School Board Work Session   8/12/2026

Call the Charlottesville City Council, August 12th, 2026.

Special meeting to order.

Councilor Kleinscher?

Here.

Vice Mayor Ostrun?

Here.

Here.

Is there a motion to adopt the meeting agenda?

All in favor, please say yes.

Yes.

All opposed, please say no.

Motion passes 5-0.

We have one action item today before we begin our meeting.

It's the resolution to appropriate $234,000 to the city-wide reserve fund for approval to use an amount not to exceed $234,000.

$6,993.23 for the repayment of a local match fund to the Department of Justice for the Charlottesville Albemarle Family Drug Court.

Thank you Mayor Wade, Councillor, City Manager Sanders.

So I'm Taylor Harvey-Ryan, the Grants Program Manager.

So I'll take this back just a smidge.

The City provided a grant to BRAC last fiscal year in the amount of $204,000 to support permanent supportive housing through Regent Sen's program.

We provided them with that grant because they were not supposed to receive their HUD funds.

They did ultimately receive those HUD dollars.

And so they did not use the $234,000 that we had awarded them.

So we would like to take that $234,000 and put that into the citywide reserves.

And then in addition to that,

The city served as a fiscal agent for a grant from the Department of Justice to support the Charlottesville Albemarle Family Drug Court.

That was a partnership between us, the county, and Region 10.

The grant was for $827,973 for which there was a 25% match required.

That grant closed last year, but match documentation to support that 25% was not turned in during the grant period.

So the DOJ monitored that grant, and ultimately they decided that the repayment of that 25% was necessary.

with our internally and with the county and with region 10 to get that match documentation.

We plan on submitting that match documentation.

Right now we're looking at potentially $194,000 of that match being provided through documentation.

So DOJ will reduce that $206,000 down should they approve the documentation that we turn in.

And ultimately we hope to only have to pay back $12,000

$12,058.03 specifically if they approve those dollars.

Any questions from council?

It appears to be a miscommunication from when the grant application was submitted to the time of which the reports were being turned in.

And so since they were not being turned in with the quarterly reports, no match was being documented.

To finish that thought for you.

That's a capture of, we missed that moment in the past and we haven't had anyone in the position to check and make sure that certain criteria are being met.

Hence why Mrs. Harvey Ryan is on our staff now.

Because we have so many grants across the city organization, the goal is to make sure that we are doing compliance checks.

And if we were to have this particular grant in place today, Taylor would be capturing things like that to make sure that they are complete.

So it would be a capacity issue rather than a partner.

Thank you.

That's probably fair.

I might be a little more generous than I should be, because they asked us to apply for the grant, so they should have known to document it as well.

That's fair.

That's it.

Thank you.

So we would take that $234, put it in the reserves.

And if we have to pay up to $206, we would use part of that $234.

Thank you.

There's no other questions.

I move to approve the resolution appropriating $234,000 to the Citywide Reserve and granting the City Manager authority to use an amount not to exceed $206,993.23 for the repainting of local match funds to the Department of Justice for the Charlottesville Albemarle corridor.

And we're requesting a four-fist vote.

Okay.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor, please say yes.

All opposed please say no.

Motion passes five to zero.

Was that the only item you had before the meeting?

Okay.

So I would like to call our joint work session to order today being August 12th, 2026.

And if I may have,

Yes, Madam Chair.

Ms. Bryant.

Here.

Ms. Burns.

Here.

Ms. Cooper.

Here.

Ms. Dooley.

Here.

Ms. Richardson.

Here.

Yes.

Thank you.

So moved.

So is Ms. Cooper and then Ms. Dooley.

Ms. Bryant.

Oh.

You can't be here.

I'm just so sorry.

So sorry.

So Ms. Bryant with a motion.

Ms. Dooley for the second, are there any questions or discussion?

All right, any opposed?

Great, thank you.

Yes, and thank you all so much.

So the presentation I'm going to make this evening is information only.

Action will be asked for at a later time.

Please feel free to ask questions or comment through the presentation.

Myself or Dr. Gurley will be happy to answer.

The next slide.

Since the school board adopted their FY26-27 budget on February 19th of 2026, there have been several updates.

The first update is the General Assembly adopted and the governor signed the state budget by June 30th.

On July 2nd, VDOE released the CALC tool to the school division with the final state allocations.

As a result, Charlottesville City Schools received an additional $318,847 in state revenue.

And so I just want to add some further context just to our budget process.

So in FY26, which would have been the 25-26 school year, just so that everyone had, so you all have an idea of how things happen on the school side.

So during that FY, during the school year 25-26, which was the fiscal year 26, we had extra state revenue that year, which was $385,077.

And so as we always do, we presented this to the school board in a technical adjustment, which was June of that year, June 5th.

And those extra funds were used for enrollment growth.

And I just wanted to point this out because I know that there's been some discussion on council side and probably even on the staff side.

So during that time period when there were extra funds, those funds were used for enrollment growth.

And we added a social worker who focused on attendance.

These things aren't norms.

They don't typically happen with extra money.

The last time we had extra money, and I'm saying that in quotation marks, was the fiscal year of

2022, which was the 21-22 school year, is when there was extra money.

I know that came up during the April the 2nd meeting with city council.

And I know oftentimes

You all don't know that these things happen because we don't come back to the city.

But for context, during the fiscal year 25 school year, we did have an increase to our LCI, which is the local composite index.

We went from 0.75 to 7.7.

So our ability to

So this increased our ability to pay.

The city and state's budgets were finalized.

And after that happened, the governor put in the budget a 3% raise that year.

And so we did not have those monies.

And so internally, what we had to do is we had to offset things internally to make that happen.

So we don't come back to the city.

We do make those things happen internally.

Another thing to point out, during the FY24 school year, which was the 23-24, there was an error in the calculation tool from the State Department, which caused a $334,000 error.

We had to offset that.

We didn't come back to the city.

We had to offset that.

That was a shortage.

That error was a shortage.

So that was money that they didn't get.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

That was money that we did not get from them.

So we were short from them $334,000.

So we used health insurance monies and fund balance monies.

And then just a reminder that during the FY23 year, which is the 22-23 school year, the additional revenues that we had, the additional state revenues we had, we used the ESSER one-time funds to lower some costs so that we could help with projects throughout the city.

We show this timeline here, and we presented this last week at the school board, just so that people understand that so many moving parts happen because we have to do our budget, of course, before you all present your budget, and so many things happen at the state level, and then the state budget is often, as it was again this year, it wasn't approved until June, and so so many moving pieces happen that we have to make work.

All right.

I do have one question.

Yes.

When you said that you spent extra money on enrollment growth.

Teachers.

So when we have a rise, so that particular year when we have the rise in enrollment at many of our schools we have what we call a small class size initiative from the State Department.

And so that's for grades K through three.

K-2 and K-3.

And so with that, some of the schools, such as Summit, they can have class sizes of like 19.

Higher than 19.

So if the class size exceeds that, we're required to add another teacher or we lose money.

And so we have to offset that.

We had to do that again this school year.

We had to add a teacher at Tall Oaks Elementary School in kindergarten.

The class size there is in the 20s.

They exceeded the number in kindergarten, and it's not one of those things where we can have two classes of 22 and one class of 23.

This one, in terms of the... You said when we were first talking about when the enrollment growth happened.

Oh, that was the...

That was this past year.

2022 is what happened again though, right?

Initially.

All right.

So the next slide is the...

Next update to our budget.

When the city adopted its budget on April 9, the state budget had not been finalized.

And because there was a significant difference between the House budget, which was 914,000, and the Senate's budget, which was 518,000, and the proposals, the city appropriated 2 million of the school board's requests into a school's operating contingency, subject to future approval by city council.

If I may, so this brings up an interesting point and a lot of questions that I think I have for council and for you all.

Regarding this change to the appropriations ordinance, several of us have gone back and listened to the meeting to kind of try to get a better understanding of where this originated from, what the concerns were, and with

All due respect.

I mean, we try to follow all of the meetings and understand and listen to the updates as far as the challenges, as far as budget and the scope that you all are responsible for.

But I have to say, and right now I'm speaking for myself, I found this process that occurred and this change to the ordinance ultimately just really insulting to us because I feel like it

potentially reflects that there's this sense that we are less than fiscally responsible, that there's some mistrust of what we're going to do.

Some of the comments that struck me

that were said either by council members or people in the room during these special sessions.

There was a question about, have we ever done this before?

No, it's never been done before.

A lot of talk about the game sharing.

Is this a big enough policy or practice change that someone might be upset by it?

Is the scale of this decision

or the change to this, is it potentially going to upset somebody?

There was a lot of talk about the timeframe.

This meeting happened on a Thursday.

The ordinance was gonna be written up and was presented on a Monday and then approved on a Thursday.

And there was talk amongst staff council members about whether or not the school board had any sense or the school division had any sense of this.

We did not.

Nobody communicated this to us.

Nobody alerted us to this change in the ordinance.

One of the questions that I have and I believe Dr. Gurley and staff have is, is this going to be, you know, perpetuated year to year?

I mean, there was talk about it would be looked at yearly.

But none of that had been communicated to us.

The $2 million from what I gathered as far as when there was discussion about options and how this language could be written up, there was no mention of we're going to hold $2 million.

There was mention of

And again, I can't help but take that a little bit personally because we have never

been irresponsible and been irresponsible partners and on multiple occasions.

And we can get into that.

I think we're going to get into the game sharing and how some of the monies that we do give back based on that agreement, you know, were used and were taken.

And there's some pretty big lump sums, you know, and that money was given in good earnest and good faith, you know, as often.

And you guys correct me, Ms. Hammill, you correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, it was used towards

CIP funding or to pay down that debt and all of that but we've always been very upfront with all of that language like you know once monies are appropriated it would be difficult to claw money back you know I mean that's just alarming and maybe that's legal term you know or financial terms or language but it's insulting

And I think we've done a really good job of trying to communicate our needs and what those needs are.

This money, this $2 million, I don't know where it came from.

It wasn't discussed in the work session.

And then at the first reading on that Monday, it's there.

