- The school board ofIndependent School District 624. Ask the clerk to please call the roll. - Daniels?- Here. - Ellison?- Here. - Newmaster.- Here. - Arcand?- Here. - Alright, thank you very much. And before we move intoour first discussion item, Dr. Casperchek. - Alright, so MSBA moved school board appreciationmonth to September. Used to be February. So our Bear sheet bars are going to now. - It's like my favorite schoolboard meeting of the year. (people laugh) - Thank you.- Thank you! - There you go. Thanks for all you do. (overlapping chatter) - This is gonna go my backpack. In like five months, I'm gonna find it, get excited to have candy bars- - Ingredients, thoughtful, accountable, open, representative voice,goodwill, conscientious, fiscally responsible,supportive, and proud. So thanks for all you do. And yeah, I guessSeptember is the month now. So going forward I guess they changed it going forward. - Thank you very much. I am really proud to serve on this board of this district, butespecially with the members that I'm serving with. You're all just reallythoughtful people, so thank you. - It's a nice group. - Yes, thank you very much. I'm gonna eat this as soonas the meeting is over. - These were manufacturedby White Lake area, White Bear Lake area schools. - It says so on the-- It says so. Thank you. Thank you all very much. It's really a gift tobe able to serve here. And with that we will moveinto our first discussion. Item B1, early childhood update. Dr. Gillespie, we havea whole crew of folks. (some chuckling) - I'm gonna take the lead on this one. - Alright, so Mr. Mower, you could- - Nice break and enjoy all the information that's coming your way. - Wonderful. Thank you. Mr. Mower. - Thanks for, well, happyto be here. Good to see you. Trails and members of the board. It is my pleasure to introduce- Angela Drange could not make it tonight, but it's my pleasure tointroduce Kristen Nelson who was hired as ournew assistant director of early childhoodprograms over the summer. So we're three weeks intothe school year this year with our little ones. So we have a presentation tonight that she will be taking us through in regards to our earlychildhood overview as well as some updates of what'scurrently happening. So Kristen, you have the floor. - Thanks. Hello Chair Ellison andschool board members. Thanks for letting me comeand talk about early childhood and the littlest of the little Bears. I'm super excited toshare what I know so far as I've kind of gotten into the role and been able to be withkids, it's the best part and the staff. So on the first slide here we have what does early childhoodlook like in White Bear Lake? And it was just kind of a little overview to show the two programs. So we have the special edprogram and community education, but it really shows kindahow we work together. And so on the special education side, you see in the early childhoodthere's birth to two, ECSE Child Find, and then on the community ed side, in the early childhoodworld there's preschool and we have ECFE and screening. And then there's alsoOutreach and home visit and you'll find even wework together on that as well as we roll. So next slide, for screening, last yearwe screened about 591 low preschoolers that came through us and they do need to be screened before they come to preschool. So we make sure that happens. But I think as you cansee on the screen there, we have our T-shirts and we've been able to get back to sending those T-shirts back out to our families whenthey are ready to come to us and be screened. And so they are going, I am expecting them to come in wearing them'cause they're pretty proud of their T-shirts when they come in. I've seen some of the kidscome to school in them already. And so that is a reallyimportant part of being able to make our families feel welcome, as well as make sure we'retouching base with all of our families in screening. That's the first contact of the district. And so we take that very seriously. I take that very seriouslyto be able to make sure that they're feeling welcomed and that they have a reallygood experience to be able to continue on with us. The next overview is aboutEarly Childhood Family Ed. That is the program ofcourse where families sign up and they come with their students and their children to classes with us. We currently have 141 enrolled and I think that's probably gone up inthe last couple of weeks. As school starts, theygo, "Oh, I should come to preschool" or "I should come to ECFE," and they give us a calland sign up right away. So we are working on that. I've been down to thatclassroom a few times. So there's lots of activity going on. We also have a fullfamily literacy program. So we have two sectionsthere that are full and parents do the same typeof a day with their kids. They come twice a week and they do come in and do activities with theirchildren in the classroom and then they're able to go after that and do some adult-based ed coursework. And so they've been workingreally hard on that. I know they were testing today. So let's see, next is pre-K, next slide. Thank you. And so our early childhood programs we have the full dayoptions that we've been filling up quickly and are full in many of those. We have our co-taught, halfday preschool programs over at Normandy and Oneka. And then our full daymodels do have access to wraparound care and transportation. Currently we have 297little preschoolers coming, 359 ECSE