So yes, we are here this evening for the 2026 2027 general fund budget hearing. Uh this is an annual hearing uh public hearing that the that we host and this is prior to the board's adoption of the uh of actually the entire budget. Um that will occur on June 23rd.

First thing is the Minnesota legislature sets funding for public schools. So they not only determine how much we're going to school districts get, they also determine how much will come in the form of uh state aid and what will be collected through property taxes.

Something new for us this year and I want to point out this isn't in our unassigned I we'll talk about more more about this at the end of the presentation. It is within the general fund but it's it's dollars that are set aside thanks to the generosity of our community. Uh the community approved in [clears throat] November of 2025 a $6 million annual uh levy that will help offset the cost of our technology salaries, hardware, uh safety improvements in our facilities and related communications uh and software.

we are projecting 6,883 for next year which is like um 85 students less uh than our actual enrollment for February 1st.

So overall, looking at our total general fund, um we're looking at a 81% increase from the current year to next year. So a lot of times you know there's confusion also about oh you know even if you look at our basic funding formula if it increased 2.6% that doesn't mean our overall budget increases 2.6%. It's just that one component that basic funding formula.

we are begin we are estimating that we're beginning the school year as a with an unassigned fund balance of 12.2 uh million. You can see our unassigned um uh revenues and expenditures there. Uh we als we will have def deficit spending of $3.9 million being our um uh our expenses will exceed our revenues. So we will be drawing the fund balance down to about 8 uh250,000 which is around 6.5% of the fund balance.