So I don't know whose brainchild that was, but that's money for our staff.

That was collective bargaining.

That was to pay our staff.

I would like to have a better understanding.

And if there is a sense of mistrust, I would just hope that something like that, which I think is a significant change, would have been brought to us and communicated to us.

And then not to mention, we have been asked or not asked, told that we need to come before city council on the 17th to ask for the money that has already been appropriated to us.

And so I just find that, again,

insulting to us, you know?

And I ask that you all remember, we are also your constituents.

And I think that's an important point to make.

I don't know if there's a response to that or if there is a discussion, but I think my colleagues and I would love to hear.

You know, where this was born out of, other than the fact, and I'm not minimizing it, I get it.

I watched all of those budget work sessions.

So I know it was a tight year, but to say that, you know, and again, this was based on projections of $500,000 to $900,000.

We ended up with 300, excuse me, sir, hold on, a little over $300,000 and we're being asked to split that.

Okay, you know, based on decisions and ordinance and a policy that you've put in place, you know, some folks, you know, felt like we shouldn't be asked if it was less than a million dollars.

And I want to say thank you.

I think that made a lot of sense.

I mean, it was the basis of the appropriation, the language that was used.

Are we talking about the steps to reappropriate the budget?

I can't say much about it.

Krisy has gotten better information about the specific steps for the appropriation.

However, anytime that we're moving money from a contingency fund to a school's budget, we have to reappropriate the money.

When we were working on the budget, the school ask was based on a projection of what the state revenue number was that you thought you were going to get.

At the time, the state budget was not complete.

And as you noted, there was a wide range of additional state funds that

that were anticipated that potentially you could receive.

And so the idea was that we would set aside a contingency amount that would be at least the maximum number so that if the state came and made you whole, that the city, the local dollar match would be then reflective of your total budget, local dollars, minus the new state number, minus the federal money.

There was never an intent that if you had gotten $2 million, then you wouldn't get the $2 million contingency because you got the $2 million from the state.

And so there was never an intent to hold that money back.

It was just to wait until the state budget was finalized so that we had an accurate account of what the state funding would be so the local match to that would be appropriate.

And then further, as far as the 17th goes, I don't think there was a request for you to come and ask for money that had already been appropriated.

It's just an update to amend the annual budget ordinance.

And that would be a matter of the change.

So I hear you on this was a change to process.

And it was a change to process.

And this was a very tight year.

And this was a year that we were considering a 2 cent increase on the real estate tax.

That's what generated this.

I'm going to first say that there's been no assertion whatsoever on our part, and I'm speaking from a staff perspective, that there is a concern of mismanagement of funds or anything like that.

That was never ever asserted by anybody, and that was not our intent.

If it landed that way, I apologize for that because that was not what was intended.

There hasn't been a concern about that.

The concern was that the budget was unclear as to how it was going to land.

And the question was, would the state give you up to that amount, less than that amount, or whatever amount?

And in order for this council to then have their budget approved, they need to make a decision on a number.

They could have made a decision and you got way more money than $300,000.

And yes, you could have kept that and we could have waited for that to come back in gain sharing if it came back in gain sharing or not.

We were in a tough year.

We've had very tough conversations this fiscal year, this cycle of getting the budget together.

So when we were considering two pennies on the real estate, one of the contributing factors was the request from schools.

The amount of the request from schools was a part of that calculation.

So that was where this came from.

And that's all that it came from.

Nothing else.

The coming back to council is simply because of what Ms. Hammill said.

There is still an action to complete the budget process.

And it's your budget.

So the thought was that you should be a part of coming and explaining that as giving them the details.

That's all.

We could easily have done that for you, but it's your budget.

So just to make sure that we understand.

So this is

The first step in that, correct?

Because this is what we would have been presenting next Monday.

Because unless there are questions on Monday, we simply have this as an agenda item.

It's done.

The recommendation for me to consider is continuation will be dependent on how the budget cycle goes, how hard it is to close the budget gap if we're struggling to make the numbers work.

And when I bring to council whatever recommendation that I make in regards to, is there a tax increase?

Where would that tax increase come from?

I will pull whatever levers I have to pull in order to make the numbers add up.

That too.

It's been tough on our end, on our side as well.

Absolutely.

You know, but then I guess again, the discussion about whether it should be 50% or all of it too, you know, that's a hard thing to hear.

Well, the increase, I mean, I think we looked at it the same as gain sharing.

That's all, that's where it came from.

We already have a precedent of splitting that.

But there were, there were some, some counselors who felt like you all should get all of it.

So, I mean, it's just, yes.

I mean, that did not set well with me.

I was looking for myself.

Well, I appreciate that.

And I think to your point, Sam, that the state budget process didn't help with this.

So I understand that big difference there, Delta, and wanting to edge that a little bit.

I guess what

It comes to my mind though is when you all have a budget surplus though, we don't have an opportunity to come back also and like try to go after those funds necessarily and make an argument for some of those funds in a similar way.

In my mind, the logic that kind of went with that.

So if we were, you all get an excess of funds from extra real estate taxes or other tax revenue coming in, we're not getting an opportunity to then go back and look at our operating budget and try to budget higher, right?

And so

Can I ask a question about that?

I mean, we can't use our surplus money for operating funds anyway.

It would have to be for capital or one-time expenses.

Correct.

Right?

So if the school had capital,

I'm aware.

So we have all these conversations about that.

That's it's not operations.

So when we learn of a surplus on the city side, the school district should come back and ask for money to be appropriated from your overage.

No, it can't be used for operations.

Sorry to come back, but that's even more problematic for us, right?

Because we're being, and I'm even talking about the whole budget process in general, I don't, I don't really like going first.

If you might say, if we think about it, we're always at the front end of your budget process and we're not usually coming in at the end.

So we're pigeonholing and you're trying to nail us down early so that you can get onto all your other decisions.

But we're not able to come back as you even update your budget process and get your revenue forecasts farther on, usually, to come back and ask for more operational money.

All right.

And again, once you get that extra money that comes in each year, we're not able to come back and say, oh, yeah, we needed two extra teachers or we wanted to expand to Spanish or something like that, because we didn't have the opportunity to think about that money for our operations.

And is that a matter of protocol or a matter of asking for a median and to stipulate it?

Like, is that opportunity available?

Or is it

We start with the budget because it's a bigger part of the budget.

I would note that there's probably an advantage to you all to be the first ones, and use a metaphor, to have the largest rock in the budget, in the bucket.

At that point, we are having to adjust everything else around that number.

Now, admittedly, that number has already been the subject of some negotiation, but when we get down to the final last million, $2 million, we don't sit there and say, you know, we really should have cut them, but they cut them another million bucks.

So it's not nefarious that this is the way it happens.

I think that the way, if I may, I think that that point is well taken.

However, are all of you familiar with the recent school funding report, the JLARC study and report?

And knowing that Virginia is ranking so low in comparison to other states of how much our schools are being funded,

Knowing that SOQ, the formula for SOQ positions is highly outdated.

Knowing that the LCI is highly outdated.

And it just feels like when we were having the conversation about the budget last year, and we were talking about collective bargaining, we felt like we couldn't even come to the table with a full ask to be able to update the, and to increase the pay of administrators because of the way that the conversation was going already.

And I just, I'm speaking for myself.

I felt uncomfortable saying like, oh, we need to pay assistant principals or principals more because it felt like we were already begging for the amount that we were asking for.

And so if all of us look back at the meetings and the way that the conversations were had, it did give the vibe that there was maybe not insinuation of misappropriation of funds, but definitely a lack of responsibility on the part of the school board.

When it comes to collective bargaining, that is an essential part of our process.

And so it is hard for us to go first when those discussions evolve over time.

And so I just would like to see a little bit more coming to the table in a collective way rather than us feeling like we're begging for money from the city.

I wonder whether that gets us into territory that ultimately you're not going to want us to get into.

We've never tried to sit there and say, oh, we don't think you should be spending that $50,000 over there.

We're specifically not supposed to be micromanaging you all.

And to the extent that you want more involvement in the process, it begins to get into the micromanaging piece.

Number one, it gets away from the notion of your independence once we get into that too much.

I understand and agree with that point.

I think to Chair Torres' point, though, if we're thinking about, again, the tone and how that comes across, we are still your constituents, to her point.

And it is a bit discouraging to see large appropriations for things like a shelter, which is important, don't get me wrong, but knowing that our students and our schools need a lot of updating, knowing that we still need a lot of resources for our schools and seeing that those types of decisions are happening.

Yes, it may have been an ongoing conversation, but it felt like public pressure allowed for that to happen a little bit quicker than for maybe a collective bargaining, a large increase to our budget.

So I'm trying to go back and remember budget cycle.

It's a stressful, busy time, and there's a bunch of meetings that happen.

So I'm trying to differentiate.

But correct me if I'm wrong, fellow counselors.

We passed the...

We did a combination of a lot of different things, as we do annually.

But we also have been transparent that as we continue in this process, it's going to get harder and harder to do that.

And that's why we've talked about whether we should have a meeting in December, because I think it gets a little confusing when we make a request and then we don't have the state's budget yet.

We don't know what the governor is thinking.

On March 2nd, we came back to city council with an ask of $2,569,071.

That was the final, okay.

So, but a lot of that jump from the jump down from six-ish to the two and a half was

through a reexamination of the original ask and it was described to us at least a lot of that came from savings from Walker being not needed to be staffed at the level that it had previously been.

That was what we were told at the time.

Does that ring a bell?

I know that was part of it.

If I could help refresh your memory just a moment.

Some of it was our own, you know, healthcare savings costs.

We give a projection and so we had a final number by then.

And the quote that you all had provided us for transportation and maintenance had been adjusted.

So that's where some of that difference came from, your side and a little bit of ours.

I haven't said much.

I said a fair amount at our board meeting.

I would encourage you to go back and listen to it.

I concur with Ms. Torres, probably a little bit stronger, if you will.

And I will remind you that I am also your constituent, as are many of my stakeholders.

I just am.

Really just disappointed in the poor communication, especially when there was so much back and forth at these tables in this room about the tight turnaround.

And could this be a blow to the school board?