students andthat's birth to five. We do still have familiesregistering, calling us every day and our full day options right now are Monday through Friday. Full day options are full. And so we are working onthose wait lists as we speak. And then we have Tamarack of course, which is our outdoor program that is new to me and I am really enjoying being out there and seeing how they're workingtogether with the naturalists to provide a really engagingenvironment for our students. And we did start an all dayprogram, a Monday, Wednesday, Friday all day program there. And so that of course is also filled up. So they're having somewonderful experiences there, I think yep, early childhood special ed. We have our programming withearly childhood special ed and our students with ourchildren with exceptional needs. And they're seen in a differentvariety of environments. It could be anythingfrom home or childcare integrated into classrooms or playgroups and certainly preschool is an option. I think that being able to collaborate with early childhood special ed and our programming, it justprovides the best opportunities for all children and providingeach child what they need. So I think that's a huge asset to what we have here at WhiteBear Lake is being able to provide those services together. And so- - Oh, I want to take a minute. I forgot Lisa, I forgot to introduce you, but Lisa Oren, our directorof student support services is here in case there are any questions that come up around the ECSE side in Angela's absence,Lisa's department oversees that area of early childhood. - Thanks.- Next one? - Yeah.- All right. - So one of the topics that we picked to talkabout was our action plan and that strategicemergence of our action plan and so on the slides are the three tactics that we determined and thenthe three specific results that go with each of those. And it's just kind of an overview of what our action plan is focusing on and that will be engagingdiverse learners, increasing access toearly childhood programs and fostering family andcommunity engagement. And so the next few slidesare just a quick overview of how we're working on that so far. So engaging our diverse learners, this fall when I joined, the team had a reallyamazing training planned for our staff and sothey were able to have the presenter come in and provide training on engaging with young children, multilingual children and their families. And so we did that in Augustand staff were super engaged and you can see already some of the things that they're trying in their classrooms. And then we're having thisteam come back in January and they're gonna dive intolanguage focused planning so that we can really take a look at how we're putting those practicesin place into both RTSG, into our assessmentsand into our curriculum and making sure that we'reproviding those opportunities. The next one is that we're going to increaseaccess to early childhood. And so we're super excited. As you can see, we've got some interest, some fun things coming up too. So we're working onproviding an additional class for our Monday throughFriday all day kiddos. And so we're in the process right now. We have some interviewsthis week for a teacher, so this would be awesome. We're hoping that one ofthese teachers works out so we can start rightaway sometime in October to get those kiddos on the waiting list. We also experienced alarge number of threes enrolling this year and so we are also in the process of adding an additional threes class and that would be in collaboration with early childhood special ed to be able to have some more threescome into Normandy Park. So I think we've got ateacher lined up for that. It's just getting thosenext pieces in place. And then certainlywe're super excited with the transition into new spaceswhen construction is done and making some of those plans, creating some opportunities up north. And I was up there withTim just yesterday. So being able to kind oftake a look at what kinds of things we're able to provide and having some discussion with our Early ChildhoodFamily Ed staff too about what things we maybe couldstart already this school year and provide someopportunities for families to try out some open gyms or different things like that up there. For Outreach, we do some home visiting, we have some ECFE family events and then we do have ourchild and family advocate and that, I'm learning, sheis critical to who we are and what we do. And she really has this, the goal is to connectfamilies to community resources and enrich their school experience. And I have seen it almost every day how she's really connecting with families and being able to providethose resources that they need and making families feel connected. Next slide. And there's some of our Foster Family and Community Engagement,those are some of the things that we have coming up. So we're having a field trip to Pine Haven and opening that up to allfamilies in the community and trying to find ways. Some are gonna be able to do the busing and some are going to joinus there as they come in. But with the engagement,the engagement dollars that we received, we're having an apple adventure on Wednesday and so we have families comingin at three different times at the beginning of their class or at the beginning of their class, whichever one works best for them, but there'll be some activities and then I believewe're having some donuts that are apple themed as well. So