will call the men in public school district, uh, Monday, September 15, 2025, meeting the order with the Brosch Fehlich room. Uh, first item on the agenda is a pledge of allegiance. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. P. of the Republic for which it stands. on the issue on behalf. individual the injustice for all Thank you. Uh, Next item on the agenda is approval agenda. You got any changes? I don’t see none over there. Anybody else have any changes? See none what is the wishes of the board. I would move forehead. I move to approve the agenda. All right, we have a motion. We have a second. we have a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, please go roll. Yes Yes yes Yes. Yes Yes. Next item on the agenda is public communication. Anybody in the audience wish to address the board? Anybody wish to address the board? Seeing nobody standing up, the next item on the agenda is the administrator report, the 2526 enrollment. Update Dr Bitzs Yeah, I have a handout in front of you that I printed off today. It compares our enrollment, um, as of today, September 15, 2025 to a year ago, September 15, 2025, um, highlighted the one with the pink highlighted on the dates from this year and the oranges from last year just so that you can see, um basically total enrollment, um, we have this year we’re 4440. Last year we were 4,416, so we were up 24 students. Um, and that’s when we minus our homeschool students out. That’s what we get paid on. So we’re up 24 students year over year. Um, probably one of the more concerning numbers that I have is if you look at our kindergarten enrollment, that’s highlighted in blue. Um, this year we have 301 in school. We have a couple of homeschoolers, but 301 that are actually in school. Um, last year we had 322. So it just, we’ve been just um dropping of the last 3 years are, um, 2nd grade, 1st grade, and kindergarten are much smaller than our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. So, I, I was kept saying that I thought it was a blip, but when you have it 3 years in a row, it’s starting to be a trend. So that’s something that we need to keep our eye on and that we need to watch our, uh I guess our hiring and our staffing and our elementary schools so that we can write size and be prepared. Um, I can answer any questions you have on, on the enrollment report or? I, I would just, uh, I don’t think you’d have an answer for it. I just noticed so that um was it 4, 4th to 5th. um 4th, uh, well, 4th grade last year is 400, maybe his fifth grade that I was looking at. It seemed like there, there was one of the greats that had a, a number of unless I looked at it wrong. it had uh a number of uh students I was looking at it backwards. I saw it, it was an increase for this year, so it’s good now. never mind Sorry about that. Dr Bitz, can you just talk about what’s really going on statewide in regard to kindergarten because I think this isn’t just a Mandan thing. I mean, we actually went up in total students, might not actually went down 200, right? Yeah, I saw a news report. They were down about 225 students district-wide, which is, that’s the significant, uh, you know, when I look at Bismarck, I, the, I got their enrollment report and their kindergarten is same thing, um, there are about 100 students less than they have been, you know, they’re 3 times bigger than us, but so I the, other than the river, they’re seeing the exact same, uh, demographics over there as well. When you look at birth rates, um, I think we’ll be, we’ll probably be closer to 3:20 again next year than 302, but still not to the level of students that we’ve enrolled in, you know, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade right now. I do notice that we had a pretty good jump from 24 to 25. I mean, kindergarten in 2024. was 322. We went to 329 and in first grade, so that’s a 7% increase. So I mean our students are picking up even from year to year, they’re still coming in and growing, so our processes are growing even though we don’t have them in the first or kindergarten, they’re growing bigger as they go on. Right. And I think if, you know, if you look at our senior class this year, Jez, I got my need my glasses on, but um we’re about 289, so we’re still above that, but, you know, we’ll graduate 289 this year, so. All right. Any other questions Thank you, Dr Bitz. You want to go on to the next one, school board, uh, Fall Conference. Correct. It’s earlier this year. It’s usually the traditionally it’s been the end of October this year. It’s October 9th and 10th, um, if you would like to go, um, the, the registration deadline for the early or for the cheaper registration is September 30th. So if you could let me know by the twenty-ninth, I will get you registered. And just as a side question. The ninth is the legal, the 10th is