How do they know?

Natalie, you yourself said this could be a big blow to the board.

Do they know?

Do they know this is happening?

But then you pushed it.

You were the champion, if you will.

of taking half the money.

And I appreciate counselor Snook for saying, hey, you know what, if this isn't one, $2 million, like there are things they need money for, let's not squabble about a few hundred thousand dollars.

So I appreciate that.

But Natalie, you drove that and you pushed that.

And so I just like, when looking at now numbers of what we did year over year, only a couple of times where this has happened,

I wish you had had the foresight to ask for that prior to making such a sweeping change so that you could have seen, and everyone else who voted in favor, what this really looked like over time.

and how the one year we didn't get 300 and some thousand dollars, we made internal adjustments and didn't come back and ask for any additional funding.

We made the adjustments, you do well with what you get and leave it at that.

And so I just, I'm just disappointed that we're here.

I thought and felt like we have enjoyed mutually beneficial relationships up to this point.

When we were getting tighter and tighter into budget season, I personally reached out and met with a few of you to talk about the importance of supporting our collective bargaining contracts.

And we weren't even there yet, but we were anticipating a support staff collective bargaining agreement that we all wanted to support.

And so helping to educate some of the counselors on what that really looked like.

This money was not

Frivolous, this was to support union wages, which I believe our city has said time and time again, we support.

But for there to be some conversation on the back of union workers on the school division side, but not union workers on the city side, that doesn't feel good either when we talk about wages and who gets what.

Union workers are union workers, and so I would hope that each of those contracts are honored with the same fidelity.

And so I'm disappointed we're here.

I do think we need to understand if it's going to be looked at every year in a 50% versus is it just part of gain share, which you get back 50% at the end of the year anyway.

I don't

You know why we're adding an additional 50% there, but it's really about the funding formula and how it's not been, no one knows where it came from.

No one knows how we got here.

How do we change it?

It's unpredictable.

It's not helpful.

I don't think it's helpful for city staff to not, like we're all just throwing darts and shooting out a number.

And then there is all this back and forth.

And if we had a number with a formula that we were consistent on,

Well, if I could, there's a lot in this conversation.

I would say I'm a few points first.

I'm sure I can speak for all of us.

We certainly apologize, you know, if anything, in terms of our conversation and decisions we'll cross as accusatory or

like we were trying to say that the school division is mismanaging money.

That is no one's intent here.

I don't think there's a need for this conversation to need to be accusatory or negative on any end.

I would say in response to some of the things that are raised, I think some of the difficulties we have are

We have globally over the past several years increased taxes almost every budget cycle.

We have in the state among the highest meals tax rates, real estate taxes gone up along with assessments.

And once again, last budget cycle, we're looking at contemplating tax increases again.

So globally across our entire budget, we're looking at how can we make sure if we're voting to increase taxes yet again, as we have multiple times over the past few years, how can we do that while ensuring we're doing that with as much clarity and information possible.

Again, also in the context of we're anticipating the one cent sales tax coming up again.

At a higher level than that, I think,

There's part of that conversation in terms of this came from we are in a unique position compared to many localities where our charter, not our charter, but our ordinance requires us to adopt our budget by a pretty early date.

Most localities don't have that.

So they have a lot more flexibility in terms of being able to adopt their budget at a point where they know what the state budget is going to be.

So part of this is that this came out of that

Quirk and that we are statutorily required to adopt our budget before the state adopts theirs.

And throughout the state, there were many localities this year that adopted their budgets after the state budget was known.

And that's something that's kind of a structural issue we have.

And to one point that was raised, I think something we've discussed multiple times is there is a need to re-examine our agreement on school funding.

We have the existing agreements that are coming from the Blue Ribbon Commission on Sustainable Schools funding from many, many years ago.

And it's clear that there is not agreement on what that looks like or what that should look like.

And so obviously you are coming to us every year with requests that are substantially above

what that agreement would require.

I don't fault you for doing that because you have very legitimate needs, but it creates a lot of challenges for how we figure out our budget.

And I do think we've had numerous conversations about a need to revisit that and get to a new agreement so we're all on the same page.

And so I think part of this is coming from there are a lot of structural limitations in terms of how we develop our budget in combination with schools.

And so I don't think there's any ill intent on our part, but I do acknowledge their communication information gaps as well as I think our process is not necessarily set up for success.

I think you are also in a structurally very difficult position because you have to come to us for requests, but you don't have any legal authority to raise revenue on your own.

So obviously I know that puts you all in a difficult position because no matter what you do, I imagine it feels like you're just coming to beg us for money.

And so anyway, that's just my perspective.

And I don't want to deny some of the frustration that I'm hearing from you all.

But stepping back, I still look at, you know, we as a city, we funded significant capital projects in terms of acquisition of CATEC, Walker, the middle school,

As we'll discuss later tonight, we've been involved in years in legislative advocacy to get the one cent sales tax over the line.

We are all aligned on campaigning for that this November and getting over the finish line to fund additional major capital projects.

We have funded the collective bargaining agreement to another point.

We had a finance committee of our own a few months ago where we were discussing on our own city collective bargaining contracts

our uneasiness with the fact that we know there are future costs coming over the next few years that we haven't budgeted for that could very likely require tax increases and that problem exists for the school's collective bargaining contract but we have never in isolation said that's only a problem for schools and that's not an accusation against the contracts or the need for these wages to increase but it's a challenge for us of how do we figure out how we're going to plan for the next one to five years so

And again, I mean, we have been able to fund funding increases, not as much as what the initial asks from the schools were, but certainly far above what the existing funding agreements are on numerous occasions.

So, I mean, I just I think that's context I look at it from as well.

The rest of what I was, thank you for that context.

I was trying to refresh my memory and didn't quite get all the way up till now, which is, you know, you often suggest right at some point during budget cycle, the fact that we passed the budget earlier than other folks.

And we were kind of getting down to the wire there where we had to

figure out is it possible for us to delay passing the budget.

And I know we were deep into conversations about the logistics of noticing and the timing that the staff would need to turn things around and stamps to talk about how to get word out.

And so this was born out of the need to have kind of a hover fund.

to tie us over to be able to pass the budget without knowing what the state is going to give us.

For me, it was late in the game to try and rearrange.

If we want to have that conversation, I think that's something we should talk about before 75% to 85% of the way through budget cycle, which is something we can talk about not using everyone's time here tonight.

If that's something you would like to bring up again.

But this was a way where we could get the budget passed without having to rearrange everyone else's schedules, fully knowing that we would allocate money later as needed by the school.

So I agree, I don't want this to be characterized as a, you're not coming to council to beg for the money that you are owed.

This is just the protocol we have to go through.

to get that money reallocated.

I would just say briefly, one, I would I certainly agree.

I think there would be benefit if we gave ourselves the flexibility to adopt our budget on a later date, to have at least a better chance that the state budget is passed by the time we make a final decision.

I would also say, at least speaking individually, I am certainly I very, very much want us

to begin a process to revisit our school funding agreement and acknowledge that enough time has passed since the Blue Ribbon Commission on Sustainable Schools funding, we've got to re-examine it and reach a new agreement.

And thirdly, I would say, I think, I don't think, and I'll just be honest, I don't think anyone, I'll speak for myself and I think everyone I could, no one is ever thinking that the school is mismanaging money or that you don't have legitimate needs.

I think our challenge is always just how can we align on the same page of acknowledging city council has

budget constraints.

We cannot fund everything.

We are embarking on major capital projects, major collective bargaining contracts, and clearly there is more and better communication happening, a lot more fiscal constraints on the city's end to honor.

Again, after we've increased taxes multiple times over the past few years, even after very significant assessment increases,

I just want to chime in so we can, I'll give everyone that, you know, else to want to speak.

I can say that, you know, for my 16 years being on the school board, that that was something that came up every year because of the funding formula with the city, with city council.

And I think that seemed like there's enough push now that we need to have a committee or something to look at that.

Being on council now, it always doesn't seem that there's time for it.

You know, right after the budget is over, we're rolling into something else.

But I think we just need to just make time to do it and look at it.

It may take a year or two to do it, but I think that it needs to be done.

But part of the pressure on the city is because

As School Board Bryant said, is that we're not getting what we're supposed to get from the state.

I think if they stepped up to the plate, it would be a lot less pressure on us as city council to provide additional funds.

The state is not doing what it's supposed to do.

And I think we need to continue to push our representative to

Step up to the plate and do what they have to do.

And as far as union, the collective bargaining, that's something that I think that city council is definitely supportive of both the school board side and local governments and commitment that we've made.

And it's going to be difficult to do it all continuing in the future because we have three new contracts coming up with the police, the fire, and transportation.

And we all have some.

We're going to have to find a way to fund this and that is going to have to be considered with the, you know, we redo the budget as well.

And we also have to

Consider that we have just taken on pretty much a new department dealing with the shelter that's in operation 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

And I don't know what those final numbers are going to look like either.

But as a city, we have to make some tough decisions.

And we all around this table are public servants.

We stepped up to the plate to say, we want to serve the community.

We all are doing this for the right reasons.

And never, if I had ever heard any inkling of city council or anyone saying the school board is not doing this because of my time there, I would have said something that has never ever come, you know, been come up.

But I'm glad that

We can have this difficult conversation.

Some localities can't do this with the school board and city council board of supervisors.

We can.

We can, because many of us are personal friends and things.

So we can have this conversation and afterwards still be able to talk to one another.

And that can't be taken as a given.

So I think that

Moving forward, it sounds like Sam, will you work with Dr. Gurley and I will work with Lisa to see if we can come up with a committee to look at this and probably of the funding formula.

Probably won't be in place for next year.

I'm not sure what it entails, how long it would be, but to see what that would look like so that we wouldn't be staffed

elected officials, public, whatever.

I'm not sure what it will look like, but we need to have that conversation and start it and stop talking about it.

I'm thinking about the middle school, which we're going to do the ribbon cutting.

I can't tell you how many conversations we had about we need a new middle school.

We need to, we're finally

have done it.

And so we can address these difficult things once we put our collective minds together.

So I just want to give Jen and other school board members a chance to talk.

