So, our overall staffing right now is at 92 92%. Um equipment and facilities, we only have three issues, um major facility issues, and no equipment issues right now. And then technology, I don't have any We cleared all of those up. And then food supply.

The digital application is the best way because it is the fastest way fastest way to process a free and reduced lunch application. Literally, we can process it in minutes. Um and so we encourage families to to apply for free and reduced lunch that way first because it is faster.

School nutrition is fully funded by how we operate in the sales that we make. We cover all of our own operating expenses, which includes our labor, our food, our overhead, anything that you see that we do, whether it's a tray, a spoon, a milk, we have to cover the cost of that. And so that's tied to the money that we charge for student meals.

We want to leverage innovative technology and use that technology to drive to have data-driven decisions and operational excellence to provide every student with a safe, reliable, and accountable transportation experience.

So, if you you look at it, you you see uh, CMC and I think they're at 19%, DGI at 15%, Luther at 10. Uh, you can see STA with a 47%. I'm going to say 50% stake in our operation. You never want a vendor to have that much stake in the operation because the moment they pull out, you know, that leaves a threat in in our business that leaves students not being picked up.

That That was one of the things that we talked about that when you have um whether there's a big or small portion of the contract, it doesn't matter, but we have to be examined. Are you able to fulfill most of those routes? And that's where we saw difficulty there.

The students we selected have committed to and stuck to 120 hours of work in our technology services department. That has earned them some money this year. I'm sure they're excited about that. Um and also a high school credit in the CTE program, um because they had those 120 hours. So, this really is about us bringing the CTE program to a place where students get to practice and be and do the things that they might want to do as they leave us um and think about what's next for them.

We I call it our grow our own program. I think we could I could probably come up with something more creative than that, but it speaks to me that this is um should be a goal of our school system to help our students be placed, but also that the school system would be a place that they would want to be.

From this program, I believe to diagnose and repair computers and also manage server infrastructure has grown significantly. And I also have gained a lot of knowledge about what a job in low level and high level IT is. That's the way of saying it. Um looks like and I see a path forward in life. I see a path into IT now.

The first item would be the bonus is the employee bonuses. We did not forecast in the superintendent's proposed budget and therefore it was not included within the board's proposed budget any types of bonuses. And our estimate is we will require 3.4 million dollars of funding, local funding to cover that portion of the bonuses. Again, the state will pick up the funding required for state funded employees and our grants and other non-state, non-local um funded employees will get picked up by those.

The biggest area in reconciliation um has to do with a large increase for certified teachers and certified instructional staff. Superintendent's proposed budget and the board's proposed budget included, as did a lot of our peer districts, an average 3% increase for all categories of employees. And again, this was going based upon a little bit of this, no biennial budget kind of anchoring on. And um as a result of the significant increases to the salaries for teachers, I think in percentage they range from 17% I think the lowest one was close to 5%, so in that range. Um we will require an additional just under $14 million, $13.7 million of local funding to cover that and that is a recurring requirement unlike the bonuses.

We would recommend that you consider removing the 1% increase in salary supplement that was in the board's proposed budget. When we brought that forward, it was at a time we thought the state raises would be in the 3% range. But now that the certified salary increases are much higher, they're between 5 and 13%, an average of 8%. Um this may not be the time to adjust the supplement. So, staff would recommend that we pause and not include that um and use those funds instead to go toward these state increases that are much higher than we anticipated.