March 5, 2025 at 7:30 AM - Budget Committee Meeting

Description:  The purpose of this agenda item is to discuss the 25-26 budget timeline. As a reminder, we are entering into a new state budget cycle. As such, we will be following the process very closely and will recommend updates to the budget process as necessary. 

Description:  The purpose of this agenda item is to provide a review of the preliminary budget planning process for 2025-26. Open enrollment approvals from January and the financial estimates as a result of the 25-26 CPI have been updated. Attached please find additional data that was requested at the February committee meeting. This attachment contains open enrollment data for our comparable districts as well as enrollment growth data for our comparable districts. We are looking for approval to take to the full board at the regular March board meeting.

Some of the next major milestones will include a health insurance renewal decision at the April board meeting, compensation decisions at the May board meeting, student fees at the May board meeting, and the first draft of the budget in May.

Description:  In January, the committee made a motion "to establish a fund 10 balance goal for 2024-25 of $0 and authorized administration to allocate expenditures across accounting funds to meet this goal." Administration has been working with HR to repost salaries and benefits to get an accurate snapshot of where we are at now compared to the last posting which was done in October. Attached you will  find a screenshot that shows savings from October to now. We also wanted to make the committee aware of the post-employment benefit payments we have made for 24-25 which total $633,391.46. The current balance in our trust account is $722,294. Administration will begin the process of pulling the OPEB funds out of the trust to reimburse fund 10 for the payments made this year. The remaining balance will be less than $100,000 which confirms that the 25-26 budget planning process will need to include funding for OPEB payments. 

Next steps would include reposting the HR data and updating the nonsalary/benefit data such as legal fees, special education categorical aid revenues, etc. Administration will then reallocate the necessary expenditures from fund 10 to fund 49. 

Description:  Administration would like to continue to discuss the district fund balance policy. Attached please find the current policy. For perspective, the most recent statewide data for fund balance is 26% and 25% in Dane County. 
As an example, the increase in fund 10 expenditures from 23-24 to 24-25 is $4,143,522. A fund balance goal of 15% would require a 24-25 end of the year balance of +$621,528 and a 10% goal would require a positive balance of +$414,352. The district fund balance and long-term financial planning has been discussed as part of the board workshop process. Administration will continue to request feedback from the budget committee. 

Description:  The purpose of this agenda item is to continue the discussion of technology updates for the 2025-26 school year related to bussing.  These updates include camera upgrades as well as app technologies. The committee expressed an interest in holding on these investments until the next request for proposal. Dr. Brown would prefer additional conversation around options to consider in 25-26. One opportunity could be the use of a parent app to track the bus, without the investment individual student tracking and security cameras. 

Description:  The purpose of this discussion is to review final step in the borrowing process for the construction funds from the November 2022 referendum. Attached please find the most recent copy of the financial plan and net new construction historical data. Administration was able to push the borrowing past April 1st in order to open one additional year on the debt schedule. We plan to review the following with the committee:
1) Fund 39 equity investment 
2) Fund 49 interest earnings investment
3) Fund 39 tax levy increases over time
4) Remaining steps moving forward

Also attached, please find the most recent bond rating summary. Our bond rating remained the same from November 2024 at AA-.

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