the board association, right? And you don’t have to register for that. You can do one day or both days. Just so everybody’s aware of it. Orans that you don’t have to go. Nobody’s required to go this year to the new member seminar. You’ve all been there. Any questions for him on that? Please let him know probably by the end of the month so we get the cheaper. and go. Uh, next item tribal input. Dr Redderathth. Yes, last board meeting I shared with you are federal funds with that is shared with Standing Rock, and then we did tribal consultation with them just via the phone on the twenty-seventh. And so they approved us, um, that we consulted with them. We continue to be, have a great working relationship with that group. Um, it is going to, they did share that they have elections going on right now, so that dynamic, that community could look different, um, but they’ve been a great partner and, uh, we’re said to continue to work with them. From our side was all involved with that. It was Dr Bitz, myself, and then Travis Albers, who is our cultural liaison and then through them we participate in some professional development opportunities. So actually, at the end of this week, um, Rob Birdhorse, who teaches our Native American studies, is going to go to Minneapolis. All expenses paid. There’s a, a museum there that has pretty significant tribal art, and he’s going to do some professional development that’s really unique to what he’s teaching all, um, provided to us through the Health and wellness Committee at Standing Rock. So they’re a nice partner. Glad to hear the partnerships. Any other questions All right. See you in none. We’ll move on to the men in high school demolition update, Mr. Legacy. Yeah, just a quick update for you tonight on plans for the old high school. Uh, right now, we are working through asbestos abatement, um, there was a little more asbestos in the building than we thought, so we are opening bids on Wednesday, the 17th, so, uh, this week, um, for the abatement process to start, we may need to call a special board meeting to get that going, um. we’ll evaluate bids on Wednesday, and I’ll send a message to you, Mr. Wolf, um, to get that scheduled. Um, we do want to approve that right away so they can get in and get going. Um, on the rest of the demolition, we’ll have documents done from IConn on September 29th, so we’ll start advertising for bids that week and we’ll open bids towards the end of October, uh, to get demolition contractor lined up, so, uh, still the plan is to be done next spring. Uh, we’ll kind of see what the contractor availability is and how much they can get done yet this winter All right, sounds good Um, just a quick question for you all sitting around here. Do you want a morning meeting or an afternoon meeting? If we have a special one to approve that abatement contract. It would be a one item meeting, so like 5, 10 minutes, yeah. We could call it a call-in meeting. OK. Morning works for you? OK. All right, just so I have an idea so we do what we schedule kind of meets everybody’s needs that way. All right, let’s move on to the consent agenda then and the consent agenda review and consider appro approval of previous board minutes from August 18, 2025. Review and consider approval of previous board retreat minutes from August 18, 2025, reviewing consider approval of June 2025 bills, June 2025, revenue and expenditures July 2025 bills, and July 20 and 25 revenues and expenditures and then accept the facility and finance committee minutes from August 25, 2025, and it’s up to Health Insurance committee minutes from September 2nd, 2025. What are the wishes of the board? I had a question before we vote on it. Um, with the one Hey, can we pull the school board retreatment out, then we’ll handle that under a unfinished business. So we’ll, we’ll, we’ll do it without that one then, all right? All right. What are the wishes of the board minus item B. B is the one you wanted, right OK. I would move that we approve the consent agenda agenda except for item B. right? We have a motion. We have a 2nd, 2, we have a second. Please go roll Yes. yes yes, yes. Yes. Yes. All right, let’s go to the unfinished business. Let’s go to review and consider. It’s probably new business, but let’s do it. Uh, review and consider approval of previous board retreat minutes for August 18, 2025. Go ahead. Yeah, I was just wanted to clarify under the student achievement, we had talked a lot about the grading system and wanted to continue to monitor that. And so that wasn’t in the minutes to discuss, so I just wanted to. clarify that we were still gonna continue that. OK I have it on the agenda for the next student achievement committee meeting. I just didn’t know if I needed to be and we can amend the amendments. Alright, good go All right, so could I get, uh, what