So because this is one of those things that we can just keep going around and around about this, but it's good conversation.

And I think that we have a step that we can move forward with it, you know, that we're going to see if we can come and

Look at that formula to see if we can, what that will look like, you know, if we want to redo it.

Sure.

I think it's also hard being the newest person.

You like show up January 5th and you're like, hi.

That's how it's spending some money, you know, right now.

So I have the least seasoned opinion on this, and heeding Counselor Snook's warning of micromanagement.

No other department came back to us with a $4 million change in their ask.

And so I don't know if that's normal, but that was unsettling as a new person looking at the numbers.

And it does not, again, to echo this, it was not meant to throw back a

a concern about mismanagement.

It was just unlike, it was unique.

It was unlike anything else that had been presented in all the other places.

So I think there was also a lot of conflict for us this season with the tight budget and with you and the letter and the union.

And so there was a lot of static in general around the whole piece, as well as this unique situation.

comparatively this season, heeding what Ms. Burns said, you know, in other seasons that may not have happened and it could have been considered.

So I would like to see more transparency in some of our, again, worried about micromanaging, but would like to see more transparency in our shared decision making.

So, because essentially we have to act like the bank and we need to figure out how to

set you up for success with all the other demands on that pot and we want to prioritize that success, but it's hard to make those decisions to execute that.

If it just comes back and forth like this.

So if there is a way, obviously the formula is a big piece of that.

I would hate for us to design a new formula and then next year we're like, and we're going to ask over that or under that, or, you know, we've got, it's probably going to take some time to decide what that number, the best fit for that number.

And if there is a way that we can clearly get a sense of,

where you're headed, what you're thinking about your collective bargaining, how that's really a big pressure on us and how we're thinking of future self.

Can what we're learning serve you as you learn it too?

How do we support future self in that process without getting too in the weeds, but going into the conversation, should you be first still with a little more informed decision-making around those priorities and in that direction?

Oh, I just, the statement, Mayor, where you said the state isn't doing what it's supposed to do resonates with me.

And I think that's why withholding this money felt particularly bad because we know the state's not doing so.

They are giving us money and then to not receive the full amount, um,

Just didn't sit particularly well.

And in regards to the homeless shelter, you know, we have been serving and feeding and clothing those students and families pretty consistently for decades, as you know, from your time on the board so that we are intimately aware of that concern and challenge to the city.

I think so much of this relies on trust between council and the school board to put budgets together.

My recollection of the significant decrease in the initial number to the number that came back was that there was some back channel conversation where we got feedback that said that number was never going to fly.

And so there had to be concessions and reductions made before it was presented.

And so, yeah, I hope that would not be interpreted as, I don't know how that landed, but it seems like that caused questions and pause to counselors.

But no, I think we've got some thinking to do on our end and how conservative we are with what we put into our budget as a placeholder for the state, if it is going to be this delta that we get half of.

You know, that would impact, you know, what we project potentially.

And I like, we don't want to play that game.

We want to be able to work collaboratively and with trust and to actually, you know, get what we need to provide for our students.

Ms. Richardson, would you be good?

The next slide.

This just walks through the calculation of our ask, the city setting aside the $2 million, the sharing of the additional revenue, and then what our ask of the city from the school contingency would be.

It's a $1.8 million.

That would be a total adjusted preparation to schools of 2.4.

And then the schools is retained $159,423.

The next slide.

I don't know the Chief of Transportation, but transportation falls in my area, so I need to talk about this.

Very much appreciated that Sam and James and Garland initiated a meeting with us back in June to just talk turkey about the state of the

our situation with people transportation.

In short, we still struggle some days with having enough drivers and aides as well.

The aides are more of a focus with the new preschool center.

We have to have, there's nothing cuter than seeing those little ones get off the bus next to our office now, but they have to have an aide on every bus.

And then we still have needs for aides on elementary buses and even some of our older buses based on special needs and things like that.

So there was just a hard look at what it was really gonna take

to guarantee an aid for every preschool bus, which there are four of them, plus make sure we have enough coverage to support the students that are scattered on the different tiers and the different levels.

And so this was the number that came up, that we came up with.

And this is an adjustment for the school board to understand post original adoption of the budget and the funding for this kind of leaning into some of the conversations you've already had.

We are looking to, so we have,

We call them Fund 25 monies that are, you know, they come in there for a specific purpose, like school nutrition or whatever.

And they are money in, money out for those specific programs.

Looking at, so those balances can carry over from year to year.

We felt that examining the balances in Medicaid and our preschool program, there's enough to get us through to the next time the operating budget's discussed.

Again, you don't do this ongoing operations, right, from fund balance, but there's enough to get us through to, so that this can be considered in the next budget.

So that's the,

Information for the school board really as much as anything else.

And then kind of hand in hand with that and just the overall shortage of drivers that we continue to face.

There's a long standing sort of situation with the model that we have now where there are 40 hour drivers under transit that drive for pupil and they get the city has like a one contribution rate for benefits that's for if you're a 40 hour employee and there's a different contribution rate for benefits if you're a 30 hour employee.

We have a fair number of 30-hour drivers still in our system, but because there's still an overall shortage of drivers, those 30-hour drivers are consistently driving 40 hours a week, and yet they don't have the full contribution to benefits.

Yes.

And we talked about this.

It's very hard to know what's the actual net

additional cost going to be for this move, but I also respect that you have to kind of base the budgetary number off of what the cost factor is for that position.

And so we worked with Krisy and she helped us determine what this would be.

Six drivers represent the additional six gets us to 16, 40 hour positions, which when we look at the pupil transportation model, when you consider summer services and the summer workload, we feel like that's

sort of around the number that we need to be at that are guaranteed available year-round drivers.

We're also very grateful that out of that June meeting came an idea that we need to have a study done about our transportation model.

We are somewhat unique.

There's only one other locality, and that's Harrisonburg City, that actually operates the pupil transportation as well, but they do it differently than we do here.

And with all of the different cost pressures, I think looking at how we

Our model operates and what's the most efficient way to really make sure we meet the needs of our programs and our students, but do so in a way that's efficient and effective.

And so this is funding that also, this all came up after budget and we want to just move forward with this.

So the funding source is again, contingency.

Can I ask a question about the number for the six bus drivers?

If there's a number seven, it could have been based on the fact, because I didn't catch this until today, I think.

The number that was originally proposed by transit was to convert seven positions, but it ended up being six.

The difference here is the

The top number, depending on what benefit selection the driver picks, could be up to $131,000 for the drivers.

However, the $159,424 that you see here is the city's 50% of the revenue that we're getting from the state revenue.

And we're putting that all in to cover the cost of the conversion as well as the study.

OK.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yes.

So got it.

The next one.

So with the school's share of the state revenue, the superintendent is recommending an additional 2% salary increase for administrative staff, bringing their salary, total salary increase to 5%.

The cost of a 2% is $172,000.

This is more than the additional state revenue by $12,000.

The funds to cover this will be from vacancy savings from reconfiguration of positions after the budget was adopted.

We currently are doing a compensation study specifically for administrators.

What Ms. Torres is referring to is that

Because of the work that we've done with collective bargaining for support staff and specifically licensed staff, we have had many difficulties trying to recruit administrators, largely because the teacher scale has outpaced the administrative scale.

Not been attractive for people to leave the classroom to become an assistant principal because they actually are going down in their hourly rate to become an administrator.

So we are currently working with Evergreen to do the compensation study and what the school board has done at the recommendation.

What they proposed at our last meeting is this 2%,

Well, the 1% brings us to what the governor's budget for, but then what the additional 1% that they are advancing forward, that helps to knock off some of that chip away at that gap.

Well, it's not even a gap to try to create a little bit of that gap for the administrative scale so we can entice our

I appreciate that and not to drag us back, but I think this is one of the conversations for city council, you know, we had in terms of this is one of our question marks for how we're going to do.

We don't have the dollar amount, but we've asked that it be done prior to the, I think we said November, October, November so that we can have a good baseline when we're building the budget.

Councilman Payne, you know one of the things that as a city council and as a staff you should I mean I thank you all hopefully you're aware of this but when we build our budget for the upcoming school year you know that we we already will be asking for three million dollars

I mean, we can tell you that right off the top.

I mean, and that leaves no room for anything else.

And that 3 million is specifically related to the collective bargaining contracts.

And so I think that's why it's really important for you all to be thinking about how we approach this moving forward, because to your point, I mean,

This will be some number that's high and then people are like, well, where did that come from?

And then if you're like, that's not going to fly, then we have to figure out a way to balance it.

You're one of a three year for our support staff.

year two of a three year for license.

Yes, ma'am.

We ask them October, November so that by the time we get to you all that we have a pretty solid number.

Salaries are by the contract.

What about hours and scheduling and supply and demand of drivers?

The next slide.

This is a true technical adjustment, moving money from the general fund to the special revenue funds.

Personnel costs associated with the collective bargaining agreements are initially budgeted in the general fund.

And then once the salary and benefit allocations are finalized in the special revenue funds,

A corresponding budget transfer is made from the general fund to the special revenue funds to reflect where these personal costs will occur.

The next slide.

And this is just a summary of all the changes that we have discussed.

And the overall result is a net increase of $159,423 to our bottom line.

The next slide.

And so what this slide is asking is a council appropriate the $1,840,576 from the schools operating contingency to the schools supports the funding of the collective bargaining agreements for the license and support professionals presented during the budget development process.

And then after the appropriation, there'll be $159,424 left in school operating contingency.

And we ask for the city to use this money for the conversion of the part-time to full-time bus drivers and the pupil transportation study.

Clarify question with some of the increases on the transportation too.

This helps ensure that the situation we've had at Summit is resolved because we added a bus.

Yeah, that wasn't really how we solved that problem.

All right.

No, we're using the teacher at that school is doing a double run.

Unless there is questions that come from council where I could know about superintendent, let him know to be there.

I don't think that was our initial understanding of it in the first place was once we knew what the state

There was always going to be a follow-up action required because the funds went into that contingency fund.

Yeah.

And so I guess I would characterize it less as an ask and more as a completing that last step that we already agreed to.