there'll be lots of timefor families to kind of come in to Normandy and see what their children are doing in their classrooms and kind of engage withsome of the staff as well. So we're looking forward to that. And that's the presentation. So thank you so very much and we're super excitedfor the school year. - Wonderful. Thank you so much. Any questions from the board? Dr. Arcand? - I don't have a question as much as I just have a thank you. The ECFE is so crucial because especially whenyou're a young parent, not only starting on thatchild's journey of learning, but sometimes as a parentwe're starting off on that journey, networking andlearning and so both the parent and the child get to start on that pathway and it really helps in the networking. I also like the fact that when we do the 3-year-old screening,the earlier we can do it, the greater the chance if there'sa gap we can fill that gap so they start kindergarten,ready to go without any deficits and that's important andit's just the opportunity that we provide in our programs that the students start lovingto learn and want to be here and it just sets 'em off on the right path for their academic journeythrough our system. So thank you for everythingyou do with that. - Thank you. - Question: For the waitlist, do you know how many students that might be? Or are there and thenprobably the difference between threes and fours? - Yeah. Most, the wait list in the 4-year-old programming we'reright at around 10, 12? - Something like that. - If we get that teacher- - If we get the teacher cover that wait list. - Absolutely.- Yep. - Oh, that's excellent. - Yep. We have a space readyto go up Birch Lake Elementary that will expand our schoolreadiness plus seats over there. - Awesome.- So we've been working with Julian on that, so that'sprepped and ready to go. So as soon as we get ateacher lined up, get time to get them hired and get acclimated, we hope to in a perfectworld where we're off and running in notificationof the families of classes starting right around MEA. - Oh that's great. Andjust one other question. When you talked about wraparound services, is that the family advocate then? Is that the same? Is that family advocate theperson that does the wraparound, when you talk about wraparound services? - That and the fact thatwe have extended days so that they're able to comeif they come on the bus but they don't have anyone yet to pick them up at homeat the end of the day, then we can hop over to extendedday and the rehab services provided there for them as well. - The wraparound for childcare with extended daysavailable to preschoolers that attend preschool sectionsat our elementary schools. - Perfect. Thank you.- Mm-hm. - Alright, thank you somuch for all of your work. - Thank you.- Thank you. - We'll move into oursecond discussion item B2, a transition education center update. And Dr. Gillespie, Ms. Orin. (indistinct chatter) - Good evening, membersof the school board. It's my privilege to introduceSarah Derby this evening. She's gonna be talking aboutthe Transition Education Center and the programs that she has there. She's the assistant directorof student support services as well as the principal at theTransition Education Center. Welcome Sarah. - Thank you. Good evening everyone. Alright to start, wehave moved this fall into what was formerly Hugo Elementary School and we'll be there for a couple of years until we transition into Sunrise Park. It has really been a great location. It's a beautiful site up there. But in addition to just larger classrooms, the staff have reallyloved having the designated cafeteria space, the gymspace and the outdoor space which we will also have at Sunrise Park. But that's been really nice. In my 12 years here, we'venever had a cafeteria and it's just another reallynice time for socialization and for students to reallyget together on their own. So I always like to do a little review of the four unique programs at the Transition Education Center 'cause people aren'talways familiar with them. But we have the Transition Plusprogram, which is typically for our 18 to 22 year oldsthat are working on education, post-secondary education, employment and independent living skills. And then we have the TAPPprogram, which stands for Transition and Post-secondaryPreparation program. And this is for students ingrades nine through age 22. And these students have been referred to the TAPP program due totheir social emotional needs. Then we have Project Search,which is a program that's for students in their lastyear of transition programming. And this is located at Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare. And this is a school to work program and our students are internsat Gillette Hospital for that last year of school. And then we have theAWARE program which stands for Accountability with Academicsand Restorative Education. And that's for studentsin grade six through 12. And that's a program thatprovides education for students that are serving a suspension. New this year, which Ijust kind of wanted to note and highlight is thateligibility in Minnesota now provides services to students until age 22 for students that are on an IEP. So previously students could go through their 21st school year. Now students graduate a day prior to their 22nd birthday, they age out. So students can obviouslygraduate sooner than that if they've met their goals. But if there are students thatare with us through the end of their schooling career,it would be one day prior to their 22nd birthdaywould be their end date. So this is our technician. Oops. I told you I'd be fast.