are the board’s wishes on on reviewing and approving the previous retreat minutes, including the addition of the grades section I moved to approve the previous board meeting minutes with the addition of the grading. All right, we have a motion. We have a second. We have a second Any discussion singing and hearing no, please go roll. Yes. Yes Yes, yes, yes, yes. yes, uh, then we move on to new business, review and consider approval of the fiscal year 26 business managers Report, Mr. Legacy, yes, included in your packet is our annual financial report that we submit to DPI, um, I’m gonna jump right into the numbers on page one. please stop me and ask questions at any time. Um, it’s easier to kind of do it as we go along. So, I’m gonna jump into page one, page 1 and 2 are our general fund revenues, uh, broken down by line item. Uh, if you look at page one, the left-hand side is our revenue from local sources that is going to be our tax revenue, tuition, um interest earned. really the two items of note there are the very top line, our General Fund property tax levy for $11.8 million. Um, just want to remind you that is our 60 mil, uh, general fund mill levy that is deducted from our state per pupil for. payment, um, from the state. Just so you know, and there are miscellaneous fund levy. Um, we took in about $2.2 million last year in our miscellaneous fund on the right side. I’m gonna point out our state revenue, are per pupil aid of $42.6 million. Uh, we get about 65% of our money from the state and from that per pupil aid, so. as we talk about during legislative session of a 2.5% increase, 3% increase. That’s the line item we talk about every spring during legislative session to be bumped up for the payment for each student that we have. Below that line 3300, Career in tech ed uh $1.25 million. I just want to make a note that’s higher than most years. That’s due to us being part of the Heart River Consortium. We don’t get to keep all that money, um, we rese it, but we also expense out a large amount of that to our member schools as well, just so you know. I’m gonna flip the page 2 on the left side, it gives a breakdown of our revenue from our federal programs. That’s going to be our Title 124, and 6. We took in about $3.6 million. And on the top right of page 2, you’re going to see line item 5300, uh, sale of fixed assets, that $2.4 million is the sale of our property to Senex at the high school site as well as the auction proceeds, um, from the old high school. down on the bottom under our general fund recap, our total revenue for our general fund this year was $67.4 million. And if you look towards the bottom, uh, total expenditures of 67.06. So a slight surplus this year, um. kind of not really expected in the sale of property really, really buoyed our, our general fund this year. I’m gonna jump ahead to pages 3 and 4. this gives a breakdown of our cost of education expenses, um, in detail. So, page 3, the top half where it says section 1 regular programs. Um, if you dove into that, you’d see that’s our cost for teachers, Perass, guidance counselors, principals, those actual instructional items in each of our individual buildings. The bottom half, Section 1 federal programs, that’s going to be our title programs. Title 124, as well as CLSD. The top of page 4 are undistributed programs. That’s going to be um more of district-wide expenses, um, so our overhead for our buildings, operations and maintenance, uh, district administrative support gets lumped into that category, and you can kind of see them listed out. And on the bottom of page 4 are cost of education recap. Our total expenses for the cost of education $61.5 million last year. I just want to make you aware that if you look at columns A and B for salaries and employee benefits that totals 85% of that number. So most of our expenses are going right towards our people. I just want to make sure that you’re aware of that. Page 5 is our expenses that don’t get included in the cost of education. Uh, this is gonna be our transportation costs and extracurricular costs on the top. That’s totals $3.8 million. On the bottom of page 5 is a tuition and assessments. We paid $700,000 last year in tuition costs for for students that have to get educated outside of our district It’s very important to note we do have levy authority for those dollars. We have not used that in the past. We will next year. So do you have a question? Yeah, I do, Mr. Legacy. Just stop there that student transportation services, we paid 1.9 million, that was our expense, right? That is our expense for our general fund routes. We also have special education routes that will go into in the special education. So it’s not the total cost, but it’s close. But when I look up here on the revenue section, transportation was 46,465,000. So 1.5 plus is