District One governing board meeting at a glance
The Yuma School District One governing board convened for its May meeting on Tuesday, May 9 and streamed live via Youtube. The meeting is viewable at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2oqa0z4yts on the district’s Youtube channel.
PUBLIC HEARING ON BUDGET REVISION
A public hearing was held before the regular meeting to review the final budget revision for the 20222023 school year. CFO Denis Ponder highlighted the changes from December to May in a presentation to the governing board.
May’s revision saw an increase of 13 students for Average Daily Membership, making the 2023 fiscal year’s total estimated student count 8,447. Ponder stated that the district will see a slight increase from that and a larger one regarding Kindergarten – 3rd grade reading students.
For Group B specifically, which refers to any type of special education and is weighted differently for additional funding, the number of K-3 reading students caused an increase from 5,592 in December to 8,963 in May. This is because the K-3 reading plan hadn’t been approved prior to the budget’s December revision. Ponder added that each category in Group B saw some sort of increase too.
The maintenance and operations budget had a minor increase from $75,416,137 in December to $75,420,620 in May. The major difference is in unrestricted capital which bumped up to $7,126,471 in May from December’s $5,682,065.
“That’s where we captured all that additional revenue that we got from the ADM increase as well as the Group B weighting adjustment and the reason we wanted to put it into capital was we do have some plans for making some improvements with looking at some security improvements throughout our our district as well as working with some ability to beautify some of the areas through landscaping and those kinds of things,” Ponder said. “... The nice thing is we can move it anywhere we want next year if we have to respond to a need or something that comes up that we hadn’t planned for.”
He concluded that both the maintenance and operations and unrestricted capital budgets match the amount of money the district’s allowed to spend.
“All this shows is we didn’t over budget or under budget we matched exactly where we were supposed to be,” he said. “Any additional carry forward money we just put into the instruction line.”
Later in the regular meeting, the board voted to approve the final budget revision.
RECOGNITION
The district’s High Five program acknowledges employees that demonstrate the district’s values of professionalism, positive attitudes, “sees it, owns it, solves it, does it,” demonstrating district pride and going above and beyond. For the month of April, District One acknowledged teacher Arturo Barrios from Fourth Avenue Junior High, teacher Arelieen Lemke from Sunrise Elementary, teacher Austin Browning from Gila Vista Junior High, teacher Cheryle Tew from O.C. Johnson Elementary and District Library Coordinator Amanda Coltman.
Recognition was also held for the district’s retirees.
DONATIONS
District One received a total of $29,410.99 in donations this month. The most sizable donations of the month included $12,670 to Dorothy Hall Elementary from its PTO to purchase outside tables and benches; $3,000 for painted cabanas and $2605 for classroom supplies to Mary A. Otondo Elementary from its PTO; and various community business donations to the district for its milestone celebration event.
ENROLLMENT AND FINANCIAL TRENDS
CFO Ponder stated that enrollment year over year is still up but “dipped a little bit from the 140th day to 160th day. PRE-COVID, that was fairly normal … so it hasn’t happened in the last couple of years so we’ll keep an eye on that but it’s not out of the norm to see a little bit of a dip as we get towards the end of the year.”
He also noted that the district’s financial position still looks strong and its ending balances are favorable. About $1 million are being encumbered in the capital budget that won’t be spent for the purpose of saving funds for a technology refresh when the district’s ESSER funds are no longer available. Another $2.3 million is being encumbered for about 32 teacher positions which are currently being paid for with ESSER funds.
CONSENT AGENDA AND ACTION ITEMS
The governing board unanimously approved the consent agenda, which consists of items of a routine nature that generally do not require deliberation.
Aside from the final budget revision, the only action item involved the approval of trustees for District One’s insurance trust. Bruce Jensen, Christopher Franey, Adele Hennig, Sara Aivazian and Elizabeth Valenzuela were unanimously voted to serve as the trustees, effective July 1, 2023.