(people laugh) I've never talked so slow. - Can I steal this? (indistinct chatter) - Yes. So our mission, whichI wasn't going to read but I highlighted some of it in orange, which was honoringstudents' unique abilities and aspirations, ensure that students achievetheir individual goals and transition successfullyinto their larger community and student-centered planning approaches to encourage independence. I put those in orange because our staff wastrying to think of a way that we could maybe summarize or be more succinct inexplaining our mission so students and familiesand even themselves could remember it a little more easily. So we came up with that TEC and our staff submitted anumber of different options and our student leadership team voted and they voted on the T istransitioning to community, E is encouraging independence, and C is celebrating aspirations. So that was just a little wayto help us all remember it. We've T-shirts, we'vebeen doing some marketing and some posters inour hallways with that. The next one I'll just keep talking is our strategic plan tactics. And we have two of them. The first one is that wewill embed personalized post-secondary planningopportunities into our programming in our students' final year. And this was something thatour strategic plan team developed, a measurablepost-secondary goal check-in and the checklist. And before students graduate they have to identify three goals,maybe where they wanna live, where they wanna work, ifthey wanna go on to school or go on to the military,whatever that might be. And we don't want there to bea gap in, once they graduate, now they have to startdoing all of that planning. So prior to them reachingtheir 22nd birthday or aging out, we wannabe meeting with them four to six months prior tothat time to make sure that they've taken the ASVAB or that they've toured a day program or that they've enrolled in a school. And they've started to look at some of those next steps in their plan. And then the other tactic is we will understand our students and their needs to ensure belonging. And we have three maininitiatives under that bullet. The first one is implementingrestorative circles. And during our advisoryclass we've embedded restorative circles intoour class and it's really a way to help create safe, respectable spaces wherethey can come together and talk about different topics and really strengthen relationships. So each of our staff memberswas assigned a different topic and they've created them for all of the different classrooms. And some of the topics that we've done for restorative circles are like why friendships areimportant, dealing with stress, understanding yourstrengths, feeling respected. The second bullet under that tactic was positive feedback tracking. And we have found thatour students really like a tangible feedback. They really like it if youcut out a little butterfly dye-cut and write a specificlittle note to them, something that they can take home. So in addition to just givingthem verbal feedback, we track to make sure all of ourstudents are receiving some sort of a tangible feedbackthroughout the school year to take home, which has been great. And then the last bullet isour student climate survey, which I'm going to highlighton the next slide. (laughs) - We have it. - Oh you have it? Okay good. I'm like this, this willfeel a little weird. Alright, so this again, our survey was developed byour strategic planning team. It was really helpful, like especially to have a parent on our team who could really help us with the wording and make sure that theirstudents would understand the language and whatwe were asking of them. So we had differentcategories that we created and all of our students,in all of the programs took the survey. And as you can see here, about 90% of our students marked yes or sometimes that they liked schooland about 90% marked yes or sometimes that theyfeel safe at school. And on the next slide, it gets a little bit more into the four differentcategories of the questions. The first one was reallyaround safe environment. And again, you can kind ofsee, we're looking for a lot of blues and reds in our responses. And the second one isfeeling valued, celebrated, included and understood. And again, about 80% ofour students were feeling that they were feeling celebrated and understood in our building. And then on the next slide, it was our third category,which was kind of under student agency and about 90% of our students marked yes or sometimes, to thestudent agency questions. We did find that, again, our students don't alwaysfeel like they know what their IEP goals are. So that's something thatwe're continuing to work on that they really know whatareas that they're working on. Our teachers meet with themand they present a PowerPoint that they present attheir own IEP meetings to help them betterunderstand their disability, their goals, and maybe the accommodations that work best for them 'cause we want them tobe able to self-advocate and be that student agency. Most of our students do have self-advocacy as an area in which they are working on. So we'll continue to work on that as well. And then the studentclimate survey dated one, we did ask, this wasunder our fourth category, which was access to supportive