coming out of the general fund, right? Yes, that’s pretty common, um, that we get 25% of our, our, and that’s state aid, right? That correct, yes. We’re reimbursed on the rides and miles in our, in our district. Yes, at a small amount, yep. So transportation is a pretty significant cost for us. Yes, um, if you total transportation from this page where it’s 1.9 million. Um, our special ed transportation is 700,000, so it’s, it’s even a, a smaller amount we’re getting reimbursed on. Thank you. Page 6, shows our debt service payments out of just the general fund. We have a cold trust fund loan, uh, that we were qualified for due to inflation expenses. That’s the repayment for that. Page 7 is our special education costs by program. I’m not going to go into each individual program, but the district spends $10.5 million on special education, um, or has last year and transportation costs for speculation special education, you can see are the second to last line item on that page of $702,000. Page eight we’ll skip over, um, because we’re part of Morton Sue Special Education Unit. We do not have any direct federal expenses towards special special education. Page 9 is a breakdown of our career in technical education costs. This is by a program, uh, you can see the cost for a welding, marketing, all those programs that are designated as career and tech head through the state and our expenses are just about $2.5 million for CTE programs. Yes a legacy, does that just ours or does that include West River, Cur Tech Edson are Heart River Career and Tech Ed Expenses, um. on the line 32,330. You’ll see a total of $965,000. That is where we’re paying assessments out or cost share out to our member schools. So by us going with that is actually, we’re a little bit of our expenses is actually going up because of that, even though we’re getting covered. So our revenue’s gone up and so does our expenses. So if you’re So if looking So if, if you’re looking at total expenses year over year in relation to that. A little bit is here because of the way we set it up, which actually benefits us because of the payment structure. It does, yes, you’re, you’re 100% correct. Revenues and, and costs are, are both inflated. However, we are coming out ahead by being part of the consortium, are, uh, refund percentage from the state is higher as being part of the group, so. yeah Uh, page 10 goes into our, our separate funds that we have. Um, we do not have a special reserve fund, so I’ll jump into Fund Group 3, or building fund. Um, I’m just gonna go down to the bottom. We have a $31 million balance at the end of last year. Uh, it sounds high. We do have about $10 million left in expenses at the high school. We have not closed that out yet. We’re closed. And then I am setting aside some funds, uh, to tear down the old high school. Uh, we’ll have a much better picture on our building fund in about 90 days of where we’re at. We’ll get the, the new high school closed out and we’ll have bids on the, on the demolition of the old high school, so. page 11, our fund group 4 is our debt service fund. Uh, this is where we pay back our voter approved debt. So the high school, Lakewood Red Trail Bond and loan expenses are are in fund Group 4. Fund Group 5 our food service fund. We had a $400,000 deficit last year in our out launch fund, um. this is concerning, um, if we spend past our balance of $200,000 we have to repay that from the general fund. Um, we have had increased costs from people. We opened up a kitchen at Lakewood, which we had a new kitchen, new staff. We added staff at the high school last year, much larger kitchen, we can do a lot more. We’re seeing more revenue come back, but the main expenses is food itself. Uh, 2 years ago, I pulled this exact same report in that s up pl ies line item, which is our food costs. We spent $1.25 million and last year it was 1.76. So. I, I don’t know what to do. We can’t pass those increased costs all at one time to our families. We’ve been increasing our hot lunch prices. We’re gonna have to continue to monitor it and see what we can come up with. So just just wanna make sure you’re aware of that. Page 12, our student activity fund. We ended the year with $586,000. That is an in and out fund for our different, um, different programs, different, different student activities, FCCLA, FFA run through there. I have no concerns about her activity fund. Fund Group 7, our trust and agency. This is our health insurance fund. We are self-funded, uh, so we have to keep pay for costs for all healthcare. Uh, we had a tough year with our health insurance fund. Um, our loss ratio on our health insurance plan is 123% last year. Um, so you can see we had a deficit of $500,000. That’s due to healthcare costs. The Health Insurance Committee has made some changes to our healthcare plan