Technically yes.

So I'm going to walk out on a limb and hope I don't fall off the limb.

because I tend to do that to myself.

And just again, apologize for no intent on the process moment of the approach to attempting to address what was a problem with a budget gap that needed to be closed and needing to be addressed somehow.

And because the state budget was where it was, it was causing conflict with being able to close that gap.

That is my take on the genesis of how we got to a contingency fund being set up.

$569,000 was the biggest part of the conversation as it related to the school's budget and the city budget coming together.

I repeated that to council on a number of occasions.

There were other items that we needed to address, and all of that is how we arrived at my recommendation for increasing real estate tax to two pennies at council's request.

So if we find ourselves in this next cycle not having to talk about a tax increase for any of those same reasons, or the state budget, I'll say, and the state budget not being dramatically delayed well beyond a reasonable period, which is what this crisis was, then I don't know that there's a reason that we have to consider this again.

But I think that

And I'm also going to go back and say that I do think the December meeting is needed.

I recognize that it feels like begging.

I'm not weighing in on that.

I think it's process.

The December meeting is to notify us on this side of the budget table of what you anticipate you might be asking for.

That is very helpful.

I don't think we know.

I think that's the hard part.

I get it.

And I think what we can work to fix is maybe how it's taken that the number changes.

I think we can leave room for the number changing because the process hasn't concluded.

But it's important for us to have the number up front because one of my first actions when this young lady here sitting next to me, notice how I said young lady.

We start the process with, Chrissy, what's my gap?

That's my first question to her in the budget cycle is, what's the gap?

And the gap is simply, with the numbers that we know, including the number that I get from the superintendent, plug it all in, the increases that we can anticipate, and all of the city budget asks that came in, what is the gap?

And the question is, do I choke or not?

Is it a small number?

And we feel confident we can close that.

It is a gigantic number.

And I guess, so prior to us going to that December meeting, will we have the number?

Because typically we're giving the range from the city.

So will that still happen?

No, I think going into that, we're like,

Will the city have their number of what they're looking at to get it to the schools by December?

How much you'll be able to increase our appropriation by the 40%?

We always know the 40% number.

That number has never worked.

It was absolutely, and I'll say that it was my intention that tonight we were going to talk about the 40% formula.

That was the original agenda I had planned for this conversation.

But the school's thing came up, the sales tax thing came up.

And we need to get on the same page in regards to that, which is why we're not going there and we didn't prepare to go there.

But I've been here five years and it has been uncomfortable.

Every single time it comes around to this budget conversation.

When I was told we have a 40% formula and we never use that number.

And so for me, we should either stop talking about a 40% formula or we should change the formula to what the number really should be.

So I think there's agreement amongst all of us that we definitely need to revisit the formula.

That's what the December conversation could be.

I think it would be nice to see where we've overshot every year.

Average it out.

We've provided that before.

Yes.

And then I think just, yeah.

Do we know of school districts that have nailed it with their algorithm?

No, because they're making a decision.

And that's really what it is.

It's a decision.

And I appreciate the difficulty in however the formula came from wherever it landed from out of space.

It was an attempt to say, this is a number that then we can say to the school system, you can rely on that as your base.

That's what you're going to get.

And then we can work towards figuring out the rest.

It has never felt like that.

I think when I first got here, it felt very tense.

I don't feel the tension today.

I think we can talk about anything and we're straight shooters back at each other.

I own that in this moment of that happening, because that was weird and awkward, I owed you a phone call that I probably should have given you a lot sooner and help explain what was what.

I don't know that I fully understood it.

So that's part of that as well.

But I'll say that we should meet in December.

We should try to talk about whatever we feel comfortable being able to say that numbers look like as a beginning place, because it is very important that we have that.

Because without that, we don't know if our budget gap is 2 million or 8 million, honestly.

And I'll just add to like, you know, you've thrown out the $3 million number, just for point of reference, our real estate increase total was only $5 million for the 27 budget.

And the current formula is 40% of that.

So, I mean, you know, of the total, the $3 million is more than 50% of our increase.

So,

Relatively speaking, that's also our source for our biggest new pot of money as well.

And again, I don't want to deny the frustration, but again, I'll just, I mean, if the city is, city had the interest of

Nippling and diming the schools.

I think the context of the middle school project, pre-K center, one cent sales tax increase, supporting the collective bargaining agreement, every year going substantially above the existing funding formula.

These are all things that are real and have happened and are the largest commitments we've made as a city.

So I don't want to pretend that there's not a lot more work to do.

I think it speaks to, you know, the city is not interested.

Which is not a veiled threat.

No, I mean, that's what I mean.

Yeah.

Why don't you ask the UVA to step up and make accidents?

We couldn't find enough money to pay for $50 million football training facilities and spend a bunch of money on athletic facilities and basically professional sports teams.

Can the commissioner of revenue figure out how to start taxing all those athletic fields?

Most of which are in the county.

We've talked, I'd be happy to.

I've said that over and over and over and over again and no one ever dates me up on the talk.

We're ready to do that.

But again, we don't have the legal calendar invite.

I'm happy to meet with you.

It sounds like something we can as part of our much broader discussion we have to have that we can also

But it's a conversation that clearly is overdue.

And based on the feedback, it seems like something that we should be discussing.

I agree.

A genuine question.

I mean, do you feel the city did not do enough in terms of pressuring UVA in the Federal Executive Institute?

I just want to recognize that I think

I haven't watched the budget over a number of years since I moved here, but that the Blue Ribbon Commission, et cetera, had recognized that their school system had been underfunded.

And I do think the city councils over the last couple of cycles, including yourselves, have been supporting our schools at a much higher rate, which is great.

And we have a huge hole, infrastructure hole that we're trying to dig out of and appreciate.

CMS support and again the Pre-K Center and starting to look at that and structurally the budget needs to change and I think Lloyd have we spoken about and Michael also is kind of what does a needs-based budget look like and I think that's what we've been presenting to you all before not something that's based on whatever percentage of it's coming off of that but what is our needs-based budget look like for all these additional low-income folks who have been coming in from the more affordable housing etc

Again, we're seeing the impacts of, as Emily noted, all the unhoused also and having to feed and clothe those children, et cetera.

So yeah, there's a lot of challenges.

And I think to some of your points, as you've risen to the occasions here recently, and I think we still have a lot more to do.

And I look forward to the opportunity to kind of figuring out that new funding formula that reflects the needs of the students based on a lot of other decisions you are all making too, because those do impact us.

I know that you bring up kind of deferred maintenance over the years and one of the challenges that we have as everyone in this room is that the sooner we do things the cheaper they will be, but we can't do everything all at once because we have so many other priorities.

And so that's gonna, I know we're gonna continue to talk about where our capital investments are gonna go, but we wish we could make up all those gaps right away, but it's gonna be, we're gonna have to be strategic and careful so that we can use the ones that tax revenue judiciously, knowing that it's not gonna cover all of the, not even close to all the costs that we have, but we have,

As we continue to prioritize out-of-town developers and their building of luxury apartments, let's create some tax revenue funds for our schools maybe.

Since we want to put up so much housing and it's trickle down, maybe that can help benefit our schools.

Since you know we can't use a surplus just directly for operating, surely we could use some of those tax

revenue funds for general operating so that we can pay our staff more.

But as we get more property tax revenue, that will be 40% of that new tax revenue from these various projects will be coming to you guys.

I just hope that it does come to us.

Well, I hope that that's the case.

Let's look at already guaranteed formula conversation.

That's the formula conversation we need to have though.

We just said 40% wasn't enough.

Any other comments from council on this?

So I think that, Lisa, I can't give your, Dr. Gurley direction, but for the committee to get together to look at a committee or somehow to, on the way to look at the formula.

So before we move forward, we want to take a few minutes to get grounded in a kind of common understanding of some foundational information and the history of the city's school facilities.

Next slide.

The typical useful life or the depreciation timeline for a new school building is 40 to 50 years.

That's according to the Government Finance Officers Association, the GFOA, I'm sure Krisy mentions them, and generally accepted accounting principles or gaps.

So 40 to 50 years of useful life, if you will, for a new school building.

And then building improvements and major renovations have a typical useful life of 15 to 20 years.

And then the furniture and the fixtures and the tech that go in those buildings

typically ranges from three to seven years.

So these timeframes are largely accounting constructs that define how to depreciate asset investments over time.

But they also can be useful for planning replacement cycles and budgeting.

In Charlottesville, we exemplify how maintenance can greatly extend these timelines.

The age of most of our schools demonstrates that Charlottesville does capital maintenance and does it really pretty well.

In fact, our oldest schools do not have the greatest need for improvement.

Our schools that were designed in the 60s are in fact the most out of alignment with current education expectations and best practices and even basic standards in some cases.

The photo that you see here is actually from one month after CHS opened back in 1974.

And with the exception of the science spaces in CHS, the classrooms are basically as they were over 50 years ago in that building.

Next slide.

So this timeline here really illustrates how for about 40 years in Charlottesville, there's really been a capital maintenance focus.

And in other words, there was not really substantial improvement or change in the learning environments over that period of time.

But then starting in 2013, there was a shift.

to more intentionally focus on capital improvements in addition to doing the capital maintenance projects.

Next slide.

In 2016, a group that was called the Facilities Improvement Planning Committee, or FIPSE, started a process of looking at each school to identify meaningful projects that could one, be accomplished within the time constraints of the summer break, and two, we started off with projects that were around a million dollars.

Since then, the budget line and the CIP for these types of projects has increased up to around $1.4 million now.

And that's in line with the fact we've seen cumulative inflation for construction costs at about 40% since we started looking at these projects.

So construction inflation is a painful reality.

It was decided when FIPSE got started to start with the elementary schools first because they are the oldest schools.

And also back in 2015, both CHS and Buford had recently had those upgraded science spaces.

So that's why the focus was elementary first.

I'm sure those early projects at Buford and CHS to support STEM education really helped to drive that subsequent push for more intentional capital improvement work, again, in conjunction with capital maintenance, which is essential.

You will also note the Charlottesville High School is listed on there with the project.