adults. And we had a picture ofeach staff member along with their name and we askedthese staff really care about me and 100% ofour students were able to identify at least one staff member. Some people identified every staff member, which made us feel really good. But ultimately I really wannacommend the tech staff just for their ability to buildrelationships with our students and make our students feelwelcome and safe there. And then I didn't put a slide in this one, but I just was gonna highlight quickly. We had three open-ended questionsas well for our students and one of 'em was what wasthe best thing about school? And some of our most popularanswers were reading, Spanish Club, positive engagement class, my friends and staff. What would make school better,was our second question. And we had, more color in our classrooms, burgers, not cheeseburgers,(people laugh) more time with friends, if Taylor Swift would come to Tech, (laughter) a later start date, time, and more points of pride prizes. And then what would make youfeel most celebrated at school? And this was veryheavily birthday related, treats for my birthdays,cupcakes for my birthday, DJ on my birthday, small things and having friends. So that was kind of funfor me to read those. The next one was just a picture of our students in our new cafeteria. Again, it's just fun tosee them in the cafeteria. The next slide, thanksLisa, moving it forward now, is a list of our course offerings. And again, I felt like ourstudent climate data really showed positive results and feedback and I think that's a directrelationship to the variety of courses and the number of courses that we offer our students. We have many of ourstudents for four years, but we have had somestudents for eight years in our program. So we really have to offera variety of classes. We don't offer all ofthese classes every year, but we do always try to offeran independent living class, cooking class. Obviously reading and math kind of classes are offered every year, but some of them we call'em more like electives and we don't offer every year, but they can have a variety of courses while they're with us. The next one was a littlebit about project search. Again, this is an option forstudents in their last year of transition programming. If they're accepted to projectsearch, there's an interview and a skills day applicationthat they have to go through. But if they're accepted then they work in three differentdepartments at Gillette while they are there. This is our eighth schoolyear of project search. We've had 41 interns complete the program with seven more there currently. And we've had 80 to 100% of our interns have achieved competitiveoutcomes after graduation, except during Covid, slippeddown to 70 a little bit. But competitive employmentmeans working at minimum of 16 hours a week atminimum wage or higher in an integrated setting. So we've been really proud of the outcomes and seven of our internshave been hired at Gillette, either full-time, part-time or seasonally after they've left the program. And they're currently in the departments that I have listed there. So it's really fun right now. We have one of our studentsfrom last year who's training our current interns this year. The next slide is just a listof the departments at Gillette that have hosted a project search intern. We currently have students insupply chain, human resources, health and information management,environmental services, and patient engagement. And one of the thingswe got back this year that we haven't hadsince prior to Covid is some of the locations a lifetime clinic. Some of 'em are across the highway or in different locations,not at the Gillette site. And previously our studentswould take a shuttle, a Gillette shuttle, thatdoesn't run anymore. So now our students aretaking public transportation to those sites. So that's a really good skill that our students arelearning midday to practice that public transportation. So that's that one. The next one is just someexamples of the job tasks that our interns mightbe asked to perform. Again, I'm not gonna read through those, but you can see there'sa variety of clerical, kind of housekeeping, lots oforganizational type of tasks that they're asked to do inthe different departments. Next is the AWARE data. And here, this is fromlast year, just kind of a summary of last year. And the data shows again thatthe majority of our students that attend the AWAREprogram only attend one time. Of course we have students of all genders and of all grade levels,secondary buildings that attend. And the majority of ourstudents that are referred to AWARE come one, two or three days. Finally we have three buildinggoals that we've identified. The first one is toincrease the attendance rate of our students in our TAPP program. Again, those are ourstudents that have more of those social, emotionalmental health needs. So where we are workingon kind of identifying those problems, the barriers of why they're not getting to school, we are offering more flexible scheduling. Some of our students don't come every day. Some of 'em, we have donesome online things when their mental health is really abarrier to getting them there. So we're trying to offer different things to get those students theirdiploma and get graduated. The second one is relatedto the DESSA pre-assessment and our students that areidentified as, needs instruction. And again those are thosesocial emotional