to address this and hoping it’s enough. So Page 13 is just a summary page of our ending balances in each of the funds which I’ve talked about. Page 14 is our statement of indebtedness. You can see our outstanding bonds and our outstanding loans. Again, those are for the high school, uh, Lakewood and Red Trail. And then page 15 is our, where we get our average cost per pupil. Um a lot of information on this, on this sheet. We’re gonna look at the total column only. Um, if you look at it, it’s broken down by pre-K kindergarten 1 through 67 through 8. We don’t report our expenses the same way on our district ledger, as we have to for DPI. So those numbers get skewed. Um, grades 7 through 8 are combined here. However, we combine 67, and 8 for a middle school expenses. So that column gets inflated, while others are deflated, uh, similarly. So I just want to talk about the total here is all I wanna do. Um, if you look down that 61.5 million in total expenditures. That’s our cost of education that we talked about on pages 3 and 4. If you divide that by our average daily membership last year, our total average cost per pupil was $14,109. That is significantly higher than we’ve had in the past. Um, we had some one-time expend expenditures opening up the high school, our technology costs went up substantially last year with new iPads and new laptops. So I’m hoping that we can kind of bring that down as we go forward next year. So. that’s one number you might want to jot down, that 14109, cause when we go into the middle of a discussion here. We’ll see what we’re getting reimbursed at, so. 11 349 this year from the state. Yes, that kind of comes into play a little bit there, it does. so Yeah With that, I went quick and there’s a ton of information. If there’s any questions, I’d be happy to answer them. Oh, yes, and then on the, the final page, um, there’s a financial report for publication. That’s a summary of this full report, the 17 pages that we send to the paper and have to have it published, so you can see the summary there. It’s gotta get published. I didn’t know it questions A lot of information there. I mean, it’s the whole year summarized revenues and expenditures and everything that’s out there. It is a nice way to look at it. I mean, you can really break it down in a lot of different ways. So yeah, there’s a ton of information here and please, if you have questions after the fact, don’t be scared. Reach out, call, email, I’m, I’m happy to go over this. All right. Any questions? All right, what’s the wishes of the board in this? motion to approve the FY 26 Business Man’s report. All right, we have a motion. We have a second. 2 We have a motion in the 2nd. Any discussion? Seeing none, hearing none, uh, please call Ro. Yes. Yes, yes. Yes yes yes. Next item on the agenda, review and consider approval of LEA compliance report, Dr Bitz. Correct, and EEA stands for Local Education Association, which is what DPI considers us. Um, and we have 12 schools in our district. We have 7 elementary schools, a middle school, a high school, uh, an E or K through 8 virtual school, a high school virtual school, and then we have our our alternative high school. So each of those principles of those 12 schools has said that they are in compliance with all the laws, um. that apply to them. Everything from fire marshall reports and safety issues to teaching the curriculum that’s required by the state, De a highly qualified teachers. There’s 8 different areas. Um, they’ve said that we’re in compliance with all of those, and now we need a motion from you to say you accept those and then I can submit it to DPI. All right, thank you. Any questions for that? Not where the wishes of the board. I would move that we approve the LEA compliance report. All right, we have a motion. We have a second 2nd. We have multiple seconds. Um, any further discussion? Seeing none, please call roll Yes. Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes. Next item on the gin is review and consider approval of an open enrollment application seeking the deadline. You have them in front of you there looks like, uh, Dr. Uh, two families, three individuals, yes, and it would be our recommendation that you approve these requests. All right. What are the wishes of the board? I would move that we approve the open enrollment requests. All right, we have a motion to have a second 2 motion 2nd. