on the solar project. Unless maybe unless maybe Dominion's the one doing the work. It blows my mind. I mean, he's stronger to provide power is. Why would they turn down? Well, it just means they're taking the power, but they're not paying you for it.

Then they're not getting the power. You know there are uh there are also options for uh buying credits for that for companies, right? But that had been opened up to government in recent years and then it went away. So we we weren't in that window to do so. We we were looking forward to that because I think the system was we would be able to sell the credits to private companies. Right. Right. But that's now dead. six o'clock. We probably pushed this long enough. Any uh wrap-up uh questions? I

I got one quick question. Um thinking about alternative supplemental revenue streams help diversify your revenue portfolio and thinking about how we have facilities like Bailey Field and and then we have more turf fields now. Have you explored the option of naming rights? Naming rights. Yeah. I mean that's plenty of places do that. Why would the number one school district in the in the state um look into bringing some revenue from doing that? I haven't looked into that yet. Yes.

It's possible might be worth I mean having been involved with it from HRTFA it sounds real easy. It's not. We've been working on it for two years. and haven't gotten anything worth the value of giving up the name. Another place by the way, but they're a lot bigger. Yeah, town bank in this area is sponsoring PNC facility down in Raleigh

because it's right on the interstate 40 and millions of people drive by there. We don't, you know, our little center is going to be tucked in there even though we're going to get, you know, several hundred thousand people a year through there. What they want to pay for it is not always uh worth the understand. But whatever the options are, you know, we we're not in a flush economy. So, I can say everybody wants to lease our cell tower lands, but nobody's come to us saying, "Can we get the naming rights on Bailey? Well, maybe that's an idea for people to start thinking about now. Name it rights on the cell towers.

Well, thank you, gentlemen. Very informative. Thank you. You met our needs in terms of a good thorough understanding of your budget and and where we can help. Um, Sheila, you ought to feel proud. Did you were on the board of supervisors when this guy graduated from high school? I know. I WASN'T GOING to say that. been on it when he was in a kindergarten when the school was built. He was a junior. Are you junior or sophomore? I think he's junior or sophomore. Are Tab and Brutin the same school floor pan architect or whatever it is Lafayette? I don't know. Sure looks like it.

All right. With that, I'll close today's meeting. Our next session of the board is on Thursday. Also a budget. Thank you very much. Thursday. Good to have the presentation. Yeah, very good. Thank you.