Obviously, that restroom project is not an elementary focused project, but it was identified as a much needed priority to support CHS operations.

And so it just had the effect of delaying the completion of Trailblazer a little bit, but we were happy to complete that modernization work this summer at Trailblazer.

Next slide, please.

So the previous slide highlights the projects that were specifically associated with that early FIPSE process, and it's now called the school priority improvement project line when you're looking at the CIP.

But these are some other notable projects completed since 2013.

Funding for these projects has come from the CIP, also from CCS, and also grants supporting in particular pieces of the security project work.

And then the community partnerships have also played some role, particularly with the baseball complex improvements.

That's a partnership with the Tom Sox and then the Curtis Elder track and field complex had some good community support along with CCS support to get the lighting piece of that completed.

Next slide.

So with the opening of Charlottesville Middle School, the opening of our interim Charlottesville Early Learning Center and moving the fifth grade classes back to their neighborhood elementary schools,

Charlottesville has finally achieved reconfiguration, which was an ongoing community conversation since the early 2000s.

It's been a very busy summer.

The journey of a thousand miles truly begins with a single step, and the first steps were those early 2000 conversations.

We really need to take a moment to thank the city for supporting that process and this progress.

It's really huge, and we really are looking forward to the next steps with the Early Learning Center.

Next slide.

So if you have not yet been able to visit the completed new middle school, we are really hoping you all join us for the grand opening this Friday afternoon at 1.30.

This campus truly went from worst to first, if you will.

It represents new opportunities for our students, a great asset for the community, and a much improved environment for everyone who works and learns in these spaces.

Amanda has some brochures that she has made for prospective students and community members to really help them recognize that this change has happened and to learn about all the greatness at CMS.

Next slide.

I could sit here and look at that slide for a very long time and just soak it in.

So the bottom line with the city's school facilities, we're battling some big numbers.

The slide in the top left, well the image in the top left is taken from a slide from a 2017 VMDO presentation.

This was back when we were all, and I mean council and the school board were still really working with the community.

to make reconfiguration happen and to get the middle school project going.

So you see the average age of our buildings was 61 back in 2017.

The average age now is 63, 64 years old with the fact that we got to put a zero on Charlottesville Middle School, which is great.

But if we had not done the middle school project, the average building age by now would be over 70 years old.

With the expected completion of the new Early Learning Center in 2029, the average age would drop below 60.

So we get into the 50s, we'll be putting younger.

And so that's really all I have as far as just some foundational understanding about capital maintenance versus capital improvements and the history of the city schools.

Sure.

Next slide.

Next slide.

So what we tell our families is that our school buildings are aging but sound, but that's becoming a less plausible story with each passing year.

So you can see what our student restrooms look like in the middle school.

And while we've done one restroom improvement at CHS, that is the example of a student restroom at CHS on the right.

We're having conversations, obviously, about getting this building out of disrepair, but we need to balance making investments in Band-Aid solutions at CHS when what's really needed is comprehensive renovation.

Next slide.

At our last joint session, Council heard ideas to make upgrades at every CCS building, and in response, Council asked us about priority areas.

So those priorities are CHS, Greenbrier, and Jackson-VIA.

We'd like to give you a better understanding of how we selected those schools.

It's the teachers and support staff who understand best what it's like to work in these buildings, all built in the 60s and 70s, and so we wanted you to hear directly from them.

We've got a brief video showing some of those staff perspectives.

I will say that what you're about to hear, you've not heard these facilities needs before previously, because there was not money to meaningfully address them.

Now that we have the sales tax as a possible tool, we want you to know what the needs really are.

As we're waiting for that to come up, when you mentioned the improvements to Buford and Charlottesville High School science labs in 2013 and 2014, I just thought that those improvements is what prompted my daughter, Gabriella, to be interested in engineering.

She's an engineer now in Northern Virginia, just those new labs and those new facilities.

While this comes up church, it's just the school board is going to be taking some actions as individuals and as a school board to help obviously advocate for the sales tax referendum.

A number of different things we're looking at, including talking to radio folks, op-eds, et cetera.

Sure, let's try that.

All right, I'm just gonna pause while I am all the way up.

You won't be able to see very well, but it's really mostly, it's not a professionally produced video.

Yeah.

Fine.

It sounds like you're turning it on.

Add it to the list.

Just a promo probably.

So, uh, some questions.

Who do you care to know?

And who are those coming to us?

And it's not something you could just fix with a plunger.

We do have our library that was recently renovated and it's wonderful.

If they're listening to a song, we are also listening to a song.

If they are playing a game, we can hear everything that they're doing.

And the last thing in this room is that the air quality, the air flow is really not great.

So it gets really hot by the end of the day.

I actually put out a call to friends on social media, got a bunch of free fans because the heat is just unbearable by the end of the seventh period.

There are not enough classrooms here, especially compared to you guys.

I am working out of three other teachers' classrooms.

And for three of them, I am teaching during both of their planning and reading periods.

So the three of us no longer have any

There's no airflow in the wrestling room, which can get dangerous because we're sweating a lot.

So we had to take out ceiling tiles to try to create some airflow coming in from the spare gym.

That has helped.

So I've been here for almost 20 years and one of the things that's happened over the course of that time is that Jacksonville has grown.

We're the biggest elementary school in terms of enrollment but our building hasn't changed.

Down in our auditorium, it's a multi-purpose space.

The nutritional staff has to transport lunches each day from CHS to Jackson-Biah.

We don't have space for the students to eat every day.

We do not have an actual cafeteria.

And a big issue with our children is although I'm

All right, we will now go

There's clearly a lot to take in from those videos about the deficits of our current facilities from an operational standpoint.

But Dr. Gurley and I are going to talk about the high school level, the significant academic and programmatic shortcomings that we experience because of the building.

Our facilities need to match the standards that we set for our students.

Buildings send a message about what we can expect from them.

We need school buildings and facilities that adapt to how our students learn and allow us to support their readiness for life after graduation.

Our district serves a diverse community of over 4300 students.

These are some of the numbers.

Many of them are from last year, some a little bit more dated from our school report card on the media website.

Our schools and programming cannot be one size fits all.

Over half of our students, 52%, are classified as economically disadvantaged.

We have around 700 English learners.

When we're planning for our spaces, programs, and facilities, we have to ask ourselves whether we're doing so with the needs of all of our students in mind and whether our facilities provide

Safe, healthy, equitable, and instructionally appropriate environments that enable every one of our students to succeed.

While a majority of our graduates transition into higher education, college is only one of the many meaningful pathways for our students after they finish their time with us.

True equity means ensuring our schools prepare every single student for the day after graduation, whether that leads to a college degree, military service, or immediate entry into the workforce.

Next slide, please.

The work we're doing to support our students is grounded in our strategic plan.

We have three huge goals around increasing academic achievement.

All three of these goals are related to that, but goal one is what we'll emphasize here, and that's what it means to be a life-ready graduate, ready with a plan.

Dr. Gurley tells us on the instructional team all the time that the most important day in a student's life in our school system is the day after graduation and what they're doing.

That's something we all take to heart, and it's definitely rooted in our strategic plan.

It's not just our strategic plan or our work, though.

We're actually charged by the Virginia Department of Education around this work as well.

In 2024, the Virginia Board of Ed adopted a new accountability structure, the school performance and support framework.

which introduced the 3E Readiness Framework as our high school indicator.

The 3E Framework evaluates how well we prepare students for three distinct post-secondary pathways, enrollment in a institution of higher ed, employment, and enlistment.

Simply put, our charge is to ensure that every student that graduates ready for the day after high school, whatever that means, whether it's college,

Workforce or the Military.

All right, so there's a question here about how we equip all students with a plan for the future.

And so when, as you think about that question, you know, what you really need to begin with is that every student deserves a roadmap to be successful for the future.

And that means designing education that sparks

that leads directly to high wage careers.

And so we are just teaching students.

And so I think we have to remember that when we're having conversations that we are preparing the next generation to drive our economy and to lead our communities.

So this is the next generation.

This is who will be the leaders in the Charlottesville City community.

And so if we are prioritizing their needs, then we're doing a disservice.

We're doing a disservice to our students and our community.

Next slide.

You know, we spoke about, you know, just talked about sparking that passion and building the next generation.

But when we think about the space at CCS, it daily, actively holds back the potentials of our students.

We have, I know we couldn't hear the video, but there was a teacher who said that she's one of five teachers who teaches on a card.

and what that means is that we have at least 20 class periods that rotates throughout the building without a permanent location daily.

So I think you have to let that resonate with you that there are five teachers and these are five full-time teachers because there's also data that we can provide about other teachers who are rotating throughout the building but there are 20 class periods

that rotate throughout the day and that's limiting potential.

Yes, ma'am.

Most of the teachers do have a classroom, right?

So you come in and visit me in room 112 every single day.

But these five teachers are rotating, which means

The materials move.

What subjects fall under that?

Yes, ma'am.

The teacher you saw there was an English teacher.

There's an English teacher.

There are also about 12 other teachers who rotate for at least one other period because the class size

is not conducive to the size of their current class.

So they may have a class of 28, but their class only holds 21.

Yeah.

So the five that don't have a space, what would happen is like, if I was on my planning period,

I'm not, I now, I might not have my planning period.

Like I can't just necessarily be in my classroom.

I guess I could, but now he's coming in and teaching in my class.

Like somebody that's on a cart is coming in and using that classroom consistently when I'm on my planning.

Yeah.

Yes, also a space thing.

So when we think about the three E's, enrollment, employment, and enlistment, our facilities restrict us being creative about how we meet those three E's.

What we know is that we're setting expectations really low.

I mean, it's what I opened the school year with is that our students rise to the expectations that we set.

And so if we're saying that this is good enough, then what we're saying is that we're good enough that we just want the status quo because we're only limited to the walls that we currently have.

Next slide.

So I want to

I want us to understand that the opportunity gap is real.

Dr. Isley shared with you that yes, a large portion of our students go on to college, but then how do we serve our other students?

And we know that around the Commonwealth, our neighbors, people around the state, that they're doing amazing things in their schools and that students are being prepared to be life ready.