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, please call ro Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. Yes Uh, Next item on the agenda is future meeting dates, uh, the first, uh, one there is September 15th, right after this at 6 o’clock in about 3 minutes. Budget hearings 6 p.m. City Hall, September 22nd, Policy and Personnel 5 p.m. Brave Center. September 30th, the wellness Committee, 4 p.m. at Amanda Middle School Library. Do we have anybody that sits on the board on that committee? or is that just all made up of individuals? I believe Oh. You’re Hon? OK, thank you I couldn’t remember what we had on there. And then August 6th, the regular school board meeting at 5:30 p.m. City Hall. Um, instead of adjourning the meeting, I, we’re just going to go into recess for 3 minutes at 6 o’clock, we will start the budget hearing. So we’ll recess for about 3 minutes, so if you need to go to the restroom or do something, we’ll have a couple minutes. Thank you. All the, uh, budget. hearing to order for the men in public schools. It’s Monday, September 15, 2025 at 6 o’clock, we’ll call the the meeting to order. We’ll have a budget hearing Mr. Legacy, I think you’re going to start off, correct? Yes, I am, uh, just, uh, purpose of being here tonight, Century code requires us to have a budget hearing so we can provide or I can provide information to the community on our proposed budget and then community members would have a chance to speak about it before it gets approved. Um, we do have to approve our budget at the October 6th meeting. It is due to the county auditor by October 10th. So, um, this will be kind of our last chance to look at it. Um, I did send the budget hearing packet out. I’ve made some corrections. I apologize. I was, I was home from surgery last week and kind of a few too many painkillers when I was looking at it. So there’s a couple of updates as we’re going through this, uh, and I’ll forgive you. They were minor, but there’s a couple of things. So, um, I’m gonna jump right in, um our first page is our enrollment projections. Um, it is so important for us, um, 65% of our revenue is, is directly tied to the state, uh, so we contract with RSP and Associates out of Kansas City to do our enrollment for us. Um, this makes up such a huge part of our budget. We need to know where we’re at. So I apologize, it’s so hard to see on the screen, um, but you’ll see a black line running vertically. The numbers to the left are past enrollment and to the right is a projected enrollment from RSP. Um, we’re in the 2nd year of projections, and Rob and his team had projected our key-12 enrollment this year of 4,449 students, um and, and right now we’re below that. We’re 61 students short, um, of those projections that, um, I think it was 4388. I know Dr Bitzs shared that at the meeting beforehand, um, may not seem like a lot, but our state aid payment this year’s $11,349 per student. So that’s $700,000 in revenue that we’re not seeing this year that we were kind of counting on, um, in our enrollment being down last year, it’s kind of compounding on itself. So, yeah. Yeah, a question for you. Uh, uh, Dr Bitz gave us the one today. It was 4440. You got a different number that you use? Pre-K this is K-12 only. OK, thanks. I just wanted to clarify that because this is when we looked at the other number, we’re off a little bit because we got that 53, that’s not counted in, yes, so thank you. 4,388 students. We’re 61 short of projections is the, is the important number to remember. So. Um, we monitor this. This is incredibly important to us. We will continue to monitor this as well. So School funding formula, we talk about this a lot. All spring, we talked about funding formula, you know, 2.5% increase, 3%, 1%. What does that really mean? Um, 24, 25, I used last year’s numbers because these are in stone, and this is what we get from Financefas. This is our latest information. Last year’s number was $11,072 per student guaranteed from the state. That is made up of the state payment plus our 60 mil uh local tax levy that we have. So last year, those 60 mills generated $2,649 per student. So the state filled in the gap of 8423 to make sure that all districts got that $11,072 per student. I just, I’m not saying that the formula is bad or good. I’m just saying that that is how they do it to equalize and make sure all schools are on the same playing field. Um, so every payment to every district is going to be different. Yeah, Mr. Legacy, you, you put this in here because using 24, 25 because you knew what the mills were in this case. And we don’t have that until probably another month or two in relation to the next year, probably more than that, but 11072 is 2425. What’s 25, 26 for just that number. 