January 2022 Board of Education Regular Meeting

Moved Item 2.2 - Approve memberships in Professional Organizations from Consent Agenda to Agenda Item 4.

President Theaker recommended that NSBA membership be excluded from the membership list.  Vote was taken to remove agenda item 2.2 from the original consent agenda.  See Agenda item 2.

No more questions or discussions.

Sent to vote.

No questions or discussion.

Sent to vote.

Treasurer Schumacher reported as follows:

The audit is finally finished.  It looks like we will have a clean audit once again.  They are proposing two verbal comments: the investment policy needs to be signed by financial institutions that we have investments with; and there were minor adjustments made to the SEFA (Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards).  This is the report that triggers the Single Audit. One comment is in the management letter; the budgeted receipts were not properly posted to the system, and a proposed comment concerned the Board approved appropriation amendments totaling $1,556,625 in June 2021 were not posted to the system. I sent an argument and proof that the appropriations amendment was correctly posted in June 2021. I did hear back from her and she said she had been looking at the wrong report and the $1.5M in appropriations had been updated.  She removed that comment from the Management Letter.  I have the official report and have made copies of the Post Audit report for the members of the Finance Committee and placed them at their station.  We will not be having a post audit meeting.  If you have any questions after reading the post audit report, please let me know. 

The NCOCC audit is also complete and the report was issued with no material misstatements.  Their audit is different from ours as they do not report on a GAAP basis and it is more of an internal control audit and cash basis reporting check.

December -  Since the 2008 COPS issue was paid off in December, I will be researching how to transfer those remaining funds out of the 002 Bond Retirement fund.  As you can see, there is a balance of $21,021.56 left in that fund.  I have contacted Dave Conley for assistance in the proper procedure to do this.  He has informed me that I will need to ask the County Prosecutor for a ruling on moving those funds.

We just received official word yesterday that we would be receiving GEERII funds in the amount of $235,288.  That will make our available GEER money a total of $431,528.  The time period for use of this grant is 3/13/20 to 9/30/23. Also, HB 169 includes a provision that “any personal protective equipment (PPE) purchased with the use of the bill’s appropriated funds, and any future appropriation of federal coronavirus funds, to be either:  Approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; or authorized for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, including under emergency use authorization.”

State Foundation payments - General Fund – Traditional Schools saw the first attempt at applying the new State Foundation Funding in their January #1 payment.  It doesn’t sound like it went well. These were comments we received from K-12 Consulting (our five year forecast team)

 “While I have worked on and updated over a dozen models, I think it may be best if we all wait until February or March to worry about a truly solid update concerning state foundation. This will coincide with our updating your TY2021 tax rates and values, and possibly actual 1^st half tax settlements if you have them”

“So, we can put some credence in the accuracy of the Jan #1 SFPR settlement, but not total reliability at this time unfortunately. And, there is good reason because we have witnessed wild errors in the Jan #1 SFPR settlement Sheet from large negative Ctech revenue numbers, to large negative Sp Ed revenue funding, and, in one district transportation revenue of $163 Million over what was due. So clearly the ODE is scrambling on this still, and much more work needs to be done on the HB110 detailed SFPR reports, and as a result, the Settlements sheets will continue to change in response.”

Shortly after reading these comments from Chris, I realized that our foundation payment for January 14 is also based on the new funding formula.  At that point I immediately signed up for the January Hot Topics seminar for tomorrow.  It includes a session with Aaron Rausch from ODE and also a session with some of the Fair Funding committee members. The Career Tech Treasurers are also in the process of setting up a Zoom meeting for sometime next week. Dan Burtscher and I sat down for a few minutes yesterday to see what we could figure out.  We have tied some of the figures together, but as the K12 people said, we have a way to go.  By this initial calculation, we could receive less than this FY, but we already know some of the figures are wrong.  At first glance, it looks as though we would be receiving $463,000 more, but it is only a difference in two bottom lines.  The open enrollment is switched to above the line, not added on as a transfer.  One that we know is wrong is the Career Tech funding and our calculation will increase the funding.  There is a problem with some of the withdrawals and re-enrollment figures that Dan is trying to get fixed in EMIS.

Questions

It is the time of year when we approve the County Budget for FY23.  I have attached the Tax Valuation Summary for your review.  When preparing the budget, I considered using the actual receipts we expect which is the number on our five-year forecast instead of the actual valuations issued by the County and State.  The County and State valuations include the entire amount of the Rover Pipeline valuation.  Our five-year forecast only includes those monies we expect to actually receive.  After speaking with a couple other Treasurers, I decided to use the County valuations for their report just as we have in the past.  This is the same that other area Treasurers are doing.

As you can see, the effective rates of the older levies are rolling back, so someday the Board might want to take into consideration a replacement levy for these.

If we take a look at the income from the levies, you will see last year’s estimate was $8,824,069. Collections for the year were $8,391,806.    This year’s county estimate is $9,338,043 and our five year forecast estimate is $8,511,233.  It would be nice if we could collect all of this, but I am just not ready to include these monies in the forecast.

This is the County Budget I am presenting to you at this time for your approval.

No questions or discussion.

No report.

Superintendent Nickoli reported as follows: 

 I would like to congratulate our reappointed Board Members.  Mr. Royden Smith and Mr. Dennis Long who have been reappointed by the Willard City Schools and the Galion City Schools, respectively as well as Mr. Doug Theaker, Mr. Bill Hope, and Mr. Dick Prater who have been reappointed by the Mid-Ohio Educational Service Center Board of Governors.  We welcome you back for another three years and we greatly appreciate your service to Pioneer.

January is Board of Education Appreciation Month, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support of our students and staff. You are to be commended for the progress that Pioneer has made toward increasing student learning and improving student achievement.  Also, in recognition of that service is a certificate presented by the Ohio School Boards Association signed by Randy Smith, OSBA President and Rick Lewis, OSBA Executive Director.  

As we have throughout the duration of the pandemic, we are following the most updated quarantine guidelines.  Currently, that means that any person who tests positive is isolated for five days and can then return so long as they wear a mask for an additional five days and their symptoms have improved.  These changes have allowed us to keep our students in school and our teachers in their classrooms.  We currently have 20 student and 2 teacher cases. 

I received an email from and had a phone conference with our Construction Attorney, Desmond Cullimore yesterday updating me on the timeline of our legal proceedings related to the HVAC portion of our renovation project. 

Ohio ACTE Legislative Seminar

As was mentioned at our December Board Meeting, the Ohio ACTE Legislative Seminar is scheduled for February 9-10.  At this point, the event is scheduled to be in-person.  This is a very important opportunity to connect with those legislators who are returning to office but more importantly to educate new Senators and Representatives as to the value of CTE to Ohio’s workforce development efforts.

New Student Visitation

After conferring with our Partner School Superintendents we have developed an alternative timeline for Sophomore Visitation.  The schedule I sent you last week had Sophomores coming to Pioneer at the end of January.  Given the spike in cases, it appears that we may have to delay visits until February.  We have tentative dates and will make a decision early next week after further conferencing with our Partner Schools. 

We have posted a number of positions that are either already open or that will open at the end of the school year.  Given anticipated shortages in all areas of the workforce, teachers included, we want to get an early start on our hiring process.  Current openings include:

1. Cybersecurity Instructor
2. Math Instructor
3. Intervention Specialist
4. Adult Education Secretary
5. 3^rd Shift Custodian

There may be some additional retirements later in the year.  All other personnel items are common for this time year.

No questions or discussion.

Sent to vote.

Motion was made to  move this Agenda Item to the February Board meeting.

Executive Sessoin was cancelled; not needed.