skills that they're working on. And our psychologist and oursocial worker in our building, she does large groups, small group and individual groups to support that. But we also have speakers that come in and the co-located mental healthsupports as well as having outside providers of thestudents' choice coming in to help provide some of those supports. And the last one is really just that increased family engagement and those afterschool sponsored events. We haven't done a lot ofthose in the last 11 years. We haven't really hadthe space to do that. So we tried to do more of that. We had our really greatturnout at Open House. We had 67 students and familiesshow up for our Open House and we had our firstFamily Engagement Night on September 19th andwe had 50 people show up that night as well. And we are gonna have at least two more Family Engagement Nights this year. So I just wanted to highlight family engagement a little bit. So this is our students at Family Engagement Night this week. We invited all of their siblings. We had aunties and uncles,we had grandmas and grandpas. They asked who could comeand we said, "Anybody." And we had activities for all ages, but we really focused on, we did review our family engagement plan and our equity commitment in the district and then our students colored pots and then we planted succulents and of course we did someeating and things like that. So here we can see thepots that they've designed and kind of some of their final products that they had gotten. So that's it. - Alright, wonderful. Thank you. Any questions for Debbie? Dr. Arcand? - I was curious because Iknow we went, was it 21? You turn 21 but yougot to finish the year? - Yes.- Now 22, you're done. - Yes.- Have you seen an impact on your enrollment orhow is it fluctuating? - Yep, we've definitely seenan impact on the enrollment, but we also are having really, like last year we had students who would've been grad, would've turned 22 in September and October. And again that's where thatmeasurable post-secondary goals, like what are their goals afterwards? And some of our students withmore significant disability especially there's waiting lists to get into day programsand different things. So you don't want, we really wanna haveconversations with those families that it might make the most sense to transition into those into September, not coming back a month or two. So we have definitely seen, we had our smallestgraduating class last year that we've had in anumber of years and that's because so many morewere returning this year. - Okay, thank you. - Ms. Daniels? I just wanted to commentthat I was able to attend that Family Engagement Night last week and it was just fabulous andI wanted to say the staff in your program knows, caresabout, loves each of those kids and their families and just,it was just really great to see and they were so proudto bring their families and introduce them to staff and then what was really great too was that the families weretalking to each other and getting to each other. So the parents and thatwas really great too because for those families, I think for every family, it'sreally important to engage, family engagement, and it was evident andso thank you for that. And it was just really fun. - Kathleen got thrown my credit card and I said, "Go buy more pizzas." (laughter) And away she went. (laughs) And it's been great 'causewe're using Parents Square now and that was really helpful forthe Outreach to our families for family engagement andtheir different languages and getting thatinformation and our families really told us that. So that was reallyhelpful as well. So yeah. - Anything else? - I just wanna commend you, I was really struck by,in the student survey, how highly the staff areviewed by the students. I mean 'cause relationshipsare everything in education and the fact that so many students said that they know the staffwant them to be successful and listen to them, and care about their feelingsis really incredible. So thank you.- Thank you. - Alright, thank you both very much. (indistinct chatter) - And then we'll move intoour only operational item C1, action on the certification for 2024 payable, 2025preliminary property tax levy. Mr. Wald and Ms. Johnson. - Thank you Chair Elsa,members of the board, Dr. Casperchek. Each year in September, our staff works with MDE Levy certificationstaff to prepare the tax levy for the upcoming calendar year. There's two dates we need to hit. September 30th is when the proposed levy needs to be certified and December 28th is when the final levy needs to be certified. So we're at the firststep in that process, which is certification of theproposed tax levy for 2025. Our team, and when I say our, I mean Andi, works with the team at MDEto make sure that we've submitted our data, that it'schecked and double checked multiple times and many runs occur before we get to a pointwhere we're at tonight. So Andi, great work on this. I'll turn it over toour director of finance, Andi Johnson to walk us through it. - Okay. Well as Tim said, we're at the stage in our budgeting cycle that we are at thepreliminary property tax levy. There are three main componentsto our property tax levy, the general fund, ourcommunity services fund, and then our debt service fund. Our debt service fund, again is kind of like our mortgage fund, how we pay for all of the improvements that have happened acrossthe school district. The property tax levy