And what you see listed on this screen are some of the course offerings and surrounding localities, some of our neighbors.

And before we can even consider, and you see the consider is bolded there.

Before we can even consider whether we would even introduce the idea of having these classes to our students, we know that it's not even possible.

We know that it's not even possible for us to have these conversations because the space does not exist.

Our job as educators, as city counselors, as school board members is to ensure that we are helping our students to be life ready, which means helping them to achieve high wage, in demand jobs,

And it is important for us to know that most of these programs you see on the screen, they happened or are happening because someone wanted to invest in these students' future, which means that they expanded buildings, that these ideas didn't just happen, that they realized that

They were investing in their students' future.

And so if you look there, we talk about biotech.

Biotech is coming to our communities, very high-wage jobs that we will not be tapping into without the space.

And I won't go through all of these things, but I will tell you that I was a product of

of the military.

And I would not be sitting here as a superintendent if I didn't have access to that.

And so why can't we look at ROTC?

I think when we talk about teacher shortages,

Early childhood education, there's a school system within reach of us that the students are working in the preschool center daily, but the prerequisite for that is having students to be able to learn that skill in the building.

And so, again, we hear conversations on the news about childcare centers closing because you can't find the workers.

Well, we can build our own with many of these things, HVAC.

A lot of our students, we love CATEC, but

There should be courses that introduce that pathway in our comprehensive schools.

Everything you see on this screen are courses that are offered at our neighboring schools in the comprehensive school.

And it's a pathway.

Some of those are pathways to their technical center like CATEC.

And when you think about turf, turf management, students who are

Working and working, repairing the turf, painting the lines, learning how to take care of turf, they're doing that right on the school's campus.

These are all things that are not opportunities for us because the space does not exist.

Yes, ma'am.

You mentioned other Virginia public high schools.

Oh, absolutely.

So you hear we've taken from Albemarle.

We've taken from Louisa.

We've taken from Savannah.

We've taken from Dinwiddie.

I came from Dinwiddie County and Prince William.

I came from Dinwiddie County Public Schools and far less resourced than Charlottesville State Schools.

And I will tell you that they're outpacing us in the comprehensive school with what they offer for the students.

And I think that any council person can get or school board member can get in a car and take that drive.

When you look at what's happening in Louisa right now, Louisa is outpacing us three times over.

So much so that they've built a whole tech center onto the school.

Plus they're still sending students to the tech center

It doesn't shift the academic focus.

What's happening right now is we've shifted academic focus because we make our students choose whether they want to give up half of their day to go to CATEC.

for something that they don't even know they're going to be interested in.

And I think that is another reason why black and brown students are underrepresented.

And let me be very specific.

It's another reason why black students are underrepresented at CATEC is because we don't have a lot of the courses that anchor their interest in the comprehensive high school.

So if you go over to Louisa, I think they probably have about

Four or five of the courses that are listed on your screen.

So it doesn't shift the academic focus.

What would be the point

There's only one more slide.

We would never replicate anything at CATEC.

We would never replicate.

CATEC stays intact.

These are things that are currently not at CATEC.

Or you could do both.

Like HVAC and plumbing are definitely there in the evening with the adults and so forth.

But even the exploratory offerings are so key.

That's what you see in places like really you get an exploratory and then you know you want to do it, then you can can commit more of your schedule.

Yeah, like hospitality and tour.

So if you think about it this way also, hospitality and tourism could be a class period that students take at CHS.

But then in a few year, in a year or two, they could go over to to CATEC and they could do the culinary program.

We're in Charlottesville.

I mean, I mean,

Tourism Capital, we should be tapping into hospitality.

We could do that in a school if we had the space.

But again, we should be yearly getting the interest of what our students want, which we do.

But what we also do is we don't put the things on the table that our kids may be interested in because we know that we don't have the space, we don't have the facilities to do those things.

So we're creating the barrier.

I mean, we're creating the barrier.

And I think it's important to think about like early exposure, too, because like right now, if you go to CATEC, it's like 10th grade.

So the earlier we can get our children exposed to some of these opportunities and to see if there's something that they like,

Currently we have the engineering program starting early and it feels like if you don't jump on the engineering train in middle school and then continue through high school, you don't have a very solid path.

You have to try to go to CATEC or find supplemental activities and opportunities within the school.

I think it would be great for maybe us to have an open house for counselors to come to CATEC and

And we do, we do that.

They come to, Ms. Butler has gotten all of the counselors over.

We're starting trips over to CATEC in the eighth grade.

So we're doing all the right things, but that's CATEC.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm using my, I'm using my-

So I think what we have to start with is there's a publication that talks about high wage, in demand jobs.

We have to start there.

We have to look at what's in our community.

So we know that biotech is coming, right?

How are we preparing students for those jobs?

And so one of the things that Louisa does really well with the rollout of their program, they do diplomas to dollars.

So we need to start showing our students, what can you do with a high school diploma

What can you do if you go to PVCC and get an associate's degree?

What can you get with a bachelor's degree?

There are, and I think we've reiterated this, like college is not the only way, right?

I'm from, my mother went to school, she got a master's degree, my father stopped in seventh grade.

So, but he outpaced her financially because he had a trade.

And so that's what we're, we're not telling our students to stop in seventh grade.

We're saying, get your high school diploma, get your credentials, but a college degree doesn't have to be the only way.

And so that's, that's what we have to do.

Look at what's in demand.

And then we have programs.

So we were bringing on, we're bringing on a new program, not Naviance, but

School Links.

We're bringing on School Links, which being used in surrounding districts.

Then we can say, our students have a high interest in the medical sciences, but we're limited to only a small pocket of classes.

Or there is a high interest in ag, but we don't have any, we have few ag classes.

We do have some ag classes.

So you just touched on my next question, which is in the interest of not duplicating, but accessing things that are local.

This doesn't duplicate anything from PVCC.

I mean, that's what we're getting at.

I think it's important to note that

You know, this past fall, right around the middle of the year, we presented our new program of studies.

A great deal of effort has gone into expanding pathways and making pathways clear for students, drawing connections to the middle school and the expanded opportunities that we have there so that if those interests develop and on

On roads and off roads, right?

Like on ramps and ways to switch it up so that students aren't, you know, you don't have to have started something in sixth grade, but you could start, you know, there's opportunities to get engaged in a variety of points, but really drawing those connections between the programming at the middle school.

I mean, we have drawn out maps of like, well, if you do this, you can do this at the high school.

you can take this class but then you can go to CATEC and do this program like really try to make sort of these connections between the courses and like if you really find you have a passion for it it's just that it's really been limited in scope right because like there's I mean we've expanded our health and medical sciences to some degree and added some at the high school but again you're also hearing that we have all these teachers on carts and sections that are moving

And at some point, some of these things require very specific types of equipment or classroom setup or those types of things.

But the reality too is that every student is not going to college.

We acknowledge that from the start.

So if we're talking about dual enrollment,

Unfortunately, that is still based around college.

And, you know, you have to be at a certain level to take dual enrollment courses.

We have students with different abilities, learning disabilities and things of that nature who should still have options that are not tied to college curriculum or college courses, which you have to obviously work your way up to.

So I think some of our students are black students in particular who are having a lot of challenges in our high school.

For example, they should still have the opportunity to look at some of those employment opportunities, and that should not be tied to their ability

And when you think about it is, you know, we talked often about their generational opportunities.

You know, what happens to the student when they get access to being able to do some of these things, like they're changing the course of their whole family's dynamics because, you know, now I'm the first person in my family who's made seventy thousand dollars, you know, so.

Just looking at the time, we wanted to be able to tie this to the 1%?

Is that?

If you go to the last slide, I'm done.

So we know that so many amazing things can be done for our students through the partnerships of the school board and city council.

The investments you make in our students are also investments for the future of this community.

We know that our parents and families have choices and you can look across the Commonwealth of what other school divisions are offering and we can make decisions about what opportunities are available and they can make decisions about what opportunities are available for their children.

An investment in our schools is an investment in our entire community because where our families choose to buy their homes is often influenced by where they want to send their children to school.

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing all the excellence that's happening in our schools, such as graduation rates for our various subgroups, our academic achievements for all students, and our accreditation of all schools.

This is what attracts families here.

This is what keeps them here.

We want Charlottesville City Schools to be a school division of choice.

Our facilities and programs are what will continue to attract our families to this division and also what will keep them here.

Thank you.

So we kind of put this together kind of, I know that Dr. Gurley and Dr. Isley were not able to be at our last joint work session where the CIP and the referendum was discussed.

So hopefully to address some of the questions that counselors had posed, you know, we were prepared, Mr. Meyers has kind of taken lead on coordinating some of the community groups and board members to continue to

push out and do what we can to educate the public about the referendum and the purpose and the why and what that does for the schools and city council.

Any questions?

I just want to add quickly that I visited Louisa

A good program there, Lloyd.

But I don't really have a question as much as just a comment or concern or however you want to characterize it, that my sense of things, I will say this represents a little bit of a change from some things I'd said during some earlier

meetings that we've had on this topic.

My sense of things is that in terms of building support for the 1% vote that it will be important that the people who we will be asking to vote for this feel like they've had a chance to be heard on how that money ought to get spent.

Well, I had earlier said that I thought we ought to have our own little list and you've obviously got the beginnings of a list and that's fine.

I wonder whether there is, I wonder who's doing what to make sure that we have enough public engagement to let people feel like they've had a chance to let themselves, let their opinions be heard about how this is all going to happen.

I know it hasn't come before us at council.

I don't know whether it's come before you all on the school board yet.

But Charlottesville being very much a public engagement kind of place, you can do the most wonderful things behind closed doors and get excoriated for it.

And you can do the most heinous things in public with public engagement.

And it's a very different reaction.

And I would like to

make sure that we're paying enough attention to this task of engaging the public so that they feel like they are a part of the decision-making process as well so that when the money hopefully gets allocated and gets spent, that they will feel like they've been a part of it.

That will encourage them to vote yes.

That's my overall comment.

