[0:00] It is time. The little L.I.S.D. Board of Trustees is now in session. It is 5.30 p.m. Ms.

[0:11] Flores, may we have introduction and roll call, please?

[0:18] Our first item in order is the public hearing for the proposed 2026, 2027 budget. Mr.

[0:27] Wise, it is your turn.

[0:30] Thank you very much, President Watkins.

[0:34] Board of

[0:36] public hearing to propose a budget for the 2627 school year.

[0:40] And just to kind of give you an idea of our financial management process,

[0:43] it starts with the needs assessment.

[0:45] We believe in site-based decision making here, campuses, departments develop their needs.

[0:51] We take that based on those needs assessments, go into the planning phase,

[0:55] we allocate the resources, we do the little academic ROI review,

[0:59] make sure that we're getting the best bang for our buck with what we're spending.

[1:03] And as you go around the circle, we come back into the budget, which is what we're doing tonight.

[1:07] There's the original budget, amendments in the final tonight is us proposing the original budget.

[1:13] So if you guys approve the budget later in the regular meetings, we'll count as the original budget.

[1:17] And then we'll amend it throughout the year as the needs of the district change because they promise whatever we set the budget at tonight, it will be different by 12 months from now.

[1:26] And then just like later tonight, we're going to be bringing the final budget in the end of the year that kind of puts a bow on everything.

[1:32] Let me go into our evaluation.

[1:34] We do interim statements throughout the year.

[1:37] There's an audit that will be presented to you,

[1:39] the third party audits, be presented to you guys

[1:41] in August for the 25th, 26th school year.

[1:45] Kind of like a student achievement.

[1:47] Again, making sure that we're funding what we need to fund.

[1:52] We do like to tie everything into our destination 2020

[1:56] plan for the district.

[1:57] So for my team, that is the bottom right corner,

[2:00] the ensuring physical health and sustainability.

[2:04] I like to make sure that what we're doing ties with the vision, the mission, the vision

[2:06] to be the destination district and to engage and equip and empower our students to realize

[2:12] their full potential.

[2:14] I don't sit in the classroom, but I do like to think that my team can help make sure the

[2:18] kids have what they need to learn and accomplish their goals.

[2:23] So quick housekeeping.

[2:24] We did post notice of this meeting June 6th in the Denver Record Chronicle.

[2:30] There's compliance, statutory compliance that we have to achieve with the post and

[2:35] its font size, things like that, but that was the one it went around in the paper and

[2:40] getting it to post it.

[2:44] No later, more than 30 days, no later than 30 days before the meeting and no fewer than

[2:49] 10 days before the meeting.

[2:50] You have a window in there to get it to post it so the public can come to the meeting.

[2:56] And before we can talk about where we're going, I think we can't even know where we've been.

[3:00] So I'd like to put a quick bow on this year.

[3:05] The column there, 2526 budget, is what we, the budget in the, in the books has an actual realize revenue and expenditures in the right hand column.

[3:14] You will notice in the budget expenses, that does, it's 103 now, when last we spoke it was 100.

[3:23] This is assuming passage of a final amendment that we're going to be proposing later in the regular session.

[3:29] So most of our revenue this year that we are missing is, in fact, it's that state revenue line.

[3:35] It is, in fact, related to student loss, we had a lot more student loss than we were forecasting this year.

[3:40] Everything else kind of came in with an margin of error.

[3:45] Those are our expenses.

[3:46] This is assuming everyone is going to spend every dollar they have in Tumbard and

[3:50] and quick refresher for you and for the public.

[3:53] When we spend dollars in the district, we have to basically promise the vendor that we're going to spend the money first.

[4:01] It's kind of like an IOU, if I'm going to buy pencils, I encumber the $10 for the pencils to generate a purchase order.

[4:08] And then the place we're buying the pencils on takes the purchase order, they ship the pencils and then we cut them a check.

[4:15] So the encumbrance is a promise to spend.

[4:18] and this is assuming that we're gonna

[4:20] expend all the incumbences that never happens,

[4:23] but it's a more conservative estimate.

[4:26] There are a few things that we don't normally see here,

[4:28] called other financing sources.

[4:32] These two are related to two big transactions this year.

[4:35] We entered into an energy savings plan

[4:39] with a company last year.

[4:42] The, and it basically, we're forecasting to save X,

[4:45] of energy over 10 years and we're paying that out.

[4:49] This is just an accounting entry.

[4:52] The way the government accounting standards have us do

[4:54] is we have to, in the first year of that cycle

[4:57] we have to recognize the expense for the full thing

[4:59] at the first year, but there's also a,

[5:02] we call it below the line transaction,

[5:04] another financing source, increased the offset that.

[5:08] That's why you see the 103 in the budget total.

[5:11] This is basically two offsetting transactions,

[5:13] they kind of wash, but we have to book it that way

[5:15] So it does make your expenses look like they're more than they are.

[5:19] It's just that recognizing ten years of expense in the one year.

[5:23] And the other one is the proceeds from the land sale.

[5:25] Basically, this is our share after cost from the land sale that we are able to put into our general fund.

[5:34] There will be a motion or action item later in the regular meeting.

[5:38] We have to defuse basically the cost of the bond funds that we use to buy the land.

[5:42] But we'll get to that in the other meeting.

[5:44] which leads us to the deficit of about 5.5 for this year.

[5:48] And then there's our transition fund was about 8.6

[5:50] and we started with leases of about $3 million

[5:52] left in the transition fund going into 26.27.

[5:56] So that's where we've been, and here's where we're going.

[5:59] Again, I like this slide.

[6:01] This is a very complicated process for forecasting revenue

[6:05] and developing a budget for a full year.

[6:09] Refreshed it all our folks.