11349 349 to give you an idea so. OK, thank you So the state aid, how does that work out? When I’m going back to 24, 25, just so you know, these are the numbers from North Dakota DPI Finance Fas. It’s the last set of facts that DPI uses to compare all the districts. We don’t have this year’s numbers yet. This is the last set of verified numbers that we have. Um so last year, um, state aid or the state funding formula is very good for Mandan. Uh, 70% of our funding came from the state. So when we talk about the funding formula being good, being bad, Mandan’s been a big winner out of that. We are kind of considered property poor, um, so we get more money from the state in relation to most. You can see the state average is 54.68% from the state. McKenzie County way on the bottom. Their tax evaluation is incredibly high for the amount of students they have enrolled. They get 16 % from the state. So the funding formula has worked very, very well for us. you might not be able to answer it. I, um. I’ve heard and I’ve just heard it, I haven’t looked it up, but where they’ll say that our state constitution says that they have that the state will pay for the K-12 education. and then I look here and you know, and there’s, they don’t pay for all of it There must be a twist, you know, uh, it is, uh, education is the responsibility of the state. Um, the state says they’re going to equalize what everybody has to spend. Everybody’s gonna have in, in the case that Mr. Legacy just showed $11,072 to spend on education. You levy 60 mills, and they’re going to give you whatever they need to to fill in the gap to assure that you have $11,072 to spend. So it’s fair, everybody is the same amount to spend on their kids but taxpayers pay different amounts. It’s not fairness to taxpayers. It’s equity for what you have to spend on the student and the state that’s 60 mills that we levy is really a state levy. Um, they made, they make us take responsibility and they say it’s ours, but it is a state levy for education. OK, thank you All right, I’m gonna jump ahead and talk about our general fund mill levy comparison to our other, um, large districts in the state. Uh, last year, Mandan levied 71.53 mills in the general fund. Um, so we’ve talked about the 60 mLs. We all know that’s available. Um, in the general fund, we’re also able to levy 10 mLs as discretionary mills, 12 mills in the miscellaneous fund and then were also able to levy for tuition um. we have not capitalized on all those in the past, um. like most districts have, you can see the state average is right under 82 mLs, um. unfortunately, with the tax caps, because the discretionary and the miscellaneous are capped at a 3% growth. Uh, Dr Bitz just talked about equity We won’t be able to be equitable with our large sized districts, and I’m going to show you why on, on the next slide, there is a ton of information on this slide, um and, um, if you have questions, stop me. So this is only comparing the board discretionary, the extra 10 mills, and then the miscellaneous spun, the extra 12 mills. On the bottom is our numbers of what we could levy with those 3% tax caps. and then the bottom far right is per student. We are going to levy $530 per student out of those two mills. That would be what we are capped at. If you look at the other districts, I’m going to pick on Dickinson. Uh, last year, they levied 10 mills in their discretionary levy and 12 in the miscellaneous. There had $977 per student. This is extra funding they can use for the general fund. We will never be able to get there with those 3% tax, tax caps. If those tax caps weren’t there, the row where we’re at in green. we would be able to levy up to $1,001 per student. So we talk about equity This makes it somewhat inequitable to have the tax caps on us, and it’s just, uh, maybe inequitable is the wrong word. It’s really taking away the flexibility, uh, for you as a school board to make decisions, um to offer services like our, like our neighboring schools. So. ton of information there if you have questions on it, please ask, um I’m gonna jump ahead to our total mill levies. So total mill levies, um, on top of the ones we just talked about, we’re going to have our building fund levy, which is 18 mills. That was voter approved in the 70s. We also have our special assessments in here as well as our levies for, uh, voter approved debt. So, uh, the referendums we’ve had for Red Trail, Lakewood, and the high school are included in here. Um, total levy last year, 128.14 mils. Um, it’s just above the state average of 112. We used to be at the top of this list. We looked at our, you know, comp ar able school districts, and we’ve now come down, you know, right in the middle. Um, there’s been a lot of building projects the last couple of years. I feel really good about where we’re at with our buildings right now. Um, we’re sitting in a very good spot Average cost per pupil, I know I touched on this in the board meeting a little bit. This is last year’s number, remember, um, that we’re talking about here. State A, 15,290. Last year we were at the bottom, 12, 488. Um, you can see most districts are going to be between $1300 and $14,000. with the state funding formula with the guaranteed amount, we’re starting to see these numbers compress and you heard it at the board meeting, our