is quite complex. The document itself is 39 pagesand there's three columns. All of those calculationsare set by statute and then there'sestimates that we provide, there's estimates that the county provide and that MDE provides. And so as Tim said, we combthrough it, we refine it, as we find errors or adjustmentsthat have to be made. And so, included in yourpacket is the estimates based on the latest and greatest, today's copy that is presented from MDE. We just stress that this ispreliminary at this time. And so each year inSeptember we come to you and we ask that the schoolboard approve the maximum and that allows us to continueto refine as we find anything that needs to be refined or replaced. And that also allows the county and MDE to make any changes thatthey may come across. Also included in the packetis the estimated change that would occur to the average home or commercial industrialor apartment buildings. So then with that then therecommended action would be that the school board approve the maximum for the '24 payable, '25 proposed preliminaryproperty tax levy. - All right.- Just a second. - Hold on one second.(indistinct chatter) - Were you all able to findthe document in the packet? It's at the end.- Yep. - Okay.- Not that one. - Just wanted to make sure. - Not in my tabs. - Oh, sorry. Too many tabs. Okay, so the recommended actionis to approve the maximum for the 2024 payable,2025 proposed preliminary property tax levy. Could I get a motion to approve? - So moved. - A motion by Dr. Newmaster and a second? - Second.- Second by Ms. Daniels. Any questions or discussion? Dr. Arcand? - Just a second. I just have a question, for this tax levy, what percent of that isactually funding the district? I mean that doesn't payfor everything does it? - Oh no, in the total, like for the general fund do you mean or? - Yeah, if we're lookingat all our expenses and the revenue we're takingin, about what percent is that? - For the total on the general fund? Off the top of my head, like 5% maybe? I'd wanna double check that but- - So majority of it comes from the state? - Mm-hm. Yeah, the vast majority ofour general fund revenue comes from the state. Yeah. - Typically about-- Is it five to- - There's a range. - It might be federal. - Typically it's about 23- - Like 9%. - Typically it's like a quarter, about a quarter.(overlapping chatter) - I may thinking of justspecifically the operating- - Yeah-- The referendum. - Yep. - Yeah, so total whole categories is probably in the neighborhoodof 20 to 25% for Texas. - It's not a major amount of what revenue we take in. - That's, yeah-- But I mean it's not the total. - It's not the total.- Yep. - Yeah. - Other questions? - Alright.- Oh wait. - Oh I'm sorry, Ms. Daniels. - So, so this is our preliminary - Mm-hm.- So when it adjusts and it will, and it'll change then we vote on this again, right? - Yes.- We approve it again. So we're just approving this preliminary- - Correct. Yep. You're approving themaximum just so that we are able to continue to refine it and that MDE can make thosechanges as they come through. And then in December we havethe truth in taxation hearing, you remember, that's whenwe have the big graphs and all of those changes areincorporated at that point. And then you reproveactual dollar amounts. - Yep.- By fund and that's then what goes out to taxpayers. Yes. - So the reason we don't approvea dollar amount tonight is because there's always, there'salmost always changes to it? - Yes.- And if you approved a dollar amount tonight, you wouldn't be ableto change that amount. You'd be stuck with that amount. And so as you know, theremight be adjustments to enrollment, there might be adjust, there might be prior year adjustments that the Department of Ed catches up on that then changes the levy. And so, so school districts do, they do what we're doingtonight, they approve maximum and then over the next couplemonths, everything gets refined and they bring it in December and that's when youget the dollar amounts. They usually don't vary awhole lot from what you see at this meeting, but sometimes they do. Depending on what- - Right. - Either we, we find orcorrect or correct or add or whatever Department of Ed does. - Other things that couldhappen is there might be like a statewide appropriation or a maximum that, if onedistrict had a big error that might throw off acalculation statewide. So that's another reason that we like to just have the maximum,it allows those types of fluctuations to happen. - The county could change some data that impacts our calculations. Lots can happen between now and that final levy certification. - And we're in three different counties. - Correct. - So that's three different counties we're talking about too. - Yeah.- Thank you. I feel like there's nothingon earth more complicated than school district finance. (light chuckling) - I mean there's rocket science. (laughter) - Eh.(laughter) Alright, any furtherquestions or discussion? This will require a roll call vote. I would ask the clerkto please call the roll. - Daniels?- Aye. - Ellison.- Aye. - Eumaster.- Aye. - Arcand.- Aye. - And the motion passes.Thank you so much. - Thank you.- With that I would ask for a motion to adjourn. - Charles and I move for adjournment. - Motion by Dr. Arcand and a second. - Second. - Second by Ms. Daniels. All in favor ofadjournment, please say aye. - [Group] Aye. - Opposed? Same sign. And we are adjourned. (gavel slams)