[6:11] First, we talk about entitlement a lot, entitlement is the size of the glass, right?

[6:18] Basically, the glass is going to get filled up, and then the state funding formula kind

[6:22] of decides who puts in so much water for the state or us.

[6:28] And just a reminder, the actual entitlement is, it's a formula based on a student allotment

[6:34] and then you wait that for attendance and the individual student expenses.

[6:38] So, basically, if your student is in a gifted and talented or CTE classes or special education

[6:45] or bilingual, there's different weights that go along with that, the impact that aggregate

[6:50] that.

[6:50] That's your entitlement.

[6:51] That's the size of your glass.

[6:53] Glass won't change.

[6:54] The student's changed.

[6:55] So, you get more students.

[6:56] The glass gets bigger.

[6:57] You get fewer students.

[6:57] The glass gets smaller.

[6:59] And then, really, what we do with the state is decide who's going to fill up how much

[7:03] of the glass.

[7:03] So as your property values go up, your state A goes down,

[7:07] your property values go down, your state A goes up.

[7:09] You're still getting the same entitlement.

[7:11] It's just the sourcing changes.

[7:13] And if a district property tax flex or collections exceed your entitlement,

[7:18] you get into recapture, which we are recapture district.

[7:20] That's the portion we send back to the state.

[7:26] This is a quick snapshot.

[7:28] This is about, this is our funding template that we use to math out our revenue for the future.

[7:34] This is about 40% of the student data.

[7:38] There's about 120 semi-data points that we enter that involve property taxes,

[7:43] and other grants, and things like that.

[7:45] And it's just kind of given an idea.

[7:46] It's a very complicated process.

[7:50] So we call it Read and the Tealy is Read and the Future.

[7:53] Our funding is based on student enrollment and property values.

[7:57] We'll get to a bigger picture of that in a second.

[7:59] But that's our 10 year forecast from our demographer.

[8:02] And that's kind of where we're at with our property value trend lately.

[8:06] We did take a slight dip in 25, 26.

[8:09] But one of the fun parts about this process is right now,

[8:13] both those inputs that we're using to set our budget are unknown.

[8:20] We are forecasting our enrollment based on the demographer's expertise.

[8:27] And we're also forecasting our property values.

[8:29] I won't know our official property values until July 25th, so everything right now is a forecast of future values

[8:35] which kind of makes the nice and challenging. This is a larger picture of that 10-year forecast from our

[8:41] demographer. As you can see for 26.27 the highlight here is they are forecasting a decline of 160 students.

[8:49] This was done in Christmas of this year, so we actually wound up a little bit lower than that year

[8:56] and talk for this year.

[8:59] This is the comparison for the proposed budget from last year's

[9:05] budget or 2526 budget to the start of 2627. This is different than what's in board but

[9:11] we do have a handout here and the only thing it changed on here is the per people funding

[9:17] for 2526 change. There was a miscalculation in the student numbers for 2526. That kind of

[9:26] is a snapshot for the general fund and for our debt service, our bond payment fund.

[9:32] And as you can see, the main thing is we are basically decreasing almost every

[9:37] function year-over-year.

[9:41] This is the proposed budget. This has our general fund or

[9:45] student nutrition fund or our child nutrition, if you recall, cafeteria, and then

[9:50] our debt service, which is our bond payments. And we are forecasting a deficit

[9:56] going into $26.7 of about $7.2, $7.3 million.

[10:02] If you remember, we had a, we're forecasting

[10:06] about a $3 million dollar balance transition fund

[10:09] at the end of this year, so that will,

[10:12] next year, we will definitely eat into fund balance.

[10:17] Just a quick point about this year's budget.

[10:20] We do, like I said earlier, we do forecast

[10:21] the enrollment decline of 160 kids,

[10:25] full men of 25, 26 to the start of 26, 27,

[10:28] or through the course of 26, 27.

[10:30] This proposed budget does include

[10:32] a proposed one-time payment of $500 for staff

[10:36] who were employed with the district prior to July 1,

[10:39] and that is also a agenda item to be voted on later

[10:42] in the regular meeting that y'all have a chance

[10:45] to vote on that later.

[10:48] We are reducing the budget from the beginning of last year

[10:50] to the beginning of 2627, it is a budget reduction of about $3.4 million.

[10:56] Unfortunately, it's also, from the beginning of last year to the beginning of 2526,

[11:02] the deficit's also, budgeted deficit's also increasing about $500,000 just because

[11:07] the loss in enrollment is quite a bit more than expected last year.

[11:15] Is there any questions about budget deficit?

[11:31] Is there any, is there any, is there any, is there any, is there any, is there any

[11:34] questions for Mr. Weiss? Mr. Englisch?

[11:39] Mr. Weiss, you mentioned that there was a, as I was looking at boardbook, you mentioned

[11:42] there was a little bit of a description in a numbers on boardbook. Is that right?

[11:46] Pardon?

[11:46] Yeah, a little bit of a description on a numbers on boardbook.

[11:49] Just in, on this column, it's the second gray column on the right, the 25, 26 per student expenses.

[11:57] This is, we corrected an error in the formula and basically they were forecast to get a difference for current you're spending per student versus next year spending per student.

[12:08] The actual budgeted numbers for both years are fine, thank you, sir.

[12:15] Any other questions or comments?

[12:21] We will, thank you Mr. Weiss, we will consider a motion to adjourn.

[12:26] Mr. Olson made the motion, is there a second?

[12:29] Mr. English made the second.

[12:31] All in favor, signify by raising your hand and saying aye.

[12:35] Aye.

[12:37] Motion carries.

[12:38] We stand adjourned.

[12:39] It's 542 p.m.

Jun 22, 2026 Public Hearing

Agenda

Transcript