number last year was 14.1, um, so our number is gonna go up and I think we’re going to see most districts settle around that 13.5 to 14.15 next year. Um, Fargo is an outlier. They have an unlimited mail levy and century code. Uh, that’s, that’s a just a carveout, so they have their own special, special rules, and so on. Our ending fund balance, I apologize, this slide is wrong. Um. I’m gonna give you the right numbers For fiscal year 24, 25. Um, we actually had a $337,000 surplus, which put our carryover percentage to 14.5%. Um, the board’s goal is 12%. We don’t want to fall below that number. Um, next year, we are looking at a $1.6 million deficit. Uh, most of that deficit is coming from our students just not being here. And we’re projecting a lot more kids that would have really, really helped offset that, um, but with that $1.6 million dollar deficit next year, um, that’ll get us to 12.2% carryover. So we’re, we’re just above our goal. We do not want to slip much further past that. A general question I’ll ask you again. Uh, when we borrow money, they want us right around that 12 or higher, right? We cannot go below 10%, so I like if we’re under 10%, Moody’s can downgrade our rating for bonds. That’s why we want to stay above that. So we have a little buffer there and we want to maintain that and just so everybody understands, we get downgraded, that means our interest rates go up, so our borrowing is so Rob Peter to pay Paul in this case is, uh, we can try to squeeze this number down, but then we end up paying more on the backside of it, so we’re paying it out there. So we try to keep that carryover a little bit higher in this case, so we don’t have that higher debt load right. And, and I don’t think 12% is out of line. That’s, that is, I shouldn’t say debt load interest load, but yeah, you’re, yes. I don’t either, by the way uh, proposed budget for next year, uh, total revenue is 65.4 million. Expenditures of 67, uh, so this is a deficit of $1.6 million this is keeping our expenditures flat with what we had this last fiscal year. Uh, we are working hard, uh, to keep our budget down, um, we’ve talked about it before that we are not filling open positions for Pera’s custodians, um, we unfortunately are gonna have to cut back on some of the services we offer, so. Repose mill levy for next year. Um, you can see the total proposed mill levy of 129.64, uh, last year we levied 128.14, so 1.5 mil increase, that is 1.1% overall. I just want to make a note for those listening at home. I know the state said there’s a 3% tax cap. on our property taxes for schools. We do not set your evaluations. If your valuation went up 78, 9%. You’re going to go above that 3%. We, we do not control the tax evaluations at all. I apologize for the confusion that’s been set by this, but that is our tax increase. The mill levies is 1.1% on our end. So I just want to make sure that we’re very, very clear on that. And then lastly, just the new schools tax impact, you know, this is talked about, um regularly, I’m asked out in the community, um, how do the, how do the high school in Lakewood, how did that bond affect us? And if you remember when we were out talking to the public before we pass that referendum. We said your taxes would not go up more than $99 per $100,000 evaluation And if you look at the bottom, I have that bond impact, um, tax line, and you can see our, our total school tax increase above our base year 79. $79.47 per $100,000 of evaluation. Mr. Legacy, that bottom line didn’t show up on the online stuff. It is not on online. We will get that corrected, so this one, this slide did not translate very well, uh, to our PDF, but, um, we have stayed under that number. Um, we’re doing our best to be responsible with the tax dollars that we have, so. with that, I will stand for any questions or I don’t see any community members here to speak, so. Anybody have any questions? Uh, I don’t see anybody in the audience. Normally we would open it up for any audience, uh, comments in relation to it. Um, but there’s no public here today for public input. Any anybody on the board have any, remember, we’ll, we’ll vote on this decision next board meeting. Yes, October 6th is required we won’t make a decision tonight, so you got a chance to think about it. You have some questions, please call Mr. Legacy and ask him in regard to it. I’ve had a couple. I’ve called them already on. Ask a few more even tonight. But, uh, you know, I mean, you gotta, you gotta go through it and look at it and you, you seem we spent last year, you see we’re proposing to go this year in relation to it. Take a look at those things. and if you got questions asked anybody have anyone to ask right now? Any burning questions? You guys have any more you wanna add? Well, if not, uh, it is 6:15. We’ll Adjourn the meeting.