It's not really a question, and I don't have a specific ask that somebody respond, but I just hope that

Well, one thing that I had thought of was that we have a meeting and my initial suggestion had been to sort of kick off the whole idea with

sort of a community-wide meeting on Saturday, September 12th, it being the only Saturday for a long time where there's not a home football game or something that we have to deal with, and maybe have

meeting of a presentation at CHS or someplace like that where some of the materials that you all have shown to us about the physical needs of the buildings can be discussed where people can get a sense of not only what the problem areas are but what the opportunities might be if we basically begin the selling job and then

See how many people can get enthused by that.

And if there's a way to do it, I am not an expert on this by any means, but I was often involved with them.

When Satyendra Hoosier was the director of planning, he would have these design charrettes where you followed a presentation about the needs and the problems and so on with various ways of getting public input.

And some people meeting in smaller groups

One of the things that's been done a lot recently is that putting sticky notes on the walls by the things

And it's more than anything else a chance for people to feel like they've had an opportunity.

For example, if we present this kind of information and we say, here are the problems at Jackson Viya, here are the problems at Greenbrier, here are the problems at CHS and problems at various other places, tell us which ones are the most important for you all.

I would bet that we'd get a fair number of people who would simply say, where my kid's going to school is the most important place, I'm going to put my sticky note on that place.

I think that's a good point.

And I do think that there should be a meeting of some sort.

I also think that we should be taking this sort of informal survey to the communities, mainly just so that we don't draw out the exact same demographic that, and we do want everyone's voice, but the people who come to like the participatory budget sessions and things of that nature, I feel like we get a common demographic constantly.

And so in order to get more people, I think Dr. Gurley, the FACE team has been doing a lot of community engagement, thinking about West Haven Day, going out to festivals, going out to the farmer's market,

We could do a sort of informal survey in that nature to send something out for parents and other community members.

But I fear that another meeting alone just won't do the job.

And one thing we talked about internally is that we want to be cautious of

We want to be cautious of like getting people to like how do you want to spend the money before we get people like to the yes.

It's really more about we have needs and I know our communications team has been doing a really good job and have this whole robust plan about how they inform people about the referendum because we can't tell people how to vote.

We can only tell them that there's a referendum, 1% sales tax on it, but what we can do is just keep reminding people like if you, there's something on the ballot, the school has some needs, but it may be very distracting for the community.

If we have them try to laser in on like this is how you're going to spend the money and then you don't have like people sold on like the yes first and that's why we've been focused on like saying

We've done the work for you.

Here goes his three places.

Because remember, when we came the last time, there was this long list of projects.

And we've reduced those things down to three and said, if we had the money, we would focus on these three areas.

And so really, the baton pass is like, let's get people to the yes.

The most important word in political advocacy is imagine.

If you can get people imagining, imagining a better future, imagining a nicer building for their school, for their kids to go to, that gets you to yes.

And I think this is why a year ago we started in the facilities committee jointly, CIP, to have your again your team here and staff have the joint committee to tell us what are all the projects right and I think we've seen that product here and here Mr. Goddard led for us that

So I think to your point, they're articulated.

Here are a bunch of different projects and needs that could be done and a little bit of a plan.

So I think to your point, people can react to something and have that.

And our comms team here is going to be helping articulate that out and put that out there.

I will say we do have on September 23rd on our budget calendar here already a listening event.

We're pushing out into the community, not just about the sales tax referendum and this, but also many other things.

So we'll be doing some feedback, picking feedback from folks.

In addition to many other things.

And to counselors, if you want to help push the sales tax, please come let me know.

Sorry, Mayor.

Yeah, I think it's definitely something that city council and the school board should be doing to promote this.

What I just want to be clear on, are we saying, you know, to overall get to the yes, are we saying please support

Well, I think the three projects come after the yes.

We get people to yes with the, here's all of the things that could happen.

We know we have to do them, get to the yes, and then we work on solidifying the priorities.

And what are those top three, or what are the handful of things that we're able to do with that, or what progress can we make?

That is all what we can

And so what I think that we need is that some consistent talking points for all of us to say when we get asked at the grocery store, at the ballparks or wherever, and we do get that.

Why are we doing this?

And so I think we all need to have the consistent message that Afton needs to work with Amanda, whatever.

Appreciate that Mayor Wade, and I've given that direction to our board and I'll share that with you, but essentially the three talking points for why schools need infrastructure updates are to ensure that schools are safe and secure, to ensure that they're up to modern learning standards, and to ensure that our graduates are life ready.

So those are the three priority areas.

And I appreciate your comment, Councilman Snook.

And if this referendum had not happened at the very last minute, at the very last moment, we would have had time to do the kind of imagining that you then talking to the community that would have been best practice.

But basically the state, we missed the boat, right?

We missed the boat, so we have to move right into

explaining and informing what our needs are.

I think you can still say imagine.

So usually- Imagine that the school, your kid- That's right.

So usually these things for the fall election gets in the high gear like after like Labor Day.

So in not attempting to drive a wedge in the spirit of alignment, because I'm all about it, I just want to make sure that we remember that if we stick to those talking points, which I love those, that when you are in the community having conversations about, well, is this school going to get done and that school is going to get done, I have to remind us of the caution that we have to exercise in that because we have to be able to afford it.

And while we have a long list of projects that need to get done, and while we have had a conversation this evening about three specific projects, the Early Learning Center is not completely paid for.

There's a gap.

It's a big one.

We have to fill that gap.

So this whole thing is probably going to have to start there.

So it's four projects, but not three projects, which then means that the high school project is not the original imagining that we have done is going to have to be different, or we're going to have to find more money at some point down the road.

So we just have to temper.

We have to temper those expectations for what we know today.

And if I may add to that, I hope I'm not getting too far out over my skis, but in terms of community relations and talking to people in the grocery store, it is important for them to know that we don't believe the tax solves all school facility needs for the future.

And it's important that we communicate that so that in 20 years, if we need to ask for, you know, or in 15 years or whatever it is that

that voters don't feel like we've pulled smoke out under them.

Definitely the most important thing is just having alignment to get the sales tax referendum passed and hopefully passed by a very wide margin to allow these investments.

I guess the questions I have are,

Is there agreement and alignment on these are things for after the referendum passes to figure out with the amount of money that comes in over 20 years from the referendum, like for these three schools that were outlined, what's the dollar amount for each one?

Is there alignment on like, should CHS be a project that the sales tax referendum was all in on?

Should it be the first project or should it be

Do the elementary schools come first or like how does it fit with using Walker as a flex space?

We need to know number one, does it pass?

And number two, I mean, I've been in tune to some of your meetings and it

Feels like there's some like up to 1% type conversations happening.

It's a point of clarification just to make sure we're, it's, we are being accurate

I think we're 100% in alignment that all of the sales tax referendum would go just to schools for these.

So I think those points are helpful too.

Like, are we really working with 1%?

What are we working with?

So that's helpful.

Thank you for clarifying that.

But I don't think the punch list, if you will, is developed until after we really know

Does this pass?

And then we kind of circle our wagons again and the work group really gets to work.

And one of the things that we had talked about

I think this was in a public meeting, but it might've just been an internal chat.

Was about not just one meeting, but meeting at different schools throughout the system.

So on different nights.

So if, oh, I can't make the Jackson-Bian meeting because of X, but I can go to the one at Summit.

Well, I think we'll engage the citywide PTO and additional PTOs.

Yeah, I think there'll be lots of opportunities here.

And again, the idea, as folks mentioned or discussed, is to have some publicized tours with the public, but also with us, with members of the media, et cetera, that can then help then disseminate those lessons from that.

I'll just say, yeah, Michael, I think

We need to get things discussed and then we'll figure out more of the details.

But I know we've had various community discussions on the design on CMS.

I don't know if you all remember that, but there's that.

I think that's helpful because I think one of the areas where on the city side, you know, we weren't 100% sure is if on the school side, you all already were in agreement or alignment that again, does all the sales tax revenue go just to CHS to CHS definitely come first.

No.

And I would just say, I think there's initial things and we have to see when we get there and there are other things that you're allowed to consider and we will evolve.

And again, our

So I'll share that we're running scenarios already.

We can't wait.

I don't think it would be appropriate for me to sit and wait.

I'm assuming that it will pass because I've heard so many people say that they want it to pass.

So you're going to do whatever it takes to make that happen.

And for that reason, I also have to work with

My trusty sidekick here on that capacity and what role it plays in getting us through whatever the list is and getting as much done as we possibly can.

So we've already started doing that because her handy-dandy slide that she presents to Council is projected out for

30 years or so, and this is within that time period.

So this will have an impact, an absolute impact, and we have to consider that.

So I think we're working with the information that we have available, and that is the schools that have been identified that you have indicated an interest.

We're running scenarios on those.

And the question will be, what between now and December might you say, what about this school or maybe this school?

And we can add that into the scenario as well.

Just quickly, I know it was mentioned a little bit earlier that even if the sales tax referendum passes, I think we all acknowledge there's still

Way more additional capital means beyond even that.

And just in the spirit of kind of figuring out, you know, how can we productively move forward together?

I know that the city, you know, we're working on our legislative packet right now for the upcoming general assembly session.

There are requests from the screen board for specific changes in terms of how the state funds school capital projects or compelling public universities to pay some tax burden.

I found this very helpful, you know, this last part.

So I know exactly what to focus on.

So this is very helpful.

I have one more very small specific question.

That picture of the CHS bathrooms, do we know when that was taken last month?

So I'm not sure the status on the work order for that.

I'd have to check everybody.

But there's work orders in whenever you see that type of thing, there's work orders put in.

It's for something like the bathroom condition.

I'm not sure how long it took that time.

And that was something that happened right at the end of school.

but Dr. Gurley mentioned this as well.

So the damage in some of those bathrooms, it's a recurring event.

So I can tell you it's, I could go back and find out definitively tomorrow that it's been fixed and by next week, the next stall, like those are just, that's why we really wanna fix all those bathrooms.

Any other comments, just go for councilors?

Let's get it passed.

It's in your hands.

Anybody from the school board?

Sam, any other information?

Is there a motion to end the city council meeting?

Second.

All in favor, please say yes.