We did have a delay in the ability to enter the data that I talked about that business managers do over the summer. They had a software switch um at the state level and so they backed up some timelines. There are major categories missing this year. So sometimes at this point in time I have an idea of what that preliminary levy looks like. I don't this year because the areas are pretty significant with long-term facility maintenance being the major one and again that's a rather large dollar amount debt excess and then also um some lease levy especially through 916 and so again those not being on there we really don't have um a good preliminary number tonight but again not uncommon that that happens and we always in the past in this district among all the other districts in the state pretty much certify the maximum.

The parallel organization for school district advocacy with the legislature is the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, AMSD, and they are much more robust in their legislative advocacy. They provide um a great deal of professional development for school administrators, a lot of updates with different things happening around the state. They represent largely metro area school districts.

I just feel like this has more depth to it. This has more usable um advocacy for our district to use and for our board members.

I think this is an excellent opportunity to kind of dip our feet in the water here, test the waters, see how it goes. We're part of both organizations for a year. We decide what what fits our district the best moving forward.

The current plan was put together with an extensive amount of community input. I would say well over 200 community members participated through surveys, through focus groups, through a large strategic plan writing team uh that had 50 community members broad cross-section of the community. This was approved in 2019 for the 2020 school year through the 2025 school year. And the plan is, as you know, is comprised of uh a really good framework that has served us well over the last 5 years. In a sense, the framework is a bit timeless including a set of belief statements, uh a vision statement, a mission statement, six focus areas that then support objectives, goals and objectives under each of those focus areas. Clearly the work of the district evolves. Uh we're facing a future that we didn't know 5 years ago and we need a plan that speaks to today and tomorrow.

My recommendation being that we we stand up a three board member subcommittee um to to get together and to discuss our potential options, report back to the board with our recommendations um as to next steps. And those next steps might be, you know, greater community involvement. It might be the strategic plan should look like this. It could be we need to hire an external facilitator. Um or it could be that the the strategic plan is great and we should continue.

This is very similar to the resolution we submitted last year that was ultimately adopted by the rep assembly and was part of the MSBA lobbying legislative platform. Um, as you know, we have um a large district that provides transportation to 5600 students across our district and many years we incur a half up to a half a million dollars of cross subsidy that's funding that deficit through the general fund.

So administration would recommend that we proceed with this resolution that we would then submit to the rep assembly. And specifically in this resolution would be to move the deficit from coverage from 35% to 70. You might ask why not 100%. because at the legislature they do things in steps unfortunately and the 70% figure was actually a recommendation out of the school finance task force that met five years ago now that I was part of statewide school finance task force.

Because of the nature of the transportation formula, some school districts receive more funding for regular transportation than they actually need to cover their transportation costs. These districts are able to keep the surplus funding and enhance their general fund. So that's where the the real crux of the matter is and that disparity that it creates for us um paying this money out of our general fund.